Satiated Podcast

In this week's Satiated Podcast episode, I chat with Jay Moon Fields, MA, Coach, and author about: 

You can also read the transcript to this week’s episode here: https://www.stephaniemara.com/blog/building-self-trust

THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE TO SIGN UP FOR THE SOMATIC EATING® PROGRAM!

The first class has...

In this week's Satiated Podcast episode, I chat with Béatriz Victoria Albina, MA, Somatic Master Coach, and author about: 

You can also read the transcript to this week’s episode ​here​: www.stephaniemara.com/blog/breaking-free-from-emotional-outsourcing

There are 4 days left to sign up for the Somatic Eating® Program! 

In this 3 month class, we spend 12 weeks together increasing your bodily experience of safety, security...

I've been reflecting recently on how much I talk here about the reasons food behaviors like binge eating have nothing to do with the food, but the state you're eating the food in. As I've explored here many times, there are so many somatic, trauma, and nervous system layers to your food patterns. But part of food recovery has to include explorations around food itself. 

In this week's Satiated Podcast episode, I chat about: 

Happy Satiated Saturday! 

I find it fascinating to explore the layers and layers of connections between trauma and food behaviors. 

Trauma alters the way you experience bodily sensations. A racing heart can feel like panic rather than excitement. An empty stomach might trigger fear rather than curiosity about food. 

Over time, the body learns to suppress or disconnect from these cues in an attempt to stay safe. ​Body detachment provided you​ with short term safety, but affected your ability to know how you feel, to understand if you’re hungry or full, or to know w...

Happy Satiated Saturday! 

After years and years of navigating food cravings, it was the field of somatics that started to shift my perception of them. 

I used to think of cravings as something I had to do battle with and couldn't listen to until I realized that I was defining listening to cravings as abiding by them and that listening to my craving meant I needed to eat the food some part of me was telling me to eat. 

I now experience and teach that cravings are bodily messengers. Cravings are meant to be...

Happy Satiated Saturday! 

When a focus on food and nutrition feels like it starts to take over your life, where you're not eating if you can't find what you've been taught are the cleanest, purest foods, and experience high anxiety whenever interacting with foods outside a set list of internally approved foods, you might be navigating orthorexia. 

In this week's  episode, I chat with Sabrina Magnan, Certified Holistic Health Coach founder of the Food Freedom Academy, about: 

Happy Satiated Saturday! 

Something I've noticed in any body image healing exploration is how private body image concerns are. About 84% of women struggle with body image, yet something so prevalent is often kept hidden. 

I wonder what could change if how hard it is to live in a body could be openly discussed and supported, where conversations could look like: 

Person 1: How are you today?

Person 2: I'm actually having a really hard time with my body image today.

Person 1: Thanks for letting me know. I struggle a lot too. Is...

Happy Satiated Saturday! 

Fitness culture has made body image recovery even more confusing. I've seen people year after year question if it is alright to want to lose weight, or lift weights, or increase muscle. 

What I like to return to is the intention behind these desires and how they feel in your body. Any intention approached from a place of self hate, of disrespecting the body, or pushing the body beyond what it can handle, compromising its health, is not a goal that will lead to nervous system regulation and bodily safety. 

Fir...

Happy Satiated Saturday! 

At twenty-one, when traveling abroad, I was so nervous about what to eat and eating around others that I did not nourish myself well. I flew home on an 8 hour flight with a fever of 103. 

Talking about regulating your nervous system and eating to support your body during travel and vacations is now one of my favorite things to share. 

So, I knew in this body image series that I wanted to bring someone on to chat about navigating food and body image during vacation.

In this week's epi...

Happy Satiated Saturday! 

I'm excited to tell you that today marks a month long focus on the podcast on body image healing. 

Every summer, I have noticed an uptick in body image conversation on social media and in my sessions and programs. 

So last summer, I started a little podcast tradition of offering a whole series focused and dedicated to supporting you in navigating body image during the months where more of your body is being seen, more vacation pictures are being taken, and you're potentially feeling some discomfort being in your body. 

Happy Satiated Saturday! 

Anyone else notice how much noise there has been recently about carbohydrates and protein? 

Protein has to be in everything. I literally just got an email this morning from a company that is now making protein granola. 🤦🏻‍♀️

And the continued arguments between those giving nutrition advice about eat carbs, don't eat carbs, don't eat the wrong kind of carbs, don't eat the wrong kind of carbs in the wrong order, could all make a person's head spin. 

So when I found Kate Deering talking about how important carbohydrates are for our hea...

Happy Satiated Saturday! 

Labels like stress eating and emotional eating need some updating. 

By tacking on the words stress or emotional to eating, it gives the perception that the "problem" is stress or emotions, and if you can fix being a stressed person or person who feels (an impossible task), THEN the food behavior might go away. 

Stress and emotions are a part of life. Because of this, the practice can be to see the presence of stress or any emotion as body communication. It is telling you how it is processing your ext...

Happy Satiated Saturday! 

Making friends as an adult can be hard! Not only can it be difficult to find people you truly connect with, but it can also be hard to put yourself out there when you've experienced trauma in relationships with others. 

There can be fear that you will be hurt again, as you were in the past. Yet, while trauma can occur in relationships, healing relational wounds can occur in relationships with others as well. 

In this week's Satiated Podcast episode, I chat with Kymber Maulden, Nutrition Consultant and Neurosomatic Trauma Coa...

Happy Satiated Saturday! 

How do you feel about eating around others?

I remember in my years of struggling with food how scary it would feel to eat with others. There was a constant inner dialogue about eating the "right" things in the "right" amount. 

I would find myself consistently undereating when going out and then overeating or binge eating when I would get home, as I felt starving and dysregulated. 

Eating around other people can be filled with anxiety, overwhelm, and fear, where you may find yourself engaging in food behaviors aft...

Happy Satiated Saturday! 

A common theme I've seen over the years working with women 1:1 is that for many (myself included), body image concerns started during teenage years. 

Ugh, a shifting and changing body is so difficult to be with, to trust, and to come home to. 

Your body is going to change again and again throughout your life. That can feel terrifying. When you've experienced past trauma where everything felt unknown and unstable, a body that changes and has different daily needs can be triggering. It can remind you of all that you've gon...

Happy Satiated Saturday! 

Many of you may know that touch has been linked to the release of oxytocin. Oxytocin is a hormone related to reproduction, social bonding, stress regulation, and promotes feelings of love, trust, attachment, intimacy, and calm. Ya know what else stimulates the release of oxytocin? Eating. 

Research studies have found that an increase in oxytocin can decrease the urge to eat. So you can imagine that if you're lacking safe touch in your life and touch has felt invasive, where you stay away from touch, that your body needed to fi...

Happy Satiated Saturday! 

It can be confusing what path to choose for your food recovery when there are many different paths you can walk. When exploring all the various avenues, you can focus on your experience of choice. 

There is no "right" way to decrease your food coping mechanisms. It gets to be unique to you, your body, and what supports you in feeling the way you want to feel in your life. Your recovery resources are your choice (something that the experience of trauma can feel like it took away from you). 

Whe...

Happy Satiated Saturday! 

When you're feeling threatened in your body, hunger and fullness cues can feel wonky and also frightening. 

Hunger can come out of nowhere and remind you how little control you may feel in your life right now. The felt sense of hunger can be similar to past experiences you've had that left you feeling unsafe. 

The empty feeling may remind you of being abandoned as a child and the hurt and pain of not feeling held the way you needed to be. If you ignore hunger, you can also ignore the...

Happy Satiated Saturday! 

What if diet culture wasn't actually the "problem"? 

Focusing on diet culture can become a distraction. It keeps the conversation circling around the same point—being controlled around our food choices is the problem, and we need to regain our experience of choice with food. 

Yet, when all of our attention stays on food, we miss out on exploring the deeper layers of who we are, beyond what we eat. Staying locked in a battle with diet culture can distract us from stepping into our power. 

In this week's...

Happy Satiated Saturday! 

Intuition has been fascinating for me. 

I first started getting into the mind-body connection through practicing and learning about yoga and yoga philosophy. In yoga classes, I would often hear teachers talking about trusting your intuition. To be guided by your intuition. 

But, what I rarely heard was descriptions of how do you know something is intuition. Is what you're feeling intuition or fear? The more I learned about somatic work, the more I started to question the experience of intuition and where it comes from. 

When I fina...

Happy Satiated Saturday! 

How do you currently view symptoms or impulses in your body?

Are they something to be fixed? Are they wrong or bad? Are you afraid of them when they increase? 

If you said yes to these questions, you might notice how does it feel in your body to view the body's symptoms and impulses as wrong, bad, fearful, and need of fixing? Something I've been teaching for a while is that your food coping mechanisms are not a problem. 

Often, what needs to be updated is how you res...

Happy Satiated Saturday! 

While trauma-based food coping mechanisms, like binge eating, can feel dramatic, healing can sometimes (not always) be incredibly boring. 

Decreasing food patterns can look like simple acts of body care, like:

These are the non-sexy, simple, not marketable ways of what it can look like to take care of your body and reconnect with yourself. 

In this week's episode, I chat with...

Happy Satiated Saturday! 

I have one published article in a journal titled, The Enteric Nervous System and Body Psychotherapy: Cultivating a Relationship with the Gut Brain.

I have a fascination and curiosity about the gut. The gut contains about 100 trillion bacteria that contribute to your mood, mental health, immune system, cravings, and nervous system.

Some studies have found that there are some missing microbes in the guts of people who are struggling with binge eating, which provides another example of how binge eating is not your fault but a response to what is h...

Happy Satiated Saturday! 

When I started to learn about the mind-body connection through yoga, I dove deep into all things yoga. I became a bit of a yoga fanatic and that led me to learn about Ayurveda, which is yoga's sister science. 

Ayurveda is a whole-body system of medicine. Rather than seeing symptoms as problems to be fixed, Ayurveda approaches symptoms as imbalances that can be brought into balance with foods, movements, and self-care routines. Ayurveda gave me a new lens to see my body through. I got to experience the exquisite wisdom in my bo...

Happy Satiated Saturday! 

Have you ever noticed that the strongest memories are the ones where you felt the most presence and embodiment? I will never forget my first yoga class because when I was shaking while holding a plank, I couldn't be anywhere else but in my body. 

At the beginning of your eating recovery, you may feel disconnected and dissociated. Your body has felt like an unsafe place to inhabit. Food has served as a wise strategy to create distance from your body or a micro-moment of feeling alive. Creating safety with food is le...

Happy Satiated Saturday! 

Proprioception is your body's ability to sense movement and know where you are in space. When you've experienced past trauma, you dissociate from your body out of protection. 

This can decrease your proprioceptive awareness where food comes in to experience movement, embodiment, and have a moment of presence to feel where you are right here and now. 

In this week's Satiated Podcast episode, I chat with Dr. Satya Sardonicus, a leading expert in fascia and nervous system healing and the creator of NeuroFascial Flow, about: 

Happy Satiated Saturday! 

In April of 2022, I went to Disney World with my family and came back with covid. It was, unfortunately, the Delta strain that left me with long covid. 

I had to use an oxygen concentrator while I slept for about a year while my lungs healed through nebulized steroids and inhalers. I also had the lovely long covid symptom of losing my ability to swallow where I was on an all-liquid way of eating for almost two years. 

It's been quite a journey! While there are a few long covid sym...

Happy Satiated Saturday! 

Your body loves to be in movement. Yet, movement or exercise can also be a way to create distance between you and how you feel. There is a different felt sense when you move to express a fight or flight response or dissociate from the feeling of threat in your body. 

You can ask yourself before you move: Am I using movement as a way to push myself further away from me? Am I using movement in a way that connects me back to myself?

In this week's episode, I ch...

Happy Satiated Saturday! 

I take a different approach to body image healing. I apply the same explorations I do with food from a somatic perspective to body image. I started to wonder why is it that you can look in the mirror and love what you see one day and then later that day or the next day look in the mirror and feel like everything needs to change. Your body did not change within 24 hours. 

The answer is your nervous system. You will perceive your body differently based on your nervous system state. Often bo...

Happy Satiated Saturday! 

Somatic practices have become a buzzword as the new supplement you can take to “calm” yourself down, to shake off a trauma response, and maybe not binge eat. 

They can feel alluring. When you’re struggling with food, you just want an answer. There can be panic and desperation at willing to try anything to make sure you won’t binge again. You may find yourself trying to shake, or tap, or dunk your face in ice-cold water. This may feel calming for a few minutes and then you watch yourself walk into the k...

Happy Satiated Saturday! 

Every semester in my undergraduate studies, I would receive all my coursework & experience a full-body panic. 

I would look at all that was due & some perfectionistic part of me thought I needed to hand in everything tomorrow. 

This typically led to a phone call to my mother who would say, "Stephanie, you eat an elephant a bite at a time."

This would often remind me that when faced with big tasks, you can only make it to the end one step at a time. 

On a food...

Happy Satiated Saturday! 

Body shame is body communication. 

If body shame could speak, it might say, “It doesn’t feel safe to be as you are. I’m trying to protect you from the pain you’ve already endured.”

Body shame often acts as a shield, guarding against judgment and rejection. No one could be as cruel to you as you are to yourself. This can feel like a defense, ensuring that no one else’s words can hurt you more than your own.

Body shame can create a thick impenetrable wall around yo...

Happy Satiated Saturday! 

Your struggles with food rooted in a lack of safety in your body are not just a response to trauma, they're also shaped by the commodification of health. 

The idea that a product, supplement, protocol, or routine could "fix" you and make you feel safe often triggers your fight-or-flight response. This constant sense of danger can intensify binge or restrictive food behaviors as your body seeks regulation. 

When health is commodified, it can never feel like enough. There’s always another longevity bio-hack, another supplement, another "should" to do for your...

Happy Satiated Saturday! 

Something I've been noticing is how much we're taught to see any symptom as a sign that something is "wrong" and that we have to embark on a "healing journey" to "fix" the symptom. 

For a moment, try this out on your body. Tell it that there is something wrong that you need to fix. What do you notice? How does your body respond to that?

Striving to “heal” your body sends the message to your body that you are in danger. Your body activates your sympathetic nervous system and takes...

Happy Satiated Saturday! 

As many of you know, I started my PhD in somatic psychology in September and just completed my first semester. 🎉

While I initially wanted to research all eating disorders (which may still happen), I decided this first semester to focus on research surrounding binge eating disorders. 

Going through graduate school almost 15 years ago, I was often confused about why there was not a single class on nutrition. Wouldn't that be something that would be important for a therapist to at least know the basics when exploring any issue someone is navig...

Happy Satiated Saturday! 

Body image concerns are often one of the many challenges that fuel disordered eating and eating disorders and are one of the worries that continue to stick around long after you've found a safe relationship with food. There can be an expectation when you've healed your body image challenges that you'll never worry about the way your body looks, that you'll never compare your body to someone else's body ever again, that you'll love the way you look in pictures, and that you won't even care if your body changes. 

A somatic ap...

Happy Satiated Saturday! 

I've gone out to eat sushi many times. Several years ago, when I had to go to a sushi restaurant for a work meeting, I thought, "Sure, no problem."

On this particular afternoon, the restaurant was loud and bustling. I could barely hear anyone down the table, and I was there with people who didn't necessarily put my body at ease. 

By the end of the meal, I was doubled over in digestive pain. At the time, I didn't want anyone to know how much pain I was in. So, I...

Happy Satiated Saturday! 

Because of diet culture, I was scared of carbs for a long time. I barely ate them which ended up in binging on them. Thanksgiving became a time when I would eat as many sweet potatoes as I wanted only to feel sick the next day. 

One year I decided I was going to eat sweet potatoes every day while creating balanced meals around this food to experience that one of my favorite carbs could be incorporated into how I would like to nourish myself. By the next Thanksgiving, I had no de...

Happy Satiated Saturday! 

For soooooo many years Thanksgiving meant restricting all day and eating all night beyond what was comfortable.

I always thought it was about the food. That was all I focused on as the day got closer so it had to be about the food, right?

If you're currently going through this experience, I'm here to let you know that the focus on food is not about the food. 

Focusing on what and how much you're eating can be a supportive distraction from how you're feeling. Maybe you're around pe...

Happy Satiated Saturday! 

When you're struggling with binging or restricting, all the power can feel like it is in the food. Like the food has some captivating hold that no matter your best attempts to break it, nothing seems to work. 

Often this is because your food coping mechanisms aren't about the food. So the more focus there is on the food, the further away you might feel from the root cause of your food behaviors. One root cause can be feeling like your ability to step into self leadership has been taken away. 

W...