Embodied Nourishment

8. Shame is Not an Effective Motivator for Behavior Change

Shaming yourself doesn't work to break toxic cycles. You can not shame your way into make better choices for your life.
How many times have you overate a food and then resorted to speaking meanly to yourself?
"I'm such an idiot."
"What's wrong with me?"
"I have no self control."
"I hate myself."
We all know the cliche saying "would you speak to your friend the way you speak to yourself?" And of course you wouldn't talk to your friend in these ways. And yet you continue to talk to your own self in this way.
Did you know that you shame yourself in these ways because your brain is actually wired to do so?
The limbic system is the part of the brain that associates emotions with memories. When your brain perceives your own behavior to be a threat to yourself, the limbic system gets activated and tries to make you feel a negative emotion to associate with the behavior in the pursuit of convincing you to never perform that behavior again.
But the thing is that it doesn't work. In fact, psychologists call the limbic system the "prison of the survival brain." When you are caught in a cycle, there are cultural, genetic, and environmental factors that put you in the trap of that cycle.
Shaming yourself doesn't actually do anything to get you out of that trap. Shame just berates you for being in a trap that you had no part in creating.
The cool thing about being a human though is that we have something called a prefrontal cortex and we can use this part of our brain to evolve in a different way. We can use our brain to stop shaming ourselves and to get curious about why we are caught in the trap to begin with.
Only then can we gain control and make the behavior changes that we are trying to make.
In this podcast episode, I dive much deeper in these little nooks and crannies of the human brain and I show you exactly how to break out of these toxic cycles so that you can make the behavior changes that you're looking for.
Find me on Instagram @embodied.nourishment
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7. Self Assurance

Hi friends! This podcast is a little different today. The first 6 episodes were more "professional" sounding and "containerized" if you will.
But I didn't quit my clinical job to continue being containerized. You see, the standardized practice of care doesn't let practitioners go below the surface of "what are you eating?"
And yet, all of the things that cause disordered eating and negative body image are found below the surface of "what are you eating?"
Because disordered eating and negative body image is never about the food.
It's about your individual life experience and the thoughts, feelings, and childhood conditioning that you bring into the conversation of food and body.
In childhood you may have learned that you were responsible for everyone else's emotions. Your emotional needs perhaps weren't met and/or they were invalidated. In the child's mind this lays the ground for a negative self image.
This negative self image is the foundation on disordered eating is born. The constant seeking of approval is the only way you may have learned to deserve love. And this is the seeking that you will continue to mutilate yourself for until you fill that void within yourself.
So in this episode, I let the fire come out a little stronger. There are expletives and tough love, and also a hell of a lot of inspiration to start becoming more self confident and self assured in who you are, right now, in the body that you are in, in this very moment.
 
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6. Cleaning Out the Closet

I know you think that keeping clothes that are too small for you in your closet is motivating you to "eat healthy" or to "lose weight." But what if I told you that keeping these clothes in your closet is actually destroying your relationship with food and is making you unhealthy?
In this podcast episode I talk about how important it is for your health to acquire clothes that fit your body, how to grieve those old clothes, and I finish with some tips on how to get started in the "Cleaning Out the Closet" journey.
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5. Food Waste

In this podcast episode I talk about how major corporations do a really good job of making us feel personally responsible for their waste and corruption and how this also plays out in generational family patterns.
I also talk about PEOPLE PLEASING and how being afraid to hurt people’s feelings may also be causing us to eat beyond our fullness cues.
And finally at the end I show you how reconnecting with your body and learning conscious eating practices can help you to decrease food waste in your everyday life, putting more money in your pocket.
 
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4. Cope with your emotions without using food.

The first step to healing your relationship with food is being adequately nourished. You can not deal with your emotions from a place of hunger. Only after you are properly nourished can you then move on to practice coping with your emotions without using food. This episode will show you how to do that!
 
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3. You’re not addicted to food. You’re addicted to dieting.

Trying to combat bingeing with more restriction is like trying to put out a fire with gasoline. If you want to stop experiencing the lows and depressions of bingeing then you must learn how to cope with life without the high that comes with restriction. The only way to stop this madness is to deal with the problem at the SOURCE and the problem is NOT the food. It is NEVER the food. The problem is the restriction. Whether that’s physical or mental restriction, the binges will never stop until you quit dieting. In this episode, I show you how to break the cycle of "food addiction."
 
Find me on Instagram: @embodied.nourishment
 
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2. It isn’t willpower, it’s survival. Stop dieting today!

In this episode I talk about what survival mode is and why your physiology hates intentional weight loss. Your DNA won’t let you keep intentional loss off and neither will your brain stem. At the end I give you a meal plan framework to help you begin restoring trust with your body so it can feel safe and nourished.
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1. Introduction

Welcome to the Embodied Nourishment Podcast. My name is Melissa and I help individuals transform their obsessions with food and body so that their lives can revolve around the important things.