A Deep Dive Into Body Neutrality, Healing Disordered Eating, and Rediscovering Self
Welcome to the Satiated Podcast where we explore physical and emotional hunger and satiation and healing your relationship with your food and body. I'm your host Stephanie Mara Fox, your Somatic Nutritional Counselor. Today I'm truly excited to be chatting with Stefanie Michele. Stefanie is an occupational therapist, certified health coach, and binge eating recovery and body image coach. After healing her relationship with food, following decades of disordered eating, Stefanie modified her wellness practice to include more permission, self-compassion, and self-understanding into her work. Stefanie uses a therapeutic style of coaching into her one on one and group work to help women stop binge eating, find body neutrality and live more authentic lives. When I discovered Stefanie's work, I was thrilled to find another Stefanie in the world teaching similar concepts so I'm looking forward to diving in more with her today. Welcome, Stefanie.
Stefanie Michele 01:02
Thank you for having me, Stephanie. It's nice to be here.
Stephanie Mara 01:06
Yeah, so as we dive in here and get started, I am always so inspired with how honest you are about your story. And I would love to just start a little bit with sharing of how did you get into this work because I know it's been a very personal transformation and healing journey for you as well.
Stefanie Michele 01:22
It has I, oh boy, okay, so I am now 42 years old. But my journey started when I was in my adolescence as it does for many of us. I was I went through a restrictive phase of an eating disorder. And then that moved into binge eating and the next 20 some odd years were full of just all manner of disordered eating, including bulimia, binge eating, orthorexia, as well. So at some point in my journey, I became a health coach. And at the time, I was very much channeling my eating disorder behaviors into perfectionism through clean eating and health. And I also deal with anxiety. And so I had a lot of anxiety around disease. I'm an occupational therapist, too. So I was learning about all sorts of different things in the medical world that were sort of alert sending off my signals. And so I was just channeling everything into the things that I was learning about. And I had a wellness practice going on, that was focused on this clean eating and wellness culture sort of things as a way of me trying to combat my binge eating. Because up until that point, there were really no voices around, I wasn't really involved too much in social media at the time, and there weren't a lot of voices around permission for a binge eater. I mean, for someone who in my restrictive past, sure, that was more of the message that I needed to eat more and nourish and support my body with food. But when you're someone who struggles with eating too much food in mass, shameful amounts too much of the time, that my internalized narrative was that I needed to learn how to control myself and I needed to learn how to have more boundaries with myself and to be more disciplined and that did not include permission. In my mind, I was not offering myself enough permission. So I was seeking regulation through cleaner eating. I thought that I was helping myself by offering myself this nutritional support. But, what I ended up realizing through that, you know, at the end of the day, it was like, I just recognize the patterns of my mind that were showing up again and again and again. And it was always about not being enough, not doing something, I could never reach that pinnacle of perfection that I had sought through eating very small amounts of food and through eating the perfect foods that would satiate me and never getting to that point or eating in this perfectly well way. And so I kind of took this step back, but I was coaching in wellness as a health coach and I was really battling that ethically because I realized what I was teaching other people to do was not what I was able to do behind closed doors and that I knew all this information but I was not able to sustain it you know in my own life. And so I took a step back and I just kind of got honest with myself and I said you are just doing the same thing over and over and over again and expecting different results which, you know, the definition of insanity. Oh boy. And I sort of saw everything for what it was and I recognized that something different had to happen for me to really come out of this or else I was just channeling it all in the same ways. So at the time, I came across the book The F*ck It Diet by Carolyn Dooner.
Stephanie Mara 01:42
Love that book.
Stefanie Michele 03:18
Oh, I She's so funny. Like she's just so sarcastic and her book just I just flew right through it like three times. But I read it and it was the first time someone had given me permission to eat even as a binge eater. And so that was my door opening into well, this is a radical approach that I've never tried before. And I said okay, well I'm still very much a black and white thinker. So I need to I'm going to do this all and I'm just going to like do all the all the give myself all the permission. And I gave myself a year to do that. And through that journey, I started understanding the nuances of everything and more more gray areas and more flexibility of thinking and more understanding of how my biology was working, and my psychology. And I stopped binging for the first time in my life since starting. And that's where everything shifted. And I be I pivoted my coaching into recovery coaching, I also worked alongside a coach to heal my body image or to work on body neutrality. And that has been an evolution as well. So this has been the most fulfilling thing that I've ever done, because it has felt the most true. And just the most, I've had the most clarity that I've ever had. And this is just Yeah, so this, that's how I got here.
Stephanie Mara 05:37
Yeah, thanks for sharing all of that, and so authentically, and honestly, it just that piece around allowing permission, like I had to go through that phase as well, I think it's actually a really important part of the healing process, that regardless of what patterns are playing out in your relationship with food, you have to allow that permission to still eat every single day, breakfast, lunch and dinner, the next day, regardless of what happened the day prior.
Stefanie Michele 06:04
Right.
Stephanie Mara 06:04
That it's like it's continuing to show up, because that's where actually the healing gets to start to occur as you keep showing up over and over and over again.
Stefanie Michele 06:13
Yes, I love the term showing up. Because something that I mean, I'm not sure if you resonate, or your listeners resonate, but I was in such a pattern of abandoning myself, all I would do was do something to disappoint myself and go into self rejection mode and leave. I was out of there, I was like mentally checked out, I was self berating, I would either go into the next diet, or I would just go into the next binge and both of which were ultimately just leaving myself in a place of like, I don't approve, you don't have permission, you don't you know, you need to be controlled. And so when you do show up meal after meal after meal, it is such a metaphor it is it was such for me a practice of learning how to stay with myself, no matter what, no matter what had happened at the last meal. And no matter you know how I was feeling in that moment about eating, it was like, how am I going to be present here? And how do I keep doing that so consistently that I'm not ever leaving my own side like that, that is something I'm promising for myself to do now. And really, that is so much of what it was about and continues to be. I mean, to this day, that practice and getting familiar with the concept of doing that, instead of running was is something that I lean on heavily in all areas of my life now to you know, as a as a commitment kind of to my to myself.
Stephanie Mara 07:28
Yeah, it's such a shift, because often what we hear is like, you just need to continue to focus on the food, you need to figure this food thing out. And it's actually a shift of focusing on your relationship with yourself. Of like, oh okay, this is what's playing out with my food, but I am making a commitment to myself that I'm not going to self abandon anymore.
Stefanie Michele 07:45
Yes, that is exactly what it is. And that's how most of this work I have found ends up being the plate is such a metaphor, right? And so the mind body connection and all of that. And it's something I'd read about I mean, I'd read about that in books before and I'd understand it understood it in theory, but really going through the process of recovering and even the ongoing maintenance of that recovery has it continues to unfold to me in ways in which that I am more and more there for myself and the ways in which our ourselves have to do with this.
Stephanie Mara 08:15
Yeah, it's something that I want to bring back around is the wellness culture. You know, I think there's a lot of harmful language and harmful messaging, that, you know, even we've had to create this this kind of term of orthorexia. And going even too far into well, now I can only eat these things, because that's the only thing that's going to kind of like, keep me feeling safe in my body. And so I'm wondering if we could dive into a little bit of what you have found the difference between like, actual health and respecting and taking care of your body and the difference between wellness culture?
Stefanie Michele 08:50
Yes, so I got into wellness culture, as I mentioned, as a way of, I thought that I thought that I was supporting myself, I thought this was I mean, how could you go wrong with wellness, it was sort of like it was a safety, it was like, alright, well, I'm going to cover up all my issues in wellness. Because if I pursue that really well, it can only do good things. Without recognizing at the time at all, that there's so many similarities between perfectionism and rigidity, and kind of an over identification of morality and obsession that fits so nicely into this wellness culture. And I make a difference, you know, a distinction between wellness and wellness culture, with wellness being, you know, with a lowercase w like that wellness is something that we can pursue, in general in ways that support us and our unique needs and that we where we find our own particular brand of balance, and however that looks via nutrition and somatic work and meditation and community and friendships and having purpose and creativity and all of these things. But wellness culture, and I put those in like the capital W, is a particular culture of needing to do something perfectly and there's very rigidly defined rules about what that needs to look like. And it becomes another way that I think we take, or we make acceptable diet culture. And even if it is for the purpose of health, because I I've, I've seen both sides of that fence where there is an idea that wellness culture is just really a quest of being thin. But I have also experienced it as a quest of being healthy, or health is also this moral obligation and virtue and I want wellness for myself. But what I was finding was that the more that I was investing in, in in wellness, and the more that I was pursuing it, without having healed my relationship with myself first, the more that I was really further abandoning myself and further getting into you have to look like this, you have to exercise like this, you have to eat like this. And that could be various things, too. I mean, on one, one day, at one week, I was vegetarian. And another week, I was, you know, paleo or going keto. But all of the rules and obsessions and the rigidity around that, and including the way social media enhances that. So the pressure that we end up feeling about belonging to certain wellness communities, and the rules that we're supposed to subscribe to end up becoming just another form of boxing yourself in, which doesn't support wellness, because there is no flexibility, there is no freedom of figuring out what your authentic needs are, because you're trying to fit into the wellness box, you're trying to do it this way or their way or this influencers way or this, whatever this book says. I mean, I was guilty of perpetuating that as a health coach, where, you know, I was leading people through sugar detoxes where there were very clearly defined rules of what you could and cannot have, there were red light foods and green light foods. And I was, you know, perpetuating the idea that like, no excuses, like, this is how you if you want to be well, this is what you have to do. And ultimately, what that does to a person is make them feel like they have no permission, and they don't, then they're not enough and that if they fail, it's their own fault without any accountability of our biology and our psychology and our context. Sort of takes away that holistic sense that we're supposed to be part of wellness culture that actually isn't.
Stephanie Mara 12:02
Yeah, and another factor that I'm hearing in this is the stress piece that I think is gone so unnoticed that actually here you are striving to maybe go towards health, that's a fine goal to have. And you're stressing out so much about getting it right, that it's actually not bringing you the result that you're wanting, because stress ultimately puts us in, often in inflammatory response in our body. And so you're like, I'm doing all these things, and I'm trying to do them perfectly, and why am I not receiving the health that I thought that I received by doing these things? Because of it's all the pressure that's being put on getting it right.
Stefanie Michele 12:41
Yeah, then I think that was because what ended up happening was I identify with that wellness, and I needed it to be part of my identity, rather than it supporting who I was. So I would find myself, you know, going to four different grocery stores in a week just to get the right ingredients for something I needed. Or when I would go to visit my parents and my extended family would come and I would see my grandma, and she would have made her eggplant parm, which was always my favorite. And I was like, No, I can't have it, can't have gluten, can't have dairy, plus, you don't use organic ingredients, No, grandma. And it was, it was awkward. It was stressful because I was so attached to what I had to eat to be well. And I would get angry when I would have to go places where I couldn't, I didn't have access to these things. I would get angry that I didn't have what I needed available to me. But I would also get angry that nobody understood. Why doesn't everybody eat this way? Why is not...everyone is misinformed. And it was sort of like, I didn't recognize what you know how isolating I was because I was isolating myself from my own family and my own communities. And that that stress itself was not wellness, like that was doing such a number on me. And I was not receiving the benefits that I was looking for at all. I was on a mission to heal my anxiety and a number of other things that I was going through at the time and none of my symptoms were improving. And I never thought about how the impact of stress or how the isolation itself was impacting the entire experience of trying to be well, and I think it was because I wasn't pursuing being well, I was pursuing an identity because I needed one so badly because I had no idea who I was. And I that that had been the ramifications of 20 years of disordered eating and that I was trying to fill that hole. I was trying to fill that void with wellness. And in so doing I wasn't really tapping into it. I was just appearing like I was.
Stephanie Mara 14:33
Yeah, I also remember a time where I was thick in the wellness culture and was having panic attacks. Where it's like oh, but I'm eating so perfectly and so healthy and I'm doing all the things and like I feel so much anxiety in my body right now. And I think that's such an important thing to to bring into this conversation is that how much like I think that wellness culture potentially had a really great, you know, intention when it first started, and it's moved so far away from that, and that it's promising things that it cannot promise. You cannot eat the perfect diet that will get rid of your anxiety, like that is an inside job.
Stefanie Michele 15:17
Exactly. And I think that when you combine wellness with an eating disorder, that's where it's like that has the potential to become a whole different game. And I think that's often that's what what has happened a lot, because since my recovery, I have returned to a lot of concepts and approaches that I used during my orthorexia days, and during my wellness obsession days, I've really I'm revisiting them now with because I am, I am satiated, like I am full, I am, you know, I am not, I'm not hungry anymore. And so I can use some of these tools without obsessing about them without over identifying with them. And without needing them to fill a void in me that I have since had to do that, you know, I have had to do that work. And then with that I can, I can reapproach these things and look at it in the way that it was probably intended in the first place as this as this measure of support of a whole human being. But not as I'm going to hang on to this for dear life. And we're going to do this perfectly. And this is all we got. And you, Here we go. You know, like, that's what I think it turns into when it gets kind of corrupted by I think perfectionism and eating disorder and diet culture industries that are kind of using it to, again to channel these other other missions.
Stephanie Mara 16:32
Yeah, so when you stepped back into your role as a coach, I'm curious what changed, what changed in how you were supporting individuals and how you even used what you knew from your background and like occupational therapy, and created something really new now?
Stefanie Michele 16:50
Mm hmm. Yeah, so as an occupational therapist, which was something else I was doing alongside health coaching, I, one of the things that really resonated with me in my, in my studies, and in the way I worked, we had, we had taken a lot of classes in neuroscience. And that was something that I loved, like, that was one of my favorite favorite classes. And just learning about the ways that the brain, which we don't even know so much about it, right, but but it was malleable, and that what fires, you know, wires together fires together. And I'm getting that backwards. But that we can change the way that our brain associations work together. And I would work with patients who had strokes or who had severed nerves and tendons. And I would watch them sort of retrain their body to respond and to learn and to learn to function again, through the way that it was wiring, you know, the connections wired in the brain. And I would watch this happen on this physical level. And I remember that something about that, I mean, I was just very drawn to that kind of work, and that was my passion at the time. And I remember thinking as I went through, especially with with body image work and other other components of like having food guilt and the thoughts that we have around food and our bodies and ourselves. And remember thinking like, you can train your brain to kind of do something differently, you like the ways that it's used to operating can kind of be revisited, and we can learn how to make that wire in a different way. And so when I was working on body image, I recognized all the ways that my brain was like used to, you know, feeling the sensation of my clothes on my skin, moving right into self deprecation and kind of and then following up with the behavior of abandoning myself like this was the wiring that occurred for so many years. And...
Stephanie Mara 18:35
I'm like so excited, you're bringing this up right now!
Stefanie Michele 18:37
Really?
Stephanie Mara 18:39
Like, because this is an important piece of just like, I feel like a sense of hope, as you're talking about this in my body of just because this is the way things have been doesn't mean that it it's the way that it always has to be.
Stefanie Michele 18:51
Yeah. Which was just, it can seem so far away, right? Like you're like, it's like, Oh, that'd be nice. But, But it began with recognizing this. I remember where I was, I was like in my bathroom. And my kids were getting ready for school and I remember standing there and I had this thought about my body. And in this moment, I recognized that I had that thought about my body, and that it came from a feeling a sensation on my skin. And I was so used to having that happen that I never had recognized before. But I had this recognition and I had more I was intending to recognize things more, I was I was doing some active work around my body image. So I was primed. But I recognized it and I remember switching. I remember hearing myself think something very derogatory about myself, as I did, spoke to myself very rudely. And I stopped it. I said, No, no, no, no. I said change the thought, change, change what is false. And I just decided to end the sentence in the period of like, I feel X, Y and Z on my on my thigh. Like I feel this and not there was no extension of that sentence. It didn't move into and so blah, blah, blah. It was just period. I feel this period. And when I did that, I remember like look I almost was gonna look like, I just, I can do that, like, that's something I, what? Like, it was freedom, like it was kind of this liberating feeling of, I don't have to now go into this whole thing. Like, I don't have to now have a bad day. Like, I can just I mean, because really just the feeling it gives you in your body when you when you stop a sentence and be like, No, you don't have to you don't have to go any further than that, that it was to me like, well, like that opened my world up. And so that was the practice that I actually started with, with my body image. That took a long time. It's not like it worked. And then that was it. It was like a practice of doing that over and over and over again. Because when I was stressed or vulnerable, the old thoughts would much more quickly want to come in because your brain is going to do the path of least resistance. But when I was conscious enough to stop the sentence, and that was how I ended up rewiring. And now this happens so automatically, that it's I've wired this differently. And that's not to say that I don't have that old pathway at times that can open its doors and say like, oh, you won't come this way we remember this way right? Go back there. But that there is this other option I have now of how to think and I had to train my brain to do that. So this was something that, you know, kind of came to me through my work with OT as well as some sensory therapy things, and also nervous system regulation that has to do with food. But I saw these things as really working together. And I've really brought that into my coaching practice, you know, when we're working through whether it's been the recovery from binge eating and learning to use food, or to see food as like a sensory regulator, and also to rewire the brain through whatever it might be, whether it's body related or food guilt, or...
Stephanie Mara 21:30
Yeah, I'm hearing also in the moment, it's it's reminding also just the power of choice, like you have a choice. And like, that's what I'm hearing in that moment. You're like, wait a second, I have a choice right now, I could go down that path. But I know exactly where that goes. And like what would happen if I went down a different path? And I actually don't know what's gonna happen over there. But let's give it a try.
Stefanie Michele 21:53
Yeah. And it feels unsafe, because you're not used to it. I mean, it's kind of like the devil, you know, versus what you don't you know, and it's kind of like, I know exactly what to do with my self deprecation. I know exactly how my day is gonna go, I know what I'm gonna do, I know how I'm gonna feel, I'm gonna get in my stubborn little cocoon. And I and it's kind of like saying, I have a choice. And that choice feels scary. But it also feels like it feels really promising, it feels like I didn't have a choice before. So to recognize that we've got this other option, like we have another exit ramp that we could take is just I just think that I could have potentially gone through my entire life and never ever access to that. I could have seen that happening very easily.
Stephanie Mara 22:33
Yeah. So I know, something you teach, and this kind of goes right into this, is around body neutrality. And I would love to hear more about how have you supported individuals, because that's what it sounds like. It's just like, oh, I can go to a neutral place, where it's just like, alright, I feel something, and I don't have to create a story around what I'm feeling. So how have you defined body neutrality? And how have you started to teach it to other individuals?
Stefanie Michele 22:59
Yeah, so body neutrality, as opposed to body positivity. Is a concept of not necessarily that you have to love your body or look in the mirror and be really excited about your reflection, but that you can just see your reflection, and not feel terrible about your reflection and not have it mean something about you. So this offers like the option of having whatever body you have. And just understanding that it doesn't have to occupy the same morality or level of importance in this like life hierarchy that we've created. It doesn't have to occupy the same amount of space. And to me, it was, for me body was paramount, it was really important. I had grown up with a value system of appearance, over all things, it was more important than me getting good grades, it was more important than me being a kind person, like it just had become what people validated me for, and seems to be the most important thing to them. So it became one of the more important things to me, if not the most important thing to me. And when you're so zoomed in on that it's the only thing that exists in your sphere. It's just the only thing you know, to seek even for safety. And I always clarify that this is not a vanity issue. This is not something about being superficial. But this is how we learn to feel safe in the world. Like if this is how we've been validated and accepted and kind of like that's the condition of our worth, then we're going to need to cling really tightly to that because to veer away from that is going to mean that we're jeopardizing our validation, safety and belonging. So it was a matter of, it becomes a practice of allowing yourself and giving yourself the choice of zooming out and seeing your body as one piece of you. That is, and then there's this piece and there's this piece and there's this piece and there's usually when we're, for many people who have gone through eating disorders. There's so many pieces of ourselves that we have lost touch with and haven't cultivated because we've been zoned in on that body and food piece for so long. So it's an endeavor. It's not like, body neutrality is one of these things that really takes so much time. And I think it takes even more time than healing the relationship with food, a lot of a lot of it, because it's not just the body, it's like, okay, well, when we when we put the body as a smaller measure of our worth, well, what's around now? Like, we have to look, okay, well, what's going to fill that void? And sometimes it's like, well, I'm working from the ground up. I don't even know who I am. I have a lot of clients who say to me, like, I'm afraid to not care about this, because I don't have anything else. Like, I don't know myself, I don't, I have no idea. I don't know what I like, I don't, I think I'm really unfulfilled. But I wouldn't even know where to start. Like, because I don't know what would fulfill me, I don't know who I am.
Stephanie Mara 25:38
Yeah.
Stefanie Michele 25:39
So it becomes a whole self exploration journey, and of learning to find safety and other things. And learning to pursue those. And there's a lot. I mean, that's obviously not a small feat. So body neutrality is about, for me, and how I teach it, the process of decreasing the amount of importance we place and the reliance of safety in our appearance, and finding them in other places and learning how to cultivate that safely as well, which is, which is which is a project.
Stephanie Mara 26:10
It's such a process. It's an ongoing journey, because we live in a culture like you beautifully kind of connected, that puts that, oh, you have to look a certain way. And if you look a certain way, you're going to be treated a certain way in this world. And that means that you're going to be accepted, you're going to feel like you're you belong, you might not even have as much commentary about your appearance or your being because of the way you look. And so it goes so deep, and like oh my gosh, if I let this go, am I going to be okay in the world? And so like, yeah, it's this unfolding process. And I love that you brought in also that it's a really normal part of the process of when you start to actually move into body neutrality being like, well then who am I? And what do I like? And do I have hobbies, and like, what do I even want to do with my time, because so much of that time has been filled maybe with worries and concerns about your food or your body or even reshaping yourself to fit in to what you've been taught you maybe should be to get that sense of belonging and safety that you want in the world, that suddenly it opens up this whole, I'm gonna call it a black hole, or a more positive maybe like a doorway of opportunity.
Stefanie Michele 27:29
There you go. Reframe.
Stephanie Mara 27:31
Reframe. A doorway of opportunity of just like, Oh, who am I? And who do I want to be in this world? And it can actually be both, Yes, it can be definitely a scary place to dive into but also an exciting place as well. Because you at the end of that, and it's an ongoing journey, not necessarily there's an end to it. But you know, throughout that process, you're going to relearn who you are and who you want to be to feel more in alignment in your life where then food might not be as much of a concern anymore.
Stefanie Michele 28:00
Right. Right. And that was how I really experienced it. It was something that and and I think sometimes we can think of it like okay, well, how do you begin? How do you put one foot in front of the other to start that process. And it's not, to me, it's not like a road, there's no roadmap for that. It's it's a process of staying open. So for example, as my body sort of started to, as I contemplated the idea that my body wasn't so important, I found myself noticing, there were conversations I was having with certain people in my life where I was used to being quiet and suppressing my opinion. And honestly, it wasn't even suppressing my opinion. I just didn't know I even had one because I was so used to just playing a certain role in front of certain people that I but I started to notice that I was having new thoughts. I was having like, a reaction to some things people said, and I was surprised myself by the amount of passion behind it. And I would start to say things and I don't I mean, it wasn't like I plan to do it. It just sort of presented itself as I was starting to question, I think because when you question something, a long standing belief, you start to question a whole bunch of things start to get into practice of questioning. So I started to do things differently just kind of organically. And it was an odd dynamic shift in the relationships that I had. So where I had normally been passive and compliance, quiet and kind of I had no boundaries. Or I allowed people to sort of exert their put their boundaries on me. I started to push back a little right I started to have more to say I started to have a I disagreed I started to kind of stand up for myself more and that shifted some dynamics in my in my relationship that are in my relationships rather that that wasn't comfortable. It felt really strange and it was to this day like it has really shifted some of the ways that I relate to others. And that can be a frightening thing to to watch that happen. But it's so empowering at the same time because that's I think how we learn to navigate who we are by noticing what's causing us to react? Where do we want to say something where we didn't normally say it? Or what's what's lighting a fire in you like, what's creating that passion where and then following that a little bit just like staying with that and trusting that and sort of holding, having your own back through that. Whereas before, it would have been a case of like, no, no, we're just gonna stay here in my safe little box. Because safety, I need to be here for me to be safe. This is what I've always known. For me, this is that's how you become this is how the becoming has felt. It has been just a process of staying open to watching myself unfold. And following the leads, following these nudges of impulses that I was I was starting to get that had just learned how to be quiet for so long.
Stephanie Mara 30:39
Yeah, yeah. Again, it's such a process of it starts to go into, oh, okay, now that I'm back in my body, now that I'm like, not self abandoning, I'm starting to come back online a little bit. It moves into, and I find this with these explorations that I work with as well of, how am I also showing up in relationship with other? So it's like, oh okay, everything that I've maybe wanted in relationship with other I've been doing in my relationship with food. And now that I'm not maybe relying as much on food to do that thing. It's like, oh, I have all these things that I want to say and all these ways that I want to show up that I've actually been holding myself back that that's a part of that healing process as it moves from, oh, how am I relating, how is my relationship with food? And as that heals, it's like, oh, now how am I relating with myself? And now how am I relating with the world and the people in my life? And does that resonate with the person that I'm learning who I am?
Stefanie Michele 31:36
Oh, that's so that's so good. I love that in so many levels, one way in which yes, I think that we play out our relationship, you know, the dynamics of relationship through our food. And I think boundaries are a big part of that, like how we have boundaries with food or and how we cross those boundaries, and how you know, or how we protect them. And that, then they have the freedom to start, you know, when food is not being the outlet for those voices, that we get to start saying, well, they're still here, I still have these urges and impulses, like, now, I have to put them somewhere else, I have to put them where they belong, maybe like I have to put them you know, in their context, instead of using using something else to get that message through. But also something I love about like embodiment work and what you do is that, you know that word embodiment even and being in your body that was to me something really, really foreign. And it's something I'm working on very much right now. Even still, yeah, right. It's an ongoing process.
Stephanie Mara 32:30
Yeah. It's an ongoing process. Even though I'm in the, you know, the practice of teaching others how to be more in their body, it's a constant practice for myself as well.
Stefanie Michele 32:38
And it is. I think it all is. But I remember, like, I had no idea what it meant to be in my body. Like the whole, that phrase to me was like what I don't understand. And I remember that something that did really shift in my recovery, especially the more the acute phase of my recovery, as I was with other people was getting present. And I didn't understand what that meant, either. But it was happening. So that's, that's what somehow made it click. Was like, this is what that is, this is what it means to be in my body and be present where I was having a conversation with somebody else. And I noticed that I was there. Like I was, I was like here, like I could feel myself inside of myself, like engaging instead of like, almost like I was standing next to myself, just like, I either felt like I was just watching myself making sure I said the right things, or I was just like, had a blindfold on and was just sort of like, I don't know, but there was something about being present and being inside of my own body that was not accessible to me until I was willing to be in my own body, which was only, which only came from being able to stay with myself and to be able to make have a neutrality with my body. Whereas otherwise I was simply just all I was interested in doing was rejecting it and not being here, like not being in it. So all of these pieces really do come together in ways that I think, you know, unfold as they go. And that sometimes I think these concepts even you can they can sound great. And then it's like as you move through it, you're like, oh, that's what that is like that somehow clicks now, like that makes sense. All these things I've been hearing like that's what this work is.
Stephanie Mara 34:11
Yeah, that like, oh, that's me. It reminds me of, there's a book called The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer. And he describes that consciousness is basically like, if right now you're sitting here listening to this and you say hello to yourself inside your head. That's consciousness. Like that's you saying hello to yourself. That's you realizing there is a being, like I'm here. Like, there is a being inside of you. You know, it's I think of that of, you know, when you're in relationship with someone else being like, am I here? Like, or am I off someplace else? Could I say the last thing that that person just said back to me? And how am I feeling in my body in relationship with this other person? And it is such a practice and some days are going to be easier than others. And when you notice it happening, it's really exciting because embodiment and being present with your life as it unfolds can feel really nourishing. Because it's just like, I'm here. I'm not trying to be somewhere else. I'm actually experiencing my life in this moment as it is.
Stefanie Michele 35:18
Yeah. And then how often you realize that you're not doing that? Like, it's like, Oh, I really have not been here. So yeah. And and again, it's ongoing. It's not like we it's not like you find that place, and then you stay. And it's, I think the all of these things are our practices. And it's really just gathering the tools to be able to maintain that practice.
Stephanie Mara 35:36
Yeah, so I've been wrapping up these conversations a lot with like, if there was a baby step up, a bite sized piece that you wanted to offer listeners around like, here is a baby step, you could start taking in your life towards all these things that we're talking about. And there, obviously are so many, what's the first one that comes up for you that you would offer to someone as a baby step, they could start practicing today.
Stefanie Michele 36:03
Well, so I mean, there's there's food, there's body and there's self, right? And I mean, all these things being intertwined. But I think that some, I think that really, for any of these is the recognition of one's thoughts. So recognizing what I think, again, we don't recognize that we're the water we're swimming in. So we don't necessarily see our thoughts as anything different than they are like that they just are what they are.
Stephanie Mara 36:29
Yeah. I love that imagery.
Stefanie Michele 36:32
Of the water?
Stephanie Mara 36:33
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Stefanie Michele 36:34
Well, yeah, it feels like that. Because when you recognize your thoughts, it's almost like recognizing, oh, I'm swimming in this water, like, this is what I'm in. And so, I think it's a slowing down, especially if for anyone who's deals with anxiety, as as I do, right. So my thoughts are quick and fast. And it took me a really long time to slow them down enough so I could understand that what I was experiencing as an ultimate emotion that was coming from the thoughts were starting with this, these statements I was making about myself to myself. And so slowing that down enough, we're simply just recognizing, and this is a practice you could literally engage in right now. I mean, you it doesn't, it doesn't have to be a set aside time. It's literally as you're moving through life. What? Where are the thoughts? How are you speaking to yourself, and especially when you're alone? And when you're in looking in the mirror? Or seeing a reflection or eating food? Like what is the thought that's going on that's might be so ingrained, and so automatic that you're not even recognizing it in, in language, and putting language to it. And then looking at that and asking if that is the place where we want to stay. And like, is there another option of thinking about this? And can you offer it to yourself, even even if you don't take it, even if you don't take the option just to offer yourself one and to recognize that that is a practice that can be cultivated, in any place in your life, and at any time, and that sometimes you'll take the exit ramp off, you know, this way, and sometimes you won't, but that at least you can give yourself the choice that that's out there.
Stephanie Mara 38:00
Yeah, I think that's such an important step. It's like that, you know, going back to that situation of you in the mirror and being like, Oh, wait, I can just stop at I feel. And like giving yourself even that choice, you didn't have to go down that path and you chose to that day. And so it's just saying like, okay, like, what could potentially be something else, I could interact with myself in a different way? And not even that you have to go any further with that. It's like, yeah, that's a choice. And like, Alright, I'm gonna go do my habitual thing now.
Stefanie Michele 38:31
Because that's how it looks, sometimes. Yeah.
Stephanie Mara 38:33
Exactly. And so it's that that process of like, you know what, today, actually, I'm offering myself the choice. And today, I want to take it.
Stefanie Michele 38:39
Yes, yes. And I call them like, we have like red light days and green light days where some days it's like, that's not happening. I need to be habitual, I need safety. And I insurance, I need to know what I'm doing, even if that's terrible. And then other days where we feel like, you know what, I'm a little more open today. And I think I will take that choice today. And that that's sort of that honestly, is how it looks in the beginning.
Stephanie Mara 38:56
Yeah. So how can individuals keep in touch with you? And do you have any upcoming offerings or things that, you know, our listeners should know about of how they could potentially further work with you if they're interested?
Stefanie Michele 39:07
Yeah, so I am on Instagram and Facebook. @iamstefaniemichele and I have a website iamstefaniemichele.com. And I have free emails every Wednesday that come out where I'm talking about all of these sorts of things, how food and body and self, things are happening in my own life, day to day still and how that's getting navigated. And I love sharing my stories. And yeah, that's, that's where you can find me.
Stephanie Mara 39:29
Awesome. I will put all of those links also in the show notes. And just thank you so much for your time today. This, I like I feel very nourished by our conversation and just like very hopeful of just like, yeah, change is possible. And so, you know, just thank you for being here and sharing your wisdom and your presence and your story. And you know, hopefully we can talk again and have you back in the future.
Stefanie Michele 39:50
Yeah, definitely. Thank you so much for having me. This was fun.
Stephanie Mara 39:53
Awesome. Well have a great rest of your day and those who are listening if you have any questions, reach out anytime and hopefully we will all connect with you again real soon. Bye!
Keep in touch with Stefanie here:
Instagram: www.instagram.com/iamstefaniemichele
Facebook: www.facebook.com/iamstefaniemichele
Website: www.iamstefaniemichele.com
Podcast: Life After Diets Podcast
Email: stefanie@iamstefaniemichele.com
Resources mentioned in this episode: