Busting Detox Myths and Revealing Wellness Realities
Welcome to the Satiated Podcast, where we explore physical and emotional hunger, satiation and healing your relationship with your food and body. I'm your host, Stephanie Mara Fox, your Somatic Nutritional Counselor. When I first entered into the world of wellness culture, I'll be honest that I was swept up in the promise of health, vibrancy, and fixing every symptom I had and could ever have. I did it all. I did the detoxes, the cleanses, the supplements, the colonics, the detox foot baths, the energy work, and the elimination diets. Now, if you're thinking, "Wait, Stephanie. I have done some of those things and they really were helpful to me." That is great! If there is something out there that has supported you that is wonderful. But, what I've noticed is that wellness culture has commodified health to sell something. Things it didn't guide me to look at were detoxing my thoughts, my social media feeds, my low self esteem, and my trauma. Attending to these things was far more beneficial for my health and wellbeing than any supplement I could ever take. Constantly trying to digest internal harsh criticism was part of what was fueling all of my symptoms as my body was living in a sympathetic nervous system state and as we have been exploring here, the longer you stay in a fight or flight response, the more your body is going to struggle to stabilize itself. I talk about this and more with Michele Scarlet today. Michele is a Board-Certified Functional Medicine Practitioner, Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner, Certified Personal Trainer, and Women’s Health Coach. She's spent over 15 years helping women feel strong, confident, and in control of their health. She’s also the founder of COREFIT, a holistic women’s health program where she helps women uncover what’s really going on in their bodies so they can finally feel like themselves again. She's on a mission to show every woman that she can feel better than she did 20 years ago—because exhaustion and feeling uncomfortable in your body are NOT inevitable with age. We chat about the impact of stress, understanding body communication, detoxing myths, how to support the body in a toxic world and no we're not just talking about what you ingest but also what you surround yourself with, navigating food choices, and fostering self compassion. Please consider leaving a review for the Satiated Podcast to help others find the show. You can also check out the links in the show notes where you can find all of my affiliate links, join Satiated+ and be able to Ask Me Anything each month, or check out working with me 1:1 or in any of my programs including my self paced programs and my three month live Somatic Eating® Program. The next class will start May 21st and you can join the waitlist now at somaticeating.com. Now, welcome Michele! I am thrilled to have you here, and I feel like we have a lot of overlaps in our work with just what we were talking about before we press record already. So I'm really looking forward to our conversation today, and for all of our listeners who are new to you, I'm wondering if we can first just get started of how you got into this work and how it brought you to where you're at today.
Michele Scarlet 03:36
I actually feel like my story is probably going to be feel really relatable to a lot of the women listening to this podcast, because when I was 22 so a number of years ago, 17 years ago, I started a personal training studio here in Toronto, and my whole life was wellness. My whole life was fitness and eating clean. And I was really deep into, you know, fitness culture, meaning, you know, chicken, broccoli, rice, breakfast, lunch and dinner. You know, counting macros, right? I prepped for bodybuilding competitions, prepped for photo shoots. Not that that is necessarily the relatable piece, but thinking that optimal health landed with only diet and exercise. And what I slowly learned through my years, I owned the gym for about 12 years, and then covid hit. And, you know, owning a business, an in person business, working seven days a week, up at 4am some days, I was doing two a day workouts like, you know, I was really involved in my world. Covid hit and here in Toronto, we shut down for a number of years, all of our gyms and stuff, and the stress of that and some other things going on in my life really tanked my health in a way that I never imagined happening. I think I gained like, 20 pounds in three months, but like, nothing in my routine changed. So I was still exercising regularly. I was still eating really clean. I started, like trying to go vegetarian. I went like keto and carnivore, like I tried everything to get this weight off, and what I realized was that optimal health, although fitness, your work, your exercise and your diet, obviously play a role, but it's only about 20% of that role, and so I had all this time on my hands. I was still kind of running my gym from an online perspective, but I had all this time on my hands, and I deep dived into my own health, and then became a functional medicine practitioner. And then I married the two worlds. And what I learned was that actually optimizing my hormones, my we talked about this before we hit record, detoxing my body from the amount of stress and toxins that accumulated over the course of my life were actually the pieces missing to my optimal health. And so now I was, I've been able to marry these two worlds and help women feel better in their skin, lose weight when they feel like nothing works anymore, or that like their body is rejecting them because we just take it a layer deeper than diet and exercise. So that's how I got here.
Stephanie Mara 06:07
Thanks for sharing a piece of your journey. You know, I really hear in that that like you just started to see when your life is so consistent, I'm doing the same thing. I'm moving the same ways. I'm eating, the same ways that when the body starts to change, like, I always see it as like, body communication, or body wisdom, of like, the body's trying to communicate something to you when the body starts to change and like, it feels like nothing else has. And this is where it goes beyond the whole idea that you just have to, like, move more and eat less that it's like, hey, your body, when it starts to shift in any possible way, is trying to tell you, like, yeah, what I hear in your example was, like, stress levels are really high, and it's doing the best it possibly can to, like, navigate that situation.
Michele Scarlet 06:55
Big time. Everything that your body does is feedback, and I think about a lot of symptoms. So, you know, in my case, there was a lot of so there was, like, weight gain and inflammation, a lot of digestive issues. I had thyroid symptoms. So like, my hair was thin and falling out, skin was really dull, cold all the time. We tend to as women, be told that this is just normal for XYZ issue, a thyroid issue, or this is just normal because you're aging. Or, you know, whatever the insert, whatever diagnosis you get, even, like, a self proclaimed diagnosis, like, oh, like, I'm 35 now, or I'm 40 now. This is just the way it is when, in fact, it's not. And it truly is your body just giving you some feedback like, hey, you are incredibly stressed. You are actually not taking care of yourself the way you should be. And I'm going to continue to get louder and get louder until you see it. And for me, I was probably stressed. I've probably been stressed since, you know, childhood, you know, with my own things, but it was the weight gain, like, for me, that's something I value, the way that my body feels and looks and how strong I am. And when that came crashing down, that was like a bag of bricks, like, oh, I need to pay attention now. But it was a whole bunch of other things. When I connected the dots, I was like, oh, the body was really screaming at me for a long time.
Stephanie Mara 08:22
Yeah, and I love that you're pointing out that also, because we talk a lot about, like, childhood trauma and past trauma here as well, in that like there is an accumulation where your body, if it's staying in more of like, a sympathetic state for an extended period of time. And that's where I feel like, you know, if we even go into nervous system talk for a second of like, there's all this fear, of like, oh, I can never be in the sympathetic nervous system. And we, like, literally move in and out of the sympathetic and parasympathetic all day, every day. And it's more about the longer that we stay in a place of threat, the more the body starts to break down, and organs start to get some imbalance with them, because of how it takes the body much more to stabilize when you are in a place of fight or flight. And so, like, I appreciate you naming that like, it sometimes takes that long, and then there's like a trigger event where it's like, just stress peaks even more, that suddenly everything that your body's been kind of finding a place of, like management with it. It's like, I can't do this anymore. It just went over its kind of like allostatic load.
Michele Scarlet 09:33
Yeah, absolutely. I feel like the body only has so much capacity. And I think that women in today's world, and you know, I'll speak for myself, I'm very A type. We add load. You know what I mean? Like we are constantly adding load, especially if we're not aware that we're doing it. For me in particular, I was living in a sympathetic state for decades before I realized what was going on and and now, like, I don't fear being in a sympathetic state, because I understand what it feels like in my body. I've done a lot of work on this, but I understand what a parasympathetic state feels like versus my sympathetic state, and so I feel very lucky that I have the ability, and this is what I try to teach the women that I work with, I have the ability to dip into my parasympathetic when I know I need to, and live in my sympathetic when I know it serves me. And that's okay. And I kind of talk about it like riding the waves of stress rather than trying to avoid stress.
Stephanie Mara 09:33
Absolutely, completely agree.
Michele Scarlet 09:39
Yeah, like so many women don't even know they're living in a sympathetic state. They think they're, you know, end of the night relaxation in front of the TV, you know, brings them down. And I'm sure it's not, you know, the boss yelling at you for something kind of stress. But have you really decompressed? Have you really felt that like absolute, peaceful, calm, nothing is getting to you, type feeling. And once you do and you really can differentiate between those two, you do have the power to be in control of where you are.
Stephanie Mara 10:52
Yeah. So I'm curious if you could say more about like the symptoms you were experiencing, because I know we were chatting a little bit earlier about like, things that we take as normal as we just age. We're like, this is just normal. This just is a part of aging. And you were saying before we again pressed record of like, you know, we start to just get used to that, rather than being like, is this normal? Like, maybe I should look at this a little bit. Maybe this is actually something that my body's trying to tell me, like, hey, I need some help here. I'm wondering if you could speak more about, like, what you noticed, or what you've noticed in people you've worked with, and kind of those layers that you start to attend to.
Michele Scarlet 11:51
Yeah, absolutely. So I will start by saying that your body, physiologically, is meant to feel really incredible. Let's just say we are, like, truly doing everything right. And I know that not everybody can do everything right. Like, sometimes we don't sleep good, and there are real reasons why we don't feel amazing all the time. But like, let's just think about your best self. Your digestion is on par, your sleep is great. I hope this is okay to say, and you can edit it out if it's not, but I always say that if you are happy, hungry and horny, like your metabolism, your metabolic state is in a good place, because those are just like physiological signs that the feedback is is good. So for me, in particular, things that I you know, probably struggled with from young age, teenage years, constipation, it's like probably the biggest factor. It took so much effort on my part, very, very conscious to like how much fiber I was eating. And don't get me wrong, I do still look at my fiber because it's important, but less so because I'm like, oh my gosh, I have to make sure I use the bathroom tomorrow. More so because it's a healthy, balanced thing to have. So constipation was number one. Bloating, like, not just around my period, just like by the end of the day, looking five months pregnant, feeling gross in my body, not wanting to be intimate with my partner, or, like, even changing into my pajamas in front of him, just really uncomfortable in my body. I had mentioned, like, my hair started to really thin. I have a ton of content on my social media page, my Instagram page, like showing the difference in my hair and how much hair growth has happened since balancing like my internal terrain, which we can talk about too. And then it was like weight gain. I also need to mention deep in the fitness world, fitness culture we talked about that I got breast implants at 25 and no surgeon that I spoke to, no doctor, nobody told me what the repercussions could be down the line, putting a foreign object into my body, and what I learned was that it actually created low grade inflammation 24/7 so speaking of this, like idea that your body doesn't have enough capacity to constantly live in a sympathetic state, well, I was in a sympathetic state simply because there was a foreign object my body was fighting all day every day for 10 years. So that really added to the toxic load for me. But yeah, I would say that what really was screaming among all the other little things that I was noticing and could piece together in hindsight, constipation, bloating, hair thinning and weight gain were like, my big you need to do something Michele.
Stephanie Mara 14:33
Yeah. Like, hey, body's talking to us. The symptoms are piling on. It's time to maybe start being like, oh, think maybe I need to listen to like, what's my body trying to say here?
Michele Scarlet 14:45
Absolutely, absolutely. And like, gosh, I talk about constipation with such passion because...
Stephanie Mara 14:51
We love bowel movements here!
Michele Scarlet 14:56
Yeah, I talk to women who think it's normal to not have a bowel movement like once a week, and their doctors tell them that it's normal for them. And I just think to myself, my God, like in my house, I've got three kids, and my husband and I, and we talk about bowel movements every day. My son comes home from daycare and like, hey, buddy, did you have a poop today? He'll be like, yeah, mom, because it's I want to instill how important it is, not just for the way you physically feel, but for your optimal health. I cannot stress that enough to the ladies listening.
Stephanie Mara 15:29
Yeah, absolutely. So what did you start addressing to start to shift some of these things in your body?
Michele Scarlet 15:35
So I didn't know where to go at first, so I just went to my GP. And I'm sure every woman you've ever spoken to has this exact story where she goes into her GP and says, like, I don't really know what's wrong, but I know something's wrong. And my GP said, sounds like you're just really stressed out. And I was like, well, yeah, I'm stressed, but I'm also, like, physically not feeling very good. And she offered me some anti anxiety meds, and she offered me some antidepressants, but she really just ran, like, regular blood chemistry, and everything came back normal. I remember leaving that office, like, with tears in my eyes multiple times that year because, like, I just couldn't figure out why I didn't feel good for somebody who was as healthy as I thought I was. And then when I moved into functional medicine for myself, it was looking at a GI map or stool test, so we, like targeted the gut immediately. And there was all kinds of dysbiosis, so lots of microbiome imbalance, a couple of like H Pylori, some bad bacteria that, like, really shouldn't be there, and was really correlating to what I was feeling. And so we started addressing that through antimicrobials and that kind of stuff, binders and then really sealed the gut, you can kind of clean up the mess that's in your gut once you seal it, and your immune system is just like no longer activating from every little thing you put into your mouth, how much your body can actually relax and, like, give you a break, and so your capacity starts to increase.
Stephanie Mara 17:09
Yeah, it's interesting, because a lot of the times we talk about here of, like, working with the nervous system to like, you know, decrease that experience of fight or flight. And what I hear you really naming in that is also that sometimes the fight or flight has a lot of wisdom to it when there's something going on in your body and that it's not going to diminish until the reasons why the nervous system is reacting gets to kind of like, decrease and diminish. But you were saying you also explanted as well, which probably also contributed to, like, decreasing the constant sympathetic.
Michele Scarlet 17:45
100%. So like, I will never say that the nervous system is not part of it, but the nervous system is not all in your head. It's not all breathwork and meditation. Like there can be a real physical reason that your nervous system is living there, and for me, it was ultimately toxic load, right? It was breast implants. It was dysbiosis of the gut, and then those two massive problems were just like cascading across the systems of my body, and my nervous system was like, oh my god. Like, high alert, high alert. And really didn't have this is just where it all connects, like it my body did not have the ability to access energy for for systems of non survival, so hair growth, my body was like, we're not going to put energy into growing her hair, because it doesn't matter she needs to survive. It wasn't putting energy into my digestive system. Because, like, if you, you know physiologically, if you're, you know, running away from a cyber tooth tiger, obviously, 1000s of years ago, you know your body's like, not an opportune time to use the bathroom. Like your body still remembers that. And so my body was living there all the time for decades, and then one day it was like, nope, I don't have it anymore.
Stephanie Mara 19:09
Yeah. So we're talking a lot about this whole idea of, like toxins, and there is a lot of, I will say, toxic messaging around toxins, where there is a lot of disagreement. I find even on social media, some people are like, you don't need to detox. Like, what does that even mean? Like, you have a liver for a reason. Like your organs are detoxing for you, and then you have kind of this other practitioners that are saying, like, no, you need to be detoxing regularly and doing all these like juice cleanses and like things that I swear I will never do the rest of my life, like been there, done that didn't do anything for me. But I'm curious when you're talking about it, like what you're referencing and the way you're defining it.
Michele Scarlet 19:59
Yeah, so. So I want to address what you said about there are practitioners out there, or people out there being like, well, you have a liver for a reason. So, yeah, we absolutely have a liver. I am obsessed with the organ. It is incredibly important in the body. But the thing is, is that only one of its jobs is detox, right? It has like 500 different functions in the body, and when we physiologically, our bodies have not evolved to handle the toxic load that is our world today. So if I think about my office that I'm sitting in right now, I'm wearing a pair of Lululemon leggings, which I don't know if your listeners know. I don't know if you know. I'm sure you do, has been proven that there are forever chemicals in Lululemon clothing. I am currently wearing them. I have a laptop, an iPad, an iPhone, and a WiFi router in my office. So we're talking EMFs, you know, makeup, our lighting, any of these things just literally sitting in my office. So we are in constant contact, is my point. We are in constant contact with external toxins all day, every day, that didn't exist 1000 years ago or didn't exist 100 years ago. And so our bodies haven't evolved to be able to handle that load. And the proof of that is that when you do start detoxing, not in a juice cleanse kind of way, and we can get into what I mean, specifically, when you do start doing it, and the inflammation starts to disappear, and the bloating starts to disappear, or the weight just kind of melts off, and your hair starts to grow again, and like you can really feel your body come back into homeostasis where it wants to be, then we obviously know that our detox organs, they need support daily, and we're not supposed to live in a bubble. You know what I mean? Like, I don't want this to ever be a fear mongering thing. Yes, our world is toxic. Yes, there are ways we can deal with it and still live our lives.
Stephanie Mara 22:00
Yeah, I appreciate that lens that I feel like there's a lot of like you're pointing to, like fear mongering in when people start talking about this idea of toxins and that like you need to avoid so many things that I find that people get so scared of just living their life, or like going out, or like buying clothes, or like cooking on different pans, it just gets a little nutty. I always approach it of that is also, as we're talking about, like toxic to be in that amount of fear, like 24/7, all day, every day, even what we're pointing to is that there's no way around all the things that our body is taking in every day. But what you're pointing to is, how can we support the body in navigating all the things that it interacts with every day?
Michele Scarlet 22:53
Yeah, 100% I always think of like, if we think about our whole world, what are the things that you can control? And more often than not, the big hitters is what you're consuming, right? Like, what are you eating that's going to cause an accumulation of a toxic load? Versus, like, we can't control our pollution. You know me, can't go outside. You can't control what goes on in our air. You can't control what goes on in your soil. So, like, let's just chill on that stuff for a second. You can filter your water if you can't, like, if it's something you can't afford, I understand it is, can be costly. Or if you're on well water, I'm on well water, there are just things that we can't control in terms of our water. So I am not saying, try to live in this bubble. I'm not saying like, live without WiFi that sure that would be ideal, but obviously it's not, it's not an option for majority of people. So what I'm saying is absolutely like, let's control the controllables without everything being an emergency, because what I deem as a toxic load or a toxic contributor is also our brains, how we think, how we're taking in stories about like, you know, is the receipt I touch at the grocery store going to give me cancer? That's emergency thinking my brain would be going, you know, alert, alert, alert, all the time again, which leaves you vulnerable to the things I was talking about, the gut dysbiosis. It leaves you vulnerable to hormonal chaos. So control the controllables. Do your best, support your body and, like, move on with your life. Like, just keep living.
Stephanie Mara 24:30
Yeah. So when you're talking about, like, I'm not talking about juice or smoothie cleanses or, like, starving yourself, when you're talking about detoxing, what are you referencing?
Michele Scarlet 24:41
Yeah, so when I work with women, the very first thing that we do, so we do functional labs in my practice, but functional labs don't come back within a day. So we have a 30 day protocol that we always work with women on depending, you know, it's a bit bio individual, but I can give you kind of a rundown while we're waiting for lab tests to come back, and we call it sort of like the detox protocol, but often what it is is eliminating inflammatory foods. So like gluten, for instance, sometimes removing gluten, and that's it, changes everything for women like that alone can make the biggest difference. So we usually eliminate gluten, dairy, sugar, alcohol, those kinds of things. So those are pretty big inflammatory things that go into your body. You're ingesting it, your body is having a reaction, an immune reaction, to whatever it is that you're having, and that causes permeability in the gut, cascade effect to things like bloating or constipation, maybe diarrhea. So we start with food. Let's start by eating whole foods. We are no longer going to be eating pizza every Friday night. I'm not saying forever. I'm saying for right now, let's give your body a chance, you know, to feel good, and then you can decide later what you want to pull in, you know, on a night where I will tell you my diet is not 100% perfect, and I still feel the greatest I've ever felt in my life. We can have some flexibility, but yeah, so we always start with diet. What are we taking out? What are we adding? Are we adding high quality protein? Are we adding vegetables? Are we adding fruit without fear, like that is really, really important to support detox organs. We're adding bitter foods. So things like arugula, things like lemon, if we're going to talk about teas, you can do dandelion tea is quite bitter. That also helps support the kidneys in a really great way. Nettle Leaf Tea, Milk thistle, those types of things. We're going to start to incorporate daily for people. So that's one piece of the detox. Second piece of the detox is making sure that every single person is having at least one complete bowel movement a day. And what I mean by complete is because, interestingly enough, not everybody knows what that actually feels like, but there are many women who do use the bathroom every day, but they don't feel empty after they use the bathroom. So you want to make sure that you have enough bulk in your bowel movements that you actually feel empty like you could not go again during the day. That would be considered a complete bowel movement. If you are not feeling empty after a bowel movement, then I would consider that person constipated, even if they're going multiple times a day, but not having that complete emptiness feeling. So we definitely make sure of that. And sometimes that's as easy as increasing water intake. Sometimes that's as easy as, you know, adding in some trace minerals to your water. And sometimes, depending on how severe the constipation is is actually more natural herbs to help somebody go, but that's exactly where we start. And so, yes, I call it detox, because your body, once it's supported, is like things are moving out. Those heavy metals are moving out of your body. You know, the bad bacteria starting to move out of your body. You are having regular bowel movements. We talk about sweating, drainage pathways. You have multiple drainage pathways in your body. We open all of those up, support the mitochondria. We support the body on a foundational level, so that everything we add, you know, after we get test results back, is just layered in, like to ultimate healing.
Stephanie Mara 28:20
I love the simplicity of it, and I want to preface what I'm even about to say, for anyone who's listening is like you may not be at this point. You know, I know, for a lot of listeners are navigating patterns of like binge eating or chronic emotional eating, or yo yo dieting and things like that. And sometimes, before you get to a point of feeling like you can address the what it is you're eating, sometimes, this is where I find there are different stages of explorations of our interactions with food, where sometimes it's first, like, I just need to, like, feel safe to eat, and that includes, like, the pizza on Friday nights. So I love that you named the just for now, and that it has to be unique to where a person is at, where you feel like, you know what? I have a lot more peace with food. I have a lot more trust in my body. And I feel like I want to start now playing. I always think about it as playing, instead of even calling it detoxing, or like needing to go on, like a dietary protocol. It's like, can we just play with what we're eating and then notice and observe how our body responds back to that. And so I hear that you're just for now that you said is so important, because I find that that softens the body we're not going into any place of, like, diet, culture, deprivation or restriction. It's like, hey body, I just want to, like, play for a little bit. Can we be cool with that? And like, I promise we're going to eat all the things that we want to eat. I just want to, like, maybe change things up and see what happens. And I find that's such a softer, gentler, more compassionate way when you feel like you're being called to eat differently, but you also don't want to go back to where you were with such a horrible relationship with food.
Michele Scarlet 30:02
100% I love that you said, play. I say, experiment. Let's just experiment. You know, I do get a lot of pushback on gluten. I think people like, don't want to be the woman at the girls night who's like, Ooh, I can't have that. And I get that. Who want, who I don't want to be that woman either. But like, also, like, let's experiment for two weeks. Let's see if taking that out, maybe you don't even notice a shift, but maybe where the shift happens is when you put it back in and you're like, oh, I feel I feel like garbage eating that. And now you can make a choice from an empowered place where you have with some food, you've played a little bit, you've told your body, like, it's okay, I'm just playing, or in my case, we're just experimenting. Let's see what the results are. And now you can come from a place of not restriction, like, I can't have it because Michele says I can't have it, but from an actual knowing, like, oh, this doesn't do my body very good. I now understand what that feels like, and I'm going to just choose better for myself, and that's a far more empowering place than like, oh, my coach told me I can't.
Stephanie Mara 31:06
Right, right. Because where this all goes back to what I find is like you feeling body autonomy, that you understand and can trust your own body and hear its feedback and learn and know what is best for you. And so sometimes I find that playing with how we're eating or experimenting that then we get to discover this works for me. This doesn't work for me. And I always like to approach it with the caveat of this is just for now. You know, we never want to get back to a place of saying like, like, diet culture mentality of like, good or bad or right or wrong, or deprivation or restriction, of like, I can never eat this food ever again, because I live in a very sensitive body with a sensitive digestive tract that's just like what I was born with, regardless of how much I've explored or played with or supported my gut that I'm always like, even the foods that I know maybe really don't resonate with my body, I've never labeled them as bad or wrong or I can't eat it. I'm like, I can eat that. I just also know what's going to happen if I do. I always like to frame it as okay if I eat that food, I'm also choosing the body response that's going to subsequently come afterwards. And sometimes it's totally worth it, and sometimes it's really not.
Michele Scarlet 32:28
100%. I feel this so much. I agree with you. We cannot label the second we start labeling good and bad, we're starting to dive into sympathetic nervous system again, because you label it bad and your body goes into high alert. So that's off the table. Even with my toddler, we talk about food. My husband and I, we are sort of in the same industry. We talk about food, and we talk about things being always food, and sometimes food and so and we talk to him about it like, let's talk about what's what's on your plate that is like an always food, but you can have as much as you want, whenever you want. We will never say no, and he'll like the strawberries, you know, the chicken, like, whatever it is. And then we'll be like, what is the sometimes food? And he'll be like, a cookie. And I'll be like, yeah, great. And that's all it is. It doesn't need to be anything more than we eat this most of the time, and we eat this sometimes, because I grew up in diet culture too, right? Like I was born in 86 grew up in the 90s, early 2000s a really horrible time for women, and horrible, you know, a young teenager learning her body. You know what a wild era that was. And I don't want my daughter to grow up thinking that a cookie, you know, is going to be this, be all, end all for her. I absolutely agree we need to come from a more empowered place and choose like, okay, if we're choosing this cookie or this pizza or whatever it is for somebody, we either know what's coming down the line, and we go, okay, yeah, tomorrow I'm going to feel like garbage. Maybe I'm not going to have a great poop tomorrow, and that sucks, because I know how bad that feels. Or I can say, you know what, I don't feel like doing that tonight. I'm going to have this instead, and I'm going to feel great tomorrow. And it doesn't need to be more than that.
Stephanie Mara 33:59
Yeah. And I'm curious if you could say more, because I find that when someone starts to do this playing or this experimenting, some of the issues I've seen has always been okay people start to play, they start to gain more body data, as I like to call it, but then the kind of reintroduction of some foods feels confusing, sometimes anxiety provoking. And so I'm curious about, as someone starts to feel better, how you also continue to expand their world, like I find that sometimes when people start to play, it feels like their world gets smaller, which is not the intention. It's like we want to bring more energy and vibrancy back into the body so you feel like your world can expand. You feel more confident to do more things and navigate more things. And so I'm curious how you navigate that point where it's like, okay, because even you said like, this is just for now. How do you start to maybe bring things back in so that someone feels like even the way that they're eating feels more sustainable?
Michele Scarlet 35:00
So I think that the the experiment continues, is how I would describe that. So life is an experiment, right?
Stephanie Mara 35:08
Yeah, absolutely.
Michele Scarlet 35:10
If we were, like, in like, every aspect, not just food, but like, if we were to really break down the way the body is supposed to feel. So the body is supposed to feel really great. If it is in a homeostasis, if it is balanced, it's supposed to feel really great. Along with that, you are supposed to be able to eat a variety of foods, vegetables, fruit, like people who are villainizing vegetables, you know, like...
Stephanie Mara 35:32
I can't ever get on board with that!
Michele Scarlet 35:35
No, like we are supposed to, on a very physiological level, supposed to be able to tolerate, not just, you know, enjoy and taste good with our mouth, but like, physically tolerate with no reaction, a wide variety of food all the way from plant based to animal based. Now that's not to say that we are supposed to eat all day, every day, cookies and croissants and that kind of stuff, but to the point where you should, if your body is in a really great, healed space, be able to enjoy some cookies with your kid, or, you know, cake on their birthday or your birthday, or a glass of wine with your husband or your girlfriends, like your body should be in a very robust, resilient state that enjoying those things should be a part of your life without fear. So if for a number of years, let's say, let's say somebody is 45 years old, and they come to you and they're like, oh, I just don't feel great in my body anymore, in a number of different symptoms. Okay, great, Michele, we need to start by experimenting and taking these foods out. We, you know, go through a process. Heal the body. We start to gain capacity. We start to have the body data. We start to learn that we're trusting our bodies to make better decisions. Okay, now we're in a really great, robust, resilient state. We know this because of the way the body feels. Go enjoy a weekend with your girlfriends, and let's see how you feel on Monday. Go in with the best of intentions, make good choices. Like, I don't mean good versus bad choices. I mean like, listen to your body. What are the choices that your body wants? And then let's talk about it. More feedback. It's just more data. It doesn't need to be an emotional thing. Your body, if in a resilient, robust state, will go, oh, I didn't like that. But because I'm so robust and you take good care of me, we will move past this pretty quickly. So then we can decide, okay, did that wine and sushi and do you know, no sleep whatever for a girl's weekend, was it worth it? Is there something we could do instead that still feels good for you? So that's how I would tend to start to expand things. I actually just had a client that I'm working with currently, sent me an email, being like, despite restricting another food, and I wrote back, and I was like, Why? Why she said eggs specifically? And I was like, well, why did you take out eggs? Like nothing. We've never spoken about taking out eggs. Well, I read somewhere that it was a gluten cross reactive and I was like, okay. I was like, I get that it can be a reactive food for a lot of people. So then I was like, do you physically feel bad while eating it? Well, no, I don't. Then you need to put that back in. The benefits of that food far outweigh, you know, just reading some article somewhere that some influencer said something, and I literally wrote to her. I was like, the goal here is not to make your world smaller. The goal here is to heal your body and make your world big again. And I said, does that make sense to you? And she's like, yes, that makes sense. She's like, I will go back to eating eggs. I was like, stop listening to all of the noise. It's insane.
Stephanie Mara 38:46
Yes, I really appreciate and love what you're pointing to here. And I actually say something very similar in my work of Somatic Eating®, of like, it never stops. You never get to this, like, quintessential place where it's like, okay, I've got my entire body and food figured out, and I'm never gonna worry about this ever again. And I feel like vibrant and energetic and grounded and regulated 24/7, 365 days a year, that's never gonna happen. It's unrealistic. Exactly. What I find is, what you're pointing to is it's you get to a place where you have so much further understanding of yourself and your own body, and that you do have autonomy and choice of what you choose in how you eat and how you move and how you interact, of what you take in, and that includes not just food or things that we're taking in, but the environments, the people, the conversations, the social media, that you just have a greater awareness of how things interact with your body, and that that's just going to be an ongoing process of continuing to notice and observe and notice and observe and make decisions, and that, yeah, sometimes those decisions are going to lead to maybe not feeling the best in your body, and sometimes those decisions are going to lead to maybe feeling really, really fantastic in your body. But you're just continuing to move forward. And something else you were pointing to that I really agree with and teach as well is like you move through it a lot faster. Once you have a greater awareness of how your body responds to things and you know how to support your body, you move through even like you were talking about, like the waves of stress. You move through them and flow through them a lot faster that it's not how it was in the past, or even if you're dealing with it right now, it's not as anxiety provoking or stressful or then you're in this, like, shame, guilt cycle of like, what did I do to myself? You're just like, oh, okay, that happened. Learned something new about myself. Or, oh, that happened. I understand why I made that decision. I have a lot of compassion for myself. And you just get to keep going forward.
Michele Scarlet 40:48
Yes, yes, I do find, and maybe you find this too, that yes, we can talk about, like, the relationship with food, and maybe we, I have had a poor relationship with food in the past, but like, where is it stemming from? It's like, stemming from the way we think about kind of everything. If I kind of say, and I've always said this, the way you are in one aspect of your life is often the way you are in all aspects of your life. And so if you are hard on yourself as a mother, are you going to be hard on yourself when you eat your kid's birthday cake. Probably, if you are hard on yourself at work, are you going to be hard on your choices? And I just feel like women need to learn to give themselves some grace, like just, it's okay if your child made a mistake and they colored on the wall by accident, they went off their paper and colored on the wall. You know, are you going to give them a little grace? Are you going to are you going to scream at them and punish them for the next 24 hours and go down a spiral with them like your best girlfriend? Are you going to tell her that she shouldn't have eaten that donut and that was like the worst thing she could have ever done for herself, and now, for the next week, she's fallen off track, right? So if we can, just like, put ourselves in the shoes of the people we care about, and how would we talk to them? Like, I feel like that helps, and then it helps to reduce the charge of our sympathetic nervous system. Helps us ride those stress waves and helps us just get clear minded to then make a better decision next time, like there is nothing in this life that cannot be fixed. No big deal. Let's just move forward. It sounds easy coming out of my mouth. It took 35 years for me to get there. You know, like, it's not that easy. But I think if we're like you said, we're like, checking in with ourselves and then making decisions and checking in with ourselves and making decisions, and there really is no finish line, because life comes at you. You know, whether it's relationships that are external, whether it's political issues, whether it's you know, financial stress, whether it's illness, life comes at you, and you need to trust like, embody the self love and the self trust to be like, we're just gonna move through it. Yeah, it sucks right now. My husband and I had twins five months ago. Every night for the last five months, we sit in our bed at seven o'clock at night and we're like, Holy hell, this is hard.
Stephanie Mara 43:21
Yeah. Well, congrats. And like, yeah, that's a lot all at once.
Michele Scarlet 43:26
Yes. And we have a three year old who's very busy, but we literally sit there and go, like, okay, well, tomorrow's a new day. I'm in the trenches with you, high five. Let's go to sleep. You know, like, we try really hard to be each other's kind of like, hey, let's zoom out for a second. That wasn't the worst thing that could happen. And I think that women sometimes we're just way too hard on ourselves, and we zoom in on the one thing you know, the latte, the donut, the whatever you know, insert your favorite food that you feel like throws you into a shame spiral. We feel like a failure when we zoom in like that, but if you zoom out and you go, oh, man, I have a great life. I've got lots to be grateful for this one little thing. Am I going to care about it next week, next year, next 10 years?
Stephanie Mara 44:13
Yeah. And what I also hear you pointing to right now that's really important is like, like you were saying there's some of the detoxification of like, yes, the food that you're eating, make sure you're sweating, having bowel movements, all of these things. And what I hear you also starting to name is that a part of this path is like how you're interacting with yourself, what you're saying to yourself, starting to look at, well, the way I approach one thing is probably the way I'm also approaching everything else. So can I start to see the themes that are happening across my life that also are potentially putting me in a stress response, and those are just as important to name and look at as much as the food and the bowel movements and the sweating.
Michele Scarlet 44:59
Yeah, there's like a real, physical piece, you know that we can do, and we can, like, be like, okay, we need to make sure we're having a bowel movement, check that off. It's a lot harder to then look at yourself and, like, catch yourself being like, oh, I hate these genes because I look fat in them. Or, you know, I failed at work for some reason now I need to work all my lunch hour, you know what I mean? Or, like, my husband and I are in an argument, and I feel like a failure as a wife or a mother or whatever, like, whatever the story looks like for you, that is a lot harder, but it absolutely is a part of the detox process. We have to detox our negative self talk. We have to detox, you know, our old stories, and create new neural pathways to just help our bodies again, just like, come back into balance. Like, I really wholeheartedly believe that this is obvious. I wish women knew that they could just show up in this life with nothing to give anybody, and they are totally worthy of not only other people's love, but their own, like literally just existing without judgment, without this idea that they're not good enough, or this idea that they're not worthy, like those really deep, internalized stories, they aren't real, not that they aren't real to you. I wish women could just show up like that, because I think that the self judgment would stop a whole lot more if they knew they could just exist and it'd be okay.
Stephanie Mara 46:27
Yeah, I completely agree with that, and I completely understand also what you're naming is that, yes, whatever you're hearing internally, it is real. You are thinking those things, and it is also based off of what you learn to think about yourself, from your family, from your past, from how other people interacted, from you with you, with media, with social media, and what you're talking about, which I completely agree, is like, can we create a new story for your body, that it feels safe to be here, that you don't have to continue to operate in the world the way you were taught to operate in the world.
Michele Scarlet 47:05
Absolutely. Like, I think the problem, it stems there. It stems with like, if you subconsciously are not feeling worthy of being in this world or being in a relationship, or even just being nice to yourself, then of course, when you seek out the external comfort food, that's a huge one. Food is comfort. There's nuance here, but food is love. Food helps you in connecting with other people. Helps you in connecting with your body. Talk about feedback. It sustains your life. Food is love. But when you're coming from a place where maybe your subconscious is like, I'm not good enough, here we seek out the validation. The dopamine fix and food can be that for a lot of women, and that's where the sort of spiral, and that's where the poor relationship can come in. And don't get me wrong, I'm not I'm like, saying this, like, I'm immune to it. I'm not immune to it when we have a stressful day, like, there are definitely days where I'm like, oh my gosh, I could go for some M&M''s right now, just like, give me a quick fix of, you know, sugar high or whatever. Like, I get it. But again, I think it's like looking at the root of where that's coming from, and, like, why we're choosing the things that we do, and there is a real neurological piece to that, and a real physical piece to that.
Stephanie Mara 47:33
Completely agree.
Michele Scarlet 47:36
Yeah, so there's a lot here, and I feel like, as I talk about this, we've kind of covered a lot of ground, and I don't want your listeners to be like, oh my god, now I need to tackle another thing on my to do list. You know, that's not it. I think that a healing journey is exactly that. It is a journey, and you will uncover layers as you go. And sometimes it starts with like the smallest little choice, you know what I mean. And it doesn't need to be perfect, and it doesn't need to be 100% everything on board now, or you're a failure.
Stephanie Mara 49:03
Yeah, this is a perfect segue. I usually like to wrap up with offering everyone a baby step, and everyone offers different baby steps because of your lens and our conversation and what we've explored here. But I'm curious of what we've talked about, both in we've covered, like you said, like, a lot of ground. What baby step would you offer listeners of where you feel like they could start, you know, just dipping a toe into some of the things that we've explored today.
Michele Scarlet 49:32
Ooh, okay, so my first instinct here, if you are a woman who is like, I know I'm I'm not feeling good. I haven't really jumped into my wellness journey at all yet. I know I need to do something, but I'm like, we haven't started. Like, if we're talking very foundational, very basic, my go to would be get outside for a walk first thing in the morning. Like, if maybe you got kids, like, you know, figure out your day. 15 minutes, get outside in the sunshine for a walk, and get outside after dinner for a walk, and start there. The sun and the fresh air is incredibly energizing and incredibly healing in itself. Don't take your headphones like don't bring your phone with you. Be in the moment with nothing on your mind. If you can the shift into the parasympathetic state, the breathing the fresh air, it will shift your entire day. You will gain so much capacity, after a week of doing that, to be able to implement baby step number two, whatever that looks like for you. But that would be my advice, walk in the sunshine, whether it's cold or not, get that fresh air in your body.
Stephanie Mara 50:47
Such a great suggestion, and I agree, of like, not bringing anything with you. My morning walk, I am like, I do not want my phone on me. I don't want anyone to contact me. I don't want to look at it. I don't want to listen to anything on it. I don't need to be with it like it is left at home. So I agree with you that there's something about like, yes, go outside, but then also allow yourself to kind of like, land in your environment. And I'm always able to be like, I wouldn't have noticed that bird tweeting or chirping if I had had my phone on me, you know, I wouldn't have noticed the way that, like, oh, I really am enjoying the way the sun is hitting my face, or, you know, the crunching of like leaves or something underneath my feet. There's so much that we can pick up on through our senses, where it's more of an embodied experience when we're getting outside and actually connecting with our external environment rather than our phones. So yes, great suggestion.
Michele Scarlet 51:44
100%
Stephanie Mara 51:46
Yeah, well, I loved this conversation and all of the places that it took us to. I'm curious how listeners could keep in touch with you and the work that you're doing.
Michele Scarlet 51:55
Yeah, I usually hang out over on Instagram most of the day @MicheleScarlet_ underscore. I'm sure you'll put it in the show notes. But my first name is 1 L my second name is 1 T that tends to go over everybody's head. And then secondly, I have a podcast. It's called the Scarlet's True Health podcast. And the whole idea there is just empowering women to be better advocates for their own health. You know, going to their doctors, seeking out practitioners who can actually help them move the needle, typically geared toward women in midlife, but obviously, across the board, can help any woman just feel incredible in her own skin, because she absolutely deserves it.
Stephanie Mara 52:33
Yeah, I will definitely put all of those links in the show notes and just appreciate you and your perspective and the work that you're doing.
Michele Scarlet 52:40
Thank you so much, Stephanie.
Stephanie Mara 52:42
Yeah, well, to everyone listening. If you have any insights or aha moments from this episode, email me at Support@Stephaniemara.com and I hope you all have a satiating and safety producing rest of the day. Bye!
Keep in touch with Michele:
Website: https://www.michelescarlet.com/about
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michelescarlet_/