Coming to Food Fed: Discovering Pleasurable, Intimacy, and Safety with Food and Body
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. I'm so excited to chat with Lacou Flipse. Today Lacou is a pleasure eating coach, she helps women struggling with binge eating align with their authentic food rhythm by focusing on feeling good. She is the creator of the pleasure eating process that supports you and resolving the root of why you overeat emotionally binge and self sabotage. She believes when you heal the root, you get to reveal your authentic food for them and fall into your authentic weight. So welcome, Lacou.
Lacou Flipse 00:50
Thank you.
Stephanie Mara 00:51
I'm thrilled to have you. I'm so looking forward to diving in into what is this pleasure eating process you've created. And I would love to first start out with how did you get into this work? Has this been a personal passion, a personal process? You know, what drew you to doing this particular work in the world?
Lacou Flipse 01:12
Yeah, I love that question. It's definitely very personal to me. As I was studying to be a dietitian in college, I was also struggling hardcore with binge eating. And I could never purge like I can never like throw up. So this meant that I was over exercising, to purge. And I didn't know anything about disordered eating at the time, or at least my version of it. Like I knew about anorexia, and I didn't think that was me. But that was pretty much it when it came to like my awareness of disordered eating. And so I went along in my program, knowing all the biochemistry and all the physiology and the anatomy and everything that I was doing to my body, but I couldn't stop and ended up putting on about 40 pounds of weight over the years. And I just felt really stuck. Because when I reached out to therapists and friends about my eating, it was invalidated because I went from a skinny person to 40 pounds. And that, you know, I'm tall. So it didn't look like I had a problem with food, even though I had gained weight. And I felt like I couldn't stop myself from eating. Everyone just thought that it was normal. And so I felt really isolated and alone. And I would say like the mustard seed for this process was planted after a really intense binge, where at this point, I had given up the purge state because I could no longer like motivate myself to exercise and didn't have the energy to do it. And so I had binged all day, and a friend invited me out to dinner. And I was like, Uh, I'll just sit with you while you eat. And I was just like, it was hard to walk, I was that full. And I go, and I just couldn't not order anything. So I ordered something. And it was and I ended up eating it all. And that was the worst binge I experienced. Up until that point, it was hard to breathe, hard to walk. And I was studying anatomy at the time and thought I might have ruptured my belly and was like, I need to change something about this. So that was, I think the first time I validated that I had a problem that could harm me in the long run. And that night, I was in the bathtub, and I just kind of like, had a come to Jesus moment where I was just like, I need help. I don't know how to stop and that was kind of like the mustard seed that was planted the following semester. My grades were struggling. I was taking all the science classes, dealing with binge eating, and a lot of like, trauma that was like underneath the binge eating. And so my grades were really struggling. And so I saw this class, in part of my electives. It was called How to get an A and I was like, Okay, I need that class. And this class ended up being like a bait and switch in a good way. It was actually a class on mindfulness. And the very first day of that class, we did a experience with a raisin. And this was the first time in like, eight years that I experienced eating without the guilt, without the like insatiable, like, I need to scratch this itch feeling and without the I need to eat this way so I can lose weight. So it was like free of all of that. And I was like, Whoa, I actually really enjoy this experience. It was like sensuous, it was, like, freeing. And it showed me that there's another way to be with food. And I was hooked. After that, I was like, this is how I want to eat like, this is how I want to feel, I felt free, I felt like I actually enjoyed pleasure with food. And there was no guilt afterwards, there was no longing for more, I felt satiated. And it was such a beautiful experience. It was kind of like an awakening for me. And I think the fact that I ended up in that class was divine orchestration. Because I never would have been interested in mindfulness back then. But, yeah, that I think, was like the second little mustard seed that was planted, and I started doing my best to eat and have that experience with every eating experience. And that's like, my personal connection to this work. And that, I'm so grateful for that. Because it like allows me to really connect with my clients and, and what they're going through and know more about the nuances of what people what really brings people to eat and and what that experience is like.
Stephanie Mara 06:21
Yeah, thank you so much for sharing just that history. And I hear so many threads of first, even at the beginning of how often we have this idea of what disordered eating, like quote unquote, looks like. And there isn't a look to it. You know, if it's someone is saying, I am sensing I am struggling with this, it's like taking that seriously, because only you know in your body and your lived experience, what is real to you. And also just it was interesting that you shared the experience with a raisin because I had a very similar experience. I think it was also with a raisin. I was really resonating with that of when you've been utilizing food in this particular way for so long. And then someone offers you this beautiful mindful eating experience. It just blows, it blew my mind.
Lacou Flipse 07:21
It blew my mind.
Stephanie Mara 07:25
Like, oh, my gosh, wow, I I forgot or didn't know that there was such a different way for me to be in relationship with food.
Lacou Flipse 07:34
Yeah. And it's like, someone could have told me that, but I would never have believed it back then unless I experienced that.
Stephanie Mara 07:43
Yeah. So since then, what kind of unfolded after that. And then slowly getting into this creation of this pleasure eating process that you shaped.
Lacou Flipse 07:56
Yeah. So after that class, I just dove into all things Holistic Health. And then I ended up coming pretty close to minoring in Holistic Health with the exception of like one class that I still need to do. But I just dove into all those courses. And pretty much all of those courses were about healing that relationship to yourself, or at least that's how I took it because I really needed that medicine. And I think one of the key aspects of the process that I teach is validating yourself, and doing that as a form of self intimacy, because that was so huge for me, like, everyone was like, You're fine. You're, you're, you're okay. And so when I finally validated, like, oh, I have a problem that was so free, even though I was like, saying that I had a problem, it was so freeing to finally be like, I know my body enough to know that this isn't okay. So a lot of the women that I work with, they feel really confused about like how they want to eat. And so a lot of the work that we ended up doing in the pleasure eating process is self intimacy, and aligning to like, what feels true for your body, not what feels or looks true to diet culture, or what feels real looks true to even anti diet culture. It's like what feels true for you. And that process is really radical for a lot of people because as women, we're taught to always seek outside validation. And this process is all about like internal validation. I'm really cultivating that as a tool for self intimacy. So this process developed over... so I never knew that or didn't really have an interest in teaching people how to recover like when I recovered, I was just like, Oh, I'm gonna be a nutritionist because that's what I went to school for. I didn't know I would specialize in binge eating recovery. And I actually had a lot of shame around my binge eating. So I didn't want to teach other people how to recover because I didn't think I could because I went through it. And so that was like the story that was going through my head. So when I graduated college, I didn't immediately start teaching people how to recover, I worked in like the weight loss field, which is where a lot of nutritionists work, and worked with groups and nonprofits. And that began in about 2013. And then I just like, my heart wasn't in it anymore. And I just started to see the same thing happening, like people lose weight, then they'd gain all back. And then I just didn't understand why until I started recognizing some of the same patterns that I was exhibiting when I was binging and restricting, binging, restricting. I noticed my clients were doing the same thing. Even if they weren't, like, full out binge eating, they're just like, they had that pattern. And so I started like, slowly and timidly incorporating some of the things that I did to recover, but never calling myself like a recovery coach or anything like that. And then over the years, I think it was like 2017, it took me when I really was like, Okay, I'm doing this, I'm teaching people how to recover from binge eating. And I think it took that long for me to heal a lot of the shame that I had about struggling with this, and I just started talking about it more. And my system, my body realized, like, Okay, I'm not dieting, and I'm sharing about my recovery and my struggles. And so my body felt safe and learn to feel safe and connecting with people on that level. That's really when the pleasure eating process was born, in 2017. But there's like little kind of nuggets along the way. And I think, again, divine orchestration, I wanted to run away from this work because of my shame. And I was just like, brought back to it from my heart, because I just couldn't not, I don't think I could not do this work. I think it was definitely a part of my dharma and what I'm meant to be doing here. It's what it feels like.
Stephanie Mara 12:23
Yeah, I even hear, in following that call, that it potentially also healed maybe your sense of shame that this was something that you went through, and it was more Oh, this was something that I went through. And now I can offer my experience and my wisdom, having healed it for myself to other individuals.
Lacou Flipse 12:43
Mmmhmm. Yeah. I think that was a healing point for me. And also validating, like, yeah, it's okay to struggle and go through things. And that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you, I had to realize that even though I went through that, and I was able to recover, that doesn't mean I'm broken. And so I think when that clicked for me, I was able to see people who are also struggling in that way, like not broken, just are struggling with something. And yeah, I feel like I really needed that to specialize in this work. Because no one who's struggling with binge eating, or any type of eating disorder is broken, you just have a coping mechanism with food. And we all have our things.
Stephanie Mara 13:30
So in alignment with that as well, in shifting the dialogue and the perspective around the patterns of an eating disorder or disordered eating is that it's a messenger, it was your way of feeling safe and regulated in your body and that you're not doing anything wrong or bad, it was the best option you may knew to have at that time of your life. I know that you actually talk a lot about, you know, trauma, or even a sense of safety in the body on your Instagram page, which anybody who's listening, highly recommend that they follow you. And I would love for you to share more about just that connection that you're pointing to that this is a coping mechanism.
Lacou Flipse 14:13
Yeah. So I think it this is where self intimacy is so important, because I think we need to be intimate with our body and know like, Okay, what actually feels like unsafety in my body, what feels like dysregulation, so a lot of people live in unsafety. And so once they start feeling safe, they kind of do something like eat foods that trigger that unsafety to go back to unsafety. And so, for me, I incorporated pleasure into this process because I think we need to be in a state of pleasure in order to feel safe, like when we're feeling pleasure. It kind of alchemizes our body, or whatever we're experiencing to feel more safe. And so, self intimacy, being there for yourself, relating to yourself, co-parenting yourself with like, or co-regulating yourself with nature, or with your environment, or your breath, like learning all of these different ways to feel genuinely safe. And knowing like what that feels like in your body is huge. And then the second piece is like, once you know, like, that marker for safety in your body, like, how much time can you spend there? How often can you come back there during the day? And how can you like show your body gently that, okay, this is what safety feels like. And it's okay to rest here. It's okay to listen to my body, it's okay to validate that this is say that I get to feel like this. And so it's a practice of first like identifying what that feels like in your body. And I like to use a perspective of pleasure. So feeling like the pleasure of drinking like water. And then people find the pleasure of wearing a dress like really simple things that we do every day, that want to really let yourself experience it like that raisin like it will elicit where in your body, you actually feel safe.
Stephanie Mara 16:34
I love that of just even the simple little pleasures that we might experience in the day like the wind coming through a window, or the way the sun hits the floor of just these tiny little things that if we bypass them, we might miss that that was a really regulating relaxing moment that we could have had just being with the experiences happening in that present moment.
Lacou Flipse 17:02
Yeah. And I think like it, you know, comes back to self validation. Because a lot of times we do bypass these little experiences, a lot of like, clients, when they first start working with me, and they have these shifts, they're like, trying to bypass it, and I'm like, wait, Nope, we're gonna feel that, that's actually huge. And you're training yourself to feel safe. And so it's I think that's why I think it's super helpful to have some support with this, because it's so easy for our mind to not know what we don't know, and only focus on what's familiar and air quotes safe. And so it does take some skill to really let yourself experience the safety and the pleasure that's already around you. Because like, for people who have experienced a lot of trauma, the world around us, like it can feel unsafe all the time. And so if you can, like as a traumatized person, like really let yourself land in the safety of like simply looking at the sky. Like that's so huge and going to shift things with how you relate to food, because then you'll use that less to anger and safety in your body.
Stephanie Mara 18:23
Yeah, something I've noticed, and I'm not sure if you've noticed this as well, as you were just talking about noticing what safety feels like in your body that for a lot of individuals, a lack of talking about noticing what safety feels like in your body that for a lot of individuals, a lack of safety or feeling unsafe has become the norm, that we don't even know what actually a sense of safety feels like. Because especially with so many different layers, a sense of Go, go go, that activation response, the you know, sympathetic nervous system like fight or flight response, like where actually that becomes kind of the norm of how we feel so that when we feel safe and regulated, that might feel more uncomfortable at first, just you're saying when the client wants to bypass it. Like, that feels really uncomfortable, that that's actually a moment that we need to sit with it to grow in our awareness and our comfort of feeling more regulated and safe in our body.
Lacou Flipse 19:23
Yeah, and like when a newer client wants to bypass it, it's like not that they want to it's just like, we're gonna do what has historically made you feel safe. And that means not paying attention to things that are actually pleasurable or actually safe.
Stephanie Mara 19:40
Yeah. Great reframe.
Lacou Flipse 19:42
This is why I have the term authentic pleasure and inauthentic pleasure because inauthentic pleasure would be bypassing like how beautiful the sky is and how that feels in your body. Because you need to get to your next meeting, even though you may have like a minute to look at the sky and inauthentic pleasure is like that first hit you get from satiating, or like that satiating a craving or an urge or like this deep longing for a bunch of cake, you know, the first couple of bites are going to feel like something. That's what I call inauthentic pleasure. Because afterwards you're feeling like unsafe, because you just abandoned the body. And there's like, the feelings that you're avoiding. And then so authentic pleasure. It's like, you know, looking at the sky, because that genuinely lets you feel the safety in your body. And authentic pleasure is like honoring your body's wisdom when it wants to eat certain foods that actually align with you. Because that's going to translate like, Oh, I'm taking care of me. I'm not abandoning me with food, I'm listening. And so this like relationship begins to form an intimate relationship with the self that I have me. And like, even though I may not have been had as a child, or as a youth, like, I'm, I have me now. And so it does wonders for healing relational trauma.
Stephanie Mara 21:16
I love that distinction of food is going to be pleasurable in the moment, and just identifying of just inauthentic pleasure of okay, but how do you feel an hour two hours later, after giving yourself potentially that sense of inauthentic pleasure, whereas after you might have checked in with the sky, an hour, two hours later, you might still continue to feel calm and regulated from that experience of authentic pleasure.
Lacou Flipse 21:48
Yeah. And you're actually building something, you're building a body that can experience pleasure, rather than a body that can just recapitulate the same pain, like binge, feel bad, binge again, because you're feeling bad. So when we come to food fed, which is authentic eating for authentic pleasure, we're like feeding our our soul, our emotions, before we come to food, we're actually creating a body that can experience authentic pleasure, you know, clients start feeling like the joy of just like doing normal, simple things, or just like experiencing an amount of joy that they've never experienced in their life. And I'm, I'm just, that's all coming from reaffirming that it's safe to feel pleasure. Instead of just like going to the normal route of seeking pleasure only in like a slice of cake or a bag of Doritos chips.
Stephanie Mara 22:50
Yeah. So I know you teach a lot about this concept of come to food fed. I would love for you to talk more about that concept and what that means.
Lacou Flipse 23:02
Yeah, I would love to. So come to food fed, it basically means like feeding your soul and your emotions before you actually come to the plate. So if you're feeling like an urge to binge, that's a great sign to that there's a longing to come to food fed. And you can do that by different ways of regulating your nervous system before you eat, so that you're actually eating for hunger, rather than trying to eat to not feel a trauma that you know goes back to childhood. So that you can eat for authentic pleasure rather than inauthentically, inauthentic pleasure, which is just avoiding the sensations of the present moment, you're actually like, building a body that can experience the sensation of discomfort in the moment. And then allowing yourself to come to food fed because when we are feeling our feelings when we like actually are present with our discomfort, that alchemizes them and it also builds this relationship with ourselves that Okay, again, like even though you are not attuned to when your child like you're tuning now, and so that heals this like a void as a result of relational trauma that drives a lot of people to to eat to try to get that coming to food fed.
Stephanie Mara 24:36
I appreciate also just you bringing in of it's never too late. If just because you maybe had these prior experiences in your life of maybe not being attuned to or maybe not having the parent that can really show up for you that it's never too late to begin to attune to yourself or show up for yourself now the way you the ways you needed to be met and seen.
Lacou Flipse 24:59
Yeah, totally. And I think it's also important to note that you don't, misattunement doesn't just happen with parents who are like blatantly abusive. Misattunement can just be like, your mom, never really knowing what you mean, when you, I don't know, touch your ear. But you just like, want like a little peck on your cheek or something. Like if she never knows that you're gonna learn as a little kid, like, okay, my mom doesn't care about me. Like, that's the way that the kid's mind works. And so that parent could have been so loving and attentive in other areas, and like, you just have this small little misattunement.
Stephanie Mara 25:45
Yeah, yeah, it can happen in so many different circumstances and in situations, and even it's, we don't even have to put all the pressure on the parents, you could have been misattuned to a whole bunch of different ways, just in your environment in general. And that's why viewing these patterns of emotional eating, or binge eating as the coping mechanism that came into your life for a reason to try to support you in navigating your younger years with more ease. And I'm hearing that in your pleasure eating process, you're bringing more of that ease back into the body now. And I'm also hearing you just talk about also a sense of really rebuilding trust in the body, because I'm hearing that's maybe a piece of it of, yes, your body's talking to you. But then we also have to trust that we can listen to it, just in you saying like, Oh, learning about what you uniquely works for you that not referencing diet or anti diet culture, because you are a unique human being that needs to discover for yourself, what works for you.
Lacou Flipse 26:49
Yeah, trust is a big piece that comes through the process of self intimacy, and validating how you feel, how you feel in your body with certain foods, how you feel uncertain food situations.
Stephanie Mara 27:03
Yeah. So when you say self intimacy, I'm curious what that means in context of the pleasure eating process, and how does that get cultivated? How do we enhance self intimacy?
Lacou Flipse 27:15
Yeah, so I think a lot of people off the bat think that I'm talking about like, self pleasure, and like, that can totally be a part of it, for sure. But I'm really talking about like the attunement. So the relationship with your body, the book, the relationship between you and you. So like really thinking of your body as this being that you're relating to. And so for a lot of people who've been binge eating for a while, there's a relationship of distrust of a lack of integrity. So we can't be like, Okay, I'm going to never binge tomorrow, and then expect the body to trust us. So just like, you know, you would rebuild trust in any relationship where trust is broken, it takes time and consistently showing up. And so the way that I teach self intimacy is simply relationship with the body. So feeling the body, understanding the body's needs, validating how you feel, and moving away from judgment, and into a place of compassion, without complacency, because I think a lot of people will think that they're being compassionate, but it's complacency, because they wouldn't do that for a friend, they wouldn't be like, I'm being compassionate. So I'm gonna have like, all this cake, but you wouldn't like really tell your friend to do that. So there's a difference between compassion and complacency. And it's meeting yourself like where you are at. So not expecting your recovery to be on someone else's timeline. And really just like being that parent that maybe you didn't have or that friend that you really need to your body.
Stephanie Mara 29:17
Yeah, yeah. Just it's a process, especially when that sense of self intimacy or self trust can get broken at such a young age. It is such a process of showing up for yourself over and over and over again, for the body to sense, oh, you're gonna keep showing up for me? Like, I can trust now that you're not going to pop out you're not going to self abandon.
Lacou Flipse 29:42
And even if you do there's trust that you'll come back to yourself.
Stephanie Mara 29:46
Yeah, yeah. That even if that happens, that you have more of that body awareness online to know when you're popping out of yourself, to know when to come back. Because that's gonna happen sometimes. Yeah, so I'm wondering when someone is at the very beginning of this journey, they are just like you said, there was a moment where you identified Oh, there's something I need to address here. And if someone's like listening to this realizing, okay, I've been in patterns of emotional eating or binge eating for quite a while, and this may be something that I'm ready to address now, where does someone start? You know, what is that first baby step that someone you sense could start to explore, to step into this new relationship with their food and body that we're talking about?
Lacou Flipse 30:37
I think like, the first step happens when you validate like, oh, okay, this is not actually authentic for me to eat in this way. That's emotional. That's been bingy. I think that's the first step. Because when you claim that when you state that I think things start lining up for you automatically, like, there becomes a different awareness, it's, it's like, you start knowing what you didn't know, previously, when you're like, Oh, this is just the way I eat. This is just the way my family is, this is just the way things are, when you no longer are claiming that this is just the way things are that this is, okay, this is the result of emotions, or maybe the result of trauma like that automatically shifts the perspective and the awareness around the way that we eat. And my hope is that people, once they're aware, stop shaming themselves for having traumas or for emotional eating. Because, you know, like you said, a couple times really beautifully, it is a coping mechanism, it's a way of feeling regulated. And so knowing that you're just trying to do what's best for you just trying to feel regulated, that in itself is such a beautiful relational opening to your body, because you're going from a place of just like not misattunement, which is like, Oh, this is just the way things are to like, Okay, I see you body like this is, you know, we're trying to do our best here. And I'm not going to blame you for this, like that's already starting to heal your relationship with your body.
Stephanie Mara 32:25
I love that. I just hear so much self compassion. And that it that it might even start with naming that you're feeling shame, like naming that you are judging yourself for what you're doing. And just even having that awareness of you know what this pattern is playing out for a reason? And actually, what if I shifted, not necessarily even the pattern at first, but how I'm showing up for myself in my food patterns.
Lacou Flipse 32:56
Mmhmm. Yeah. Shifting the way you show up for yourself.
Stephanie Mara 33:00
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Of just, it's, it's actually okay, that I am engaging in this food behavior, it is not a problem, and also not even seeing it as something that needs to be fixed.
Lacou Flipse 33:15
Yeah. I think that's already just healing so much. And just realizing like, you don't need to be fixed, you're just experiencing, you're just having that experience of trying to use food to regulate.
Stephanie Mara 33:32
Yeah, I find that we really need to normalize that just in our world a little bit more that if we got to see emotional eating or binge eating, as that's actually not the thing that is the problem. It's actually these deeper things that you're pointing to of this dysregulation, this lack of attunement, this sense of not feeling safe in the body. And when we start shifting the focus away from that the eating behavior is the problem that we get to actually address the root like you, when you talk about like the pleasure eating process getting to that root of like, why is this happening to begin with? That's where that deeper healing can occur of this may, this food behavior actually may continue to play out as we explore these other things, and then something might shift in the food behavior as we address the root cause.
Lacou Flipse 34:31
Yeah, I think it's, I think a lot of people are maybe confused about the root like, identify with like, Okay, I'm an emotional eater, and just be like, okay, the roots emotions, okay, but we really need to understand that the relationship to those emotions is the root there, which is why you know what you're saying earlier about, just like relating to the act of binge eating differently is so powerful because that to me is really what perpetuates binge eating. It's the relationship to the body, like having this kind of animosity towards the body is really what allows us to keep abandoning it over and over again.
Stephanie Mara 35:17
Yeah, getting really curious about the reaction, not even necessarily continuing to focus on the symptom. That even okay, if we say the issue is how I'm relating with my emotions, there's even potentially another root underneath that of where did you learn how to relate with your emotions in that way that they feel unsafe. Was that what was role modeled to you? Is that what you were taught? Were you told really at a young age that emotions weren't something to feel or were even safe to express and feel in your home environment? So there's like so many layers.
Lacou Flipse 36:00
Yeah, there, there really is. And I think like, it's kind of like a, you can keep going as far as you want to go with this work. But not, I don't, honestly don't think we need to go, I think is when you notice, like your relationship with how you're relating to your body like, it can be helpful to know like, Okay, I was modeled this by my parents. And it's not necessary for everyone, because some people they can't recall, like what was modeled or, like, this is completely different than what was modeled, and they may feel invalidated by needing to have like a source. The thing is, if it's happening here, if it's happening now, doesn't always have to be validated by your childhood experiences, what I realized a lot of it is, but for, that's not the case for everyone. And so I think the thing that might be consistent is that relationship to self. And that's the route that I really love focusing on in my work.
Stephanie Mara 37:11
Yeah, I so appreciate you bringing that in, that sometimes we can identify it. And for some people that may feel supportive for other individuals that actually may not be supportive, to reflect on the past and get that sense of oh, I'm gonna identify where this began. And it's Hey, what is happening in my relationship with my food and body now, in the present moment, today is all that matters. And that you get to take just Okay, today, I want to start showing up in this relationship in a new and different way. And sometimes we don't always have to reflect on the past, because I totally hear you aometimes we can also get stuck there.
Lacou Flipse 37:56
An avoidance strategy, like oh, like the mind will be like, Okay, we're gonna heal this relationship with food. Okay, great. I'm just gonna fixate on the past. So we never actually do anything in the present.
Stephanie Mara 38:10
Yes. Such a good point.
Lacou Flipse 38:12
Yeah, I've definitely been there. That's why I know that pattern. Yeah, I went through this phase where I was just like, blaming my mom for everything. And I was like, I had a realization that that was actually helping me in the present. Like, it is helpful to just like, be like, Oh, okay, this happened. And this is why, but it's Yeah, I don't think it's really necessary.
Stephanie Mara 38:37
Yeah, sometimes it's, you know, I actually have to let the past be what it was, so that I start attuning to myself now in the person that I am now and what I need now to be able to move forward. And I, I get it, I was there too. I completely understand what you're talking about.
Lacou Flipse 38:59
Its so like, seductive to just be like, all my problems are my parents.
Stephanie Mara 39:05
It's, you know, it's this thing that happened, or it's that thing that happened...
Lacou Flipse 39:09
Or that thing that happened.
Stephanie Mara 39:11
Yeah. And we can stay stuck also focusing on I am this way because of this. And at some point, I even found both for myself and those that I work with that a piece of just forgiveness, and not necessarily you know, forgiveness can be complicated, not necessarily forgiving potentially a behavior that might have even felt unforgivable, but saying this happened, like kind of a an acceptance of your past of okay, this is, this was my groundwork, this is what I'm working with, this was my blueprint. But blueprints can change and you can create a different house on top of that groundwork. You know, you get to decide what you want to build for yourself in your relationship with your food and body now. So, yeah, so I'm wondering where can individuals learn more about this pleasure eating process because it's just fascinating everything that you're sharing, and I really hear that it's supporting individuals and coming into relationship with themselves and their body and who they are now to be able to create the kind of even life they want to step into in relationship with their food in their body.
Lacou Flipse 40:18
Yeah, I love that you brought in the life piece because a lot of people experience so many shifts in their life, because that can impact you know, how we're living life, it kind of impacts how we experience regulation, in response to past traumas. So people can find me on Instagram @lacouflipse, and also on Facebook at the Pleasure Eating Process. And by email, Lacou@enlightenedmunch.com.
Stephanie Mara 40:50
Yeah, thank you so much for just coming on here today and sharing your wisdom. I really hear you doing such powerful work in the world. And even just bringing in that peace of life of Yeah, I have found that too of when we start, it's a little bit of both. When we start kind of healing our relationship with food, it can shift things in our life. And when we start getting curious about how we want to be in our life, it can start shifting our relationship with food.
Lacou Flipse 41:16
Yeah, that's beautiful.
Stephanie Mara 41:19
Yeah, so thank you so much, again, for being here and sharing your wisdom. I definitely would love to have you back to continue to explore all these many facets of our relationship with our food in our body and for listeners...
Lacou Flipse 41:31
Yeah. I would love that.
Stephanie Mara 41:33
Yeah. And for listeners, I will put all of Lacou's links in the show notes so that you can connect with her and her wisdom and her passion for this work. And just thank you so much for tuning in today and looking forward to connecting with you all soon. Bye.
Keep in touch with Lacou here:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lacouflipse/
Website: https://www.enlightenedmunch.com/
FB Group: https://m.facebook.com/groups/PEPGroup
Contact: Lacou@enlightenedmunch.com