Somatic eating, food trauma, and why willpower won’t heal your relationship with food | TMOHP Episode 183

Melissa McCreery: Hey everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. Today's episode is a guest interview and it's one that I am very excited to share with you. Wait till you hear about Stephanie Mara Fox. Stephanie Mara Fox is a PhD in progress. She's a somatic nutritional counselor and mentor with a master's degree in Somatic Psychotherapy.

She's the creator of something called Somatic Eating. And that is a body oriented, sensation focused, therapeutic approach to eating. She has supported women, coaches, and wellness professionals all over the world, helping them heal their disordered eating patterns, binge eating, emotional eating, and chronic dieting and body image concerns.

She's also published in the International Body Psychotherapy Journal, and she's been featured in Somatic Psychotherapy Today. Stephanie has supervised thousands of coaches, counselors, and therapists, and she's on a mission to guide others into a safe and regulated relationship with food so they can go out and create a satiated life.

That's quite a bio. If you're not sure what some of that stuff means, you will by the end of this episode. And without further ado, I would like to introduce you to Stephanie Mara Fox.

. Stephanie, I am so glad you're here today. When I decided that I was going to start doing interviews on this podcast, you were at the top of the list for so many reasons. and I feel like so much that's out there. With advice about food and your relationship with food and your eating, it's all, it's so disconnecting. Right?

It really divorces us from our sense of ourselves and our wisdom and our bodies. Right? I have so many clients who don't even know if they're hungry anymore. So I just, you, you not only love this stuff, but you know this stuff at a depth that nobody else that I know does.

So glad you're here. If you guys haven't checked out Stephanie's, Instagram page, you really want to do that in her Satiated podcast, which is the best title ever. Tell me, tell me about the nervous system and what it has to do with eating, and let's just dive into this.

Stephanie Mara Fox: Well, thank you so much for having me here. I know we had talked about a long time ago, me coming on, so I'm glad this is finally coming to fruition and have loved having you on my podcast. So it's just great to connect with you again.

And yeah, so a little bit about my work is I've kind of been merging the fields of somatic trauma and nutrition for like almost two decades now. I feel like I came into getting my master's in somatic psychotherapy, just kind of from a background of dealing with struggles with relationship with food myself in my teenage years and in my early twenties. And not really seeing a lot of therapeutic modalities merge both nutrition and therapy.

And especially somatics, which for anyone who's new to the field of somatic psychology, if we just see the word somatic means relating to the body, distinct from the mind. So a lot of therapeutic modalities are kind of more top down. If we change the way that we think we can change the way that we feel.

Somatic therapies are more bottom up. So if we kind of address how we feel, create more capacity to be with our emotions and sensations, to be able to understand what nervous system states that we're in, and to work with our nervous system. Then we can change the way that we think. Of what we know of some research that there's about 80% of communication that comes from the body up to the brain.

Melissa McCreery: just ha grew, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I want you to say that again because we are not taught that. Right? Yeah. And, and, uh, there are a lot of, I, there are a lot of people like me who we are taught to live in our brains. Mm-hmm. We are taught that all the answers are in our brains. And I think people hear, like, listen to your body. And they're like, what the, what the heck do you, what is, what is that?

So 80, say it again. 80%.

Stephanie Mara Fox: Yeah. So about 80% of communication. It's an estimate, you know, there's still research coming out on that, but about estimately, there's about 80% of communication that's coming from our body. Which our body and our brain communicate with each other through what's called the Vagas nerve.

And the Vagas nerve is kind of known as this wandering nerve that goes through almost our entire body. And about 75% of the Vagas nerve are the nerves of our parasympathetic nervous system. So for anyone who doesn't know, the parasympathetic nervous system is kind of what's known as your rest and digest or safety and connection state.

Our sympathetic nervous system is our fight or flight state. So if our Vagas nerve is operating, you know, optimally, then we have strong communication from our body up to our brain. So even the ways that we are thinking can be information for how we are feeling.

So if you think about the things that you might think on a really stressful day, for example. I can't slow down. I have to keep going. I have so much to do. There's very much that fight or flight, go, go, go, go, go. I have so much to do energy.

And then, you know, if we're thinking, wow, today's such a lovely day. I really love the way that, you know, my friends and family show up for me and I, I really want to give back to the world today.

All, all of that is all information also. That we are more in the parasympathetic nervous system because we perceive the world differently based on the nervous system states that we're in. So our body kind of is always what's called, uh, neuroception. It's scanning our environment for cues of safety or cues of threat.

And we're always kind of taking in that information and then we're sending that up as interpretation into our brain of, okay, I will think thoughts that either I'm perceiving that I'm in threat, or I'm perceiving that I'm in safety. And then that information gets sent back down to the body again.

So how this all correlates with food. So when we are in more of a fight or flight sympathetic nervous system state. It can shape the kinds of foods that we choose and how much we eat as well. So I'd really like to normalize, we have to stop seeing that cravings or food urges or food impulses are bad. But their body communication. And in my trademarked work called somatic eating, I like to approach it more as what is your body trying to communicate to you?

Hmm. Now, when we are in the sympathetic nervous system, we are going to naturally crave foods that are higher and simple carbohydrates and sugar. Because our body wants to make sure that it gets quick hits of glucose to be able to continue to fight or flee real or perceived threat in our environment.

So it like would make total sense to eat those kinds of foods. It's not a matter of willpower or weakness. I know we've talked about that before. But it's like, oh, this is trying to do something for me. That's where we also get to create more space for choice, that as we start to learn how our body talks to us through our food urges and impulses and cravings.

Then we're like, okay, I hear you body. You are struggling today. How can I support you? There's even some really cool research that I've been reading lately about how even if we start a meal in the sympathetic nervous system, the likelihood that we will continue to eat or overeat after a meal increases.

So our body also wants to make sure that it's getting enough nutrition to be able to continue being in the sympathetic nervous system. Because that actually takes like a lot of nutritional fortitude to stay in a stress response for long periods of time. So it's not a matter of like, oh, you know, I, I just got to get on a diet. Or I just got to cut myself off, or I need to like, set a timeframe for myself to eat.

It's, we sometimes have to first slow down and be like, huh, I wonder why that might be happening and what my body's trying to tell me and how can I show up for my body? Like we were just recently talking about how if there was anybody else in our life who was struggling, we'd be like, I'm here for you. How can I support you? What do you need? We need to do the same thing with our body.

Oh, I hear you body. You're struggling. Today's a really hard day. How can I show up for you? What would feel stabilizing to you? How can I help you through this day that is being digested really difficultly.

Melissa McCreery: I love it. It, it's, it's like you're taking so much of the stuff that I talk about and it, and it's like 25 degrees and, and so much more oriented around the body.

So, and I think a lot of people are listening and thinking, okay, but I, how do I know that I'm, mm-hmm. Because we don't, we spend most of our day as people in this culture completely disconnected from what our body is doing. And so, what do you say to somebody who says, I don't even know, you know, dis sympathetic, parasympathetic.

I don't even know if I'm hungry. Yeah, like.

Stephanie Mara Fox: Absolutely, yes. And plus the fact that when we are living in a stress response, our digestion shuts down. Our blood moves away from our digestive tract towards our limbs to continue to fight or flee. So it is going to be really, really difficult to actually hear your hunger and your fullness cues.

It isn't one that I actually start out with, with most people. Yeah. So usually where we need to start, what you're talking about is raising what's called interoceptive awareness. And that is knowing the felt sense of your body. So intercepting and yeah, you're right that there's a lot of different reasons why interoception becomes low.

One of those that I work a lot with, those that I work with is if you have a history of past trauma. So you know, this can be either big T or little T. You know, little T trauma is kind of like, you wouldn't describe it as traumatic, but it's just like, oh, wasn't that normal that there's this fighting in my home growing up.

It's not about the event; it is how your body processes the event. So the example I like to give around trauma is that, let's say for example. First the way that I like to define it is it's any event that happened that was too much, too fast, too little for too long, and there was no co-regulation in place to support you in feeling safe again.

Melissa McCreery: So let's, you're playing on a, I think, I think that's a perfect description. Yeah. Say that again. Yeah.

Stephanie Mara Fox: Too much, so trauma is too much, too fast. So any event that occurred that your body processed is too much, too fast. There was too little for too long. So too little for too long can be. There was just no one attending attuning, paying attention, kind of your, your latchkey kid. Always, uh, hyper independent, having to do everything by yourself. And there was no co-regulation in place throughout these experiences or afterwards to send the message to your body that you are safe now. So that you could recover from that experience quickly.

So the example that I like to give is, let's say you are a kiddo and you're playing on a jungle gym and you fall off and you skin your knee and your knee's bleeding. Now you have a parent right there and they're paying attention and they run right over to you and they're like, I saw that. You know, and they, let me look at your knee. Okay, I think you're okay. Let's just clean that up.

Immediately you get co-regulation, you get safety, you get, uh, someone else's nervous system telling your nervous system, you're not in danger here. Everything's going to be fine.

That event isn't processed as trauma. Now, if you have a kid who wasn't really being watched. Walked to the jungle, gym by themselves, even fell off skin, their knee is bleeding, doesn't know if they're okay, no one's checking in on them. Again, it, it may sound like a very small event, but actually how it's processed in the event is oh my gosh, I'm in danger and I'm the only one who can look out for me. And it turns on that sympathetic nervous system, and it stays on. As you get repeated experiences of this.

So it's not just like a one-time event, unless it was like a big T trauma where it's like, that's more of your, you know, um, war, sexual abuse kind of things.

So. You know, with these little t traumas, a lot of the times we kind of brush them off as like, oh, that was just normal. But I, with a lot of those that I work with, what I find is that we kind of have to start to say. Hey, I what was that like for you and E, even as you're retelling this story, how does your body start to respond?

Now if your heart rate starts going up and your breath gets shallow and you start getting tight and tense. Like your body is actually reliving that experience and telling us. You don't even have to share the story with me, for me to know that if that's how your body is responding to a past experience, that it's activating your nervous system, that there's something there that still needs to be processed.

So, you know, that's where a little bit of when we are experiencing like little t traumas over and over and over again in childhood. We start to dissociate and leave our body to be able to survive that environment. So how could we possibly know how we feel. If we're hungry. What we need. What kind of boundaries we need to set?

A lot of the things that are explored in food recovery. But it's like you have no idea what it is that you need and when, because you haven't maybe even been in your body for a really long time. because you left your body for a really wise reason. It wasn't safe to be in here. To be in here would mean that you would have to be with so much pain and overwhelm and even anger or sadness, and that's too much for a kid to be with. They're not meant to be with that much all on their own.

And so I always like to see also the wisdom and why we leave our bodies. Or why we just don't know why we feel what we feel. Because we couldn't, it was too much for us to be able to learn that. And there was no one else helping us to be able to come into our bodies safely and know that that was going to be okay.

So if anyone listening to this, usually where I like to start is actually, if you think of a totally neutral part of your body right now. So this could be the tip of your nose, your fingertips, uh, your elbows for some people, their ears. And you bring your attention to that part of your body. And then just notice what happens.

That's embodiment. It was so often we're like; we have to go to the thing that feels the most overwhelming. We have to go to the, the feeling of fear, anger, and like be with that and that. Then we're going to learn how we feel, but if the only time that we ever check in with ourselves are with the most dysregulating emotional, intense experiences.

Then why would we ever want to check in with our body? So where I find is that when we are starting to say, okay, I want to know when I feel hungry. I want to know when I feel full. I want to learn what foods resonate with my body and how foods can feel good in my body. And, and how much I need and when. That first, we have to start with neutral experiences to connect with our body.

Like I usually always go to the focus of the tip of my nose because I always find it so wild because I'm, I'm a hyper, you know, I, I feel a lot of things very deeply. And so to go to a part of my body that's so neutral, Like, it's so grounding. I'm like, I feel nothing. It's just like, it's just like, I know my nose exists, but I don't feel any sensation at the tip of my nose.

And I notice that like all of my energy starts to move down. I feel much more at ease in my body. Sometimes we have to actually turn the volume down internally, that this is also an experience that we can have inside of our body just as much as all of the, the stress and overwhelm and, and all the other things that we can also experience.

Melissa McCreery: I love that you're saying that because I think it does, it, it, it feels really scary for people to like, okay, I, if I'm going to deal with food, I need to, I need to feel, feel my feelings, or I need to, I need to feel what's really going on in my body.

And, and I think even when people can't articulate it, there's a sense, sometimes a sense that, you know, I've been protecting myself from that. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So can you talk a little bit more about how food behaviors get connected to, to trauma and to your nervous system being dysregulated or stuck on sympathetic?

Stephanie Mara Fox: Yeah. Yeah. So if we kind of are growing up with this sympathetic nervous system on. Like I was saying before, one, you're going to feel very drawn to certain foods. So that's also where sometimes I, I work with a lot of people who are navigating patterns of binge eating, for example. And there's so much shame around binge eating rather than seeing like.

A lot of the things that I'd like to say is like, rather than seeing this as the problem, let's start seeing this as the answer. And what was binge eating the answer to so that we can start to decrease that experience of shame and judgment and guilt. And start increasing curiosity and self-compassion and empathy.

Which we know turns on the parasympathetic nervous system when we meet ourselves with curiosity. And will turn off the sympathetic nervous system. And that if we meet ourselves with judgment, it's going to turn on the sympathetic nervous system That kind of creates that binge restrict cycle.

Where we're like, ugh you know, I, I feel so uncomfortable with this binge eating. We judge ourselves for doing it. And then we were strict to try to get control of it. But then we're judging ourselves in it. We're feeling threatened. And then we feel horrible in our body that then we go and binge eat again to try to feel better. And it just continues on and on and on. And I do like to see that eating is such a quick, effective strategy.

Especially as a kid. So let's go back to how this all gets paired with food. It's like, so you are growing up in an environment where no one is seeing you holding space for you, attuning to you. You don't feel like it's safe to speak up for yourself or ask for what you need. And so all of this starts to need to be kind of suppressed or shoved down or numbed out from.

And this is where if you didn't live in a home where food insecurity was happening, there was plenty of food in your home growing up that you could walk into the kitchen at any point in time I and grab whatever food that you wanted. And notice, oh, I feel better, because food does make us feel better. It produces dopamine and endorphins and serotonin and oxytocin and all of these things that actually do make us feel better in our body.

And so now food gets paired with this. I can just eat and I will feel better. But what happens is what, when you stop eating those immediately start to dissipate all those neurotransmitters. And so you'd have to keep eating and keep eating and keep eating to keep receiving the good feeling that you're trying to facilitate in your body.

And it also diminishes over time your capacity to also be with discomfort. So every time now you feel any sense of discomfort, food comes in really quickly to help yourself feel better. But we never get to grow your capacity to be with discomfort or to say kind of what's going on here even when I feel the food urge.

And when you don't know how to verbalize what it is that you need. because you're not getting practice as a kid. Now, it just feels so overwhelming in your body that like food comes in much faster over and over and over again to try to self-soothe again and again and again.

So as we grow into being adults and life gets even more complicated with relationships and friendships and work and all of these things, the correlations just get stronger and stronger in our body of, oh, feel bad, like dysregulated in our sympathetic nervous system in a fight or flight response. Okay, I can quickly eat food and make myself feel different.

But it never addresses, like, why is that sympathetic nervous system on all the time for you? And so sometimes we have to start addressing the trauma response that originally happened of you kind of not feeling seen and held and heard the way you needed to be when you were younger. And how do we start supporting you and showing up for yourself that way now so that even with nervous system work, I know there's a lot of messages out there that it's like.

There's a lot of things of; we always need to be like calming ourselves down or downregulating ourselves. But sometimes what I find is also when you've lived in a fight or flight response for a really long time and you don't know how to get back to safety in your body, so more of a parasympathetic state.

What we'll do is kind of a nervous system state of immobilize or collapse. We'll kind of be like a PLA animal playing dead. And so that's when you feel like depressed. It's hard to get out of bed. It's hard to get moving. And then because we live in a capitalist society, that's like your worth is based off of what you do and what you produce.

You know? Then we feel this pressure that we have to get ourselves up. I can't stay in bed. I can't actually allow myself to collapse. That sometimes emotional eating or binge eating comes in as a way to mobilize. You know, I think a lot of the times we have this idea that food comes in to always numb us out or always calm us down. But sometimes it's a way, like if you think about it, ah, you like with binge eating, you have to plan for it.

You have to go to the grocery store; you have to buy the food. It gets you up, it gets you out, and then you have to do the eating. And the eating is usually done in a very quick, fast manner. There's a lot of mobilize action in that. That can kind of get us out of the depression or the stuckness. But then if again, we don't know how to get back to safety even after that, we're just going to go back to collapse again.

And that also continues to kind of create a cycle. So there's many different reasons how our nervous system is kind of playing a part of these food behaviors in many different ways, and they kind of start really young. You know, even some of the research I've been doing recently is how, you know if you were growing in your mom's body when you were just a little fetus and your mom was super stressed, or she was living in a trauma response, always in the sympathetic nervous system.

Your nervous system was shaped by her nervous system so that you came out potentially already feeling like, is it safe to be here? So right from the get go, you might already be living in a sympathetic state. And then you're also growing up in an environment with people who don't know how to tune and don't know how to regulate themselves.

And so food is there to either help you numb out, run away, or mobilize and get yourself moving up and moving.

Melissa McCreery: This is so fascinating. And I could, I'd be like, I feel like I want to have five different streams of conversation at the same time about this. And, and I want to move into talking about this somatic eating and what that actually is.

And, and before we do that, what you've got me thinking about too is how much, so much of what you're describing can set people up to be, overly independent. Over-functioning, reluctant to seek support. Right? There's this whole part of what you're describing is this whole mindset of I have to be the survivor because there's nobody there for me.

Am I getting that right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so, and you think about how shame-based and isolating, having a relationship with food that you don't like is. And how alone people feel and how they feel like they're the only one. And there's not, not only there's something wrong with me that I am struggling with this stuff and I haven't figured it out. But that I shouldn't need support. I shouldn't need help.

And I feel like you're talking about something, a really important piece of that. Am I, am I hearing you correctly?

Stephanie Mara Fox: Yeah, no. Absolutely. You know, I find that, okay, so what your little kid self needed was more co-regulation. And food steps in. In my work in somatic eating, one of the core pillars is security, and we have to create new security within ourselves and with others.

But what happens is that food steps in as a substitute for secure attachment. Mm-hmm. When you think about even hyper palatable foods. Like think of any food that's prepackaged and I practice food neutrality. I don't put foods in good or bad. I just like to get curious about what food is doing in your nervous system and how it makes you feel. And then receiving that feedback so that you get to collect body data and then decide for yourself.

because you, we want choice. Choice is a very important part of trauma healing because usually the trauma took away our experience of choice. And we want to put, bring that back in of like, you get to choose what you want to eat. But you also get to choose the things that feel most stabilizing and safety producing in your body.

But if we think about some of these, like what would be called hyper palatable foods or prepackaged or processed foods, they taste the same every single time. And so the qualities of secure attachment of consistency, reliability, That's the same thing that we're getting from these foods. We know we will have the same experience with them.

They'll always taste the same, and so we're like, oh, the felt sense of secure attachment. We can mimic with food sometimes. Where it's like, oh, I can consistently and reliably lean on this and know that it's going to show up for me in the same way that I expect it to. Again, another reason why we have to decrease judgment and shame when you feel like you're, you know, down the bottom of ice cream and it's just like, yeah, that did something for you.

Not like, oh, I just can't control myself around ice cream. Yeah.

Melissa McCreery: So, so is this a good place for you to tell us about your somatic eating? Because this is, this is your baby. Yeah. Right.

Stephanie Mara Fox: Yes, it is my baby. And I continue to build on it. So it's something that, you know, I've been creating for a really long time and started in, uh, my master's degree.

I actually have, uh, a published article that was like the, the beginnings and inklings of this work. So I've kind of been working on it for. I don't know, again, like almost two decades now of bringing this all together. And it just kind of hit me. I'm like, oh, this is somatic eating. Like this is what this is called. And I'm currently getting my PhD, so trying to do more research on the foundations of what I'm trying to create.

But what I find is that like you were even pointing to that, the body is the missing piece in food recovery. And so somatic eating is a body oriented, sensation focused, therapeutic approach to eating. And a lot of people ask me, well, what's the difference between your work, somatic eating, and something like intuitive eating?

Yes. Now, intuitive eating is so, so, so helpful for millions and millions of people. And I think that there needs to be tons of different modalities that are out there in the world to meet every single person with where they're at with food. But what I kept finding over the years and working with people was that so many people kept coming to me saying that intuitive eating, eating didn't work for them.

And it makes a lot of sense from the lens of intuitive eating is not a trauma-informed approach. It's also not a neurodivergent approach. So someone who is also maybe navigating being on the spectrum of autism or A DHD, it doesn't take into account that they're operating in a different body with different dopamine levels and different sensory preferences.

And, and so there's just these pieces that it's a great modality, but needs to be changed a little bit in what I've been trying to fill in with somatic eating. That I find that if we think of somatic eating more as sometimes the step before intuitive eating can occur for some people. Because also, let's say with the trauma response One, our interoception is low, like I was talking about earlier.

Two, when someone has experienced past trauma, their dopamine receptors are affected. And so when you do something like food exposure, that intuitive eating recommends like you have to just expose yourself to a food.

And you have to keep eating it to obit, habituate to it. Especially when you've labeled something as bad or wrong, you know, you have to start updating like, this is a safe food for me to interact with and be with.

But when you have less circulating dopamine, either from trauma or neurodivergency, I you expose yourself to some of these foods and you're never going to want to stop eating them.

And so just food exposure isn't necessarily going to work for you initially. You know, we first have to start to explore different ways to support your body in stabilizing to feel like you have greater capacity to ebb and flow in and out of different nervous system states. To feel like you can even be more embodied when you move into a fight or flight response.

So that when you start to eat a food that maybe normally you couldn't feel like you could stop eating in the past, when we eat that same food more from the parasympathetic nervous system. And we start building up your other dopamine, creating resources. So that food isn't your sole res like thing that is helping you create more dopamine in your body. You will have an entirely different experience with that food.

So I find that it's not always about the, what we're eating. But what state that we're eating in. And that's where I like to start is first, we have to kind of build a groundwork of safety. That's where my, my work of somatic eating begins is that your body doesn't feel safe and it might not feel safe to be here in the world based off of your past experiences.

I know we were recently talking about, uh, even just based on what is going on in the world right now, it might not feel safe to be here right now. And also that if you have what's called food trauma, so the trauma was with food itself, so you were forced to eat certain foods. You were forced to be on a diet.

You were judged for what you were eating. Or you were judged around your hunger, or you did grow up in an environment where there was food insecurity. You know, this is all where the trauma happened with food. Whenever you interact with food. Sometimes that trauma response can come in just being around the threat itself. Where we need to support the body in feeling safe to be here.

Even in an environment, like in a world that doesn't necessarily feel safe right now. So some people ask me like, what do you mean feeling safe? Like, how can I possibly feel safe in a world like this right now? And I totally get that. So we sometimes have to bring it into the moment-by-moment experience of like right now I'm just in a room around all my favorite things and I have cues of safety, of artwork and things all around me.

And sometimes I have to bring it into this very moment of the sun is shining and you know, there's a breeze today. And like, okay, this moment is perceived as safe so that we can start to kind of find that balance in our body a little bit more. That we will start to perceive food differently like I said earlier, based on the nervous system states that we're in. Our perception will change.

Melissa McCreery: This is so fascinating. I love this. And I love, I mean, it's just such a clear explanation that because, I was just having a conversation with somebody about, she's so frustrated because she just, she's trying to do, she's trying to be present with her eating.

She's trying to be mindful. She's, and she, I just don't feel satisfied. I just don't feel, and she's in that place. We were using different words. But, but it's that, you know, she's in that fight or flight agitated place and it's going to keep feeling like that. Yeah. Fascinating. Okay. Yeah.

Stephanie Mara Fox: And even something I hear in that is a lot of what I explore with those that I work with as well is that when the trauma happened with food, that it's actually very, very, very difficult to practice something like mindful eating.

Yes. Because you are connecting with the threat. Like why would you want to connect with something that feels threatening. So a little bit of this more in a somatic lens is we want to attend to, okay, this feels uncomfortable. Can I show up for myself in this discomfort? And then move away from the discomfort towards a cue of safety in your environment.

So you get little breaks. You're attending to the threat, and then you're moving away from it into like. What's in my environment? Maybe you're playing music while you're eating, uh, what's outside the window today? You know, so that you are not just solely focusing on the food, which might actually feel like too much initially.

Melissa McCreery: Yes, exactly. Okay. So there are people who are listening to this who are, it's, it's, it's kind of like, when you go to a conference and you leave feeling really inspired and you have all these great ideas. And then the conference is over. And at least maybe it's just me, but I don't think, so you get home and then you, you think.

Okay, what do I do with this? I feel like this is one of those. Like we have talked for a very short time, and you have put all this information out there and you've reframed some stuff in such a powerful way. If somebody's listening to this and they are starting to get it, what it, what, what could they do differently today?

Stephanie Mara Fox: Yeah, it's a great question, and I'm actually on the same page with you where yes, I like to nerd out on understanding why we're doing what we're doing in a different lens. But then mm-hmm. Yeah. It's like, okay, this is great information and awareness for me to have. But if awareness created action. Then like we'd all be healed by now. Because I bet even with your listeners, we all have so much awareness.

Too much usually. Way too much. Too much sometimes. Yeah. About why we're doing what we're doing, but that doesn't necessarily lead to change. It's the first step. Absolutely. We have to be become aware of what's going on so that we know what we want to update and change. I don't like to kind of go in the fix because there's nothing to fix here.

Like this like I've been saying, this is all body communication. And I think that's one of the first things is first starting to approach yourself with curiosity rather than judgment. And asking yourself the question, what is this doing for me? And I know that's kind of a very different lens for someone to take on because a lot of the times it, it's, this is the behavior that you want to get rid of.

You wanted to get rid of it yesterday, you wanted to get rid of it like five years ago. And you're like, what do you mean? What is this doing for me? This is doing nothing for me. So, I understand that response if anyone's having that. But it is either trying to protect you from something or support you with something. So that could be protecting you from feeling or facing something that you haven't felt ready to feel or face.

It could be supporting you in trying to find stabilization and regulation in your body because food can do that in the short term. It just can't do it in the long term. Like I was talking about before. So even the things that you find yourself drawn to emotionally or binge eating on that we get to see like, okay, this is doing something for me.

And even just stating that. Starts to kind of shift us in a curiosity. You don't have to know what it is yet. So even just saying, this is doing something for me. I don't know what, but it is doing something for me starts to bring in compassion.

Melissa McCreery: Yep.

Stephanie Mara Fox: The other piece that I find is that by the time the food behavior has come in. Like that intense food urge of like, I have to do this now. Like the internal train has already left the station.

Not that it's impossible to slow down and be with ourselves in those moments, but I find that if you are at the beginning of this work or been trying to work on making decisions for a different decisions for a really long time. That's like, like master level, like, like, let me actually pause and be with the intensity of this food urge right now.

Like, wow, that is like, a lot of things need to occur before being able to do that. So what I find is that sometimes the work needs to happen away from the food at first. Where it's how much do you check in with yourself throughout a day. And when I say a check-in, I don't mean just checking in with the things that feel horrible and bad and stressful.

I mean, just like, how am I doing right now? Like, what have I enjoyed about today? Or, you know, uh, what can I acknowledge myself for. Or even just a simple like body scan, nonjudgmentally. Not needing to try to change anything and being like, yep, my shoulders are tight. I'm breathing shallow right now. I feel a little ungrounded. Okay. That's where I'm at right now.

So sometimes we first just need to add in a few more of these kind of, I call them somatic pauses throughout the day to slow down and rather than checking in with all the thoughts that you're thinking. Usually we will get the most sensation in sometimes our face, but our shoulders, our chest are in our belly.

So kind of our midline and just kind of checking in with where are the positions of my shoulders right now. If I could notice my heartbeat, how is it in this moment? What's my belly doing? Is it sucking itself in and tightening itself up? Is it, you know, kind of just being there existing? My breath is kind of coming in and out very easily, or does it feel shallow?

Already just those few simple things will give you information of how you've been processing either the moment or your day so far. And I find that the next question usually people ask is then what do I do with that? So let's say I notice that my shoulders are tight and my chest feels tense and my heart rate is a little bit up.

And if we think of like, I like to see this as emotional digestion. When we eat any food and we put it into our body, we don't have to tell our colon to turn on. It just starts acting for us to be like, oh, you put food in. Let me go to work to digest this for you. It's the same thing that when we validate and acknowledge our human experience, it's kind of like we're putting the emotion into our body. We're acknowledging it, and our body will go to work to send us body impulses that we get to follow, that it will digest that emotion.

And sometimes you don't even have to do anything. Sometimes just saying, yeah, today's a really stressful day today. And just seeing yourself in that and not having to change it. Starts to shift us from the sympathetic to the parasympathetic because there's nothing to fix.

As soon as we perceive something as dangerous or threatening, sympathetic nervous system automatically turns on. Starts mobilizing you towards how do I protect myself. Or that's going to increase your cravings and start to move you towards food.

So if we get to see like, okay, let's back this all up. And actually I need to be checking in even at the first signs of some sympathetic activation and being like, yeah, I totally hear you body. This is a stressful moment. And again, what that might show up as is tension, tightness, changes in heartbeat, changes in breath.

And then the body impulses I'm talking about is sometimes, instead of trying to think your way out of it. Because our body doesn't talk to us through words. It talks to us through urges and impulses and sensations and emotions.

We can't talk back to our body first. Sometimes we need to talk back to our body and our body's language, which is more physicality than words. So that might be, I am really angry at what happened at work. Okay. How might we be with the ex, the bodily experience of anger? So usually that's like heat.

There's a lot of energy. Maybe our boundaries were broken. So sometimes I like to suggest that if someone you know is at work or at home, uh, and there's a room that you could go into and feel safe to do this, like pushing against a wall. You start to feel that heat, you get to kind of push back against something, especially if you felt like your boundaries are broken.

And sometimes food comes in to shove down that feeling like our boundaries are broken and we don't feel like we can push back. Our food kind of gives us the ability to be like, here's where I'm going to say no. Like, I'm going to say no by giving myself the option to eat how whatever I want to eat and how much I want to eat it. And I'm not saying no to the food.

So when we get to practice the no, in other ways, again, food doesn't have to become the sole responsibility of processing somatically what is showing up in our body. So that's one example of like a body impulse.

Another body impulse. If we see it as either the need for mobilization or containment, that would be more mobilization. I need to get something moving through my body, you know, walking, dancing, shaking, you know, that can all be like, yeah, there's big energy here. And if we think of also like binge eating has big energy to it. That we actually want to lean into the big energy that's there just in non-food ways.

Otherwise, we need containment. Maybe we're in sensory overload. We've been picking up way too much. The day felt way too overwhelming. So that might be that we need to turn the volume down on sensory input. So that can be closing your eyes and taking a few deep breaths and feeling your feet on the floor. Even kind of wiggling your toes so that you're bringing your intention down.

Other things that, you know, for containment can be like self-hugs to actually feel that containment. I know a lot of people like weighted blankets. So things like that. Even I had a somatic teacher, uh, recently just talk about how like. Adult thumb sucking can be if you take your thumb and kind of wrap your other hand around your thumb, and then the other fingers, uh, that, uh, the hand with your thumb. If you're not seeing this, you kind of cup your other hand and then just notice what it's like to hold your thumb.

And notice what it's like to have your hand warm, your thumb. And sometimes that can give us containment and grounding and a focus and it feels soothing. And so, you know, and you could walk around like this, like, you know, if I just like put my hands down and I'm just holding my thumb, you know, I could walk around like that. No one's going to question anything. It's just like, okay, I'm just holding my thumb.

Internally it's like, hey, I've got you. I'm here with you. We've got this. So those are some somatic resourcing things that someone can play with. But I find that all of this usually needs to happen many hours away from the food behavior.

And then as you practice these things, you'll build your capacity to be with yourself when you're feeling discomfort. That when you get to the point of a food urge, it's like, okay, this is just discomfort. Yeah, I can ride this. I can be with this. You have choice there that you can go choose to eat the food.

We never want to take that option away from you. But what we want to also build in is that you can also choose not to do the food behavior as well.

Melissa McCreery: It is so counterintuitive to not start with the food and we are so on the same page about that. Like if you start with the food, yeah you are going to use the same foundation you've always used and you're going to end up turning it into the same path you've always taken.

You got to learn how to, you got to create something different if you want it to be different. But it's so hard. It's so hard. Like we both know that. And you guys who are listening it is hard. It's, it's, it's, and it's asking your brain to trust you and your body that we're going to do something different this time.

And your, your poor body and brain, which are by the way, the same thing. We forget that too, but they just want to protect us. Yes. Yep. They just want to take care of us. Yeah. So, Stephanie,

Stephanie Mara Fox: we can talk. Yeah, I'm on the same. Yeah. Oh, sorry. On the same page with you. Absolutely.

Melissa McCreery: We are totally on the same page.

And I was going to say, we could talk for days because there are so many little, uh, little pathways we've just created that I would love to go down. And maybe we will do that later because I think it would be a lot of fun. In the meantime where, where, who, people who want to learn more about you, where can they find you?

Stephanie Mara Fox: I love talking with you. I also agree feel like we could talk about all of these things endlessly. And sometimes I even like when I'm sharing things, my brain goes off like, oh, we could go down this path and we could go down that path.

Because before I go into like where you could contact me, I just want to bring in that piece of compassion for also anyone that's listening. That food is way more nuanced and multi-layered and complicated than we try to make it out to be. And there are so many things that affect why we eat, what we eat, when we eat.

And if anyone can just bring in more compassion into this experience, that you will have some days where it's really easy to be with food and to move through your food interactions.

And there will be some days. That are just harder. Just like in any relationship that we have in our life. That some days are just really hard and it, some days it's really hard to be in a body and it's really hard to be in relationship with food. And that regardless of how far you've come along on your food recovery journey some days are still going to be hard.

And that doesn't have to mean anything. It just is what it is. And like that's where also just you being like, okay, what do I need today? How can I show up for myself? Can be supportive? So I just wanted to add that piece. Oh, but thank you. Yeah. People. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah.

People can find me first. My website is StephanieMarrow.com. You can find like kind of all my links there. I'm probably, uh, the most active on Instagram at underscore Stephanie Mara, and then I am also on like TikTok and LinkedIn and, and Facebook and all those other places. So you can find all those links on my website.

So I have a second website also called Somatic Eating. And I teach a live three-month program twice a year. The next one is coming up in October, so you can join the wait list at Somatic Eating. I'm actually updating that website right now. So I'm in the process, uh, hopefully it will be coming out late 2025 potentially early 2026 of my first Somatic eating coach certification training. because I've had so many people reaching out to me and wanting to learn this work. So the website is being updated, uh, to include that offering. So, you know, whenever this comes out. That might be up. Uh, but keep checking back there for that.

And, and then for anyone who also just wants to keep in touch with me, uh, for just free resources, like we were talking about my podcast, the Satiated podcast is a great place to check out free resources. You've been on twice. Our conversations have been amazing. And then also, if you join my newsletter, you'll get a free five-day email series that walks you through some of the things we've been talking about today.

Okay,

Melissa McCreery: and I will put all these links in the show notes. If you haven't caught on yet, this is a woman who has a lot going on. While working on her, while finishing her PhD. And there's a book too, right?

Stephanie Mara Fox: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It just interesting. Yes. I am also wanting to come out with a book on somatic eating.

So lot of, lot of things going on. Lot of balls that I'm juggling, but it's as you can tell, like, I'm so passionate about this work. And I, I know that I had a history with also struggling, like I talked about earlier, struggling with my relationship with my food and my body. And I never want anyone to feel like they need to navigate this journey by themselves.

You know, it took me a really long time to reach out for support. And I never want anyone to. Feel the same way that I did, that I felt like I needed to like hide this behavior. because I actually probably made it stick around much longer than it needed to. And, and so that's why I just want to continue to, you know, raise awareness of this work and me as a resource just so that no one feels alone on this path.

Melissa McCreery: Well, you're doing great stuff. And I'm so glad you, you spent some time here on this podcast and I have a feeling you'll be back if you're up for it. So yeah, thanks so much, Stephanie.

Stephanie Mara Fox: Absolutely would love to return.