WWC 95 - FULL AUDIO - Lisa Schlosberg
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Lisa Schlosberg: [00:00:00] can you not be psyched about how you look and still treat yourself with all of the kindness and love and acceptance and compassion that you would if you did like what you looked like.
Can we just start there? Right. That's one way to do it is sometimes I don't like what I see in the mirror, but I'm not gonna change the way that I talk to myself because of that. Right. So that's a power that we have if we're conscious of it, and if we remember that how we look is not who we are.
Welcome to the Wild and Well Collective Podcast where we believe empowered health is your superpower. We have combined our expertise in medicine and nutrition to bring you the latest research expert insights and success stories of people on a mission to live a big life. So buckle up and get ready to learn how to live wildly well.
Welcome back to another episode of the Wild and Wild Collective. Today's guest is a dear friend of both Krista and mine. She is the founder of [00:01:00] Out of the Cave, LLC, where she combines her comprehensive expertise as a licensed social worker, integrative nutrition health coach, certified P personal trainer and registered yoga teacher to guide emotional eaters towards physical, mental, emotional.
Spiritual health and healing. She's maintained 150 pound weight loss for more than a decade by healing her relationship with food through emotional healing, somatic experiencing mindset shifts and so much more. She discovered that her lifelong struggle with morbid obesity and disordered eating was symptoms of unprocessed trauma and emotional stress.
This realization fueled her. Passion for helping others navigate similar challenges with a heart-centered and trauma-informed approach. We just love the energy that Lisa brings, and I know this conversation is gonna be absolutely transformational in terms of all the things we dive into from body health to confidence, to really understanding how we can process what goes on underneath the weight.
I'm looking forward to you diving in, enjoy.
Sheree Beaumont: Today we are joined by the beautiful [00:02:00] Lisa, who, as you know from the intro, she is a dear friend of both mine and Krista's. This is a topic that is so dear to each and every one of our hearts, and I'm really excited for the magic and the wisdom that you bring in this space.
I wanna start us off with. Something that I've seen is getting a lot of traction at the moment, and I feel like you'll have a hot take on this. The idea that. The summer body ready, or this bikini body era is dead, like it's over. We're actually moving into this wellness space, prioritizing, our health and our hormones and being in a regulated, calm state far more than, how hot do I look at a bikini?
Like, that's the byproduct now. That's what I'm seeing and I'm really curious if that's where you're at. 'cause I know this is a huge part of the work that you do. Mm-hmm.
Lisa Schlosberg: Wow, diving right in. And I'm not surprised. I love this question. My answer to this is, potentially a hot take, I, you'll [00:03:00] have to tell me, but to me it's both.
It's both. It's not, the reason that I wouldn't agree with either of those is because it's all. One side of the spectrum versus another. When I think the reality is there's truth to both sides. Let's say of course, we have been moving more toward holistic wellbeing and health and mental health and how we feel in our bodies more than how we look over the last few years, the last couple of decades we've been moving in this direction.
But I don't think that that's enough to say that how we look is completely dead and that no one cares anymore about the fact that it's summer or anything like that. Like I think it's all of it. I think all of it exists at the same time and it really depends who you're talking to and who you're asking.
But if you're asking me, that's my opinion
Christa Elza: for sure. I think. It [00:04:00] is really hard as a society, but definitely as an individual to make internal shifts. To make, yeah, to make the internal shift, to show up in whatever state that you're in. I think as women, especially in your childbearing years and hormonal shifts, like our bodies change and there are seasons where our, we've got the banging body and then there are seasons where you just had a baby or there are seasons of stress and we're not always.
Same. And I think it's hard to I think what's important is what you teach is really getting into the, your own mental tapestry and figuring it out so that no matter where you're at, you trust who you are as a human, as a spirit, not necessarily your body. But that is hard. I think that there has been a societal shift in like.
Thicker thighs, bigger booty, which, thank goodness 'cause I'm pear shape. Like some of that has become a little bit more invoke. But trends change. On a dime people be taken out their butt lift and trying to turn back time. It's, so how [00:05:00] do we, I would love to just start to dive into the mental aspect of how we stay consistent in our own self-love, despite trends and despite maybe where we are in our body at the time.
Lisa Schlosberg: Yeah. Great. Great, great. So there's so many things I wanna say about this. The first is, I think that it's always important to have, you mentioned this a foundation of the understanding that there is a difference between who you are as a person. I. And your body. So sometimes what I say to people is like, I'm not even really concerned with how you feel about your body.
If someone says to me, I hate what I look like, okay, fine. That's okay. What I'm way more interested in is how are you in relationship to yourself as a human, as a person? Let's just start there because for a lot of people, and for a lot of valid reasons, those two things have become conflated. For many of us, right?
So it's like, if I don't like my body or the way that my body looks, then I'm treating it a certain way, then I'm not as nice to [00:06:00] it then I'm not respectful of it, and I'm saying mean shit to myself. But we have to just, start to. Parse those apart so that the question really is can you not be psyched about how you look and still treat yourself with all of the kindness and love and acceptance and compassion that you would if you did like what you looked like.
Can we just start there? Right. And so that's. That's one way to do it is sometimes I don't like what I see in the mirror, but I'm not gonna change the way that I talk to myself because of that. Right. So that's a power that we have if we're conscious of it, and if we remember that how we look is not who we are.
So that's the foundation. Right. But I think on top of that, another important thing to consider is I always like to ask people I'm working with, where did you get the idea? Like where did you learn that thinner is better? Or that you can only be nice and accepting to yourself when you look a certain way?
Like where did this come from? And what I think is always important and [00:07:00] fascinating is that none of us came out of the womb with these ideas. We didn't decide this, we didn't come up with it. We did not design the system, right? So sometimes it's just very helpful to be like, wait, oh, I learned this when I was a child.
We are developing from zero to seven years old ish. We have no critical thinking. We're just taking in the messages as fact, as truth, and so many of us show up as twenty seven, thirty seven, fifty seven, a hundred and seven, and we've taken in all of these internalized messages because that's the way the brain works without ever stopping to be like, wait, this isn't mine.
This isn't my original thought. Like, I don't need to. Continue and perpetuate this. So I always like to say I heard it once because you picked it up, means that you can put it back down. So sometimes you know, if we have this foundation of like the way that I look is not who I am, it doesn't define me. And also this like fierceness [00:08:00] around, like I don't need to give this any more of my time and energy.
I'm no longer perpetuating this. I don't buy into this and I can very consciously choose to opt out of this paradigm. I'm gonna start with the way that I treat myself and talk to myself as a human. Ultimately, it comes down to self-compassion, unconditional acceptance and love towards ourselves, regardless of what the body looks like.
So I think all of that is really important. And the only other thing I wanna say about it, I have so many things to say is I always like to remember and think about safety. Safety. So I will always come back to, even if you're not comfortable in your body. You are safe in your body. And because a lot of us, again get confused with like, well, if someone's judging me for the way I look, that can activate something very primitive and it can feel like that's a life-threatening danger or threat.
So it's important to just remember that even if you don't love what you look like, you [00:09:00] are safe to be in your body as you are right now. And sometimes just that communication to the animal brain that you're gonna be okay. Even if you don't love what in the mirror is very helpful.
Christa Elza: I think that just really quickly, it is just on my mind because I recently had a major surgery, and I've mentioned it on the podcast before, but I recently had a double mastectomy and re immediate reconstruction.
So that means they took fat from one part of my body and moved it to another part of my body. And so there's scarring, there's healing, there's, I'm only eight weeks out, so it's just funky, right? Like things don't look exactly right. But what I will say between the way of thinking of my body now versus a decade ago, like postpartum after a baby is different.
And I think that is applying exactly what you're talking about because our bodies are very much changing all of the time. We can, and so recognizing and trusting that it's okay, like I look in the mirror and I'm like, oh no, this is still swollen and puffy and this summertime, and [00:10:00] I can't wear a bikini.
And then it's like. Cool. Like it's fine. Like it's not, my body's doing the best that it knows how, and even applying it to healing your body like healing incisions. There was a part of my healing that still isn't completely healed and I decided about 10 days ago instead of being. Frustrated with that part of me like that I could visibly see wasn't healing as fast as the other areas to envision that little part, almost like one of the kids that's running last in a race at a track meet, like I would never put a kid down and boo a kid running on the track and yet here I was this part of me is doing the best that it knows how it might have different challenges that other areas of my body didn't.
And so as soon as I change that, and I'm not kidding, I have noticed drastic. Improvements in that healing and the power that we have over healing, over external healing, internal healing of disease processes, I think also plays a role in it, which is a whole other conversation. But [00:11:00] I really just wanted to pop in here and say, I get what you're saying.
Like you can look in the mirror and not be okay with it, and at the same time, say. But my body's freaking amazing. It is healing or it is growing or it's on its way to better health and, and whatever, right? So I think it's just huge. And some of that just does come with internal growth and really practicing that along the way.
'cause it doesn't just happen if you're in a state where you're in self beat up, it doesn't just ha it doesn't fix itself. We've gotta be forthcoming about where we're at and find help to shift that.
Lisa Schlosberg: Well said and congratulations on that awareness. I love that. Not talking or talking to it the way you would someone running last in a race like that is such a good metaphor for exactly that.
And it doesn't surprise me that you've noticed shifts since then because that is the mind body connection. It's fascinating. It's brilliant. Yeah.
Sheree Beaumont: And there's so much that you said just before Lisa, that we I'd love to unpack and. When we [00:12:00] really get nitpicky about this and we really dive into it, I think you've got so much of the science you can also share behind how you do what you do, which I'm super excited for.
I just wanna start off by going back to the part you said about the self-talk, because I think there's so much. Fluff that can come with this in the sense that people give you the eye roll, like, yeah, I'm enough. Yeah. My body. Yeah. I love myself and like the affirmations that we get told to say, especially as a put the post-it note on your mirror, and I'm not saying it doesn't work.
I'm not saying it isn't a great reminder. I still have little affirmations that pop up on my phone every day, around different things that I'm working on. It's also. Something that we have to do a bit of the deeper work on. And so I'm curious if you can start to highlight for our listeners where that process can really begin.
Because there's an element of self-awareness that I'm hearing. There is an element of the science and also just like bring in some of the tools that maybe you use to support people in [00:13:00] this so that they don't just go, okay, we're just looking in the mirror and being like, I am enough over and over again.
And then wondering why it doesn't stick.
Lisa Schlosberg: Oh God, this is such a good question and there's so many ways that I wanna respond to it. So we'll, we'll I see where I go with it this time. Okay, so I want to start with a foundation that is something I say all the time. You are a spiritual being. Having a physical experience with an animal brain in a social context.
So the reason I say that is because if you feel like there's a lot going on, there's a lot to juggle. There is just by way of being a human and having a human experience, there's all these different parts of us and they all coexist at the same time. So our job is to navigate that. Like how do we be a spiritual being, having a physical experience?
But also have an animal brain and live in a social context. Like what? So let's [00:14:00] just start there, right? That's the foundation of , what we're all dealing with. That's the car that we're all driving, whether we know it or not. So. Part of the reason that just saying affirmations or something like that doesn't always address what's going on a deeper level and doesn't always feel very effective is because it's not addressing all of those parts.
It's not addressing, for example, the animal brain. And the fact that your animal brain, which is designed to keep you alive, only knows safety and danger. It doesn't know, it is not here to help you be healthy or happy or successful, or any of those things that you want as a human. The only thing it knows is something safe or is something dangerous.
So the reason I say all of that is because as you are going through your human life and you're. Your brain is filtering every experience you have, every thought, every feeling, every relationship [00:15:00] into the categories of safety or danger. So this is why if you are running late to work and you hit a red light.
You start having the fight or flight reaction in your body, not because there's a saber tooth tiger coming after you, but because that's what happens with the stress response, that's all your brain knows how to do. So when you are going through it emotionally. What it needs, and this is where I, that's all context and I'm gonna shift to like, your question about the deeper work around it.
What our emotions need is space to exist. Emotions are energy in motion. You probably have heard before the body keeps the score, things like that. Why? Well, because your emotions live in your body. They move through your body, and so what they need is to be released and expressed, especially including, and especially all the ones, we don't like to feel all the [00:16:00] ones we judge ourselves for feeling all the ones we have shame and embarrassment and stories about, right?
Like, oh, I don't wanna give a voice to my jealousy. I don't wanna be jealous, and I don't wanna admit that I'm jealous. I also have a hard time with anxiety, insecurity, inadequacy, especially when we talk about our body and body image, right? So the way that we generally are in relationship with these feelings is, oh, I'm not gonna feel that.
Oh, I'm having this experience. No, no, no, no. Let me find a way to distract myself. Avoid it. Numb it. Suppress it. Exactly. Push it down. I have much experience in my life using food to do that. Right. But we have, we all these ways of just not feeling what we're feeling. Back to the brain science. The reason that this matters is because of your relationship towards your emotions is, oh no, I'm not gonna feel that.
I'm turning away from that. I have to go in the opposite direction of that. What your brain is [00:17:00] understanding is that this is not safe. You're now, there's this experience of like my internal world is this predator. That I can't go near. This isn't safe for me. So then you stand in the mirror saying affirmations to yourself, I am enough.
I'm enough. I'm enough. But the entire time you've neglected the fact that it's okay for you to sometimes feel like you're not enough. So the irony of it is that if you actually open yourself up to the feeling that you're feeling. You end up on the other side with this piece and serenity that you're hoping the affirmation will bring you.
Right? And so what needs to happen for a lot of people is exactly that, where you know, and again, it's gonna sound very ironic and paradoxical, but this is how it works. That if I'm feeling, let's use the example of body image, like I'm not good enough that I need to look different in order to be okay or loved or accepted.
[00:18:00] Instead of slapping an affirmation on it and, and ultimately bypassing that experience, oh, don't feel that way. Oh, you don't deserve to feel that way. You wouldn't say that to your friend, so don't say it to yourself. Sometimes those things are very helpful, but ultimately what I need is the safety and space to turn toward myself and say, it's really hard to feel that way, isn't it?
This sucks. This is hard and sometimes it's painful and I don't know who designed the fact that you are a spiritual being. Having a physical experience with an animal brain in a social context, like tough. That's tough, but it's not your fault. You didn't do anything wrong. These feelings are not your fault, right?
But I need the space to say, sometimes I don't feel good enough. Sometimes I feel insecure, sometimes I'm anxious. And then when I can meet that and say, that's okay. Now it's like, oh, it's okay. It's okay to feel this way. Yeah, it's okay to feel this way. Right? Then [00:19:00] from that place of deeper connection with myself, it's like, oh, okay.
I don't need to bypass it. I don't need to run away from it. Sometimes that's just how it feels. So yes, it's neurobiologically informed, but what it really comes down to is, re-parenting. Is being on your own team when you have feelings and you don't always, you don't always need to feel better.
You just have to feel what you feel. That's the biggest misconception. Does that answer your question?
Christa Elza: Yeah. I think it's really important, and you brought up a good point about the, we're either, we're always in one state or another. We're in fight or flight, or we're in rest and relaxation and if, yeah, the affirmations don't necessarily pull you out of one or the other.
And the irony is, yeah, the block or the breadcrumbs to relief and that, I think it's a hard thing for people to, to look at and say, well, that surely cannot be. Like, I don't wanna look in the mirror and be like, it's [00:20:00] okay to feel like my thighs are way too fat right now, but in the mind it does. Within 90 seconds or so of really accepting that and being with that part.
You move then into that rest and relax, right? So then you're out of that fight or flight, and then you can, I think some of those affirmations then can actually sink in and you actually mean it. I truly love myself. And I think too, the process that you just described. Really helps yourself build trust with yourself.
And so then you really do genuinely start to love yourself and respect yourself because there is a relationship with yourself. Mm-hmm. I know that sounds crazy, but once you're in it, you understand it. Yeah. And that's the beauty of it.
Lisa Schlosberg: Yes. Yes. Well said. A hundred percent. And I'll also just say like, on the note of affirmations and such especially for anyone who's listening for whom that really resonates and does work.
I think the important thing about it is that if you are speaking an affirmation to yourself in the mirror or anything like that, [00:21:00] that you are moving it from your mind to your body, and I think that's what often gets really missed with it. So the way that you can effectively practice these things is instead of just saying like, I love my body and just saying it over and over again, hoping that it will become true, the practice is to.
Say I love my body, but really question and experiment with what would it feel like in your body if that were true? And it's like, okay, well if you don't love your body right now, right? That's the reason you're saying these affirmations. But the thing that matters so that your body can like metabolize this energy and attract more of it is what would it feel like if you did love your body?
And it's this kind of like. Fake it till you make it situation. But I always like to say, 'cause again, I'm looking at the physiology of the human being. I always just say it's really about embody it until [00:22:00] you habituate to it. So can you actually embody the energy of, I love my body, or I'm safe in my body, and just like, close your eyes and experience what that might feel like.
Just try it on. Just try. And I always say to people like, you don't have to believe it. You don't have to buy into it. It's like going into a fitting room, right? Like you don't know if the jeans are gonna fit. You have to try them on. So it's the same thing, just energetically where it's like, let your body try on that energy and then see what happens.
But that's where the shift happens for a lot of people, where it's like, oh, okay, well if I try on the energy, if I love my body. I've released a lot of contraction and a lot of tension and it's like, right, okay. So that's, that's another way to get there. Using something like affirmations.
Sheree Beaumont: Yeah, I think it's, you brought up a beautiful point and it segues into my next question fantastically. We're starting to get into some of that [00:23:00] somatic work, which, I do have a question after this that I'd love you to touch on. One of the things that. When we're talking about body image and we're talking about weight and we're talking about the transformation that comes often tied to our health journey, that you know underlying a lot of it, when you do speak to women, that as much as they wanna have healthy, balanced hormones and a less bloated gut, huge part of it is still to have the confidence they think comes with the weight loss and can come with the weight loss.
I'm not saying it's not hand in hand, but one of the things I see time and time again. Is you like people weighing themselves every day or every week or getting so emotionally attached and so emotionally invested in the number on the scales, put to the side that there's obviously body fat and bone and all that sort of stuff.
Like there's that emotional attachment. One of the things I always share with my clients is like, if you are weighing yourself every single day and you're stepping on there and it's not shifting in the direction you want it to because maybe you haven't had a bowel movement, or maybe you had more water last night, or maybe it was a little bit more carb heavy, or maybe you trained [00:24:00] yesterday and that's reflecting.
Right. You are still sending that cortisol message, that cortisol response in the body. You are then communicating a lack of safety. Can you talk to that from the safety level? I know we've touched on the nervous system, but really diving a little bit deeper into the physiological response that can happen, and then from that space, how you help people navigate when they have that relationship to the scale that drives that level of unsafety within them.
Lisa Schlosberg: Yeah. Okay, great. So what happens is from the, neurobiology perspective, kind of like what we mentioned before, you can either be in a stress response or a stress relief response. And so the important thing, especially about the scale is that we consider our conscious input. So. The way that we talk about and understand our world and our experiences matters very [00:25:00] much to how we end up experiencing it.
So what I mean by that is, if someone gets on the scale every day and it is attached to their worth, and it's like, I am only as good as the number on the scale. Well, that's gonna be a really high stakes experience, and it's gonna feel that way in the body. Like if my, if the number on the scale is not what I want it to be or expect it to be, then I am not lovable and I am not worthy of connection and belonging in human society.
That's gonna create a response. But if you also were getting on the scale, and let's say we're an alien and it had no meaning whatsoever. Right. It's like, well, you'll have the same exact experience out here in reality, but it wouldn't feel that way. But the reason for that is not because the experience of getting on the scale is, in, in the physical dimension different, but because of [00:26:00] the conscious input around it, what does the number on the scale mean?
And more importantly, what does the number on the scale mean about me? We make meaning of things. That's just what we do. So the first thing to pay attention to for anyone who you know is interested in this or is struggling with this, is tell the honest truth about what your relationship with the scale is.
And I remember one time I had a client when we were working through this, she was like, I never realized until you said it, that every single morning I walk, I wake up and I walk into the bathroom and I feel like there's a saber tooth tiger waiting for me. Like, that's my relationship with the scale.
Right? It scares me. It, I like I right. And all we have to do is ask the question, how do you feel? How do you feel emotionally? Or how do you feel in your body when you think about your experiences with the scale? And some people immediately just like seize up and is like, oh, I hate it. I hate it. I hate it.
Right. And it's like, okay. So that's very [00:27:00] informative. That's your experience with the scale. Some people. I don't work with any of them, but some people are like, oh, the scale, I don't know. Who cares? And it's like, great. Then you don't have to pay attention to it, you don't have to worry about it. But that's what's going on because of, again, our conscious input, and I think it's Dr.
Kristen Neff who talks about anything that threatens your identity or your perception of yourself feels like life or death because we're human beings. We're so. Connected to and identified with our identity. So if we're in this place where it's like my body or my weight equals who I am, we're making it a life or death experience, which is why it feels like a life or death experience.
Our perception is our reality. So that's what's going on there, is like it's all about what it means to us and what our conscious mind is [00:28:00] interpreting it to be. Does that make sense? Mm-hmm.
Christa Elza: Well, I think it is interesting, I've experienced this firsthand where maybe in a different group friend group, you feel more confident than in others.
Maybe going to a different country or a different environment. I feel more confident in my body in a bikini on the beach than other areas of the country or the world. Right. So, and it, it all has to do with what I'm seeing around me. Like, I'm five feet tall. Like if there's, if I'm in some country or an area of the world where all I'm seeing is, six foot women that are a hundred pounds little, then I might feel, so it's all relative.
Have you seen that on, you've seen that meme or whatever, like a bottle of water costs? This amount in the grocery store, this amount at school, this amount in an arena, right? And it's all water. It's just the value that you place on it or the importance or what have you, it changes. The thing is still the same.
Our body's still the same. And so to me that's as you were talking, brought to my mind of like, yeah, I've definitely felt more confident in [00:29:00] my body given who I'm surrounded by. And I think certain ethnicities have certain. Tolerable. It is, it's just so subjective. Yeah, right. Like there's certain ethnicities that feel like this is fat and this is not fat and this is appealing and this is not appealing.
And it is very, very subjective and it's so unfortunate for our psyche as women that we learn something along the way and that stuck and it happens early. I can remember middle school literally. This is before Pinterest showing my age, but, cutting clippings from magazines of like motivation of like, you need to work out more to look this way.
And it's just, when I look back on it, it's really sad that a 14-year-old, a 13-year-old puts some of their value in it, and I, my family members, we've got younger kids in our family and my niece in particular, my sister said. She's been upset recently about her physical appearance and she's fine.
She looks fine to me, but my sister's like, it breaks my heart that [00:30:00] it's already happening. She's 14, and here we go. And it's just, where do we start to shift those and how do we teach? Well, first of all, we have to teach ourselves as grown women, and then we need to start imparting that, to.
To younger people, how do you outreach and what do you do in terms of that? Like spreading that? How do we as individuals, I guess I should say, you, including all of us, get started with doing our part. Because much like anything, when the masses are thinking a certain way, it takes all of us in impacting our own little world of how to express that, and so I think first is healing ourselves, but then. Yeah. What advice do you give to just impart that to the young women in our environment?
Lisa Schlosberg: Yeah. It's a great question. You nailed it. So I always just wanna like reiterate this point of doing the work on ourselves is always the first step.
We can't teach anything that we are not. Integrating and embodying. And that goes a really long way. I just [00:31:00] wanna say, especially for mothers, I work with a lot of mothers and sometimes I get this question of, I heard this recently, someone said to me, I don't know why my daughter and her daughter was like five, because that's how early this starts.
She was saying like, I don't know why my daughter like hides her belly whenever she like sits down and she starts seeing like the rolls and like, I don't know why that's happening, because I never, I'm so careful not to say anything to her. I've never made a comment about her body. I tell her, she's lovable and she's worthy and all of the things, like I do not perpetuate this at all with her.
And I also know. The person that I was talking to, and I explained a lot of the time, especially with mothers, they're not behaving that way because you said anything. They're behaving that way because you behave that way and they are watching you. And [00:32:00] so the question is not, have you ever said anything about her belly rolls because I believe you, that you haven't.
The question is, are you hiding your own? Because if that's what they see, that's what they do. Monkey see Monkey dow, especially with younger kids. So I just wanna, again, like reiterate that point where it's like, it's not just heal yourself, so you say the right thing, you're not always gonna say the right thing, but that's why it goes so far.
When you. Look in the mirror and you say kind things to yourself. Your daughter is watching that happen, and you are laying the foundation for what is actually possible. Not because you're telling her to do it, but because you are doing it. And I think that we just, we don't know that enough, that really is the first step is they just need to see you in action.
So that's the first thing that said. I think especially when it comes to, your own community, [00:33:00] and that could be your own child, your own family, your own school, if you work in a school or something like that. I think that's an important point because very often it's, it can feel very defeating.
It's like, well, what can I do? Because my child, for example, is still gonna go out there in the world and people are still gonna be the way they are and they're still gonna be on social media and I can't stop that from happening. And. That's fine. That's true. We're not gonna invalidate that. But I think what we can do is on a small scale, if you have a child or you know a child that either is struggling with their body image or struggling with their weight, or has been bullied by other people because of it, the best thing that you can do is be there with them and be there for them.
You don't need to take it away. You don't need to change it. It goes back to everything we were saying before where it's like. They need to be able to feel their feelings. And if you as an adult can [00:34:00] say, this is okay that you feel this way, I know that it can be really hard out there in the world where sometimes people do make judgements about what you look like, right?
We're not gonna sugarcoat it. We're not gonna bypass it, we're not going to tell lies about it. Sometimes that's the case, but you get to model. Not everyone's like that. Not everyone is gonna do that. Not everyone thinks of you that way. And when you set that foundation of this is what a loving, healthy, stable relationship looks like with a person that doesn't judge you based on your size, you're giving them the blueprint, you're giving them the opportunity to learn that this exists out there, this exists out there.
You can grow up and find other people that you're gonna feel this way to you and. Because I think that's the truth. Sometimes people ask me like, I used to be over 300 pounds, and people would ask me questions about, after you lost weight, how did people treat [00:35:00] you? Or did you notice that people treated you differently?
Or things like that. And yeah, there were definitely people who like after my weight loss reached out and like wanted to be my friend. Or people who were nicer to me after I lost weight, or people who were like giving me the time of day. And sometimes people, the question is like, well, what do we do about that?
What do we do about the fact that we live in this world and people judge you? And my answer to that has always been, you don't hang out with them Like they're gonna be out there and that's okay. We can't do anything about that. But I have a lot of power over where I spend my time. And who I build my relationships with.
So a lot of the, a lot of my best friends from back in the day are still my best friends today because I'm not getting distracted by, Ooh, these people like me now because of the way that I look. There are plenty of them, but I don't want anything to do with that. And I think a lot of that comes down to, again, if you can provide an experience of [00:36:00] seeing, hearing, loving, and accepting a kid.
That's what they go out and seek and want more of. So that's what you can do is embody it like on every level.
Sheree Beaumont: I think this really highlights the nonverbal communication that goes on. Right. We know that body language is actually 70% of how we communicate versus actually what we're saying, so to speak to the point where you're talking about with the little one hiding her belly rolls and like, , I know for years I modeled for a very long time.
Well, mom hates her thighs. I hate my thighs. And like, that was the big thing for me was like changing my relationship to be like, you know what? My thighs are strong. They're. Fucking powerful. They are sexy. I don't need a thigh gap. I've got a cup holder. And like, coming from that perspective, it was like this massive shift internally.
Now, one of the things that, it always like breaks my heart because I know that, it's, I feel like it's getting worse and worse. We went through the days of cutting out clippings. The kids have now got social media at their [00:37:00] fingertips. They're not just judging themselves against the other ones at school.
I also know it's super common. I know both you and I have gone through. Eating disorders as well. And I'm wondering if we can just dive into that a little bit, because that is a huge part of our relationship with our body and if we can. Start younger and start with ourselves, and then role modeling that like we've been talking about, it's gonna be huge.
But one thing that I don't think is talked about enough, and you have so much beautiful science to weave into this, is, yeah, there's the eating disorder. Okay? Whether that is the exercise anorexia where you're pushing your body too much to undo and punish yourself. It is the bulimia where you're making yourself up.
It's the binge eating or it's the anorexia where you're starving yourself. There's all these different things. In my opinion or my experience, it actually comes down to the mental health aspect. There is something a lot deeper driving that. So again, that relationship with our body, we often, or I often see the case being that it's a way or a [00:38:00] means of us being able to control something.
When we go down this path, right? If I binge like it's, I'm not dealing with the emotion, like you said right at the start, it's suppressing it or pushing it down. If I'm calorie counting to the extreme, it's a means of I can control this because everything emotionally outside of me, I'm not able to control.
And so this gives me a sense of safety almost. So with all that being said, are you able to dive into a little bit more of like. Why this may happen in a little bit of your personal journey, because I think you have such a powerful story to share with people. Yeah. You lost the weight, and I don't wanna diminish that at all, but the emotional journey that you had to overcome to keep showing up and like you, we know that you've kept this off for a dec over a decade.
It takes a lot more than just. I'm not gonna eat that food.
Lisa Schlosberg: Yes. And I very much appreciate that. I genuinely think that the weight loss is the least interesting part of the story. Because of [00:39:00] that. It was all the symptom, it was the. The external world that is visible to other people, but the way harder thing was the inner work that that went into it.
And that's why I do everything that I do ultimately. So yeah, I agree with you completely. The way that I understand my own story is that. From the very beginning I was the strong one. I thought that I was just so strong that I didn't have feelings, and I thought feelings were silly and stupid.
I thought therapy was a waste of time. I didn't get it. I just literally lived in such denial. Of these parts of myself and I was full of defense. It was just one big defense mechanism. And I know why, I know where it started and it really was, very early on in my life and the trauma that my family experienced, and I learned that if I could just [00:40:00] keep it all in, then I would be okay.
And that's what I did for many, many years. And the way that I could at least believe in the illusion of control was using food to stuff it all down. And I like to also clarify when I was a kid, especially, I would never have considered myself an emotional eater. And I still to this day work with people who are like, well, I don't know if I'm an emotional eater because.
The perception is that an emotional eater is someone who feels a feeling and then eats about it, and that's one way that it shows up. But my particular flavor of emotional eating is much more proactive, let's say. So I am not someone who responds to a feeling with eating food. I like to eat food so that I don't feel the feeling.
And so I just say that because it shows up differently for everyone. [00:41:00] And then of course there are the side of the spectrum, let's say if we're making it linear of not eating as a way of coping or, overly restricting or calorie counting with like a hyper fixation. So. It shows up in a lot of different ways.
So for me, at first it was using food to stuff it all down and control it in that way. And then I just swung the pendulum and started undereating and over exercising. And that also felt like control because then there was no space in my brain to think about anything else. And so that's how it shows up.
And I always like to clarify and say. I could work with a hundred people who all have the same behavior around food for a hundred different reasons. It's different for everybody. And I think that's why A, some clinicians hate working with disordered eating because there's not like a formula. But it's also why I love it because [00:42:00] it, it provides an opportunity to get really curious and just explore, like, okay, so this is your behavior.
How does it feel? I. When you're doing it, and some people are gonna feel a sense of freedom and some people are gonna feel a sense of control or safety or power or love or connection. For a lot of people, food is a relationship. Like any other relationship, it's an attachment figure. The way that our parents like it really is different for everyone.
So yes, it always comes back to some sort of safety. Comfort. It's, ultimately, and if you're interested in the brain science of it, there's a couple things that happen every single time you eat food. Two of the four happy chemicals are released in your brain. So dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins are what scientists will call the happiness cocktail.
Dopamine and serotonin are [00:43:00] released in your brain every single time you eat. Because we have to be motivated to eat, to survive. So the same reason that sex feels good, because we're designed to reproduce, is the reason that food feels good. We have to be motivated to eat something or we're gonna die. So I think it's also really cool they did this study with rats.
If they remove the dopamine receptors in the brains of mice, they die from starvation in the cage with food. So they're looking at the food. They're in the cage with the food, but they die from starvation without the motivation to eat it. Okay? So we need these chemicals in our brain to like draw us into things, right?
Which is also why like getting likes on Instagram feels so good. It's a dopamine hit, right? So. Dopamine and serotonin are released in the brain every time we eat, which explains emotional eating, and then it also brings our stress, our cortisol down. So I always like to just say, if you consider yourself a stress eater or an emotional eater,
congratulations. You are a human [00:44:00] being. Everything is working properly. So that's what's going on. And it's, again, it shows up differently. It manifests differently, but that's the idea is it's always regulating what's going on internally by either bringing the happy chemicals up or bringing the stress hormones down,
Christa Elza: which can be hard because it's not like.
It's not like drugs, like we don't need drugs to survive. So that kind of, that therapy is different. We have to eat. And so creating a healthy relationship with something that. We still can't cut off ties. It's like getting divorced with children. Well, you're gonna have to hang out with FedEx longer than you would if you didn't have them.
There, there's, that's harder, right? Yeah. Because you can't completely eradicate it. Yeah. And so, I think what we're talking about here is two maybe separate things, but oftentimes together it's the relationship with food. It's also the relationship with yourself. But I still believe that if you improve the relationship with yourself, you improve the relationship with.
Food. [00:45:00] Because when you start to view food as nutrition, then you start to make different choices. You start to say no to things for a different reason. Not because, well, shit that's gonna make my thighs fatter, or my scale's gonna be bigger. It's more like, well, this is actually a detriment to my physical body.
And because I love me and because I care for my body, I'm gonna make a different choice even though I'm tempted to eat. The burger, I'm gonna go ahead and have a salad with a protein on it. Not because why I used to choose, but because I know that this is what I need. Nutrition, like really viewing food in the same way that you view yourself, because then you're not gonna sit and eat five sleeves of Oreos because it's just deeper.
It's deeper than that. It's a deeper love for your entire being. Right? And so they're different, but they go hand in hand. Those relationships, and I think. I agree. It's a challenging, people who, who work with, thank God people work with people with eating disorders because it is deeper than the food.
It's not about the food, it's about the chemical [00:46:00] release. But why are we needing that and how come we can't get it other ways? Or what are we trying to shovel down and shut down and shovel down? But I think it, it really does come down to sitting with the difficult things sometimes to work through it and that.
Is inescapable. I don't care what therapists you go to, if they're not telling you this, they're telling you wrong. You have to sit. And oftentimes it's harder at first before it gets better. You dig down to dig it all up before you just like cleaning out a closet. It looks like a disaster in your room, but the process is messy.
But in the end, it's so much more organized and so much more peaceful. What do you, what is your process and do you have programs? Like what do you do now? Yeah. Currently to really help support people through this sometimes messy process.
Lisa Schlosberg: Yeah. Yeah. So I agree that, I always say when it comes to my program and I'll talk about it, is it's an opportunity to use the relationship you have with food as the [00:47:00] mechanism through which you learn how to reparent yourself.
So exactly like what you said. It's not about the relationship with food. The relationship with food is a reflection of what's going on inside and the relationship we have with ourself. So using the relationship with food. As the mechanism, the pathway to learn how to reparent ourselves well, what does that mean?
Well, especially around food, there's the physical component to that and there's the emotional component to that. Reparenting is being able to see and hear and love and validate and accept your emotional experience. And re-parenting is also in the physical dimension. Buying the food, preparing the food, eating the food, right?
Like we have to do all of this for ourselves now because we are. Fortunately or not, the parent now, like no one's doing it for us. No one's coming to save us. No one's gonna make the meals and buy the food. And eat the food for us. So my program is really about saying, okay, so there's this relationship with food that you [00:48:00] have right now that is stressful and emotional and complicated, but let's use that.
We're not turning away from that. We're not putting a bandaid on that. We're getting into that. We're exploring that. And following the thread of what comes up so that you can learn how to reparent yourself, both around food and eating, but also the emotional and psychological components as well. So, so that's.
What the program is about. It's a 14 week group coaching program. So I, you probably have mentioned this, maybe, but I started as a personal trainer. I became a health coach, a yoga instructor, a licensed social worker. And my approach is really taking all of it, it's very holistic, mental, emotional, spiritual, social, environmental, physical, physiological health.
Needs to be the end goal so that we're not sacrificing our health for our weight. And that's really what it is. So it's a group coaching [00:49:00] program. The curriculum has been built out and I've been teaching it for years and it's my. Child. It's my heart and soul. It's my everything. I love it. Because it's really deep and profound.
I'm kind of like, I saw a meme recently that was like, go deep or go home. And I was like, that's my motto for like, if anyone's thinking about working with me, it's like, that's kind how it goes. Always,
Sheree Beaumont: I literally said the same thing to someone the other day. I am like, it's like me with small talk.
I know it's a completely, but I'm like, I'm not here for the shit chat, so I'm not here to know what your favorite color is, mate. Like, I wanna know the depth of your soul. Like you need to share this with me. And I think that's like the beauty of the work that you do. The work that, we do talk about a lot on this podcast is.
Being able to have that space to go deeper. Being able to give yourself the compassion for where you're at in your journey to bring it right back to where we were at the start of this conversation. Looking at [00:50:00] generating more self-awareness, which is really the first step. We quite often jump to what's the next action before we've moved through the process to get to acceptance and so.
I really love the work that you do, and I think this conversation, I'm like, I was already, when while you were talking, I was like, this just, everyone needs to hear this because I think there is the societal norms that we're trying to break. There is that relationship with ourself that we're speaking to.
There is the context around weight and also, shifting that idea that. It's not you that's broken. It's not your body that's broken. It's nothing you did wrong. To go back to what you said right at the beginning, it's the conditioning we had as a child. We tried on these beliefs, we held onto some of them.
We let some of them go and now it's about that re-parenting. And so, the work that you're doing is just. Beautiful. And I really just wanna thank you for your time today and I'd love if you can share, we will definitely pop it in the show notes, but can you share with us how people can find you if they just wanna reach out and chat and be like, oh my gosh, this resonated so much.
Lisa Schlosberg: Yes, thank you. I think the best place to find [00:51:00] me is Instagram Lisa Schlossberg. That's S-C-H-L-O-S-B-E-R-G. You can email me. Feel free, lisa [email protected]. My website is out of the cave.health. I think, oh, and My Outta the Cave podcast is another free resource and if anyone is interested, yes, there's a group coaching program and there is a retreat in person coming up in September.
So if anyone wants to know more about that, just DM me or check out the website.
Christa Elza: You're invaluable information and through experience, which I think is always. So brilliant. When someone has gone through something, they tend to be much better at solving problems for others. And so, thank you for sharing your story.
Thank you for sharing your insight. I think many, many, many people, even people who don't think that they need to hear this, they do need to hear this because if you're a woman, you've probably had phases in your life that this has become apparent that you need support in. So [00:52:00] thank you so much for being here.
Lisa Schlosberg: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
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