[Ep. 336] How To Lose 125 Pounds & Lower Your Stress Naturally

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]when you started just as I did in my life titrating in the balancing foods, the foods that actually lower that output of adrenaline, then you started gaining a peace and ease in your body before the shape of your body even transformed. And it might have been like slow transformation, things that wouldn't even be noticeable to you, but the felt sense changed. And I really want people to hear that cuz you could have the same body right now that you're sitting in that hurts, that feels bloated, that you hate, that you're overwhelmed in, you have anxiety in, and in 5 hours that body could transform based on what you eat next. And that's a very different way to understand food for the nervous system versus I have to eat this way for 8 months to lose 50 lbs if I'm lucky.

[00:00:43]Welcome to the holistic life navigation channel. I am your host, Luis Moika. I'm a somatic educator and nutritionist and I'm here to explore every aspect of life through the lens of somatic psychology, nutrition and philosophy.

[00:00:58]Let's dive in. Okay, welcome everybody.

[00:01:02]Today I am joined by my friend and co-teer Camille Leak and we're going to explore the conversation about weight loss but more importantly our experience with weight loss uh in recent years and um fill you in a little bit on this program we're doing in July and how weight loss intersects this work uh kind of naturally not as the primary motive but tends to be the result for a lot of people when they're able to balance their nervous system and their glucose with food. So, I think I wanted to open this up by speaking about um a newsletter I had sent out and I definitely paused before I sent it because the title said I think it said how I lost 10 lbs in a month or in 28 days or something. Now, I have been really against timelines in my work.

[00:01:50]Like I never say like 21 days to heal your trauma, 21 days to freedom. I I don't do 21day detoxes. But the reason why I wrote this email was to teach people that when you understand the biochemistry of fat storage and fat loss, you can just turn it on and off when you've worked with trauma. Because when you haven't worked with the trauma, the trauma is propelling a lot of that.

[00:02:12]So you can do all the guidelines you want, but as you lose weight, it can feel really scary. It can trigger things or you cannot understand it. And so you don't know how to lose weight, so you keep gaining. But what I was trying to show people was I understand this biochemistry. So, I was testing it out on myself and I was able to lose a tremendous amount of visceral fat, which I'll get into in a relatively short amount of time and reduce a lot of symptoms I was getting. And the email was read by some people, not everybody, but by some people as a really triggering kind of shaming, like you should also. And I was in conversation with someone who said, you know, I really I felt like you were telling me I should do this. And we realized as we were talking like, okay, that's what you felt. Never did I prescribe that or suggest anyone do it. It was kind of like the teacher is doing a radical thing to experiment on his own with his own teachings. And this happened after I was uh doing a lot of travel last year.

[00:03:05]And so I think for me because of being interex and my estrogen dominance that tends to take over when I do a lot of travel when I eat certain uh a large amount of carbohydrates than normal but travel especially especially in different time zones like England it definitely affects my estrogen. and I notice it will rise more and that will affect for me for men in particular how you store fat. And so for I don't know a couple months I think with travel and with eating things on the road I was starting to develop a lot of visceral fat. And visceral fat for anyone listening is so different than subcutaneous fat. So when you look in the mirror and you see like your face looks fat or your your arms are fat or your legs are fat that's subcutaneous fat. That's actually it's something people don't like. We have negative connotations around it based on how it looks, but it doesn't really affect the body. Shockingly enough, it affects the joints if there's a large amount of it.

[00:03:59]But generally speaking, even when there's a good hefty amount of fat in your legs and arms, doesn't affect your health the way we think. Visceral fat is what affects your health. Because visceral fat is the one behind your ribs and under your belly button. It's the kind that distends and pushes out your stomach. Like if you think of a beer belly, you think of like a man that's like thin that has a big beer belly.

[00:04:19]That's visceral fat. It's the fat that builds up around your organs and your livers. It's a stress induced fat as well. But it also happens from excess glucose, insulin, sugar, corn syrup, a lot of different things. So my stress of traveling, cuz I wasn't even eating that off, my stress of traveling with my estrogen uh issues and imbalances caused me to gain like almost 15 pounds of visceral fat. And I knew it was visceral bags. I know my body and my entire body was trim and fit except for my stomach.

[00:04:48]So I didn't have this thing I used to have where I looked in the mirror and was disgusted cuz that usually would trigger dysphoria because for me if I see my stomach getting big then I assume my breasts are going to come back in.

[00:05:00]Now if you're listening to this you don't know who I am. You're like what are you talking about? Your breasts are going to come back in. So I was born interex which means my my body converts testosterone into estrogen. does it to this day. And when I was developing, we didn't understand this. So, I developed in this ambiguous male female body. And my hips spread out in puberty. I had breast development. I felt very female.

[00:05:22]I couldn't put on muscle. I put on fat very easily. Had a lot of dysphoria. Um, and then when I got top surgery at 23, the surgeon said, you know, because you have this this condition, you could have breast development again if your estrogen gets high enough. So for many years I had this fear that if I gain any weight because for men when we gain weight our estrogen goes up that weight is going to cause my breasts to come back which is a big dysphoria for me. It has a lot of negative connotation.

[00:05:49]What's amazing cuz I worked with so much of that trauma as I looked in this the mirror and I saw this big belly I was like fine I saw it for what it was. My body is storing visceral fat because it's been in a stress induced state and it needs to have a release of that fat.

[00:06:05]So, I need to change the chemistry. So, I went on a very specific intermittent fasting diet. And what was interesting about that is I didn't I didn't feel like I should fast. I wanted to fast. Like, I was noticing I was eating breakfast cuz I'm so used to eating breakfast, but I wasn't actually called to eating it. And so, I paused and realized my body's telling me it wants to fast. So, for a month straight, I would wake up in the morning and I wouldn't eat my first meal until somewhere between 12:00 p.m. and 2:00 p.m., which is really rare for me.

[00:06:39]I'm usually hungry within the first hour. So, that was my the wisdom of my my body. And then all the meals I ate after that were extremely balancing low carbohydrate meals from the quiet diet protocol. So, I had this amazing experience where after just 3 and 1/2 weeks or so, I was down 10 12 lbs. And then after the first month, I was down 15 lbs. So all the visceral fat I had gained was gone in a month. Now what that meant for me was no inflammation cuz my knees were hurting. My back was hurting. So that went away. No fatigue.

[00:07:11]My brain fog went away. I had a lot of energy. My sleep improved. My stress response was way better. And my cravings were completely gone. And I happen to no longer have a big belly. Right? So, I'm saying this out loud because when you read the email, I do come off as this kind of diet culture nut who's saying like you can lose 15 pounds too like me.

[00:07:32]But what I was really trying to teach people was there's a chemistry and when you understand that chemistry, the weight just drops, you know, when you're ready and whatever experience you're in.

[00:07:42]So, I'm giving that part of it because that's me. One month, 15 pounds of Israel back gone. Hasn't come back. Now we're turning to Camille. This is like your public coming out cuz you've had a tremendous amount of weight burned up, used from your body.

[00:08:02]>> Yeah.

[00:08:02]>> In the last 5 years.

[00:08:04]>> Yeah.

[00:08:05]>> You know, so me I'm like 15 pounds in 30 days. How many pounds are we talking for you in 5 years?

[00:08:11]>> Yeah. So in October of 2021, I was 325 pounds. And that's uh what I know to be my highest weight. And last time I checked, which was earlier this year, I was down to 198.

[00:08:30]So, I have lost as of now, uh, well, I didn't weigh myself this morning, but generally, so I'm about 125 lbs, uh, lighter than I was 5 years ago, which is so fascinating for so many reasons because like most people, I have a history of diet culture. Uh, I've it's gone up, it's gone down, I've done different protocols, different different weight loss methods. Um, but what was really fascinating is that at the start of my journey in October of 2021 when I started doing the the quiet diet, I decided to stop weighing myself because weight wasn't going to be my focus as it related to food. Um, and it wasn't until really last year that other people started saying like, "Hey, you've lost weight." And I'm like, "What have I?" because I it just wasn't um on my focus or or in my my vision at all. And yeah, it just kind of continued to progress from there.

[00:09:32]>> I remember you getting out of the cab in our little horse village in England for the retreat and Ma went, >> "You've lost weight." And you said, "Have I?" I was I was there for that moment. That was about it that was a year ago almost. Exactly.

[00:09:45]>> Yeah.

[00:09:46]Why this is so important to highlight is because it took me what I'm almost I'm gonna be 39 this year. So this like 15 lb weight loss in a month which was last year took me what we're talking like 18 years to understand weight loss, right? Like I happened to lose weight by accident when I started eating differently and my testosterone increased. This is the first time in my life I had like a targeted like I know how to lose weight and I can do it if I need to. I'm saying that because it seems like 30 days, but it took 18 years to understand the chemistry to have that happen in 30 days. Your experience is the same to me.

[00:10:27]>> You said October 2021, right? You're at the the highest you've ever weighed. You have the most fat in your body.

[00:10:33]>> You didn't go into this next 5 years with this goal to lose weight, which you've done your whole life, you've told me.

[00:10:39]>> Right.

[00:10:39]>> Right. You didn't go into it with hating your body. You went into it the way we teach it of okay, how do how am I how can I be kind to this body? How can I uncouple the negative associations? And how can I change my relationship to food and by doing that see how my body follows.

[00:10:57]>> Yeah.

[00:10:58]>> So I want to like I want to open those first first kind of two three years where there wasn't significant weight loss but there was a changing in your relationship to food. Can we just talk about that period for people listening that think like, well, I want to lose the weight though.

[00:11:10]>> Yeah. And and I totally empathize with that. Um, but I want to lose the weight because I'm I'm I'm with you. I know that feeling. Um, but in in 2021 or over the course of 2020 and 2021, as for listeners who know my story, I was in burnout. I was in a a a life-changing moment trying to decide if I wanted to leave a 15-year successful corporate career, but I was burnt out. I was miserable. I didn't it didn't feel sustainable. I was a functional alcoholic. All these things that I felt needed to change, but I didn't know how.

[00:11:45]Um and then I found sematics and specifically holistic life navigation.

[00:11:49]And when I started learning more about the the quiet diet, one thing I decided to do, well, not just the quiet diet, it became really clear to me just how adrenalized I was, like how much adrenaline, just how much how constantly I was perpetually in a flight and fight flight and fawn response >> that I decided, particularly as it related to food, my focus was going to be on lowering my adrenaline Like right now that is my key priority. I want to get my adrenaline in balance.

[00:12:27]The number on the scale be damned. Like if anything for me at that point I felt like focusing on the number on the scale was part of what was contributing to increased adrenaline in my body. So I said for right now I'm putting that to the side. The only thing I'm focusing on as it relates particularly to food is what food helps me lower my adrenaline or what food uh practices or eating practices help me keep it keep it in balance. And so that was really liberating for two reasons. One, it was just different. Like I said, I never really thought of myself as being highly adrenalized, but I was. But then two, it was a very different experience of eating so that by the end of the week or by the end of the month, I will have lost an x amount of weight versus eating something or not eating something and feeling the effect of it 3 hours later, 6 hours later. That was something that was really a game changer for me.

[00:13:26]And I liked like I liked that I wasn't eating for something a week down the road, a month down the road, six months down the road, but I could literally eat something and it would change how I felt or impacted how I felt 3 hours later, 6 hours later, maybe a day later.

[00:13:44]>> That's so important. I mean, I'm doing so many interviews right now about this book, and this is the hardest thing to teach people and explain about the food therapy philosophy and and everything we do with HLN, even even outside of food, but I'm centering that for now, >> is eating for peace, eating for an embodied state, right? And it's just how you said that. It's like if my focus is I want to eat this way so on Friday when I weigh myself, I lose 2 lbs. You're not really in your body. You're you're in your body on Friday, you know, it's Monday and you're thinking, "Where will I be in five days?" You're not here.

[00:14:18]It's a dissociative looking at the future. And I I know that myself from all my health issues. I'm going to eat this way and my asthma will be gone in a year or I'm going to eat this way and my skin will be clear next year. Like all this looking at myself in the future, which does a few things. It not only disembodies us from where we are, but it compares who we are now to who we could be. And we always come up short. So for me there's always shame with that.

[00:14:42]There's always like a little humiliation, a little pressure, a little hopelessness even. And then I lose the motivation just how you said I get more of a stress response when that happens.

[00:14:51]I get even more overwhelmed. And for someone like me, when I get overwhelmed, my history has been turning to food.

[00:14:57]>> Right. I was going to say that. Yeah.

[00:14:59]>> So the overwhelm with the food just creates more of the the for me the binging and the soothing with the food which creates more of the symptoms I'm trying to reverse.

[00:15:06]>> Correct. So, this piece around, well, what if I eat just to see how I feel for three hours, that is what made my 30-day weight loss thing so amazing because I was I really wasn't even thinking of the number on the scale. I mean, I was in a technical way cuz I knew it was visceral fat. I just didn't want that much visceral fat for for health reasons. But I was feeling within I remember like the second day just fasting in the morning and and anyone listening when you're fasting in the morning or even longer but when you're fasting in the morning and you have visceral fat your body starts burning the visceral fat to fuel you. So I was feeling as the morning was going I was just feeling like okay my body is fueling from itself. And you know as someone who fasts it's such a good feeling when you hit that it just feels like clear and clean and easy and smooth. I felt so settled. I felt very regulated. So I my inflammation went down after the first day. So I already was experiencing bliss in my body without actually losing my stomach yet.

[00:16:04]There was still this like big bloated 14lb stomach in the in the mirror. So it's a good example what I experienced what you experienced for those few years of my body hasn't even changed that much you know visually yet my physical experience is changing in my body. Do you find that for those and I I keep holding three years for some reason, but for those three years, do you find that that gave you more capacity to actually change your eating habits?

[00:16:32]>> Oh, yeah. I mean, so I think one within those first three years focusing on um because when I got into all all this work and I I realized something about my life needed to change, I I I did a little meditation. I was like, what is it? What is it that I want? What what do I want out of life? And it was space, energy, and flow. Those were the words that came up. And so over those three years, eating for space, energy, and flow, eating for that that balance, that peace, that was like uh that really allowed me to shift my relationship with food. Um because like you were saying when I was orienting to two pounds down um by the end of the week or even something like a quote unquote good marker like lowering my blood pressure in 3 months or lowering my my um a AC1 whatever >> that it was still like these these things that were so far off that I'd be sitting there think like is it working?

[00:17:32]Is it working? And that would just further adrenalize me and so then I'd need to eat to depress it. And so being able to simply focus on space, energy, and flow, >> like being really aware of is what I'm eating is how I'm eating. Cultivating space, energy, and flow in me right now really allowed me to expand my capacity to be in a different relationship with food and not feel like I was either being restricted or like I was doing something wrong. It truly felt easeful to eat for space, energy, and flow. And in the first three years of really focusing on cultivating space, energy, and flow by bringing my adrenaline into balance, I felt like that then brought me to a place where I was like, you know, the next hormone I kind of want to focus on is insulin.

[00:18:25]>> Okay. Okay. Almost there. Cuz I was I was I was going to say, let's do some recap first >> because we're I I was with you. I'm like, let's go to insulin in a moment.

[00:18:34]So to recap for everybody, I want you to get this visual. And maybe you can all think of your own bodies. Like think about something about your body you don't like. What I want you to understand is that's the shape of your body. The felt sense of that body, how you experience that body, how well it moves, how well it sleeps, how well it recovers, has to do with how much adrenaline that body is producing. So when you hear Camille say, "My first thing was adrenaline. I just wanted to focus on what's creating the most stress." So she wasn't thinking about weight loss. She wasn't thinking about health. She wasn't thinking about calories. She was thinking what creates less stress response. And as you So, everyone listening, first of all, you should get my book if you don't have it, food therapy, cuz it in that book, it perfectly beautifully curates you into how to start doing this in a way that's titrated and trauma informed and practices around, you know, the emotions that come up and such. But when you started just as I did in my life titrating in the balancing foods, the foods that actually lower that output of adrenaline, then you started gaining a peace and ease in your body before the shape of your body even transformed. And it might have been like slow transformation things that wouldn't even be noticeable to you. But the felt sense change. And I really want people to hear that because you could have the same body right now that you're sitting in that hurts, that feels bloated, that you hate, that you're overwhelmed in, you have anxiety in, and in 5 hours that body could transform based on what you eat next. And that's a very different way to understand food for the nervous system versus I have to eat this way for 8 months to lose 50 lbs if I'm lucky.

[00:20:07]I'm taking 30 seconds to remind you that the most overlooked resource for recovering from stress and trauma is nutrition. The foods you eat and the beverages you drink have the power to affect your fight orflight response, your mental health, and even your perception of the world around you. And that's why I took 20 years of personal and professional experience and put it all into my new book, Food Therapy, which is out now. You can pick it up at your favorite local or online retailer today. Now, let's get back to the episode.

[00:20:37]Two different worlds >> they are. But I will also say I did lose weight over that period cuz even though I wasn't weighing myself, I did, again, for listeners who know, um, I got pregnant. Um, and then, uh, the day I gave birth, they weighed me. And usually throughout my pregnancy, I kind of like just dissociated whenever they weighed me. But I was like, hell, you know, she's about to come out. Let's just see what the number is. Um, and I was 300 lb. And that's like nine months pregnant.

[00:21:07]>> Yeah. And so I was like, "So that means I'm probably like 275." I was like, "Oh." And then this is probably over about two a little less than two years.

[00:21:15]So I was like, "Oh, it's been a little less than two years and I've lost 50 pounds."

[00:21:18]>> Wow.

[00:21:19]>> By just focusing on adrenaline.

[00:21:22]>> I love that so much because another thing for people to understand is one function of your adrenaline is to drive up glucose. So when you have more adrenaline, you usually have more insulin. And now we can go into that cuz more insulin means more fat storage. And I think this is the most um misunderstood piece around weight loss in general is the insulin piece because we just tend to attribute insulin to people who have diabetes or or pre-diabetic. You rarely hear any doctor or anyone talk about insulin unless you fall into that category, which is a shame because that's usually when people feel like it's too late, which it's not.

[00:21:58]I've had many people reverse it, but you know, you don't hear about it until you're in the trenches of it. But insulin is being created as we sit here and talk right now. If you had a carbohydrate today, if you're getting stressed out, if you're drinking some coffee, if you're smoking a cigarette, if you're smelling perfume, if you're getting excited, all those things have an adrenal effect and that brings your glucose up a little bit and that makes you make a little insulin. So when you make insulin, your body makes it to drive your glucose down because too much glucose is actually highly toxic to the body and will kill you. So your your first line of defense is the pancreas secretes this hormone known as insulin drives that glucose down. Now it drives the glucose down by storing it in your body's fat cells. So insulin is literally the hormone responsible for storing fat. Now many other hormones can conspire and create a lot of metabolic issues and issues with fat storage and nutrition and hunger and satiet sati. I could never say that >> satiety.

[00:22:58]>> Satiety. Sat oh satiety. Okay. Sat satiety cues. Sat I'm going to name my daughter satiety. my next topic. Um, so what we're what the insulin has a a lot of other hormones have play a role in all those different cues and hunger and such, but insulin is the hormone that stores that glucose into your fat cells.

[00:23:19]Its job is to grow your fat cells with glucose.

[00:23:23]That is so important because when you first understand the adrenaline piece, that's the felt sense piece, everybody.

[00:23:28]That's when you feel that that frustration, that overwhelm, the anxiety, the panic, that's the adrenaline. So, when you're eating to lower that, you are also simultaneously lowering your insulin because the less adrenaline you make, the less glucose spikes you're going to have, even if you're eating sugar, cuz the adrenaline is going to just increase those glucose spikes, which increases more insulin production. So, less adrenaline naturally makes less insulin, and that means there's less fat storage. So this is why there's this beautiful pathway here of when you're eating at a trauma-informed way for peace, not for health or weight loss in particular, and you gain that peace, you feel that body settling, you are simultaneously not going to store as much fat because your insulin goes down. Now for you, what I'm curious about, last year in my experience was like your boost year >> because you had these 50 pounds over two years and then you seemed like you kind of just stabilized for a year.

[00:24:26]>> Yeah. And then we saw you in the beginning of last year, May. You definitely had lost weight from the year before, but this last year was like bam.

[00:24:33]Like when I saw you in Costa Rica, I was like, where are you? Where'd you go? Where'd your other half go? You know, and so I'm so curious about like what did you do when you started focusing on insulin? What were your changes?

[00:24:45]>> Yeah. So, um, I kind of just saw insulin as a continuation of my work with adrenaline. uh in particular still focusing on how I can feel when I'm having an insulin spike in the same way I can feel when I'm having an adrenaline spike you know in the brown communities we like to call insulin spike the itis you know like I don't like having that super super big crash that really groggy low feeling so what would it be like to eat to not experience that in addition to you know I was wear like high levels of of insulin, increase inflammation, and that's something I'm still working on. I like to to to feel good in my body, so lowering in insulin can can do that. Um, and so there weren't like super super amounts of changes that I made. It was just like as we did the nutrition course, as you shared more around carbohydrates in particular, just tweaking rather than eliminating. So whether it was the order in which I in which I ate, that was just something um that I did or even something I'd already been doing with my children, really prescribing it to myself, which was no sugar in isolation. Always pair it with a a fiber, fat or protein. Um and I my boss is better than yours. He got me a walking pad. And so I was like, if I >> Oh, yes, I did. Oh, yes, I did.

[00:26:14]And I know they're >> always you use that if if we had like stickers like you know how like you know different companies would be like do this and you get a free vacation >> you'd be the Bermuda like Ma and Ev and I would be trailing Evan would be trailing behind most but we'd all be trailing behind. You'd be in Bermuda you'd get all the points.

[00:26:31]>> Well I was I figured like let me use it.

[00:26:34]He got it for me. Let's see. And I liked how I felt. I didn't necessarily lose weight. I didn't know how what my insulin levels were, but I liked how I felt after walking. And I know some people are going to be thinking like, well, you know, so you were expending more calories, that's why you lost weight. Sure. Are calories going to be a part of it? Maybe. But let me be really clear, y'all. Luis knows this. I like to saunter. Okay. So, we're not talking about any speed walking here. I am sacheting. But I think part of it and and you've talked about this is the muscle movement again soaking up the insulin, soaking up the glucose which helps lower my insulin. So my I think these what I do consider to be small tweaks significantly impacted the level of insulin in my body which allowed my body to switch from primarily a fat storing mode to a fat using mode.

[00:27:26]>> What I love about that story for everyone listening is you are still eating carbohydrates.

[00:27:30]>> Yeah. You were still eating sugar, >> right? You still drink alcohol.

[00:27:35]>> I do.

[00:27:36]>> You I do. I guess I do. You know, when we went to Costa Rica, like you that was your that was your kind of big weighin where you told us how much you lost.

[00:27:46]>> And you know, for a lot of people, I know for me it would be like I lost that much. I had to be really careful. You know, if I was in my old days of weight loss, >> you enjoyed yourself. You had double portions when you wanted to. You were double servings when you wanted to. You had delicious cake. We had so many delicious desserts together. You had sandwiches. You know, it's like there was no depriving yourself because you were doing it through a different lens.

[00:28:09]You're you're feeling your body. You're doing the tweaks. You're doing all these little pieces around movement, the order you eat them in. Are they refined? Are they unrefined? Are you having fat with them? Are you having them by themselves?

[00:28:20]You learn how to eat carbohydrates.

[00:28:23]And I think it's um you know, we do this six-month nutrition group. It's coming up on July 7th. And I believe it's month three. Yes, month three is the connection to carbohydrates. It's on the website if I'm wrong. But each month of these six months, Camille and I dive into a specific nutrient and a specific emotional piece around food and how it how it relates to us nutritionally, biochemically, and sematically, emotionally. And the the month on carbohydrates is really where we teach people how to eat them, >> which is so much more sustainable than teaching people not to eat them. Because when you learn how to eat a carbohydrate, you actually get to lower the insulin response your body has to the carbs. So, you're still getting the delicious, soothing, pleasurable, nutritional benefits of a carbohydrate without all the insulin response, which means all the fat storage. How has it been for you to actually practice it and see tremendous weight loss, not having to I mean, think about all the diets you've done in the past. Like, you haven't restricted yourself of anything.

[00:29:25]>> No. No, I haven't restricted myself of of anything. But and what has been interesting with this exploration with food and nutrition is that my I think part particularly because of the work I'm I've been doing with as it relates to my insulin levels, my cravings have dramatically shifted and changed. And so I'm not even craving the same things. Like, you know, I've talked about this in other spaces. Oh, I used to love me a Snickers. Now I can Oh, Snickers. They were my jam. And um I had one last uh last year and I was just like, this is Oh my gosh.

[00:30:06]>> Okay. What happened? Cuz I did this with the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. What happened when you had the Snickers?

[00:30:10]>> The way I describe it is that it was too loud. Like that was the first thing when I went when I bit into it. That was like the immediate thing. Like I wanted to cover my ears. It was just I was just like, "Oh, it's too loud." Like I And I never thought I'd be the person to say this. I actually prefer salted almonds and blackberries.

[00:30:28]>> Ah, get out. Get the >> to stickers now. Well, I still have the stickers. Sure. But it I don't y'all I'm telling you, I used to be able to put like eight, nine, 10 of those fun side and like kill it. And but I there there's not >> I don't have the capacity or the desire to do that I anymore. And that's different than any other like food or diet protocol I've done before where it was always like when can I can I get back to it? And then there was it was always just like this this this binge rush would would come back into play.

[00:31:00]>> Well, you had the experience that you know Claudia Sarat who's been on the podcast before calls it decolonizing your taste buds.

[00:31:07]>> You know, decolonizing your diet. Like you've had that experience through this.

[00:31:10]that that's what I'm really trying to teach people is how do you get back to this animal body being lit by whole foods.

[00:31:18]>> Yes.

[00:31:18]>> Not like I'm making it, but like I'm lit by because what you just said, that noise when that when those dopamine levels come down because you're not getting the dopamine hit from all the foods, these seemingly bland foods like a baked potato becomes like a wonderland for my tongue and my body, you know?

[00:31:36]It's incredible. And I recently had this experience in LA in the mini bar. There was a Kit Kat and I was like I used to pound a Kit Kat. Like I would eat two whole things and just like it was no big deal while I was driving or walking >> and I broke the piece off, you know, gave myself the break and I started eating it. And and what I love about it is, you know, I come from such restrictive eating patterns after being uh in binge eating patterns for so long that I would go into extreme restricting, like demonizing foods, calling them toxic, like evil, all that stuff. And so to just open it and eat it already felt like deep recovery cuz there was no fear. It was an experiment, like what's going to happen? I ate half of one of the sticks and I was just feeling it and if it tasted like plastic, first of all, it tasted like like creamy.

[00:32:28]Plastic's not the word. There's a better word for it.

[00:32:32]>> You know, like um you know, like palm oil has a certain texture. I I can't really describe right now. Wax. That's what it was. Wax.

[00:32:40]>> It tastes like chocolate flavored wax.

[00:32:42]Mhm.

[00:32:43]>> And the sugar and the additives had that thing that you're talking about, the loudness. It was loud. And I remember like waiting for the loudness to pass.

[00:32:51]And then I finished the rest of the one piece I broke off and I threw the rest of it in the garbage. And it was the same feeling of like nothing in me wants this. I was like the nostalgia was taking me to let's just enjoy a Kit Kat.

[00:33:05]>> It was so unenjoyable. And then I had the same experience. I in my in my mini fridge I had blueberries and I had some salted cashews and I just ate those and I'm like this is the Like this is the good This is where it's at now. You tell me that I'd be doing that 20 years ago, I would have laughed in your face.

[00:33:23]>> Laughed. Laughed cuz Yeah. I mean I experience it with various forms of whole foods. Like even now I I will find myself in the kitchen. Oh, I'm just so hungry.

[00:33:34]I want me a chicken thigh. like instead of like look look cuz it used to be like where are the donuts where you know but now I'm like I want me a baked chicken thigh and I but I can feel that craving but I don't necessarily have the craving for the ultrarocessed carbohydrates anymore which is >> so liberating in so many different ways.

[00:33:54]so liberating and then when you when you are confronted or presented is a better word with like a beautiful slice of delicious you know vanilla layer cake >> you're like I'm just going to enjoy this.

[00:34:06]>> Yes.

[00:34:06]>> And you have the liberation to enjoy it and maybe you eat the whole thing cuz every bite is amazing. Maybe you have two bites and that's enough like the Kit Kat. Like you find your way >> but you're so liberated to choose but you don't need it. It's like you actually want the other foods and this is a bonus sometimes for of pleasure.

[00:34:24]>> Yes.

[00:34:24]>> Um but you had said something I wanted to just review about how less insulin means less cravings.

[00:34:30]>> Something for people to really hear is when your pancreas is putting out insulin like I said that the purpose is to drive the glucose out of your blood and into your fat cells. Now consider that your brain runs on glucose. It's literally fuel for your brain. Like if your brain was an engine, right? And glucose is gasoline. So when that glucose leaves the bloodstream, your brain is now thirsty for glucose. It's like, I can't think. I need something.

[00:34:55]So your brain forces your body to go seek out something that gives you a quick hit of glucose. So potato chips, crackers, pastas, cookies, sodas, sugar, it wants those things. It wants a quick hit because now it's glucose starved. So the more insulin spikes you have and the more consistent through the day or chronic insulin spikes you have, the more carb and sugar addiction you actually have by design. And so the fact that you real and I've realized this too, when your insulin starts going down, right? You start noticing, whoa, I'm not even craving the donuts. Like when I'm when I'm hungry, I'm actually hungry for nutrients. And then this is where we go into the stress and trauma conversation because stress and trauma requires a certain amount of nutrition to recover from it. You know, it is it is a stressful experience for the body to experience stress. We think of it mentally, but it actually stresses out the body when we go through something stressful.

[00:35:51]>> So your cells, your nerves, your hair, your liver, your your lungs, everything needs to be replenished from these experiences and nutrients from whole foods replenish it. So you're binging or the way I would binge or even comfort eating, it's rooted in this instinctive survival mechanism of trying to get more nutrients to recover from the stressful event. But the the the food that lacks nutrients or I should say the food that we want the most, the processed foods also are the most malnourishing food. So we don't get the nutrients, we get the calories, we get the sugar, but we don't get the amino acids, the antioxidants, the vitamins, minerals, the polyphenols.

[00:36:27]We don't get any of those things. And so we just get more of an insulin response, more of a stress response, more cravings, more fat storage. So I wanted to say that because someone in our groups before says this beautiful phrase of being metabolically captured. And most people that are just desperate to lose weight or to heal their rash or to lower their cholesterol and they just can't. They eat foods they know they shouldn't eat, but they're eating them anyway. they're metabolically captured and that means their their metabolism is completely transformed and compromised because of their hormones and their body chemistry and their brain chemistry. So, it's not their fault. They have all this chemistry working against their desire to eat differently. So, if you focus on the adrenaline like Camille and I are talking about, the insulin starts to come down on its own, which means you have less cravings, less food noise, way more capacity to choose what you want to eat. Then the insulin keeps coming down.

[00:37:21]Then the fat storage comes down and all the other things connected to insulin.

[00:37:25]You know, heart issues come down, cholesterol comes down, blood pressure comes down, skin issues, like all these other things come down. And this is why I love teaching people whether it's pure somatic work without food or it's food or it's both. When you're focused on your nervous system, so many other things benefit. It's kind of like the root of your body's health is your nervous system. And that's why you can have people who can lose 200 lb by completely stressing out their nervous system and their adrenals and then by the time they get to their goal weight, I lost all this weight. This is great.

[00:37:57]They completely crash and burn out, go to those foods that come for them again and gain the weight, sometimes twice the amount back. So I really think if the focus is on the nervous system, all this starts to fall into place.

[00:38:09]What would you say just we have a few more minutes about our nutrition group for people that are hearing this because we don't market it as a weight loss group. It's called embody nutrition for a reason. It's like let's feel our food and the relationship underneath it. What would you add to that for people listening around this conversation?

[00:38:25]>> Well, yeah, because it don't I I I would recommend you not join if your goal is to I'm gonna figure out how to how to lose weight or I'm gonna lose x amount of weight by the end of of of the program. Um, instead it really is what what I think or I think it really is truly related to the title embodied nutrition. This is about having a conscious awareness of the impact that foods have on your body. And then with that conscious awareness, you get to decide what choices you you want to make. And by impact, I don't even mean is this going to cause you to gain weight or or is it going to cause you to lose weight. Again, we're going to be focusing on more immediate forms of impact. And you get to decide, do do I like feeling groggy in the morning? Or did having that ice cream right before I go to bed put me in this place where I feel groggy? So maybe I don't have the ice cream as late. Maybe I'll have it a little bit earlier and maybe when I have the ice cream, I'll have some salted almonds with it um to to help back, you know, we'll we'll explore those things so that you can decide how you want to be in relationship with food to cultivate the life you want to live.

[00:39:35]Yeah. And as you're saying that, even how you're saying like salted almonds before you have the ice cream. My favorite thing to teach people is we will show you how to bring the balancers in to kind of support the comfort foods even because if your diet's just based in the comfort eating, you'll have this metabolic capture. But you can kind of wiggle in there with some foods before and after you eat comfort foods. You can still eat the foods that you love to eat and find pleasure and even safety in eating, but reduce some of that metabolic capture. then you have much more space in your body. And and I really agree coming into a group like this because you want to lose weight. I understand it.

[00:40:12]>> Uh but I want people to come in because they want to explore the relationship they have with food. They want to explore the unseen emotions or traumas that propel, you know, and motivate their food decisions. They want to learn the chemistry of food. Like all that is going to be way more successful. And the reason why I wanted to talk to Camille about this today is cuz you you've lived it these last 5 years. you know, you didn't know a thing about nutrition and then you took it and through a sematic approach. You know a lot about it now cuz you co-e but just following the sematic approach those first two years you were down 50 lbs. But before the 50 lbs came off your body was feeling much more open, much more settled, your sleep was better, your parenting was better, you were dropping into your life because of food. From that balanced place, you had weight loss. Because the cool thing about the animal body is once it's balanced, it then lets everything else come into balance.

[00:41:04]>> Yes.

[00:41:04]>> So your blood pressure, your pulse, your cholesterol, you know, your nutrient load, your hunger, your weight, sleep, all those things come into balance because that nervous system isn't working so hard.

[00:41:18]>> I agree. I agree. And it's it was helpful for me to let those things unfurl as they they would rather than I'm eating so I sleep more or I'm eating to lower my blood pressure. I'm eat Yeah, it just it was really helpful to take my focus to more near-term effects understanding or not even understanding but then experiencing the long-term effects how they just unfurled naturally. And even as you say that, I just want to close with saying I'm I'm hearing through you and I'm feeling from my own experience. There's actually less to do with this approach. Like you're not in the driver's seat in this interesting way. You're kind of learning how to feed this animal body, then you're letting your animal body take over >> versus I should lose two pounds a week or I should have this much protein.

[00:42:06]We're just like, no, let the body show you. It's a very interesting. It's not passive necessarily, but it's like a permitting kind of way of doing it where you're learning with your body in real time and and it's showing you >> a lot of ideology or like clenching of the fist going into it.

[00:42:20]>> No. And I know we got to wrap, but I will say like really quickly to that point, I I this is what I would describe as intuitive eating. I feel like too many times people misunderstand intuitive eating as I feel like I want to eat it, so I'm going to eat it. And then they're like, "Well, if I ate that, then I would just continue to have continue to be obese and and have high blood pressure and have high d diabetes." For me, intuitive eating is exactly what you described. Coming into conscious awareness of what my body is craving and what is potentially the unmet need, finding other ways to meet that need, and then also then making nutrition choices that support the life I want to live.

[00:42:58]>> That's right. Okay. Okay. Well, everyone, if you go to the episode details, you can see the you can click on the link and go right to the page to join the six-month group. The best thing about the six-month group is you have ongoing one-on-one support on our private circle space with Camille and with Unique Hammond, who's a nutritionist and a bean expert.

[00:43:19]Certified bean basic bean is what she's called.

[00:43:22]>> I say bean queen.

[00:43:23]>> Bean, she is the bean queen. Uh so you have like pretty amazing an incredible somatic therapist in Camille and an incredible nutritionist in unique 5 days a week on circle that that's a pretty big deal. So please uh consider joining if you want that kind of support and you want to learn with us. All the information is on that website. Thank you Camille and congratulations for falling in love with your body and seeing what it does.

[00:43:47]>> Oh thank you. I appreciate it.

[00:43:51]>> Thank you for watching today's episode.

[00:43:53]Please like and subscribe if you found it useful and let me know in the comments what you want me to cover next.

[00:44:05]I have developed a 4-week self-paced course that takes 18 years of my personal and professional experience and puts it into one place where you can easily and quickly learn the foundations of recovering from stress and trauma.

[00:44:19]How does the food you eat affect your stress levels? How do the relationships in your life create stress or peace? How does the relationship you have with your body allow you to feel happier and more settled? I will cover all this and so much more in this 4-week self-paced course. And the best part, it's self-paced. You don't have to sign up at a certain date or finish it at a certain time. It's yours for life and it's waiting there for you when you're ready to finish it. Throughout this course, I'll be teaching you philosophies and practices that combine my three favorite modalities: somatic experiencing, embodied parts work, and nutrition. For more information on this course, click on the link in my episode details.

[00:45:02]On September 6th, I am leading the most majestic retreat I have ever led to date. I will be flying myself and my entire team over to the UK at the Enchanted Broton Sanctuary, a 30,000 acre retreat center that's currently being rewed with native plants and trees to restore it to its indigenous roots.

[00:45:21]And I'm hosting a retreat called Finding Safety in Yourself and others through the land. Anyone who joins gets to experience a week of learning from me and my team in addition to demos, collective sematic ceremonies, lectures, delicious bean-based meals, and deep connection time with this special special land. Our classroom is a portal to pleasure called Avalon. And it includes an indoor swimming pool, sauna, steam room, hot tub, and lounge. And get this, it's all ours, completely private for the entire week. For more information, please visit holisticlifenavavigation.com and click on events or check out the link in the episode details. Spots are limited, so make sure to reserve yours now.