105. Emotional Eating and Marriage

Welcome to the Connected For Real podcast. I'm Rebbetzin Bat-Chen Grossman, a marriage coach for women in business. And my mission is to bring God's presence into your life, into your marriage and into your business. Let's get started.

And we are live! Welcome everyone to the Connected For Real podcast. I am Rebbetzin Bat-Chen Grossman. I'm a marriage coach for women in business. And as you know, we are talking about the four pillars. God is at the core, marriage and business have to work together, and you are the fourth pillar, and you are These holds it all together, right?

So you contain all the parts of your life. And that is why we need all four pillars to be in balance and working together in order to create flow. Now, this month, the focus is food. And specifically today, we're talking about food and marriage. And who better guess? To have about this topic, then Justine Friedman.

Okay, Justine, first introduce yourself, tell everyone why you're so awesome and why you have to be the person to talk about this. And then we'll get right into it. Thank you. And I'm so excited to be here with you today. I think we spoke a while back about me coming and talking to on your podcast. So obviously now is the perfect time for it.

And I have been working. Wow. I'm going to give my age away for about 25 years now as a clinical dietitian and a mindset mentor, which means that I am not only worried about what people are eating. I am worried, not worried. I am motivated to also help them improve the relationship that they have with food, with themselves, with their bodies, because it's not only about the food that we eating so many women come to me saying, I know what to do.

I know what to eat, but I can't do it. And it affects every aspect of their lives. So really for me, what is important is I help women to understand their bodies, understand what their unique bodies need, because there's so much different advice out there. You can binge watch, get downloaded of everything that's on social media, on chat, GPT, on Google.

Of what to eat and how to eat but unless it is right for you It is the wrong advice So I really help my clients to be able to understand what is uniquely right for them Whether it's healthy or not It can be healthy for one person and not for somebody else as well as to help them overcome some struggles and challenges that they may have with food in their body.

And the most important thing for me is that my clients do not feel deprived or restricted because that is a recipe for a poor relationship with ourselves and with food. And again, as I said, if it starts with food in our bodies, it's going to affect every aspect of our lives as well. Yes, I love it. So

Let's get into food and marriage because I think that, you know, there's so much of a correlation. We use food, obviously, as a way to nurture, a way to show love, a way to connect, and also a way to escape. And, you know, almost like Calm the nervous system down or sort of just like bottle it in and push it down.

So let's start there. Let's hear what you have to say Okay. So first of all, I think that as women yes, we use food For from a nurturing point of view, I always joke because I see it with my son more than anybody else. The way to his heart is definitely through his stomach.

So I think we show love through the food that we give. I know so many of my clients will always say to their kids and their husbands, what special meal would you like for Shabbos this week? So we want to show love through the food that we are giving others. But the issue sometimes is that we don't always do the same thing for ourselves.

We don't say, what foods do you enjoy? What foods really do you feel nourishes you and puts you in a good mood? Now, 90 percent of the time with women, we are more reactive with food. We are like, I'm feeling this. I need to eat this in order to feel better and it's not always the right solution because as you mentioned when we are feeling a certain way and we are using food to soothe us to suppress some very difficult emotions that we might be experiencing.

If we aren't expressing to ourselves how we are feeling. And we're using food to suppress how we feeling it's also keeps us in a very negative cycle. So it causes us to feel disconnected from our bodies and to ignore sometimes what our body's telling us. So because our emotions take over, and I think as women, we are generally Very emotional and we can speak a little bit about how at different ages and stages of our life, though, the emotions can also play a role with the foods that we choose to eat when we experience these flow of emotions and emotions are energy in motion.

They never permanent when we riding the wave of those emotions and we are always choosing foods that are linked to those emotions. Then we are not always paying close attention to what our body might actually be saying I need. So when I'm feeling anxious, I feel the need to eat. What do I go and eat?

The chocolate bar that I've got lying on my desk, okay? Because it's, I've got all this nervous energy inside of me and I don't know what to do with it. So it feels like I need chocolate, not that there's anything wrong with eating chocolate to calm down. As you said, to like slow down that nervous system activity that I've got going, but the repercussion of that.

Is that I may feel then that my blood sugar level is unstable. I get more anxious afterwards. My blood sugar level then drops. I feel more irritable. I feel more moody. And we get ourselves stuck in the cycle of, of reactive eating and making choices based on that. And then we wonder why are we feeling so terrible by the end of the day?

And we have no energy. So it's about unraveling all of that. It's about learning. And I'm sure you do this with all of your clients, whether it's in your masterminds or your one to ones. When we are able to really go inside and recognize what's going on in our inner world and learn what. is the most ideal food to nourish our body, then we can blend the two together.

We can eat foods that are incredibly nourishing and still have the chocolate, but do it in a way that is less reactive. And I think that's really important. Why is that important for marriage is because if we are not feeling good within ourselves Our partner says something our children say something at work We experience something and we react to that and then we use food in that moment we're not actually dealing with what the core issue is and it can create a Not only a poor relationship with us and food, but food becomes the crutch in dealing with our other Relationships and that's the wrong reason to be using food, right?

Yeah. We use food as you know, almost like the in between the go to instead of really dealing with the issue and a lot of times it's Not very helpful. So what, what do you do with your clients? How do you help them bypass the food and still not feel like they're deprived of food, right? So it's like, you don't need the chocolate bar in order to deal with this emotion, but you're totally allowed to have the chocolate bar when you're conscious about enjoying the chocolate bar.

That's what I would, I would say. Absolutely. So it's about, I think the consciousness behind it. I'm going to answer your question, but more than that, I want to just bring into our discussion today, the energy of the month of Shvat, because the rectification and the energy of the month of Shvat is all about healing.

The relationship that we have with anything that we eat. It is the perfect time to actually be having this conversation. Okay. So if we can bring that energy and draw that energy into the conversation, then I know that the right messaging will also come out. So when we are feeling those emotions. And we feel that we need food in order to soothe them or to deal with them and cope with them.

It's like putting a plaster over a very big searing wound. It may look like we're covering it up. It may look like it's healed, but there's still stuff going on underneath that. If a client and I have many of them who are dealing with a lot of emotional eating and I think now especially with what's going on with the war in Israel, it's been even more heartened.

There's a lot more comfort eating that's going on. There's a lot more emotional eating because there are more emotions that we're dealing with that feel very unsafe and very uncomfortable and they're scary for us. So I'll give you a personal example, if I feel anxious. And my husband's asked me to do something that makes me then feel overwhelmed, even though he may not mean that I need to do it right then right now in the moment.

My personality is if he says this needs to be done, I think it has to be done like this. And he's actually saying he's reminds me, I'm telling you, this is something that needs to be done, but it doesn't need to be done now. So he's learned that that's important for him to say that to me in the past. If he'd tell me to do something and I started going through in my head, I've got this to do that.

And I go through the list of all the millions of things I have to do. And now he's adding something on the anxiety and overwhelm that I would feel in that moment. made me immediately feel like I needed to go and have something to eat immediately. So I think it is about having self awareness. That when you are feeling a certain emotion, there is that knee jerk reaction to want to eat something.

And for me, it's generally a combination of chocolate and nuts together. Like that just really hits the spot. Okay. There's the crunch with it. There's, there's the chocolate part. I mean, I think that's the best combination in the whole world, but what I started doing with myself and what I teach my clients to do is first of all, stop themselves and say, okay, you can eat that.

No problem. But first of all, let's ask ourselves one question. What am I feeling? Next question. Is eating that food going to solve how I'm feeling? Is it going to make me feel better? And then decide whether you're going to actually eat it or not. So a dialogue I would have with myself is I'm feeling anxious.

Why? I don't know, or I might know why. If I don't know why, it's also okay. Sometimes we get these, these feelings and emotions that come through our body, that we can't always identify where it's coming from. And that's also okay. We don't always have to be able to know what the source is. But it is valuable for us to be able to name what that emotion is.

So underneath this, in fact, I've got a chart of emotions and feelings chart that has all the main emotions and underneath that, like all the different other feelings that can come up. And it's very valuable to be able to actually identify more accurately what it is. So on a, that anxiety for me might actually be more of a depletion.

I've certainly been feeling that way this week. After the Pigu in Renana on Monday, I was exhausted on Tuesday and I kept getting this feeling of anxiety coming and it was actually a depletion. So once you can say to yourself, this is how I'm feeling, it already gives you the ability to not need to suppress that emotion.

Because you've expressed it. So it already takes down a notch or two of the need to eat something in that moment. Because the reason, as you mentioned in the beginning, that you would even want to eat that food is because you're trying to push down something uncomfortable that you're feeling. If it's out there, if you've acknowledged it, that electric charge around it already starts to reduce.

Then we say, okay, what do I feel like eating? What will make me feel better? Make me feel better? Okay, this is what I want. And then I'll say to myself, okay, is that really going to solve the problem? If I'm being honest with myself, the answer's no. The answer's no. If I'm not hungry, if my blood sugar level is stable, and I have an emotion, the chances are whatever I choose to eat in that moment is a temporary fix.

But it's really not going to take it away. So I'll say to myself, okay, this is how you're feeling. Let's do something else right now to see if we can shift that emotion. And in 15 20 minutes, if you still feel like you want to eat that, The Simcha, but then we're going to sit down, we're going to put it on a plate, we're going to look at the food, we're going to make a bracha, we're going to eat it, we're going to taste every bit of the texture and the flavors of that food, we're going to really be in pleasure with eating that food, we're going to finish.

We're going to thank ourselves for eating in such a cavotic way. We're going to make an after bracha. Don't worry if you don't make brachas. It's okay too. You can still go through the other processes. Not everybody is a Hebrew speaker or Jewish. So just, okay, so let me, okay, so let me unpack that.

Right. So if you're feeling that and you want to be eating that food, you're going to take it. You're going to put it on the plate. You're going to look at it. You're going to go, wow, this looks really good. And I'm already salivating because I know what it tastes like. I'm going to take that first bite.

I'm going to chew it slowly. I'm going to pay attention to the flavors of it. Is it salty? Is it sweet? Is it crunchy? Is it smooth? And as I digest it and, and swallow it, I'm going to enjoy every single mouthful. I'm then going to finish and I'm going to go, thank you. That was amazing. and move on with my day.

When we can do it like that, then first of all, knowing that we maybe haven't still dealt with the emotion, but we've approached food in a more respectful way. The respect that we have for the food. For what we're experiencing for how we've gone about eating it makes us feel a lot less of all the negative emotions that sometimes come from using food to suppress and soothe a difficult emotion because more than the emotion that we've experienced that may be difficult is the After effects of eating something that maybe we've promised ourselves we didn't really want to be eating or overindulging in.

And I think that this is sometimes where the other emotions come in. Then we start having guilt with what we've eaten. Then we start feeling shameful with what we've eaten, especially if we've eaten more than what we maybe would have liked to have. And then those emotions make us want to eat it more.

And we have this cycle that we get into. So if we can do it that way, if we can identify what the feeling is, That we are feeling. Bonus if we know what it is and where it's coming from. But even if we don't, if we can say, okay, before I go and eat that food that I really feel is going to be the fix for me, I'm going to leave where I'm sitting.

Generally, when I get anxious, it's because I'm sitting stationary and I know I need movement. I'm going to Go outside onto the patio. I'm going to take a few breaths in. I'm going to maybe make myself a cup of tea and sit there without my cell phone. Because obviously in that moment, if I'm using my cell phone, even then that's disconnecting me even further from what I'm feeling because I'm using that to distract me.

I'm going to sit there. I'm probably going to close my eyes. I'm going to breathe in and I'm going to acknowledge how I'm feeling. And allow myself to have that feeling and once it passes because A lot of the time it does, then I'm able to return to my day and then decide, am I still going to eat that food or not?

And if I want to have it fun and I'm going to eat it in the way that I described to you. So I think the other things we can do, we can put music on, we can dance around our house. We can draw something. We can listen to a podcast. We can get into the kitchen and tidy up. I'm trying to take us away from chores though.

Doing something that can nurture you in a different way, other than using food, Especially if you're not hungry and your blood sugar level is stable, then it allows you to have a more respectful relationship with food in your body and deal with the emotional side of things as well. Oh, I love that. Okay, so the thing that really jumps at me is the fact that you're putting the food on a plate and sitting down to eat.

Like, how many of us Go to the pantry, grab a handful of blah, blah, blah, whatever the thing is for you. And by the way, I found that even though I eat really healthy food, you know, I love dates and nuts. And I love healthy options and all these different things. Like, I really cleaned up my environment a lot.

Throughout my life, and I found the things that work for me even though all those things are in place. I still turn to food for an emotional fix and a lot of times I'll just grab a date. I'll check it while standing. I'll grab a bunch of you know almonds or whatever And I'll just like, you know, eat it on the go, or even just I'll grab a banana and while I'm doing something, I'll eat it totally not conscious of what I'm doing, like, Oh, how did the banana go so fast. And I don't take the time to plate it or to take, like you said, the respect that it deserves.

I think that for me is a real big takeaway. You know, when I do get conscious about, Oh, I'm in the mood for a banana and you know what, I'm going to put it on a plate. I'm going to put some peanut butter on it. I'm going to sprinkle some chia seeds and I'm going to make it into like a whole experience.

That's to me, that really does fill me up. A lot more than grabbing the banana and just like, you know, walking out with it. And that that's a really great point that you brought. Another thing that came out for me from what you said was knowing yourself and what things you need to be in place in order for you to connect.

So my method, the calm method is all about step one, connect to yourself. Right. And it's very tempting to just want to skip that. And be like, let me just go to the next step because I don't feel like it, but instead, you're like, wait, wait, wait, put your phone away, put the food away, but all the, all the ways that you numb the emotion away and just connect. You have to know what works for you.

So I'm going to give a couple of examples, what works for me, just so that you can get your wheels. turning for some things that are working for you and then maybe you can do the same. I find that when I get, especially when I'm decluttering, I get like antsy to eat something because it's a good excuse to not declutter.

You know, it's a wonderful way to get away from work. So, I'll tell myself, okay, just drink water. It might be that we're just thirsty and we think we're hungry. But, water is great because it's going to rehydrate me. It's going to make me more focused, going to give me more energy, and it's going to keep me moving without having to sit down and take the time out to think of what to eat or, or grab something, which we just said was.

You know, not respectful. So I like to drink water. I like to go outside. I think that air and sun are really healing and very helpful to connecting to yourself, right? There's a lot of noise in our heads. Like you said, a lot of the anxiety comes when you're in your bed or in your chair or just like stuck feeling like I don't feel like getting up.

I don't feel like moving. I just want to stay here and veg, you know, and that feeling comes with all the emotions just sort of pile or almost like pool, you know, like you're sitting so they're just pooling. They're not moving through you. They're stuck. And if you can get up and move, Even just walk outside.

It doesn't have to be for a long time. It doesn't even have to be far. Sometimes I just go outside my door and I see the sun. I'm like, okay, you know, take a deep breath. Allow yourself to let it through you. Let it, let it move. Don't get stuck in it. I find that this really helpful for people.

And the last thing that I wanted to say about what you said was about being aware of the emotions. And something that I love about, there's a, there's a book by Dr. Sarno about how to heal back pain without surgery. And there he says, you don't even have to know what the emotional thing that's going on.

Like you don't have to go into it. You don't have to solve it. You don't have to fix it. You don't have to deal with it. You just have to tell your body. I'm aware that I'm going through something emotional and that you're trying to help me. So thank you, but I don't need your help. I can handle it. And that's it. You don't have to do anything.

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Now back to the show.

 If we can. Yes. And I think what I love about what you said is, and it's important is that we are in a results driven world where things have to be fixed. If it's not fixed, then it must be broken. And there's a, and it's okay that that there's an intermediate.

Phase between those two, it's okay that it's not fixed and it's also okay that it's not, it's not like falling apart. It's okay that there's an in-between, between those two things, and to be able to get comfortable with some of that discomfort also gives us the ability to not want to immediately have that knee jerk reaction.

to either solve something and if we can't then eat in order to help that. The other thing that I found really helpful, and this is part of the connecting to ourselves from your calm method, you'll see if you can't go outside, and look at the sun or close your eyes and breathe and put something away.

Connecting to you just sometimes takes putting your hand here by your heart. That's it. Sometimes I have to put both and it's a pressure. What is it doing? It's drawing my attention To an inner world and also connecting me to my heart center, which allows me also to feel just pausing, just stopping for a moment.

And especially at a time like this, I feel like when we are experiencing all of those ranges of emotions, we just need to feel grounded and safe. So putting off both our feet on the floor, because most of us as women tend to sit with our feet and our legs crossed over. Feet on the floor, I'm feeling the ground, I'm feeling inside, I'm connecting to myself, and then I can breathe through that and move on.

And I think that in itself, even if we can't move from where we are, also gives us The ability to connect with who we are in that moment and to say, okay, I'm, I'm having a hard day. This feels difficult. I don't have to solve it. I don't have to know where it's coming from right now. I'm having a bit of a difficult time.

Maybe you can ask yourself, what can I do to make a change? And there's so much more you can do with that. What I love doing with my clients is also reparenting. inner woundedness that they experience. Generally when we triggered and I'm sure you experienced this with your clients as well. When we triggered, it's not our adult mature part of us that is having that reaction.

It's a much more primitive feeling and maybe younger version of ourselves that's having that reaction. And when we can recognize that as well and sit with her and identify it and give her the space to be heard and to say why she's having that reaction. When the adult part of us has taken over. We are able to access our logical brain more.

And the choices that we make are far more grounded, level headed. And again, then we don't necessarily need the foods to cover up something that's really trying to get us out, get our attention on the inside. Yeah, I love that. I love it. I love the grounding, you know, sometimes in the middle of a fight, in the middle of anything, I'll just be like, one second.

Takes literally 10 seconds right to put your feet on the ground and just throw all your energy down into it and just cleanse, you know, like there's so much going on inside right now. Like all the thoughts, all the emotions. So I'm thinking of what I can respond and what this means and how this will affect my Children.

Like all the things are happening all at the same time. Let me just throw all that into the ground and start over. You know, what do I really want? What do I want? And what am I going to, you know, my next step is pray for what am I going to ask for? How am I going to move forward? And so it's, it's something that is so, so crucial for us to be able to learn and know.

But I want to get more into how our relationship with food affects our marriage, because there is a real, there's a real interaction there that is sometimes You know, a little bit of running the show behind the scenes. So I think there are many levels at play here. I think as women, we don't pay enough attention to our monthly cycle and then how that affects the food choices that we're going to make, our emotions and our relationship with our husband.

And we expect ourselves to be the same every single day, to be constant. And we are not. From the time that we are young girls and we start menstruating, especially in those first few years, once our cycle calms down enough, like at the age of about 20, generally 18, 20, we're going to go through this wave throughout the month.

And when certain of our hormones are higher, we feel more confident. We feel like we can connect better with our husband. We feel like we can connect better with other people. We are motivated. And then we have these drops in our certain hormones right close to our cycle where we don't want to be with anybody else.

We don't want to look at our husband. We have no desire to connect with him on a physical level and that. Dip in hormone is what actually also causes cravings then. And then, you know, around your cycle. A lot of women find that they get those cravings for sweet or savory.

We think there's something wrong with us. Instead of acknowledging that it's actually totally normal. And for us to understand that food can play a very big role in how we manage our hormone fluctuations during the month, which also has an impact on whether we want to connect with other people, whether we want to connect with our husband or not, even just on an emotional level, nevermind like a, like an actual physical level as well, that the foods that we are eating can affect how.

greatly those hormone levels of either rising or dropping. So I mean, it's crazy to think that it's like that can be that connection, but it is. And also when we are finding that we are making more poor choices from a food point of view, foods that are going to boost our energy and blood sugar level quickly, but then dip us back down again afterwards, even though we feel like that quick fix is going to help us, the after effects of it often leave us moody.

irritable and not really happy within ourselves. And when we are feeling irritable and moody, first of all, we don't want to be in our own body. But second of all, we don't even want to be connecting with the people that are really important to us. And then how does that spill over into marriage? Your husband can come in through the door and say the same thing to you.

One, when your blood sugar level is stable and another when it's just dropped and you will react completely differently. So the comment, the statement that he may have made is so neutral, but depending on where you are in the day, whether you've eaten, you haven't eaten what you've chosen to eat and whether your blood sugar level has just crashed or not will have an effect on how you are now going to interact with him, your children, how you interact with your children, so much more so.

So understanding that you have these Fluctuations in energy in hormones and that the best way to deal with it besides the inner work that we've spoken about is through keeping your blood sugar level stable throughout the day makes such a big difference. The other thing that a lot of women have an issue with is when they're feeling uncomfortable in their body.

Maybe they've picked up weight. Maybe they've been always desperately, desperately trying to lose weight. They're trying different diets. They're doing things that are more restrictive and causes them to feel deprived. You know, when you are really using all your energy towards staying on a diet, to eating as little as possible, or eating foods that maybe you don't even enjoy, and depriving yourself of certain foods that maybe you really love, what is your mood like?

Awful. Horrible. Then we have no Capacity to have a relationship with somebody else, because again, we's fighting with ourselves. So I'm not telling you not to take care of your weight, but I'm saying the way that you go about doing it is incredibly important. Not only because we want to have good relationships with our husband and we want to build strong marriages, but because first of all, we want to have a good relationship with ourselves.

We want to be able to get up in the morning and not be saying to ourselves, today's the day I'm not eating this. And I'm only going to start eating at this time. And at four o'clock, when I normally reach for that, something that I want, I will not have it today because today I'm being good. And then. As the day goes on, the less we've eaten, the lower energy we have, all we need is somebody to walk through the door and say, hi.

And we like, that's it. I can't deal with you right now. And I'm reaching for the food and the cycle starts again. And then you go to bed at night thinking, I can't believe I did it again. I was going to be so good and I was going to only eat these foods and I was never going to eat those foods ever again.

And, and and I couldn't, and now. Broken my promise to myself and I can't trust myself around food. So even though it's affecting our marriage, it is first of all affecting us. So as woman to have a peaceful relationship with food and our body is a cornerstone of developing a healthy marriage as well.

Because when we feel more comfortable in our body, more confident in our body, more at peace in our body, then we are able to relationship with other people so much better. Yeah. I love that. I love that I'm very much into the find balance and find what works for you. And, you know, don't do things just because you should, or somebody said, this is what works for everyone.

You know, it's like, everyone should wake up at 5:00 AM and have an amazing morning routine, da, da da, da. And it's like, no, that doesn't work for me. You know, like, I'll do what works for me. I, I know what works, but I'm not going to go out of my way. You completely changed my life so that I could fit someone else's ideal.

And I think that's what's happening in a lot of the diet culture where it's like somebody found something that they think is the ideal way to live your life or, you know, lose weight or blah, blah, blah, shortcut, whatever thing they're trying to shortcut. And in reality, if you're not. feeling good right now doing the thing that you're choosing to do, then you're probably going to pay the price somehow in the coming future, right? So it doesn't matter how great it works for everyone else. But if I feel like I am not happy doing this thing or I'm feeling really restricted, and here's the difference. You can decide I'm not eating certain foods, but not from a place of restriction, but more from a place of freedom, you know, I don't need those foods in order to feel good.

And then it's a totally different narrative. And I'm allowed to have them if I want them, but I'm just choosing not to because I know how they make me feel. And I know how I want to be feeling, you know, and I'm going to be intentional. I'm going to be conscious about it. It's a totally different energy to go into.

And I love how you said, you know, like we think we're going to be out today. I'm going to be good. I just want to double tap on that because it's so powerful. If you think that being good means depriving yourself and not doing certain things and, you know, quote unquote, keep it to someone else's rules, then.

How much are you judging yourself? How much shame? How much guilt? How much of the all of that weight and the drain that it causes on your system to be constantly judging yourself? I was going to be good and then I wasn't good and then I'm, you know, bad girl. Why'd you do that? And why are we doing that?

That's not serving you in Anyway, you know, and oh, today I was good, even if it feels nice to say that in reality, what you're saying is I am completely judging, you know, all the other times that I wasn't quote unquote good. And it's not, it's not working, it's not working. So let go of all of those stories, let go of all of that culture.

And get so focused On you as an individual, what works for you as a unique person who has their things that they like. You know, I found one time that I told my husband, I'm so in the mood for something smooth and not too sweet, but blah, blah. Like I started describing the thing without knowing what I wanted, and he's sitting there going, is this a game?

No, it's a craving. You know, and I'm trying to communicate. I'm trying to figure out what I should eat. That fits this craving is like, do you want soup? And I was like, yeah, but could we like judge it so that it's nice and smooth. And it's like, yeah. And you know, I'll add some protein to it, you know, while I'm judging it anyway, so that you could actually, you know, Fill up on the right thing.

And we're having this conversation. I'm cracking up in my head. I'm like, the people would hear us. They think we're crazy, but it's so important. Like you were really in tune with what you needed at that time. And I think it's so incredibly important. Yeah. And of course, you know, I can find other things that are smooth and yummy just as easily going for the go to things that, you know, may not be as, as powerful for the need that I needed, but being able to communicate, being able to be heard and all of those things, that's actually more important than anything else.

Definitely. You know, one of the things that you touched on, and I think it's so important to highlight it, is that, first of all, to filter out all the messages that we are being told, you should have this, you shouldn't have this, you should do this, you shouldn't do that, and really listening to what your body's telling you.

There's certain really healthy foods, That give me joint pain. Now, why must I force my, myself to eat something that my body says, no, that's not right for me. So I can know, for example, that avocado is the healthiest thing in the whole world, but if I eat too much of it. You know, like the woman that I work with who come to me, they'd say, I know that I'm meant to be eating salad and vegetables, but after I eat that, I run to the bathroom and, and like, I can't, I can't live my life that way.

So it's about then being able to identify, okay, which of those vegetables may be disagreeing with you. So just because somebody has told you that something's healthy does not mean that it's right for you. And that is where it's so valuable to get the right support. To understand what works right for you.

Sometimes you can do it by process of elimination yourself, but sometimes you also just need like a professional who can guide you in a, in a better way. I think we're so used to ignoring what our body's telling us because we wanted to fit into a. certain ideal. It needs to look a certain way. It needs to feel a certain way.

And we need to act a certain way. And we stop intuitively listening to what we really need. And I think when we can reverse that process, when we can say, okay, that may be what looks ideal, maybe works for somebody else. If I can listen in and really get Down to business with what my body is feeling. It needs the most my mood improves.

My body feels more like I'm living in line with it. I don't want to be working against my body. I want to be working with my body. And when we try to force it to do something just because it happens to be said that it's healthy, if you are, if your body says no to that, you're never going to get the results you want anyway.

So it's incredibly valuable to be able to identify that, you know, if you eat a certain food and straight afterwards, your stomach is hurting or your joints are aching or you get a headache or you feel nauseous, don't ignore it. Right. And the craziest thing is that, like you said, most of the time, Early on in our consciousness, you know, when we were young, we, we were in tune and we said something and people were like, Oh, don't be like that.

Oh, don't, you know, you're too sensitive to this. You're too bad. And it almost took away. The permission to listen to your own intuition, right? A lot of people let that go because it just wasn't safe. It wasn't safe to be intuitive. It's not safe for me to, you know, listen to my own body. I just need to go with what I'm told because they know better.

And, you know, maybe, you know, in the parenting thing that your parents were doing, like, it was really convenient that you know. listened to them and held them to a high standard. And that's wonderful for, you know, that situation in the moment. But for the longterm, what, what happened was that you disconnected from yourself in order to appease other people, you disconnected from yourself in order to create peace in order to, you know, just make quiet in order to be the good one.

And, you know, again, there's just so much that. We don't realize we let go of as children and it's, it's an extremely powerful experience to be able to go back, you know, now as an adult, going through these things and just be able to pause and work with someone. One of the things that I love the most is when we do guided meditations and we meet. Different parts of ourselves from different eras, from different time zones, from different parts of our lives, and maybe even just like different emotions and have conversations, there's so much eye opening, situation is like, wow. It's mind blowing. It's, it's just absolutely amazing.

It's freeing and it's empowering to be able to do that because when we do, and I'm doing a lot of that work with myself at the moment and also with my clients. I love it. It gives us the ability to reparent those parts of us in a way that would have been more effective. As parents, I'm sure we all we all do the best that we can with what we have available to us, but we can never satisfy every need of our children.

And sometimes there's the dynamics of having different children. So what one, what one gets attention and the other one doesn't. To be able to have that valuable practice, whether it's through a guided meditation or just also that self awareness of this part of me needs to be heard right now. For whatever reason to be able to go back to her and sit with her and hear her and validate her And and you know bring her up to where you are in your life is incredibly incredibly valuable And that's part of the inner work that I was alluding to with you earlier that when we can do that Then we don't need to use food In order to soothe those difficult Emotions that are coming up sometimes not even from our present day experiences sometimes and often it's And a past part of us that needs that attention.

Oh, so true. So true. Okay. So people already know that I have my three month one on one private coaching available right now. How can people get in touch with you? Right. So I'm super excited. I'm in the process of revamping my whole website. So I do have a website and it will be, the new one will be up and running soon.

My website is justinefriedman. com. I'm available on social media platforms. I have a YouTube channel as well. I have Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram. You can connect with me on any of those channels on my website. You'll also be able to book a 15 minutes complimentary call so, I can hear a little bit more about maybe what some of your challenges are.

And guide you in the right direction. There are a few different ways of working with me. We can either do a power hour, which is a once off session for an hour where you tell me what your concerns are. And I give you two to three practical tools to implement, and then I follow up with you for four weeks afterwards.

So you've got my support afterwards, or there is also my one to one coaching, which I generally work with clients for between three and four months. Some for a little bit longer and then currently I'm not enrolling, but I also do have a group online program called the wellness upgrade. And I have two wonderful masterclasses that are prerecorded one on how to boost your metabolism and mood.

And the other one on stress management called the magic wellness switch. And all of that is available on my. social media and website for viewing. That's amazing. I love it. I love it. Well, Justine, I was right. You are the person to go to for this. This was such a wonderful and valuable conversation. I think You know, if I had to go back and highlight all the things that I took away from this conversation, it would be a very long list because we really touched on a lot of topics.

And I think that it's, it's one of the most amazing things that. We get to, you know, have these conversations and have fun and record and be out there helping other people. And people are listening in the middle of their life to something that gives them an idea or a boost or aha moments. And, and that's a gift. So thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you so much for the opportunity to have this conversation. It was amazing. A pleasure. And thank you so much for listening. Make sure you come back next week and don't forget to be connected for real.  And that's it! Thank you for listening to the very end. I would love if you can leave a review and subscribe to the podcast. Those are things that tell the algorithm this is a good podcast and make sure to suggest it to others. Wouldn't it be amazing if more people became more connected for real? And now take a moment and think of someone who might benefit from this episode.

Can you share it with them? I am Rebbetzin Bat chen Grossman from connectedforreal. com. Thank you so much for listening and don't forget you can be connected for real.