EP 169: Food as Healing, Understanding Needs for Safety and Satiation with Ali Shapiro

Sex Birth Trauma with Kimberly Ann Johnson

In this episode, Kimberly and Ali discuss how food intersects with physiology and psychology. Specifically, they discuss how to identify our physical and emotional needs, how to send safety signals to our bodies, and how to unpack some of the deeper impacts of socialization and culture around eating and body image. Similar to our nervous system signals, our bodies and minds send signals when dealing with chronic stress and unconscious stories around our behaviors that often motivate our food choices. Ali works with women to help them unpack issues around diet culture, body image, and eating for satisfaction and nutrition.

Bio

Ali Shapiro is an MSOD, CHHC, holistic nutritionist, cancer survivor, and host of the podcast “Insatiable.” Her work is at the intersection of physiology and psychology as she helps women unravel their relationships with body image, food, and movement in order to ultimately build a sense of safety and satisfaction. She offers the Truce with Food Coaching program as well as individual client sessions and speaking engagements.

What She Shares:

–Uncoupling body image from normal human emotions

–Physical and emotional safety signals

–Identifying physiological and psychological needs

–Emotional immune system

–Food for healing and health

–Truce with Food program

What You’ll Hear:

–Issues with body image/positivity marketed to women

–Socialization and religious culture influencing body image

–Prioritizing safety signals

–Unpacking individualization and systemic issues surrounding food

–Weight and health

–Physical and emotional safety signals

–Identifying foods and movement right for our individual bodies

–Prioritizing sun and sleep especially through aging

–Re-establishing relationship with our bodies with food experiments

–Identifying which foods make body feel safe and satisfied

–Intrinsic motivation versus shame-based motivation around health

–Emotional safety

–Emotional immune system run down by chronic stress

–Anticipating deprivation and/or restricting with food

–No baseline of neutrality and satiation

–Translating the body’s signals

–Intuition based on patterns, difficult with lifetime of dieting/overeating/undereating

–Highly processed foods hijacked intuitive understanding

–Practicing intuition with three meals a day for physiological and psychological benefits

–Rejecting commercialized brand names of diets

–Restriction with food in relation to aging, stress, parenting, etc.

–Processed foods on a continuum

–Amount of attention to give eating can be overwhelming

–Undoing binary thinking around foods

–Emotional health in relation to food, exercise, diet

–Emotional immune systems made up of stories

–Intersection of physiology and psychology

–Family, peers, religion, work influences to emotional health

–Overriding body’s signals to “deserve” to eat

–Seeking belonging on deepest level

–Food one of our first senses of safety and comfort

–Understanding insulin resistance, blood sugar levels, and stress

–Turning to sugar for nurturance and comfort

–Reducing stress and balancing blood sugar results in less sugar intake

–Sleep-deprivation contributing to higher sugar intake

–Nervous system predisposes towards certain tolerances with foods

–Identifying physical and psychological needs for health and sense of safety

–Basic human habits declining with modernization and individualization

–Food and community

Resources

Website: https://alishapiro.com/

IG: @alimshapiro