Happy Satiated Saturday! I will be brief here except to share that I'm excited about a new mini-series on the podcast. In this week’s episode, I'll share with you the inspiration behind this series and what we will explore for the next several episodes. You can also read the transcript to this week’s episode here : https://www.stephaniemara.com/blog/introduction-to-the-history-of-somatics Once you hear what this series is about, if you have a request for something you would like me to cover, ema...
Jun 18, 2023•4 min•Season 4Ep. 176
Happy Satiated Saturday! I explore a lot here on the nervous system dysregulation, trauma impacts, and emotional reasons that binge eating can occur. Yet, sometimes, binge eating has more to do with physical imbalances that have nothing to do with your emotional body. Or, as you cultivate more regulation and safety in your system, the physical realm is just as important to address as the emotional realm. In this week’s episode, I explore three physical reasons that contribute to patterns of bing...
Jun 11, 2023•10 min•Season 4Ep. 175
Happy Satiated Saturday! For the first about 20 years of my life, I experienced my body as the enemy. I did battle with it. I numbed out to it. I didn't know how to listen to it. It felt overwhelming, unexpected, and uncontrollable. I know it's going to sound incredibly cliché, but being introduced to yoga helped me to start experiencing my body as wise. I read book after book on yoga's history and the meaning of the poses. One book that I came across was Your Body Speaks Your Mind by Deb Shapi...
Jun 04, 2023•38 min•Season 4Ep. 174
Happy Satiated Saturday! It took me about a decade to heal patterns of disordered eating. I've had about every comment made on my body during that time. Whether I was too thin, whether I'd gained weight, what I was eating, how much I was eating, and on and on. A very important part of healing your relationship with food is learning the skills that food was trying to help you with. This can include learning how you feel, speaking up for yourself, and setting boundaries. Food and body coping mecha...
May 28, 2023•9 min•Season 4Ep. 173
Happy Satiated Saturday! It's been a slow awakening for me over the years to realize that food can only take me so far. Before I embraced my sensitivities, I thought that if I could just practice every "self care" thing, like eating perfectly, getting outside, socializing, moving my body regularly, that I could "fix" the sensitive body I was born with. What I have seen within myself and those I have worked with is that when you stop fighting your body and start listening to it is when some major...
May 20, 2023•34 min•Season 4Ep. 172
Happy Satiated Saturday! How many people have you told about your challenges with food? Have you let anyone know about your patterns of binge eating, emotional eating, restricting, and struggles with your body image? Toxic shame, the kind of shame that leaves you feeling like you're worthless, breeds in the darkness. The longer food and body coping mechanisms are kept out of the light of other's compassion, the more stuck you can feel. For those that work with me and have yet to tell anyone in t...
May 14, 2023•40 min•Season 4Ep. 171
Happy Satiated Saturday! There are many many approaches to navigating a harsh internal critic. With myself and those I work with, I like to teach to see it as a part of you that is saying such cruel things because it's trying to get your attention. Often even negative attention is still attention. Once you've heard this part out, then you can explore what it needs, how it's feeling, and how it wants to be met. And sometimes, this part needs support remembering that it can take breaks and have so...
May 06, 2023•40 min•Season 4Ep. 170
Happy Satiated Saturday! I have so so many memories around clothing store fitting rooms. The most interesting thing to do where I grew up in Connecticut was often to go to the mall with friends. Laughing, crying, and feeling stuck on the floor in despair all occurred within the walls of a fitting room. We learn that clothes have meaning from a young age. The size we can fit into becomes symbolic for how we "fit" into society. When your clothes stopping fitting you, it can feel like so much more ...
Apr 30, 2023•9 min•Season 4Ep. 169
Happy Satiated Saturday! I've had many nights where I was at the gym at 11:00 pm or early mornings where I was at the gym by 5:00 am. My overexercising started in high school and ramped up through college. After a binge eating experience was unsuccessful at supporting me in feeling regulated, I would head off to the gym and walk and walk and walk. Sweaty and exhausted, I would either get ready for class or just head straight to bed and go to sleep. A compensatory behavior is something you might ...
Apr 23, 2023•9 min•Season 4Ep. 168
Happy Satiated Saturday! I have a very special guest with me today on the podcast. A little backstory first, I was chatting with a previous guest on the podcast a few months ago about my brother in law, who is a farmer and consultant to companies with natural climate solutions. He is passionate about teaching others on soil, food and the health of our environment. After mentioning what he does, this guest said, "Wow, I'd love to hear more from him." So I reached out to Jacob and was like, you've...
Apr 16, 2023•38 min•Season 4Ep. 167
Happy Satiated Saturday! The first time I went to therapy I was a senior in high school. I'm incredibly grateful that my first therapeutic experience was deeply beneficial and I worked with someone that was a great match for me at the time. At the end of our work together, she gave me a journal. Inside she wrote a note that said: For Stephanie: To keep track of all your thoughts, dreams, wishes, fears, loves and disappointments. They are all precious and uniquely yours! With best wishes as you s...
Apr 09, 2023•41 min•Season 4Ep. 166
Happy Satiated Saturday! In my early 20's, I went on a journey to heal my gut. After years of being in pain, I got a colonoscopy and endoscopy completed to check to make sure I didn't have a digestive disorder. The only thing the doctor prescribed me with at the time was IBS or Irritable Bowel Syndrome and told me to watch my triggers and that was it. I felt frustrated and confused. And so I dove into everything I could learn about the gut. Now, I know many of you have heard me talk about how it...
Apr 02, 2023•14 min•Season 4Ep. 165
Happy Satiated Saturday! When I was diving deeper into healing my relationship with food, my therapist at the time suggested I read Eating in the Light of the Moon by Anita Johnston. I was living by myself for the first time, trying to practice slowing down, and enjoying spending time with myself. I would do this through snuggling up on my couch and picking up this book. Not only is it an amazing read, but this book holds a special place in my heart for this time I spent with it and myself. So.....
Mar 26, 2023•41 min•Season 4Ep. 164
Happy Satiated Saturday! If I look back on my healing journey and the paths of those I have worked with, I see similar themes. It can all start with some kind of trauma and insecure attachment in childhood that created dysregulation in the body. To manage that, a focus on food and body image came in. It can feel like the dieting, exercising, and hyper focus on your food and body are giving you some sense of control, but really these things are controlling you and keeping you at a distance from y...
Mar 18, 2023•48 min•Season 4Ep. 163
Happy Satiated Saturday! It's truly amazing how many body based healing modalities are out there now. I've been involved in the somatic world way before somatics was "in" and cool. Most of my family probably thought I was going into some fake psychotherapy degree, but as soon as I read the description of the classes, I knew that was the path for me. I came in to my somatic psychotherapy program loudly declaring I was going to be the one who combines somatics and nutrition. And now, I see others ...
Mar 12, 2023•40 min•Season 4Ep. 162
Happy Satiated Saturday! As I move closer to my 40's, I've noticed many changes in my body. A few more gray hairs. Some distinguishing wisdom wrinkles. I'm excited to see that the changes a woman's body goes through in her life is becoming more openly discussed and normalized. Your body is going to change as you transition from your menstrual years, to peri-menopause, and into menopause. I like to think of it like a play (for those of you that don't know, I was a former actress and have been in ...
Mar 05, 2023•49 min•Season 4Ep. 161
Happy Satiated Saturday! Have you ever called your patterns of binge eating, emotional eating, restricting, yo-yo dieting self sabotage? The idea of self sabotage means that you're doing something to block your success. I want to reframe that you are NOT getting in your own way when you play out your familiar food coping mechanisms again and again and again. Defining them as self sabotage interferes with gaining insight from your behavior as you're then seeing it as wrong, bad, or something to b...
Feb 26, 2023•7 min•Season 4Ep. 160
Happy Satiated Saturday! I started practicing yoga when I was 20 years old. It was the first practice I had ever engaged in that brought me closer into my body. We often get these messages that embodiment practices will help us with mindfulness and find inner peace. But, the truth is that the act of doing something to bring you closer into your body can feel intense. Food can often come in to support you in keeping yourself at a distance from your body that is holding on to past wounds, traumas,...
Feb 19, 2023•33 min•Season 4Ep. 159
Happy Satiated Saturday! I always knew my environment affected me and meeting my husband, Ethan who is in environmental design, brought that to a whole new level. He looks up so much to see the structure of a building and the ceiling that even our dog Tato looks up as well. Over the years, we've explored the intersection between architecture and our relationship with food. So I thought it was about time to bring him on the podcast and dive in deeper. In this week’s episode, Ethan and I talk abou...
Feb 12, 2023•32 min•Season 4Ep. 158
Happy Satiated Saturday! Being stuck in patterns of binging, emotional eating, and yo yo dieting can feel all consuming. You're either trying to heal from the food patterns, immersed in the food patterns, or recovering from a recent episode of the food patterns. I know when my binge eating was at its worst, I felt like I had tunnel vision. All I could focus on was trying to stop the binge eating. There was little space for curiosity to explore why the binge eating was happening in the first plac...
Feb 05, 2023•6 min•Season 4Ep. 157
Happy Satiated Saturday! There is ongoing confusion around body acceptance, how to live in a body and be at peace with it, and pressure that you need to figure out body appreciation all on your own. I personally don't believe in the saying, "you need to love yourself before anyone else can love you." I did NOT love my body when I met my husband over a decade ago. I was very open about that with him from the beginning. I was struggling to live in such a sensitive body that had curves in, what I p...
Jan 29, 2023•49 min•Season 4Ep. 156
Happy Satiated Saturday! In my early 20's, I used to get panic attacks. It's part of what led me to explore meditation to be able to befriend my body and make more space to sit with what is. One of the very first suggestions I received to navigate panic attacks was to describe my environment. It was my first experience of a somatic concept called pendulation, where you acknowledge what is happening in your body and then create distance between yourself and the intense sensation and attend to som...
Jan 15, 2023•45 min•Season 4Ep. 155
Happy Satiated Saturday! I remember the first thing my parent's taught me how to cook in the kitchen. It was an omelet. It was an amazing experience to take all these ingredients to form something delicious and that I was able to make for myself. Over the years, I've felt incredible gratitude that there was a love of cooking and making recipes that have been passed down from generation to generation in my family. What memories do you have around cooking and being in the kitchen growing up? Was c...
Jan 08, 2023•45 min•Season 4Ep. 154
Happy Satiated Saturday! Here we are. Several hours left of 2022. You may have started to feel the marketing from Wellness and Diet Culture already start to pick up steam and tomorrow is the day they've been waiting for. There will be an increase in ads for diets, weight loss, detoxes, and cleanses. These ads will tap into your deepest fears about your body and this is why January needs to become a month where you're showing your body daily it is safe to be as it is. In this week’s episode, I ha...
Jan 01, 2023•53 min•Season 3Ep. 153
Happy Satiated Saturday! I have not engaged in a binge eating experience for over a decade now. But, prior to that, binge eating would come and go in my life. I would go through periods of binging and then utilize dieting as a way to put a stop to all of it. Of course, the binge eating would come back at some point because I had not addressed what was fueling my binging. When I finally started to heal the dysregulation in my body, I was also at a point where I no longer had it in me to diet. I s...
Dec 17, 2022•6 min•Season 3Ep. 152
Happy Satiated Saturday! Have you felt that intense urge that going back on a diet would just solve everything? It may have felt that your needs, physically and emotionally, became too big and dieting would keep everything in check. So you go on a diet, and for a while, you feel in control. All your needs can get shoved aside to only focus on the need to feel successful at this diet. And the moment that you crave something off the diet, when you've spent several days or weeks eating all those fo...
Dec 11, 2022•5 min•Season 3Ep. 151
Happy Satiated Saturday! The holidays can be one of the hardest times of year when it comes to food behaviors. Stuck in the restrict-binge cycle, so normalized around this time, it can be difficult to be in your body and fully present with those around you. Body image concerns, family, difficult conversations can make this a dysregulating time. And when you're trying to step off of the diet culture wheel, it can feel confusing when to stick up for yourself, when to set boundaries, and when to ch...
Dec 04, 2022•43 min•Season 3Ep. 150
Happy Satiated Saturday! When I was stuck in the restrict-binge cycle, Thanksgiving would be one of the times of the year I would allow myself to eat whatever I wanted in whatever quantity with no judgment afterward. The interesting thing I noticed was that I never ended up eating as much as I thought I would just by giving myself permission ahead of time to eat. The relaxation I felt knowing I was going into a situation allowing myself to do whatever I wanted and needed to do supported me in fe...
Nov 20, 2022•6 min•Season 3Ep. 149
Happy Satiated Saturday! Being around certain people and foods during the holidays can bring up all sorts of reactions. These family members and friends and food can be perceived as threatening to your well being and safety and so your body moves into a fight or flight response. In this state, you might find yourself trying to gain control by restricting your intake and then binging later for your body to get what it needs nutritionally. You may then find yourself stuck in a cycle of restricting...
Nov 13, 2022•8 min•Season 3Ep. 148
Happy Satiated Saturday! I have said this before and I'll say it again. Your food behaviors are happening for a reason. Binging, restricting, chronic dieting, and body image concerns all come up to support you and satisfy a need that is not being met. They are there to help you feel safe and in control. And so, healing disordered eating or an eating disorder will mean addressing the root cause that is fueling your food and body behaviors. It's not really about the food. It will be about addressi...
Nov 06, 2022•43 min•Season 3Ep. 147
