What is Satiation And How Do You Create It In Your Body?
When I decided to start a podcast, the name came quickly to me. I had created a whole course that got merged with the Somatic Eating® Program that I called Satiated. Saying the word satiated always brings me this full body satisfaction. I love saying the word, feeling the word in my body, and reflecting on what it means to live a Satiated Life. This is a term I teach in the Somatic Eating® Program (reminder that doors are still open if you want to join this upcoming class starting April 22nd. Go to somaticeating.com to learn more and join today) and I define a Satiated Life as staying connected to your body’s needs, physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually, and satiating each kind of hunger in attuned ways. This all starts with taking more somatic pauses to listen to your body, hear its feedback, and honor its requests. And, this takes time and practice to discover what satiates you on all levels. So I was excited to invite Sue Van Raes onto the podcast to discuss the practices that can guide you toward discovering what satiates you. Sue is the author of Food and Freedom, a Functional Nutritionist, Food Psychology Specialist, and Psycho-spiritual Practitioner, who is dedicated to helping women who are stressed out about food and finally make peace with their plates. After her own life- long struggle with food and her two decades of private practice, she discovered a surprising pathway to a renewed relationship with food. Sue provides a body, mind, heart, and soul approach to stop stressing and start fully living. She has been featured in publications including People Magazine, Chopra, Livestrong, and Readers Digest. We dive into listening to your body when it comes to balancing your blood sugar levels, not trapping yourself into a specific way of eating, why getting your nutrition on point is so important to do your deeper emotional healing, how what you're eating plays a role in activating or deactivating your fight or flight response, and the fear that can arise around feeling satiated. So let's get started and welcome Sue! I am so excited to get into this conversation today. And I have actually been on Sue's podcast. So we have connected previously. And we share such a similar perspective in this work on healing relationship with food. So I'm so excited to have you here today.
Sue Van Raes 03:17
Thank you, Stephanie. It's really great to be here. And I think that it's even more funny and aligned that our podcasts are named Satiate and Satiated and that so much of our work overlaps. And I'm, I'm so excited to chat with you. It's always great to be in the room with like minds. And yeah, just glad to be here.
Stephanie Mara 03:38
Yeah, me too, me too. You know, I feel like this growing field of what I'm calling somatic nutrition just as a whole, you know, I've been talking about it a lot more and just more individuals aligning themselves with this approach to nutrition as body based. And I feel like you're a part of that. And so I'd love to hear a little bit more, because I don't know much of your background, actually, of how you got into this work and what led you also to kind of this somatic nutrition field.
Sue Van Raes 04:05
For sure. Well, thank you for that. I love this field so much. It feels so good to me, in my work, in my body. And I think that to really go back and start to peel back like where that started. I think that for me, I grew up as a competitive gymnast. So I've come to this idea multiple times. Like I think I learned mindfulness and like really more of like a body centered experience of life early because gymnastics, you know, there's not a lot of wiggle room to start going off in your mind in tangents or losing your focus or losing your steadiness because then you fall right? It's like it's very obvious you're just like okay, here I am on the balance beam, thought comes in, get distracted, wobble fall off the balance beam. No one ever called it that right? No one ever called it mindfulness back then, no one ever told me about body centered experience but I feel like it's so incarnated inside of me at this point that I just don't even know how to move any other way. And when I started my food journey, well, I also had severe hypoglycemia when I was a kid. So I was a competitive athlete growing up in the 80s, with a lot of refined carbs and sugar all throughout our meals, but also especially breakfast. So I was kind of on this roller coaster, biochemically all the time spiking and crashing. And so food became a really big focus. And I mean, even back then, like, I remember our coaches telling us like to eat healthy, which was very, very different meaning of what we hear today and what it means today, I think at that point, it was like, don't eat potato chips and candy. And don't drink soda, or something like that, you know, I used to kind of feel empowered by like, oh, I have to be extra healthy because I'm, you know, this young athlete. So food and mindfulness were really like something I focused on since I was so young. But fast forward to my nutrition degree, which when I finally decided to go from like my biology, undergrad to get a master's in nutrition, it was almost like obvious, you know, because food had played such an important role for me my entire life, and had provided a lot of challenge where I had to really sort out some of the things that I was experiencing internally around my blood sugar crisis all day long. And it felt like the most alluring field for me to be in and at the very same time that I was doing my master's degree. I also did a month long teacher training, a yoga teacher training with Richard Freeman here in Boulder, Colorado, who was like a world renowned teacher. And, you know, it was like, what an interesting time to pair those two things together, because they were kind of similar to like gymnastics. And you know, just trying to eat healthy when I was a kid, except for it was like a much more spiritual based embodiment practice, and then a much different experience of honing into, you know, my metabolism and what felt good in my body to eat and like how to balance my blood sugar and feel my energy more sustained throughout the day. And being in that present moment practice. And returning to the body over and over again, it just like so like second nature and home to me, it just took on a slightly more well rounded and educated and had a lot more support, I had a lot more, you know, mentorship. And so it really kind of clicked early on. And it was tricky at the beginning, I wasn't sure how to incorporate the yoga piece into my work without kind of going all yogic on people. But I quickly realized that that wasn't really what I needed to do. But I needed to kind of go underneath of that into more of the essence of the practice, and be able to kind of communicate that through just my own layman's terms, which kind of, you know, it was a little clumsy at first with that. But then once I figured out that I could speak the yogic language, not in the yogic language to people and help them become more embodied in themselves around their eating, and sometimes have daily practice that was also supportive, such as yoga, or meditation, or dance or movement of sorts, everything just started clicking for me and for them. And you know, that was probably like, you know, within the first couple years of my private practice, which is now two decades old. So yeah, it's been quite a journey. But when I look back in retrospect, I'm like, of course, this is, of course, where I'm supposed to be.
Stephanie Mara 08:25
Yeah, yeah. It's kind of amazing how those early life experiences really shape what we get passionate about later on in life. Like, I totally hear you in if I never had digestive issues in my teenage, early 20 years, I don't know if I would have gotten into nutrition and yoga and all these things about connecting with my body as much as I would have because my body was speaking to me loudly that it needed some kind of attention and I needed to explore what it was trying to tell me. I'm curious, as you like, ebbed and flowed with combining both this mindfulness yoga piece with nutrition like what did you discover along the way in combining these pieces?
Sue Van Raes 09:10
Hmm, that's such a good question. From a sensation perspective, there's a couple really important pieces that I think brought me to feel more ready to share the work my work in the world, but also, to bring me more into balance. And one that's really important is the feeling of, which is you're going to laugh, but it's actually being satiated. Because I spent so much of my life not satiated, and on this up and down roller coaster, and because I couldn't find the right combination of macronutrients to create a satiating meal very often, sometimes dinner. Dinner was probably the most satiating meal in my childhood but breakfast and lunch were so full of refined carbs and sugars, and I would fill up on those foods but then I would be left still hungry. And it really created like a reputation in my family and in my extended family, which was like Sue's always hungry. It was just like I was just ravenous because I couldn't get enough like, for example, high quality protein and fat to give my body what it needed to feel good. And so when I was able to start doing that, and to be able to give myself permission to eat with those foods where which didn't come right away, I mean, I was also very much part of the fat free movement in the early 90s. When I first moved to Boulder, I was a vegetarian, I was eating fat free, I was like, completely depleted, I was still on the roller coaster, you know, it took me till I was pregnant with my son in my late 20s, when I started really having to take care of myself more. So all of that has really led me to bringing the awareness from the yogic perspective, or the body perspective, combining that with more knowledge around my metabolism or knowledge around my biochemistry, more knowledge around like macronutrients and how to create satiation in my body. And that marriage of those two things has really opened up so much for me, both personally and professionally. Because I can start to really like I have a really keen eye for seeing when other people are biochemically out of balance. And I know that in the work that I do that's like step one, like nothing else sticks if we're not dealing with that foundational piece. And so it really has shifted the way that I work.
Sue Van Raes 09:19
Yeah, I'm so glad you brought in this topic of satiation. Because there's the physical aspect of it. And then there's the emotional aspect of it. And just to continue on the thread that you were just bringing in, I would love to get to the emotional aspect, maybe in a second, but what do you find are those foundational pieces when it comes to physical satiation.
Sue Van Raes 11:53
In my work, I do a lot of work around identifying our metabolic profile and how our unique metabolic individuality is governing, you know, how we feel. And really, that is governed by our biochemistry. And there's lots of different ways to choose foods within lots of different categories to match that. So sometimes I eat maybe a more plant forward or plant based meal. And other times I might eat something with a lot of heavier protein like buffalo or grass fed steak. And as long as I'm getting the macronutrient balance of a pretty high protein ratio to carbs, and a good dose of healthy fats at every meal, I can definitely feel satiated. If I don't eat enough animal protein for days at a time, like if I was to, for example, like I was on a retreat a couple of years ago, where the menu was mostly vegetarian. It was like a Deepak Chopra retreat. And you know ayurveda and there was a lot of that ayurveda influence. And I just noticed, like, it was really good food, but I was snacking throughout that entire, like I had nuts in my bag, I had protein bars, I was like, why am I so hungry throughout this five day retreat, and I know it was because I'm not used to eating all vegetarian. And so it's interesting to to see like, okay, I can do some vegetarian meals, I can do some more animal based meals. And of course, I love you know, lots of veggies and fresh produce and things like that. But once I learned that about myself, it really changed my permission to give that to myself, because I don't know how your background looks. But I was also taught early on that it was kind of like lady like, that was the word that my mom would use, or my dad, I think, to eat light. And on the first date, like you're supposed to order the salad when I wanted to order the steak, you know, sometimes or when I was in my unsatiable phase, I remember like my parents be like Sue like, you need to stop, you need to stop eating and stop snacking, you know, and I would just be like, ravenous. So I got this messaging early on that it was supposed to look a certain way. And I was not fitting into that mold at all. And so it took until I was like a good little while into my 20s when I was adulting more on my own, for me to give myself permission to eat what I was needing and craving and wanting and to be able to recognize that and once I did that, which was actually a very big shift from the old paradigm of how women are supposed to eat and look, which I know you and I really talk a lot about in our work, it really shifted everything for me because now I could actually eat what I was actually craving instead of what society was telling me I should eat that really shifted everything. And that's also what influenced me bringing a lot more of the metabolic work into my private practice.
Stephanie Mara 14:40
Yeah, I so resonate with everything that you just said. I had a similar experience in my early 20s where I had just been getting into yoga, you know, around 18, 19, 20 years old and you know, at that time it was especially with like ayurveda and all of that. It was like you're supposed to eat a more of a vegetarian kind of way, like kichari, and like, you know, all these grains and these beans, and I remember being like, okay, I need to eat less animal protein. And I say all of this for anyone listening that this is a matter of you listening to your body, like there are individuals who resonate their body, their systems resonate with more of a vegetarian like way of eating, that's absolutely fine and great, it's just a matter of listening to you. And what I found was at that time, eating less and less animal protein, I got worse and worse digestive issues. And here I was doing all the Ayurvedic suggestions to try to heal my digestive tract. And I just need to like, do more kichari cleansing things, that stuff. And it was just making things worse and worse and worse. And I think that there was a period of time, where when I went through kind of my first health coaching certification, and it was more like, okay, like, just like just experiment, just eat all sorts of different ways and I allowed myself to eat a very high animal protein way of eating for a period of time. That's when I finally felt my best in my system, where that piece around listening to my body and it was like, your body has been telling you all along, this isn't working for you. And I made it like my fault that I was doing something wrong at that time. And why can't I make this work instead of the other way around. And what I know we both bring into our work now of, no, that was just my body talking to me telling me that doesn't work for me, it may work for someone else, but not for my body. And that was okay.
Sue Van Raes 16:34
Absolutely. And I think that's one of the reasons why when we put ourselves into an eating style box without fail, or with rigid rules, it's really hard to go from that to also listening to our bodies. And it's one of the things I've noticed, especially with my younger clients, as I have noticed, like I work with a lot of college girls, and who are still kind of finding their way through like who they are and what to eat, and what it all means to be an adult and all of that. And I've noticed that there's a very strong culture around certain eating styles. And when that's happening, what happens is we as humans tend to basically prioritize belonging over being authentic to ourselves. And so I've had many clients sit with me and be like, well, I really do feel like I need to eat meat, I really do feel like I need more protein, but all my friends are vegan, I'm a vegan, what will they think? What will they say? And I don't know if I'm ready to create that kind of break in where I feel like this community of belonging. And that's just one example. I know, there's also like plenty of other eating styles out there where we feel like we have to be gluten free, or we have to be paleo or we have to do this or that. Or we have to, you know, kind of name what it is that our eating box looks like my experiences if we can like set down the rules turn inward, listen to what we need, and create meals from that place of inner wisdom, which does take a little bit of practice, of course, to listen and learn and be able to translate what our bodies are saying, as you mentioned, but it really does provide us with a much more real time need and fulfillment and the ability to be more satiated, which sets us up for success and everything else that we're doing. Because we're going to just be able to we're going to be more resilient. Emotionally, our brain chemistry is going to be more steady because our brain chemistry is very much mirroring, reflecting our biochemistry, our digestion, our blood sugar, so important in our brain chemistry. And so when we sometimes are trying to come at things from the other direction, like oh, I just wish I could improve my emotional experience or my emotional resiliency, or I wish I could improve my mindset. But really, if we go further, and we start with the foundational layers of like biochemistry, nervous system, and then we can move into those other domains. In my experience of what I've seen in myself and in my clients, it just works a lot. It's easier. It just makes it easier. Otherwise it feels like swimming upstream sometimes.
Stephanie Mara 19:11
Yeah, it's really hard to do the emotional work in a malnourished body
Sue Van Raes 19:15
Really hard. Yeah.
Stephanie Mara 19:17
Yeah. So I totally agree with that, you know, your blood sugar stabilization, which you're talking about, it's hard to think clearly, then you're sending cues of danger to your body by being undernourished, and it's hard to then do the trauma work or the emotional work, if you are not feeding your body enough food to feel stabilized to then do the really difficult and sometimes dysregulated work of healing past things in a dysregulated nervous system.
Sue Van Raes 19:44
So true. And I've noticed that and I'm sure you can relate to this, that when we are biochemically off balance or when our blood sugar spiking and crashing we actually are creating dysregulation. I mean, I watched it in my kids for years. You know, it's like go to the birthday party, have some cake, have a meltdown, you know, first have a elated experience of feeling high with a sugar rush, run around and then one by one, the kids would start dropping, meltdowns would started happening. And you'd be carrying your kid out of the birthday party like so dysregulated and falling apart. And I used to start I started anytime we have like potlucks, or things where you could bring food, I would be like, I'll bring the protein for the kids. But when we're creating dysregulation with our eating, and then we're wondering like, Oh, why am I always in a state of fight or flight? Or why do I always feel like I'm super out of balance? And why are my thoughts always going bonkers? It's like, okay, let's just go back to the foundation. Of course, our nervous systems can also work on our blood sugar in the opposite directions, right? Like stress, obviously, can spike our blood sugar and things like that. But I do think when we at least see those as a dynamic between those two experiences, biochemistry and nervous system, we start to get a little bit of an understanding that it's good for all of us to be satiated. It just is. We just work better in the world.
Stephanie Mara 21:09
I'm curious to hear your thoughts of how you've navigated some of the anti diet messages of you just need to eat whatever you want to eat. And you know, you need to let go of all the rules, and you should be able to eat sugar and be fine with that. And you know, what we're talking about here is also, yes, creating balance, and not, you know, demonizing any food. But also there's this piece that nutrition can make a huge difference in how you feel in your body. And I'm wondering to hear your thoughts of how you've navigated these conflicting messages that keep coming more and more.
Sue Van Raes 21:45
Yeah, it's such a rich, rich question. I love that you're asking this. And I think about it a lot. Because just like all of us, I am also a victim of these messages, right? To the, I mean, I work on myself in a way that I can try to filter out for sure, as much as possible. But I mean, let's face it, right? We've all been fed this lie for most of our lives. I mean, I was just sharing when I said eat like a lady like, where did that come from, you know, trending body size and shape every year. That's insane. The externalized approach to eating which is like the calorie counting the restriction, the rules that can be just so limiting, I definitely have worked to unravel so much of that in myself and create new guidelines for myself that are reasonable, but also like true, at least true. And of course, the body is like the truest place to get information. But one thing that's interesting, and I find to be really helpful is as we start, like really noticing what's coming in to our minds, can we first of all, just recognize it, because so much of it is automatic. And we're just operating from an automatic view and automatic response in our systems without even recognizing why. So that's my first step for myself for the people that I work with is just to really start with recognizing like, oh, wow, what if that isn't true to question things, to notice, where we feel maybe contracted? Maybe we feel pressure in our bodies that can feel like it's putting us under stress, or where we feel something like not feeling satiated, because we didn't give ourselves permission to actually listen. And the more that we can really dig into not just the sensations around food itself, but the sensations that come from the messaging that might make us feel inadequate, or might make us feel like we have to change ourselves or might make us feel like how do we toggle between the trending body size and listening to the authentic truth within our bodies? Those two things have a very big range between them. And yet, I think that for example, like what you were asking about certain foods, like often do you ever have people do this to you at the grocery store, when you run into your clients like what's in your grocery? Oh, it must be like, all perfect food. I'm like, actually, no, sometimes I eat spaghetti. And sometimes I eat french fries. And sometimes I eat chocolate. Well actually, I really love dark chocolate. But the thing with me that I've learned is I can do those things in a mindful way. On occasion, for example, if I'm going to eat cake, I really don't eat cake very often. But let's say it's a birthday or one of my kids birthdays or something, you know, I'm just I'm not going to eat cake on an empty stomach. I'm just not like I know that I'm gonna feel like crap. But if we have a really good dinner and I'm not done I might save a little room for cake maybe but maybe I'll just have a little bit of cake but I know at least then I'm going to be okay like I'm not going to feel like I have a sugar hangover if I eat a little piece of cake after having a well rounded meal, but I'm surely not going to do that when I haven't had anything else and let let my blood sugar become a disaster or similarly like, yeah, once in a while I'd love to go get really good authentic Mexican food or, you know, eat a burger and fries. But I'm not going to do that every day, you know, I know where my foundation is, I know where my baseline is, I know what makes me feel good. And sometimes a burger and fries really does give me like some kind of grounding force. I do actually feel like that's a good meal for me once in a while. But I just know, I think after much experimenting what I need to do to feel good in general. And so yeah, I wouldn't eat a burger and fries like three days in a row. Because I think I would start to feel like gross after a little while. But you know, when I'm craving a burger, and I'm like, all in, I'm like, Okay, let's do it. I'm totally up for a burger and a beer and fries. And that can be a really fun experience here and there. And so I think we have to learn as people and as humans, like what works for us and with like, what we can eat that might be sort of like quote unquote, junk food or unhealthier compared to like, you know, the perfect garden salad or something, but do it in a way that still keeps our biochemistry and our foundation in check. And then you know, then it becomes a nice little pleasurable treat that I don't have any guilt about. I don't know, how do you feel about it?
Stephanie Mara 26:21
Yeah, what I really heard in everything that you just mentioned is so getting to know your unique body. And I think that's what I keep coming back to when I hear both dieting and anti dieting messages, is its still telling someone what to do and not referencing back to the body of okay, well how much sugar works for you, does sugar work for you, and I'm just throwing sugar out there because it's such a huge conversation that always comes up, you know, you could fill in the blank with whatever you feel conflicted about. But just coming back to okay, if I experiment, because that was a lot of what you were just talking about as well, you've experimented so much and observed your body and tracked how it responded that you know what throws it off base and you know, what brings it back to an alignment and you know when you can do what you can do, and what you even need to maybe eat sometimes before you eat something else to make it the most stabilizing experience it can be. Sometimes something I'm exploring with those that I work with is like, if you're going to choose maybe a eating experience that you already know is going to be a little bit dysregulating, at least own it. Like don't abandon yourself in the process of that experience, like you're choosing food, choose it, own it, enjoy it and move on with your life so that the dysregulation doesn't have to necessarily continue beyond that, like, okay, my body may struggle digesting this experience a little bit. And I'm going to support it as much as I possibly can afterwards. But I think, again, like with how much social media and its growth and how many messages now we can receive around food just sometimes further disconnects us from getting to know our unique system and what it needs.
Sue Van Raes 28:08
Completely. And I do believe that often we'll hear I've heard this from a lot of different places, but primarily online and social media based, like throw away the food rules and eat everything. There's you know, you can eat whatever you want. And then I'm like, Okay, well, maybe not. Maybe not if you have an allergy, maybe not if you have hypoglycemia like I do where I just absolutely feel like crap and have a migraine if I eat oatmeal for breakfast. Maybe somebody like you who has maybe a more sensitive digestion, like, yeah, you might notice like, oh, that doesn't feel good. Do I want to feel bloated all day. If I don't, then I probably shouldn't eat that. And we start to associate the food with the feeling that we get in our body, meaning the foods that make us feel good, we start craving them, hopefully, and over time, not right away, but I do think with a little bit of practice and awareness. When we have been a detective in our own body, we can say to ourselves with a lot more clarity, oh, I can look at that. And I know that's not going to make me feel good. Because I've experienced it. And I know this deeply. And so if I don't want to feel bad, why would I eat that thing? And that could be anything, right? It could be carrots, it doesn't have to be a bad quote unquote, you know, labeled food that's considered to be more of a junk food or something I remember on retreat, you know, I eat with my guests a lot. And somebody said to me, I can't believe you eat gluten. And I'm like, Well, I don't really eat that much gluten, but this is like homemade sourdough bread at the retreat center. And I don't have a gluten allergy. And so I'm enjoying the bread because it's like one of the highest quality breads that comes you know, in this form. And just like it doesn't have to look a certain way we can move between things as much as we want. And that is up to us. So I think that's another piece that I just wanted to add in there so that we're not like, you know, we can make exceptions, we can change our mind, we can follow the cues of our body, we can also say, you know what, today, I don't really mind if I feel really tired, because it's Sunday. And if I eat this food, and I know I'm going to feel really tired afterwards. I have a lot of clients who have that reaction to eggs. And so brunch on the weekend sometimes will make them feel tired. And they're like, actually, it's okay, if I'm tired today, I'm gonna have some eggs. It's like, okay, you made a conscious choice.
Stephanie Mara 30:29
Yeah, and I agree with you, and just continuing to listen, I know, a lot of listeners know that I just went on vacation and it was, you know, with a travel agency. So like, all food was included, and they served dessert after every single meal. And so, you know, sometimes it would be placed in front of me and I would check in with my body and be like, do we want this right now? What's, you know, my satiation cues? Am I actually full? Do we even like, want to continue to eat right now? And sometimes it'd be like, you know, I want to try a bite of this. And I would try one bite, and then I check it with my body again, how is this digesting? There may be something in this with my sensitive digestive tract that like doesn't work for me. So I would pay attention, I would notice. Sometimes it'd be like, oh, no, we're good. Like, keep going like this is digesting just fine. And other times, I would take a bite and I'd be like, no, I'm good. I'm done. That bite was great. And like, if I ate any more of that, I know, it would send me down a path that I didn't want to have inside of my body. And I get to make that choice. Just to bring that empowerment back into yourself, that we get to neutralize all foods, but it's also your choice, what you do or do not want to put into your body.
Sue Van Raes 31:40
Absolutely. And I think like sometimes even just looking at a food we can notice, do I feel more energized? Or more depleted? Do I feel more strength or more weakness? Do I feel more power or less power? Do I feel more pleasure or less or more pressure, and we can decide just really with the subtle leaning in or leaning out? You know, it's just that easy after time passes, but I do believe that our bodies can be that cueing in the moment. Like you can taste the bite of dessert and you can be like, okay, is this a pleasurable taste? Or am I just now eating this because I already took a bite, and I'm just gonna automatically keep eating it. It's those little subtleties that have so much potency, in our experience with food and with everything, right? It can be anything, it can be, what do I want to do? Do I want to go to a yoga class or go on a hike, you know, which one feels more energizing. Like today, this sunny day that we're having in Colorado, it's like, I was so happy to be outside this morning on a dog walk. And that's because I was listening to like, oh, this brings me joy. This brings me pleasure. So I'm going to move towards that. And I think we can start to work with that in lots of different domains within our experience. And food is such a great one to start with, or to come back to or what have you. And it's such a metaphor for so much of the other things that we do in our life.
Stephanie Mara 32:59
Yeah. And I'm curious, so as someone, because this is an exploration that I find myself a lot in, as someone moves towards physical satiation, and maybe finding their biochemical balance and what works best for them, there's this piece that I have found comes up around now emotional discomfort with feeling satiated and satisfied. And I'm curious to hear your thoughts of if you've seen that and how you've navigated then the emotional discomfort that can sometimes then come up of like, oh, like I'm giving my body what it needs, and it feels good. And I often say that feeling good doesn't have to feel good at first.
Sue Van Raes 33:39
Totally. Well, it can feel good to our body, but then our mind can swoop in and start making up stories about it. And you know, just like everything, our minds love stories. And so we have stories about hunger. We have stories about fullness, we have stories about satiation, which you know, is a slightly different thing than fullness, even we have stories about what things should look like and what we should look like. And so whenever those come in, and sort of start to question the body, it's very rich territory or investigation. It's rich territory to start to untangle ourselves from the story maybe to even just at least admit there is a story. Like I've had clients who feel so much panic around hunger, like hunger brings up the most foundational primal fight or flight survival response to a point that it's you know, in between meals, I'm not talking about like days of hunger. I'm talking about like hunger between lunch and dinner while I'm at classes all afternoon. What if I get hungry, like I might panic and have a complete panic anxiety moment just from hunger. And then the opposite of that. I'm sure you've seen this in your work as well like folks who feel super triggered by being full or super triggered by eating what would be satiating because there's a sensation in our stomach that might feel a little bit fuller, even if it's just a little bit full. And that sensation can cause a lot of stories in our mind, like, oh, now I'm not going to be able to fit into my jeans, or I'm never going to get into a bathing suit after eating lunch, or I feel like my body shape has changed by one meal, or panic sets in just with that feeling of fullness. And, you know, I think that a lot of that comes from the stories that we've told ourselves, but also the stories society has told us that we've kind of transmuted into our own version. And so it does take awareness and moment to moment presence to be able to even notice that is happening. So first, we notice it's happening. We recognize it, we're like, Okay, hello, this is a story. Okay, now let's investigate the story. I actually have an acronym for this in my book called the Rise method. We recognize it, that's the R. We investigate it, that's the deepest thing of like, where did this come from? Did I inherit this from a television commercial, or from a social media post, or from my mother or whoever, right. And then we have the opportunity to practice the shift, which is the S and the shift can look like so many things. Sometimes we need support to get the shift. Sometimes we need space and time and quiet to reflect. Sometimes we need literally to shift the languaging in our mind to something that is, you know, going to energize our body, or bring power to the system or shift the inner narrative. You know, sometimes I know you and I both love internal family systems work and parts work. And that, for me, has been incredibly profound to add into my practice with myself, but also with my clients. Because all of a sudden, I can create just a little bit of separation from the experience and be like, oh, a part of me feels uncomfortable being full. What's going on with that part? What does she need? What is she protecting me from? What's going on there? Like, is there a place in my body, I can feel the tension around that? Is there a stress happening, like have a conversation with that part of ourselves. Anyways, the shift takes some practice. And it does, you know, many different modalities work on the shift, depending on the situation. And then the E in in the rise method stands for Elevate, we can elevate our experience by kind of coming full circle, creating the shift, and then noticing, Oh, I feel more power, I feel stronger, I feel more pleasure, I feel lighter in my heart, whatever it is that we know we're on the right track. And there's an elevation in our emotional body, in our mindset, maybe even in our physical body. Because sometimes we'll notice like just to collapse when we feel like disheartened. And we'll kind of you know, just kind of curve forward. And then the Elevate, you might notice yourself being like, Oh, I feel like a little bit broader or a little taller or a little bit more open. And so that's kind of how I break it down. But really, the very, very first step of that is just the recognition. And sometimes that is profound in itself.
Stephanie Mara 37:56
I loved all of that. And yeah, I love that you started with that little baby step of first we have to recognize that we have a story about satiation and fullness or hunger and start to get curious about our experience of that. And where did we learn how to have that meaning out of this felt sense of hunger or fullness. So that's amazing. And such a great segue into your first book comes out April 9, I'm so excited for you. And could you share a little bit more about your book?
Stephanie Mara 38:31
Yeah, I'm thrilled that more of this information is getting out in the world. And the fact that your book exists is just super exciting. So that comes out April 9, and where can individuals find it?
Sue Van Raes 38:31
Oh, totally. It is a lot about what we're talking about, of course, which isn't really surprising since you and I really love our work. And you know, this book, food and freedom is really looking at our relationship to food as an opportunity and a way that, you know, I believe that our relationship to food highlights other parts of our life that are needing love and attention from us, and sometimes others but especially within ourselves. And so often I noticed that I'll start with food with a lot of my clients and then we end up kind of going through to getting deeper and deeper to sort of the root of some of the symptoms around their eating, whether it be you know, disordered eating or just imbalanced eating or just overwhelmed eating and find that there's so much there to work with underneath of the food piece. And so food and freedom does really start with some of the biochemistry, some of the nervous system regulation and you know how our nervous systems play into our relationship with food sometimes based on our stories, sometimes based on you know, other things happening like for example, digestive distress, and then it really does move through the mind piece and how our thoughts are related, and how things like resistance is related. It also moves through the feelings and how our feelings are related to our food both in a reactionary way, but also in a biochemical way. And then we get into sort of my favorite part, which is the soul of our eating, which is looking at how we can both bring more soulfulness to the table. But we can also align our eating with our souls, which is a whole different experience in my world. Because when we do that, things start to really feel more magical. Things start to really feel like more pleasure based, more power inducing, more strengthening, because now we've got our whole being on board, which is, you know, something that can take a little bit of practice as well. But it can surely bring more pleasure and more enchantment and more, you know, just beauty to the eating experience. And that's really where, you know, the juiciness is, as we kind of dig in, and in working with ourselves on this holistic and whole self level, the messiness, the intensity, our societal constraints, and sort of the ways in which our society is fairly messed up around food. And so knowing all of that, this is not a perfectly perfect journey, right? This is a journey to the self, but it's also kind of messy along the way. And like, I just welcome that I welcome all of it. And that has been such an incredible part of this process in the both my life but also in writing this book, developing more and more clarity in the writing around some of these aspects of relationship to food. And it just gets me so excited for this book to come out. Because I feel like it took me on a journey. And it kind of wrote me in a way more than I wrote it. And so it's it's been an incredible growing experience for me of like, personal growth. And you know, just getting to know myself more through the process. So yeah, that's food and freedom and the subtitle discover your personal recipe to eat, think and live well. Thank you for asking about it.
Sue Van Raes 42:11
Yeah, thank you. Yeah. So it's actually going to be anywhere books are sold all the online good places, like definitely Amazon, Good Reads, and all the big bookstores and my website bouldernutrition.com. You know, there's another link, there's some links there for some other smaller book, local bookstores and places like that. So yeah, you should be able to find it by just kind of going to your favorite book, purchasing platform and searching it there. And I have a book of that, I don't know if our podcast will come out in time, but I have a book opening at the Boulder Bookstore on April 10th. So that's kind of my debut event, which is kind of crazy that it's the day after. I'm really like just looking forward to all of it and getting really excited. So yeah, thank you so much for mentioning that.
Stephanie Mara 42:53
Yeah, absolutely. So if you're in Colorado, April 10th. Mark your calendar. And I'll put a link in the show notes to your your book as well. And just in general, just love all of the wisdom that you shared here today, how can individuals listening, keep in touch with you?
Sue Van Raes 43:11
Thank you. So you can find out lots about lots of the different things I offer at bouldernutrition.com. And I do have a little free guide there if people want sort of a little taster of some of the work that I do, which is make peace with your plate. It's called and it's five daily practices to cultivate food and body freedom. So that's all over the website. And then I have my podcast, which is called Satiate. And then you can find me @bouldernutrition on Instagram, where is kind of my primary social media platform where I know you also hang out Stephanie. So yeah, those are the key spots. Yeah. So I'd love to see you any or all of those places.
Stephanie Mara 43:50
Yeah. Well, thank you so much for just being here and sharing your journey. You know, we have such similarities in the way we work and also how we got to this point. And so it was just such a joy to reconnect with you again today.
Sue Van Raes 44:03
Thanks. It's really fun to be here with you too. I'm excited. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.
Stephanie Mara 44:08
Yeah, absolutely. And to everyone listening if you have any questions as always, I will leave our contact information in the show notes and reach out anytime and I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your day. Bye!
Keep in touch with Sue here:
Book: Food and Freedom: https://amzn.to/3J9QO8k
Website: www.bouldernutrition.com/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/bouldernutrition