When people find out that I am a nutritional counselor, I suddenly feel like they are nervous to eat in front of me.  Like I have all the answers and what they are doing is supposedly wrong.  I want to dispel that right now, that I never judge what someone else is eating. 

I have learned through my journey and relationship with food that what works for me isn't going to work for everyone else.  I don't live in your body, I don't truly know what your body needs from moment to moment (I do however love teaching how to learn to communicate with your unique body).

At the beginning of my gut healing journey, I was told how mucus forming dairy was and that it could be causing some of my issues.  You want me to give up my yogurt!? I loved my sugary added yogurts and the first time I heard this I was not ready to take that advice.

I tell you this story because it took me another 3 years to actually experiment with completely taking dairy out of my daily eating habits to find out that indeed dairy and I are not friends.  When we are ready to deepen in our relationship with food and ourselves we will.  What I have learned through my client's and my own process with the gut is to be patient and to give yourself plenty of time.

Embrace where you are now with your relationship with food.  Sometimes it may just be too intense to look at how you are nourishing yourself because it may be a protective blanket covering up some intense emotions that you are just not ready to deal with yet.  And that is totally fine!  Love yourself up and know that you are doing the best you can in this moment to take the very best care of yourself.

I wish I had been told this more on my journey to heal my gut.  Every time I had a digestive upset I felt like a failure and that all my effort to heal was for nothing. But every decision, every effort, every choice I made in the direction of listening, of tuning in to myself, especially in the moments that I was in pain and I didn't want to listen, brought me closer to myself and to my body and what it truly wanted.

So if you find yourself eating in front of me, just know that all I wish for you is an enjoyable experience with that food. We are all at different phases and stages in our relationship with food and I find the journey beautiful and full of deep wisdom and knowledge for who we are and the stories we bring with us from childhood.  It is all right there on our plate.

The stomach lining changes over about every 5 days, your taste buds change every two weeks, every day you shed over a million skin cells, the uterine wall for a woman sheds every month.  We are constantly changing and from day to day we are never living in the same body.  How will you begin the process of coming into relationship with your body and your gut for who they are and what they need today?

Happy Day after July 4th!  You might have gone to a big BBQ yesterday, ate a lot of food, and now today feel perhaps sluggish, tired, bloated, and gassy.  Additionally, often times after a large meal there is a judgmental voice that pops up.  "Why did you do that?"  "You are such a failure for eating that much." "I have to restrict what I eat today to make up for yesterday." "I have to go to the gym today and work this all off." 

Do any of these sound familiar to you?  This list goes on in terms of what that voice can say, but it is a voice that is loud, mean, and not looking after your health and well being.

So here are a couple of steps you can take after eating a big meal:

1.  Focus on Emotional Nourishment

Being with friends and family nourishes us in a similar and different way than food.  We can get filled up by the experience of being around loved ones.  Chatting, catching up, funny stories, playing games, effect the way we digest our food.  When you are being emotionally nourished by the situation your body is in a relaxation response and your digestive tract can handle any input of food easier.  So as those voices pop up, redirect your thoughts toward how you were nourished by the situation.  Often big meals are eaten in the company of others.  Instead of focusing on how much you ate, reflect on how the people, the situation, the environment was ultimately very fulfilling.

2.  Be gentle with yourself

Think of the negative, harsh, internal voice that arises after a large meal as your inner child.  The more you ignore the fact they are whining, the louder they get.  Listen to what your inner child is saying, rub their back, and tell them everything is going to be alright.  The voices may still be there but you can acknowledge them and choose not to do anything about them.  This can be an opportunity to delve deeper into what the voices are really trying to say.  Is eating a large meal mean you deserve less love?  Is feeling overly full mean that people won't like you anymore?  Be super gentle with yourself after a large meal and think about what you can emotionally nourish yourself with throughout the day that doesn't have to do with restriction or self punishment.  Take a bath, take a walk, listen to some music, call a friend, do something that nourishes your soul.  It is all about coming back to self love.

3.  Eat something fermented/take your probiotics

I of course had to add this in!  After a big meal, there might have been a lot of sweets, sugar, or carbs that were consumed.  By eating some kimchee, sauerkraut, taking a probiotic, drinking some Kevita, you will be flooding your gut with beneficial bacteria which will go to work to make sure those foods are not sitting in your stomach and fermenting.  Getting in the good bacteria after a big meal will help keep your mood up and aid your belly in digesting all the yummy food you just ate.  Additionally if you take your probiotic with a glass of water with a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar in it you will increase your stomach acid to also help break down the large meal.

And just remember every time we eat is an opportunity to learn more about ourselves.  Every meal is a chance to explore our relationship with food and others.  There is no judgment here.  Be curious like a child and explore the situation with fascination and inquiry.

I will start by saying that I am jumping out of my skin in excitement.  I just posted this article on my facebook page. "Enter psychobiotics: a live organism that, when ingested in adequate amounts, produces a health benefit in patients suffering from psychiatric illness."

I am trying to calm my enthusiasm for a minute to truly connect with why these findings and the continued findings of how important our gut microbiome is for me.  I spent years in digestive pain.  I ate poorly because I didn't know that eating something else would help me.  I became complacent with the pain and the bloating.  I thought this was what life was like for me and that I would never know anything different.

When the pain got worse in undergrad so did my anxiety and I began experiencing panic attacks.  I had no clue at the time that all these symptoms were connected.  There have been a lot of things that have helped healed my gut over time (and trust me when I got motivated and aware that I could heal, I tried everything).  But, one of the factors that I believe helped me the most was working on changing the microflora in my gut.

I grew up eating my emotions.  I loved sugar, I loved fatty meals, I loved gluten.  When my parents divorced, food came in to numb that pain.  I had no idea that how I was treating my body as a kid over time would destroy my gut, destroy the healthy balance of good to bad bacteria, and leave me in pain and confusion as to how I got there. 

Gut bacteria can:

Help with digestion
Protect the intestinal barrier
Direct microbial-produced neurochemical production (like GABA a neurotransmitter for relaxation)
Help to prevent stress induced alterations
Direct activation of neural pathways between gut and brain
Improve absorption of nutrients from food
Limit small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (which many individuals with digestive pain have and have yet to be diagnosed)
Reduce anxiety
Decrease cortisol production
Influences neural development, brain chemistry, emotional behavior, pain perception, and how the stress system responds in adulthood
Play a role in manufacturing the body’s supply of serotonin, which influences mood and GI activity

I could go on and on.  There is even research being done right now on what would happen to our body and our self expression if we entirely changed the bacteria in our gut.  Basically, what if we are just large bacterias walking around.  Is bacteria running the show?  Is bacteria really the "soul" we talk about on the inside?

I wrote my thesis on how to cultivate a relationship to the gut brain to teach to therapists about how their clients are eating and treating their body will help facilitate progress across time and in sessions.  The fact that more research continues to come out about the connection between the health of our gut and our mental health fascinates and excites me.  What if someone dealing with severe depression could one day take a prescribed dose of specific strains of probiotics instead of prozac to help them heal their gut and their mind. 

If there is anything that you take away from this today it is start feeding your gut some healthy bacteria every day!  Eat some fermented vegetables, kimchee, sauerkraut, take a refrigerated probiotic.  And then notice how you feel, notice how it affects your mood, your digestion, your ability to focus.  And if you are experiencing digestive pain, give your body time to heal.  When you set up the best internal environment it will heal.

Today on Gut Guru I discuss one of my favorite topics!  Bacteria!  Specifically probiotics.  Watch and enjoy!  I go over what they are, a few reasons on how they are useful (although I only skimmed the surface of what probiotics can do for your body!), and I share some of my favorite products to get probiotics into the body for the day.

The Institute for Integrative Nutrition defines Primary Food as the type of nourishment that fills you up first.  This comes from healthy relationships, regular physical activity, a fulfilling career and a spiritual practice which can satisfy your hunger for life. "When primary food is balanced and satiated, your life feeds you, making what you eat secondary."

The Conscious Cleanse has a term called Soul Food where again how we are living our life can nourish us in a way that food can't and that often times when our soul is not being fed adequately that is when food can be used inappropriately.

This weekend my primary nourishment or soul food has been filled to the brim.  My mother came to visit.  I never wanted to move to the west coast and be so far away from most of my family, and especially her, but that was where my life was calling me.  So I only get to see her about twice a year, which we talked about this weekend how this needs to change because it is just too little.

I am literally fed by her presence, her laughter, our chats, our hugs, that food becomes secondary.  I eat when I am hungry and I stop when I am full.  Suddenly, when I am truly present and being nourished by my life and those around me, food has less power.  It becomes something that is needed to keep me going and keep my focus on getting back to feeling satiated by my life. 

Sometimes this is a concept I forget when things get super busy.  I can often lean on meal times as a crutch to feel some calm in a busy day.  So this weekend was a nice reminder that when the stress levels rise and things get hectic and busy, this is the time I need to reach out to my friends and family even more to talk, to laugh, to take walks, to decompress.  When we are filled up, satiated, nourished by our surroundings we feed ourselves the things that feel good and give us energy. 

So the next time you find yourself reaching again for a food that leaves you tired or drained or bloated or guilty try asking yourself what else could fill you up in that moment that has nothing to do with food.  Perhaps you need to take a bath, or call a friend, or put on music and dance wild around your apartment or house.  Create a list of these things and put them up on your fridge so that every time you go to reach for food you get the reminder to ask yourself what is it that you are truly craving/needing/desiring in that moment.  Are you truly hungry or are you grazing?  Do you need physical nourishment from food or are you looking to fill some emotional hunger?

No matter what you decide to do, this is all just information to use to empower you to make the best decisions for yourself.  And your primary nourishment or soul food list on your fridge can serve as another tool in which to remind yourself to connect back with you.

I am blessed to know a lot of amazing people.  Individuals who are doing some incredible conscious awareness raising things in this world.  There have been a lot of shifts in my life lately where I am investing more in myself and more in what I have to give back to the world.  And so I have had to ask myself why is nutrition so important?  When there seems to be so many bigger issues in the world that need attention, that I could devote my time to, why have I chosen nutrition and nutritional counseling to become so passionate about.

I have discovered through my years of experimenting with what I put into my body how it effects my moods and my ability to show up honestly and authentically with others.  There was a time in my life where eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with cheese doritos in them and dominos pizza covered in ranch dressing (I had the weirdest food cravings) was a regular every day eating occurrence.  My digestion was a mess, I was bloated all the time (I literally looked pregnant/food baby belly), and I was secretly very depressed which I tried to hide behind a plastered smile on my face.

I can now see, of course in hindsight, that what I was eating was effecting my moods and my ability to feel satiation and happiness in my skin.  When I started learning about yoga and Ayurveda, I began to understand that what I am putting in to my body, physically with food and emotionally with my thoughts, could change me on a cellular level.  Every time I decided to eat a meal that was nutrient dense and protein rich, I was able to feel my internal inflammation go down.  As I learned that I have a brain in my gut and that I could trust my body's messages and what felt good in my body, this changed how I showed up in my life.

The people around me now watch in amazement over how much vegetables I can eat (I own a t-shirt that says eat more kale ;)).  With every vegetable I eat I feel mental clarity, energy, and the ability to be present.  And with every non-processed food I choose not to eat, over time the emotions that were being stuffed down by all that toxic food began to surface.  I'm not going to say it was easy to deal with these emotions; they were so deeply buried that they felt like they were going to eat me whole.  Yet, as I continued to eat whole foods, I was able to stay with my emotions and be with myself even if they felt quite intense.  As I worked (and continue to work) through these emotions, I see food and what I eat on a daily basis as a gateway.

The way you feed yourself can change your whole world which in turn can change another person's world.  When you treat your body with respect and feed it whole unprocessed nutrient dense foods (think vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, organic meats, beans, whole grains, healthy fats) you step in to your vibrancy.  Good nutrition can change the way you process the events of your day, which can in turn lead to decreased stress levels, which in turn helps you to feel happy, to give back, which then in turn can effect those around you.  So just by eating those vegetables, you could end up making someone's day by your ability to be generous with others because you are being kind and considerate to yourself.  And I think that is pretty cool.

So I want to give a call to action.  Instead of telling yourself that there is something you "can't" have, you can insert a new tape that you are choosing not to have that processed food because it blocks your ability to be you.  And when you show up as your authentic self, you give those around you permission and encouragement to do the same.

I have a difficult time with endings.  Endings of a class, of a life, of friendships, of a good time, of a day, of a meal.  I still think about clients after the session is over, I still think about conversations that I have had even though they are long gone, and when I have to say goodbye to my mother when visiting her its like someone has died (water works all over the place).  When I think about it, I have been this way since I was a kid. I always felt so empty after a fun sleepover and then all of a sudden that situation was over and I was back home.  I have been trying to pay more attention to this difficulty with endings through my meals recently.  During a meal, even a mindful meal, I am thoroughly enjoying myself.  Taking long luxuriously meals on the weekends that last almost an hour, chewing fully, tasting, smelling.  And then the plate is empty (and yes sometimes I will lick my plate clean if the meal was that good).  Today I sat with the joy I felt while eating and enjoying an experience of my life and I began to cry.  Sure the judgmental thoughts came up, "seriously Stephanie?  You're crying over an empty plate?"  But that empty plate meant so much more to me and it is amazing what we can realize and track through our patterns with food.

Let me back track for a second.  We all have our upper limits of happiness.  Throughout our lives and the disappointments and joys we have encountered we have set an unconscious or conscious limit to how much happiness we believe our bodies can hold.  In the past my limit was pretty low and feeling any twinge of joy made me squirm.  Keep your expectations low and you won't get disappointed right?  Wrong!  So over the past couple of years through graduate school I have slowly raised my upper limits of happiness.  Yet, I am still working with how to let the joy run through me like a stream and know that the joy will come again.  Take my meals for example.  I know that I get to eat again as soon as I feel hunger and yet after experiencing such pure joy of feeding myself nourishment it is enough to send me overboard and not truly know how to stay in my body with the immense amount of gratitude I have for filling myself up.  And then this extends to, how else can I fill myself up throughout the day? 

I offer this experiment to you.  Notice how you feel after a meal.  Do you feel empty?  Energized?  Joyful?  Sad?  This can begin to give you clues to how you end other things in life or how you let other things full you up.  And please let me know what you find out I would love to hear!

I know I haven't written in a few weeks.  I will admit and share that falling in love kind of took me away from my commitment to writing.  Yet with Grad School starting up again next week, I need this outlet more than ever.

Have you ever been so confused by your own mind that you didn't know which is up and which is down?  Reflecting on this past summer, my existence has literally been blown out of the water.  Every single external stipulation I had set up for myself as a kid to find happiness has now been met.  It is utterly freaking me out haha.  One would think that if you finally got everything you have ever been asking for that you would jump for joy and settle into bliss and that whole movie style happily ever after stuff.  But o wait....I don't live in a movie....and there is no such thing as happily ever after.  Life keeps going (the parts we never see in a movie).

My mind gets in the way of experiencing this happiness.  I upper limit myself to my own experience of joy in my life.  It has been fascinating watching my mind reach as far out as it possibly can to create some drama or story to find something "wrong."  We as human beings can completely classically condition ourselves just like a dog and I have conditioned myself to continuously be searching for more.  While this has been beneficial, constantly pushing me to move forward and pursue more than I can sometimes physically and mentally handle, this tendency has now become somewhat of a detriment.  Now when I have the opportunity to accept myself and my body just the way it is, I find myself still searching.

My mind is running frantic, not understanding the shift that is happening.  It is holding on to its conditioned neural pathways as hard as it possibly can; just like an addiction.  We think of drugs, alcohol, food as addictions, yet we rarely talk about how our own patterns, routines, habits, and as I have coined, mental masturbations as addictions as well.  And the interesting thing is, we find support and guidance to change our external addictions to drugs, alcohol, and food, yet I see so many settle on, "this is just the way I am and the way I have always done things and that will never change" when it comes to our own mental blocks.

As yoga and meditation have taught me, thoughts are just thoughts, they are not facts.  While my thoughts can cause an emotional reaction, as they sometimes disturb me, again they are not reality.  Reality truly is within our own perception, but the one thing we can always come back to when our mind is running is what is fact.  For example right now, at 2:34 in the morning with a running mind like a hamster on a wheel that hasn't quite figured out how to get off yet, the facts are I am sitting on a medicine ball, my feet aren't totally touching the carpet entirely as I am up on my toes, my throat is really dry, and my jaw is tight.  That is truth, fact, what is happening in the present moment.  There is no interpretation, no reading into, or analysis of why.  It isn't necessary.  This is just what is happening right here and right now.  And even verbalizing the facts, coming back to my body toward what is real, brings me out of my head and back into my body.

I invite you to try this little exercise the next time you find yourself going through your own mental masturbation.  Lie on your floor, sit on your couch, and just begin to breath and notice.  Describe what is currently happening in your body and what you feel and every time your mind tries to speak up you gently soothe your monkey mind and then begin again to notice what is real.  There can be a powerful transformation and change that occurs when we begin to allow ourselves to slow down and just for a moment experience our life exactly the way it is.  Life can be rather simple after all.