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[00:14] Hello and welcome to Almost 30 Podcast. I'm gonna try and be chill today for this intro. But if you guys even knew what was happening in my body and in my mind and my spirit, having the opportunity and the chance and the gift, it makes me emotional to think about it, of introducing you to Geneen Roth. So if you're new here, welcome to Almost 30. My name is Krista Williams. You can find me on Instagram at itskrista. I help women on the edge of breakthrough. I help you live the life that you've always been dreaming of. I am the host and co-founder of Almost 30 Podcast. I'm a coach. I am a teacher, etc. And I teach a lot on body transformation and body liberation. And one of the most important teachers in my life has been Geneen Roth. Geneen Roth is such a perfect fit for this show because she is a pioneer. She is a visionary. She is a teacher that is so incredibly invested in the spiritual components of body and weight loss. And she is someone that is so self-led and so about the energetics of food and the relationships, the patterns we have with food and the deeper aspects of how we live our life. She has been one of the most impactful teachers for me that I've ever had. I think her book, Women, Food and God, which was the first book I read of her books, was absolutely transformational and life-changing. In my body transformation program, Metamorphosis, I actually use a lot of the teachings from Women, Food and God to help support women through their own body transformation and body love journey. So she has been seen speaking to Oprah, speaking all over the world. She is one of the most prolific speakers, leaders and teachers in the body and the food space. Her work has been the most groundbreaking, I think, of any ones that I've seen. I think a lot of us have struggled with our bodies and struggled with the relationships that we've had with our bodies. And that led us to living lives that weren't fulfilling, weren't exciting, weren't alive. And that led so many of us, including myself, to a life that felt half-lived and to a life that felt incomplete and to a life that felt controlled by the part of me that needed to be thin to be loved. And her new book that I got to sit down with Geneen to speak to is called Love Finally, Untangling the Knot Between Mothers, Daughters, and Food. And what's so cool about this is that the mother wound, which is what the book is a lot about, was my access point to learning about the deep web relationship I had with my body. Because when I started to untangle and really look at why I felt this pressure to be thin or this pressure to look a certain way, it led me back to my mother. And this complicated relationship we had, the complicated relationship we had between love and nourishment, between her relationship to her body, the patriarch's relationship to our body, it can go really, really deep. And this book for Geneen, as you guys will hear her mention on the show, is one of her deepest and most personal works yet. It really weaves together the mother wound, body image and food patterns, the inner critic voice, and how it all shapes our self-worth and relationships. And so this core idea is so aligned to my work. I would say this is almost exactly the work that I do in Metamorphosis. You're not reacting to life as it is. You're reacting to what you learn to believe about yourself. So she's exploring a lot of shame women have and feel about their bodies and the worth that actually isn't theirs. For so many of us, it's inherited, often from our relationship to our mothers. So in this book, we're going to learn how to untangle all of that. It's actually surprising to me that in her journey of writing, that she has taken so long to get to this place. And I talked to her about that. I'm like, wow, how did it... Because I feel like her work is so profound and forward-thinking that the mother wound felt obvious to me, but it had to be at the right part of her journey to really explore this process. So there's a spiritual undertone to this. There is a loving undertone to this. We talk about GLP-1s and the process of what it means to be taking a GLP-1, how that impacts you, what that means for your psyche and your soul. And in this book, she actually writes about a cancer diagnosis that pushed her to even a deeper inquiry about her identity and body. And so this is very vulnerable and very open and honest. And we fell in absolute love. Like, do not meet your heroes is what they always say. But I met my hero and I love her more for it. She is kind and open and playful. And we just had a freaking ball in this conversation. So the book is out now. Congratulations, Geneen. It's called Love Finally, Untangling the Knot Between Mothers, Daughters, and Food. And you can find it online. Highly suggest also then reading Women, Food, and God. And then When Food is Love is also really powerful. And if you want to get into the work of Metamorphosis, which is my small group coaching program, where we kind of do the mother wound work, and it's a lot of Geneen's teachings that have a great reference in there, you can go to itskrista.com and get on the wait list. So it's itskrista.com to get on the Metamorphosis wait list. And you can find more from Almost 30 on our Instagram. You can go to Almost 30 Podcasts on Instagram. You can find us on YouTube. We're doing a really beautiful video. So you can see Geneen's little sparkly hair on YouTube for this. And then you can find me on Instagram at itskrista. I would love to connect with you there. I would love to talk to you. I'm always available to hear your reflections from the show. I appreciate you. I love you so much. And I'm grateful for you and your time and attention. I'm grateful to bring this woman to you today. This feels really, feel really grateful for it. So enjoy this episode. I'm gonna butcher one of your quotes, but the concept of the quote was basically like, if your spiritual life is, if your life is consumed with thoughts about food, you will never get to your spiritual life. What was the quote? It was basically around the concept that like, you will never get to do what you came here to do and you will never have the spiritual satisfaction and connection if you're constantly worried about what you're eating and food. Well, a pivot on that is that how you eat is how you live. So if you really, really look at your relationship with food and go all the way into it, then you will find what you're really hungry for. When you started talking about this, I mean, this book that I have here, Breaking Free From Emotional Eating, you said you wrote in 1984. I did. Feeding a Hungry Heart was 1982. Was everything you were talking about so radical? Yes. Because when you talk about this, it's like this isn't do the diet, this is actually stop the dieting, this is actually go deeper, this is actually your relationships, like your relationship to spirituality. What was the response and reaction when you started making connections between food and something deeper? I think people were shocked. I remember being in Australia on book tour, and they did not know what to do with me. So they loaded the entire stage with food and handed out chocolate chip cookies to everybody in the audience. And they were, yeah, right, Geneen, you're saying that if you eat when you're hungry and stop when you've had enough, then you will break the cycle of compulsive eating. And that was often how it is. But in Love, Finally, I do say if words were birds and could fly back into my mouth, I would swallow the ones I wrote about intuitive eating. Because what I realize now is that unless an adult is present, when you ask yourself what you want to eat, the answers will be like my answers were, frozen Milky Ways, Oreos without the middles in them, a lot of chocolate, Breyer's ice cream, that was popular when I was growing up, melted around the edges. So I really want people to know it's possible. And the work of having an adult there is really important. God, that's just everything. And it's funny because you know the emotional aptitude of someone if you say that, like eat whatever you want. Oh, so I'm just going to eat Cheetos all day. You're like, I know that there's no adult in the room for you. There's absolutely no adult inside for you. And what we're talking about, what you're talking about, just to confirm, is having your own inner adult. I am. It's the inner mother or the inner father, the part of you that knows that there's greater joy, peace, satisfaction, that your liberation isn't just in letting it all go and eating whatever you want. Because that's often in reaction to the person who told you you couldn't. Yes. Sometimes when I'm teaching a retreat, well, not sometimes, we do eating meditations at the retreat. And I, of course, work with people with what they've chosen. And I remember there was one person who had a stack of pancakes. That's my favorite food. I really like pancakes. I love pancakes. I really like them. I love them, but like you're comatose after, it's like not okay. That's why it's good to have yogurt and eggs with them. I'm good, but okay. You can. That sounds good. Anyway, you say, you know what? Comatose doesn't sound so bad now that you've brought yogurt and eggs into it. Yeah, now that you're making it protein pancakes. Forget it. Okay. Comatose is part of what I'm making. I wanted to know. Anyway, I asked her, I looked at her plate and I said, do you like pancakes? And she said, no. And I said, well, tell me what's going on. And she said, my mother told me I could never have pancakes. My mother has now been dead for 10 years. And I am eating them because I can, but not because of how they feel inside me, or if I really want them, but to say go to hell to my dead mother. So that's why it's good to check in. And it's crazy because when you're in, and I, with my clients, I practice parts work, internal family systems, which you probably know about parts work, IFS. Yeah, I did a lot of work with Dick Schwartz way back when. Yeah, he started an eating disorder recovery, a lot of his work. And in parts, you'd say like that was a part that's so present. And it's almost like you're living from that little girl. That's like, I am so mad at mom. I'm holding to this resentment, this anger, this frustration. And that part is just blended over the rest of you, wanting the pancakes so badly to soothe. And there's another part of you that's like, I don't like pancakes. But the part that's in pain is so much louder and causing you to choose to eat a food you don't even like. Right. You know, what I learned, and part of the reason I wrote Love, Finally, is because I realized we're all like Russian nested dolls. And there's this little, you just keep taking those dolls apart. And that little one, or you don't even have to call it a little one, that we operate, or I operated, on a set of conclusions about myself. It's different language than IFS. But it's a set of conclusions that I came to in relationship to my mother. I was furious at my mother for 60 years. I would say that I was furious with her. I resented her, the sound of her voice graded on me. And in part, it was because of the times that she told me I wasn't allowed to have whole milk yogurt, for instance. Or the time. Too much fat? When I was 11, when I went for my second good humor creamsicle of the day, and she told me I couldn't have it. And I ran inside the house and I stuffed my pants with frozen milky ways. And I ran upstairs and I ate every single one of those frozen milky ways sitting over my garbage pail and crying. Because I wanted my mom to love me. And I felt like she would love me if I was thinner. But I also felt like she didn't love me because I was fat. And so what I started working on were certain conclusions that I'd come to about myself. So that that goes back to what you were saying about a part for me, it's just conclusions. That I came to the conclusion that something was wrong with me, I'm damaged, I'm worthless, I'm selfish. There's a basket of conclusions there that I realized I needed to question a name because that's what I interpreted for my mother. She didn't necessarily say those things to me. But until I stopped, until I asked myself what I was feeling and what I had started believing about myself, nothing was going to change. I was going to keep blaming her and blaming myself. There's nothing better than getting into bed after a long day and feeling completely comfortable and relaxed. That's why I've been loving Cozy Earth. Oh my gosh, their bamboo sheets are made from viscose, from bamboo, and they stay cool all night. My body temperature is all over the place right now and it's saving me. So it just makes falling asleep and staying asleep so much easier, more comfortable. I am also obsessed with their pajama sets. My husband actually recently got me a Cozy Earth pajama set for my birthday. So soft and lightweight, they drape perfectly and keep your temperature just right. It's not, it doesn't overheat me. It just feels really, really good. It's one of those small changes that actually transforms your whole routine and makes your home feel more like a sanctuary. 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Well, you know, my book, When Food Is Love, which I wrote when I met my husband, Matt, was about the sense of abandonment that I had in relationship to my mother, what I thought was in relationship to my mother, because I had a really conflictual relationship with my mother. She was a miserable child, married someone, my father, that she didn't really love, was incredibly lonely, didn't really know how to be a mom. And what I really believe from that was that something was wrong with me. I didn't and wasn't ready to write about the real nitty gritty of my relationship with my mother. I did enough so that when she read that book, my stepfather said to me, if you publish this book, your mother will have a nervous breakdown. Because I tell the story of my mom dragging me across the floor by my hair and screaming at me and hitting me. And I went through it with my mom then, talked to her about it, and she was okay with me publishing that. I think it took this long to get to the point where I could go back and name the things that, it's like a lens almost, that when you look at the world through shattered lenses, the world looks shattered. And I was looking at the world through the shattered lens of the interpretations I had made, or conclusions or beliefs I had made about myself, vis-a-vis my mom. And then I had to question, were they true? Was it really true that I was worthless? I was blaming her for that. When I started asking myself, what's going on? And in part, it was because I met this 87-year-old near blind woman who started telling me that it wasn't what my mother did, it was how I interpreted what she did. It was what I believed from what she did, what I believed about myself. That was the first distance between me blaming my mother, blaming myself and me questioning, oh, maybe it didn't happen the way I thought it, maybe it happened, maybe that was the lens of my childhood. And it was now time to question, was that true? Am I really worthless, damaged? Because there were certain things I came away with. And so when I began to question those things, those conclusions, then I could make my way back to my mother and stop blaming her. And the amazing thing that happened was that she changed as I changed. So as I stopped blaming her, I'm not going to say she stopped blaming herself, but how a relationship totally changed. Mine did, too, it was so wild because I remember I struggled with my relationship with my mother and my life very much. And food and weight was a huge piece of our relationship. Her greatest fear being a mother, she said, was that I'd be fat. And so my sister was very thin, I kind of wasn't. It was just like a thread throughout my life of that journey of her struggling with her weight, seeing food as a threat, my dad having his own opinions about fatness and people. And so that was like an underpinning of the struggles that we had. But it's interesting how with weight and body, I really internalized it as my own problem. Yes. You know, like there were other things that I was like, she's a bit, you know, she's mean, she's controlling. But the food stuff was always something that I could fix, I could do better at, I could win at, I could control. And I've just found that to be so interesting that, especially with that, I don't know if it's because of media or culture, it really becomes the voice that is monitoring us. You know, that was maybe originally our mother, or maybe we interpreted and then became our own voice. You know, that inner monitor voice. Yes. Yeah, that's what happens. We interpret it, whatever is said out there, we hear it in a particular way, and then we start saying it to ourselves. And we start telling ourselves, or I started telling myself, I'm bad, I'm damaged, I don't matter, my existence doesn't matter. And I didn't realize that I was seeing everything through that. I call it the hunger beneath the hunger, that food cannot touch, because I got thin quite a few times in my life, really thin, when I was anorexic, and a couple of other times, and it didn't fix that hunger. It didn't fix the hunger. And I think a lot of Whitman that have struggled have had that, where we're like, I'm at the goal weight, but I'm not any happier. I'm at the point where everyone said this was when my life began and everything would be easy, and I don't feel any better. When we talk about, I guess I'm so versed in this because I love your work so much, but just for someone that might not understand, how do you correlate emotions and food? What is the relationship between someone's emotions and food? Well, what starts happening with someone is that, this is just an example. One of my retreat students said this to me the other day. I walk in the house, I've had a hard day at work. I felt rejected by my boss or criticized, let's just say criticized by my boss, and I went right for the sweetness. I went right for the sweetness. So I think that middle ground there is to realize, I'm feeling something. Let's start there. Yeah, I'm right, I'm feeling- 101. I feel sad, I feel rejected. Being down on myself. One way I tell people that you know that that voice is there is that you feel small or collapsed or paralyzed. You weren't feeling that way and now you are. And then you realize, okay, something's going on. And whenever you're feeling uneasy, whenever you're feeling discontent, you're telling yourself something and what I say, it's a lie. It's a lie. And I think for a lot of people, they were taught that they're feeling criticized, but they weren't allowed to express or emote or they didn't have a safe space. And so for me, at least, food became the safe space where I could either use food to numb or I could use food to give me dopamine or give me connection or give me this thing. And I think at the beginning of the book, you talk a little bit about it, but it's like, where we didn't get that emotional connection or attunement, or maybe this is Marianne Woodman's book, Addiction To Perfection. Have you read that? I love that book. God, that was so, that book I had to digest. I had to take in pieces. It's so good. But in it, it talks about if you don't have that attunement with your mother, you're going to try and find attunement somewhere. I think for me, a consistent attunement place was food. Gives me the dopamine, gives me a connection, gives me the feeling, and then it becomes a habit that you keep your whole life. Because it doesn't talk back, it doesn't go away, it's always there, it's always available, it tastes really good. You don't need anybody else to give it to you. It's yours. I think what's underneath there is good to see. What is the hunger really about? For most people, as it was for me, it was about bringing my, I call it attention particles back from out there to over here. What is it that I really need right now? Do I need quiet? Do I need stillness? Now some people don't get that far. They're just into the sweetness of the food, and then they feel terrible about that. But there's a, do you hear my stomach going? Speaking of. Speaking of. Our fearless leader, she's into it of eating, and she hasn't. Time to tune in. I think there's a sense that we're not allowed to take care of ourselves, not allowed to turn towards ourselves. You know, I was thinking this morning of this story when I was living in Big Sur, and I was living with my boyfriend, and he was the caretaker of the director of Essaline's, and I was anorexic. By that, I mean I was eating 150 calories a day and jogging four miles a day. And whenever he would leave, I'm talking about the director, I would sneak over to his house, and I would steal granola because I wouldn't let myself eat it for free. I felt like to give myself what I really wanted, I had to steal it. And then he caught me. And he told me, you know, he was going to call the police, and I wasn't allowed to be stealing granola. I was so deeply ashamed of myself for stealing granola. But when I think about it now, I realize how poignant it was that I was stealing food, the very food that I wanted that I wouldn't let myself have. Now, we can make a correlation there with attention. And the attention that we really want. And the care. And I think that was something, you know, I have a program called Metamorphosis, and a lot of it's like a, it is like a body liberation program. And it's funny, because I've been running it for two years now. And it was a lot of my body journey and healing that. And in one of the sections is mother wound. We do mother wound work. And because that for me, recognizing all the patterns and the thoughts that my mom had around her body, I had really taken on for myself. But something I really had learned and made a habit that I still struggle with now is not taking enough time to nourish myself. Yes, right. And cooking myself a meal. Like I have a dear friend that's staying with me for the month. And she's like, every time I'm with you, all I want to do is like cook for you. Cause you just like pour out to other people and you're so available and you just do not take care of yourself. And I think when we think, like I think sometimes in life we're confused. Like how do I take care of myself? How do I prioritize myself? And it really is like the basics like that. It's like, show yourself that you're worthy of a delicious home-cooked meal. Like what you wish your mother would have done. I will often say to people, be the one you've been waiting for. Be that one. And that's hard for people to do. It's a little step, but it's a really big step. I know, I've noticed that with a lot of work stuff, it's like even with that woman, so back to the woman example of the pancakes, I sometimes call that the inner rebel, where it's like the fuck you mom vibe. And then that inner rebel really sabotages a lot of women's diets and their bodies in a way, because when you're eating like that, you're not in tune with what your body actually wants for the most part, because she says or she doesn't even like it. So how do you work with someone if they have this experience where they're like, I was told I shouldn't eat this, so I really crave it and I want it, and they're kind of eating in response to their mother? Like how do you snap them out of it? I would say, what do you actually want? What is it you want when you eat those pancakes? And so I want to say, fuck you to my mother because what's going on? What do you believe about yourself? It's really not about food. It really isn't about food. Say more. It is about food, but it's not about the food. It is about the weight, or it's not about the weight, but it's not not about the weight. All those things are really true. So if I am eating to say, fuck you to my mother, then there is a voice in me that feels like she's not allowed to have. What am I saying, fuck you about? Because I wasn't allowed to have it, because I felt so bad about myself. Okay, well, let's look at that. Let's look at what do you say to yourself? What do you believe about yourself? You know, I take people through a process starting with a trigger. I'm triggered. Here are these pancakes. I'm triggered, and it's because my mother told me that I wasn't allowed to eat them. The first thing I would do is take it away from the mom, because it's not about the mother at this point. The mother isn't here anymore. The mother's been dead for years. Yes. It's not about the mother. So it's about me. What do I feel? In her case, she felt small, belittled, diminished, wrong, fat, bad about herself. And so we go into the feelings. And then we go into the first time she felt those feelings. And they are usually the first time happened, usually before we're seven years old. And what was going on then? What was happening then? My mother told me I couldn't eat. My mother slapped my hand, told me I wasn't allowed to eat ice cream. Or my mother used to say to me, her ankles are like piano stools. They're so thick, they're like piano stools. And so I internalized that voice. My ankles were like piano stools. And what did I feel? So the feeling there is I felt ashamed of myself. I felt bad. I felt damaged. And then I really am able to look. And so that was the conclusion that I made about myself that I'm still seeing through. Something is wrong with me. I'm damaged, I'm bad. And then there's some degree of awareness. You know, I'll often say to people, if you're noticing it, you're not it. Yes. So awareness itself, to notice it, engenders a kind of spaciousness and poignancy and tenderness. And you get to really say, that couldn't have been true. That was never true. Something I've learned with wellness is that having little treats you actually enjoy helps you stay consistent long term. And if I'm craving something cozy or a little indulgent, I try to find options that still support my body, that are still healthy. And that's why I've been loving Ka'Chava's new coffee flavor. You guys, it is phenomenal. I love coffee. I have one cup a day. I don't give it up. It's something that I love. This tastes like a smooth coffee treat, and it's made with premium decaffeinated Brazilian beans. So I can have this middle of the afternoon, give me what I need nourishment-wise, don't have to worry about the caffeine crash. It really gives it this authentic flavor. It's very, very good, but it's also doing a lot more behind the scenes. 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Banking services, a secure Chime Visa credit card and MyPay line of credit provided by the Bancorp Bank NA or Stride Bank NA. MyPay eligibility requirements apply and credit limit ranges $20 to $500. Optional services and products may have fees or charges. See chime.com/feesinfo. Advertised annual percentage yield with Chime Plus status only. Otherwise, 1.00% APY applies. No min balance required. Chime card on time payment history may have a positive impact on your credit score. Results may vary. See chime.com for details and applicable terms. And that's when you become almost your own mother, your inner mother. In the book, too, you listed a lot of the diets you had done, the diet pills, the Atkins, your kind of list. And I think a lot of women saw their mothers do these diets or even did them with them. I have so many women that I work with that were brought to Jenny Craig or brought to Weight Watchers at like such a very young age. And so we hear the voice of our mothers internalized. And then we also are like thrown into a diet culture that was so normalized. You know, it's it's two things about what you just said. One is I don't think it could be overestimated how influenced we are by the culture we're living in, particularly now in what's now being called the era of emaciation with skinnier and skinnier and skinnier and have those images blasted at us as if they are the ideal. That's one thing. We really are swimming. It's the sea we swim in, those images. Then there is the relationship with your mom. And my mother felt like she was a fat, my mother said she was a fat kid. Her mother took her shopping in the chubby section of Macy's and was really mad at her and disgusted with her because her legs used to rub together and they had to get cream that they couldn't really afford for the chafing between her thighs. She was determined I wasn't going to follow in her footsteps and thus it started. So I tell a story in Love Finally about getting off the bus from camp one summer. And my mother took a look at me and said to me, You've gained so much weight. You gain any more weight and you can be like the fat lady in the circus. We're going to get you diet pills right now. And we went to Dr. Mendy, who's now dead, so I can actually say his name out loud. And his nurse, Kathy, was sitting in front of a really big desk with boxes and boxes and boxes of pills, open, gorgeous color pills. I didn't know what they were. She gave me a shot of placenta of something. Who knew what that was? Stop. Seriously. Weighed me and then gave me a small wide envelope of 14 pills. And I was supposed to take these pills once in the morning and once at night. So I was 15 at that point. And by that point, I had already been on a diet or a binge every day for the last four years. So dieting and bingeing was second nature. And I got addicted to those amphetamines for the next four years. I was doing diet pills forever. Yeah. Ruined my body. Me too. My dad got me diet pills when I was young. Ruined my body. Yep. God, your adrenals. Oh. And just like, at first though, you're cracked out. I'm like, yo. Yeah, right. I have like, I have energy. I'm like, you're on meth. You're on meth. I'm literally like on meth at a young age. Yes. Just like, this is amazing. Like, and then you, it messes with you so much. So much. I never slept. Yeah, of course. I never slept. I lost 20 pounds the first month and that not another pound for three years and 11 months. And I stayed on those pills till my roommate in college started flushing them down the toilet. Because I'd called Dr. Mende, your, your supply, your druggy. And he'd send them to me and then she'd get to the mail before I would and then just flush them down. She kept saying to me, you're addicted to amphetamines. I didn't even know what amphetamines were. All I knew was that I couldn't afford to go off these pills because I'd gain weight. That's the scariest thing about it. There was one quote in the book that I wrote down that I wanted to kind of talk about. It's kind of related to that, but about GLP-1s and no shade to them. But it's like you said, even when we are taking Ozempic or GLP-1 derivatives and the food noise is silenced, even when we drop three gene sizes or when, as some women report, their moods are lifted and their shame about their bodies is eliminated, even then we are still left with the predicament of seeing the world through the unavoidable conclusions we unknowingly made before we were seven years old and of being swept into the cultural hypnosis of believing we are what we weigh. Oh, that is just… I love that. You love your own quote. I feel like, oh, girl, that's good. It's so true. Because, you know, there are two things about that. One is… Tell me what's profound about your quote. Do you have a year? Honestly, I'm at your feet. You know, pull up a chair, girl. I'm just about to tell you. There's more quotes in here. Let me tell you what I've underlined in there. The belief that we are our bodies, that we are what we weigh, is locked in. I am what I weigh, and the less I weigh, the more I'm worth. And then what starts happening is that, I don't mean to laugh about this, but then I watch people realize, oh, in fact, I think I just wrote about this recently. I did. And a friend of mine who was taking the GLP once, who loved it and thrilled about it, and most of the women I know who are taking them are thrilled. They're just couldn't be happier. They have more energy, and the rest of their addictions have really, really quieted down. She lost 20 or 30 pounds, and then she was diagnosed with kidney cancer. And everything completely shifts. It's like the kaleidoscope. You turn the kaleidoscope, the same colors are there, but the pattern shift and you start realizing, oh, there's something more important to being alive than what I weigh. It's my breath. It's my life. It's my relationships. It's the fact that I can walk, talk, feel. But until then, we are hypnotized and enchanted and entranced, probably enchanted is not the right word, entranced into feeling like I am this body. I am what I weigh. And what starts also happening with the GLP-1s is that people begin seeing what their eating was obscuring because they're no longer turning to food because they're not hungry anymore. So then what comes up after the initial elation, and I'm not putting them down at all because, you know, for at least four or five friends, they've been miracles. And something is underneath them. The reasons why we turn to food to begin with, still come up. Because for a lot of people, they're using food to numb, to cope, to avoid. And so when you have something that's pressing on the addiction center of your brain, and addictions usually are the place that we go when we're trying to avoid feeling. So when you have that sort of silencing or hitting on that addiction center, so you no longer do this like numbing thing, whether it's drinking, eating, gambling, like it also hits on other addictions. It does. And so when you're not doing that, it's only left you with the emotion or you with the feeling or you with what is. And there's a lot there for people. There's a lot to feel, there's a lot to experience, there's a lot. But I do think, yeah, I think there is a high that people have at the beginning of the GLP-1 adventure because what they dreamed of is finally happening. The losing weight or all of that or becoming thinner. And it's like, I think what would be so scary for me would be like, how is this, I don't know, how is this not the same type of thing where you would have the experience of having to go off at some point and then what is your body gonna do? I don't know. Yes, right, although I'm telling you that the people that I know are on it, at least two of my friends have said to me they're gonna be on it for the rest of their lives. They're never going off it. They're never going off it. So I think that's a decision that some people make. That's it. I'm on it for the rest of my life. Why should I go off? If they're not having profound extreme side effects, then why not, they say. Yeah, I would be curious too, you know, if, and this is like, cause I know with Diapils, you know, Ben, I did that for so long. They stopped working eventually. So I'd be curious about like them not working. There was another quote that I really love just to kind of switch. Tell me so I can just sort of- It's actually my own quote. I'm just kidding. I actually just want you to hear a bunch of quotes that I love. I'm like, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. I'm just going to start quoting like Wayne Gretzky and Michael Jordan. You're like, I love that one too. Okay. If the cost of being thin, which translates to being beautiful, which translates to being loved, which translates to relaxing the meanness and self-rejection, with which we treat ourselves, sickens this body, we are willing to pay it. You know what? Say. If somebody had offered me a GLP-1 drug when I was in the throes. Oh, what are you talking about? Of hating myself about my weight, I would not have cared what the side effects were. Did I care what the side effects were from four years of amphetamines? Or what I talk about in Love, Finally, one diet after another, my favorite being the all brown diet, which was the coffee diet, Chester cream soda and cigarettes diet, that I did for three weeks. And I lost a lot of weight as anybody who wasn't eating food would have done. And then there's the one hot farts Sunday a day diet, and the all sugar diet, and the Mott's- Grapefruit diet, Atkins diet. I mean, all of that. And if somebody had said to me, so you can have one of these drugs, and not only that, it might help with some other things, and that's part of the literature. I would not have thought twice. I would have taken it in one second. Because the other thing is I never considered, you know, you said those diet pills trashed your body. I never, ever considered the effect that these things are going to have on my body. Or that I was going to get older and actually have to suffer the consequences of it. I think part of it for me was, and I don't know if this just runs in my family, was that I developed osteoporosis. Why is that? Well, my bones never, ever, ever got the nourishment they needed. But, you know, when I was 20, if somebody had said to me, you know what, when you're 40, and that's when I was diagnosed with osteoporosis, when I was 42, you will have osteoporosis, I would have said, so what? Honestly, you'd be like, will my bones be thinner? Like honestly, it was just like thin. Right. I'll be a thin person with osteoporosis. You know, that's the other thing. I tell a story. Nina Riggs, who wrote, I think it was, I can't remember the name of her book. It was a memoir about her own cancer, and she wrote about her mother, and one of the last words her mother said was, or were, was were, my thighs are so fucking fat. Dying on her deathbed. My thighs are so fucking fat. And I have another one of my students, Sophia, who told me that her mother, when she was dying, would not let herself eat her favorite mint chocolate chip ice cream because she didn't want to die with fat thighs. That's how hypnotized we are by this. That's how much we believe we are the size of our bodies. Okay, so lately I've been thinking a lot about how I want to support my body in this season of life, in this kind of like preconception mode, conception mode. And it's a season of life that I've been through before. I have one son. I'm just really intentional about what I'm putting in my body and how I am making sure I'm getting the nutrients that I need. So there's so much information out there and it can feel overwhelming trying to make the right choices when it comes to your prenatal. One thing I feel really good about is that in my first pregnancy, I took rituals essential prenatal. Even if you're just in a phase of preparing your body for being intentional about foundational nutrients, it feels like such a supportive place to start. Their clinically backed essential prenatal includes key nutrients like choline, folate and omega-3. And I love that the ingredients are traceable and thoughtfully sourced. A lot of my friends chose ritual because I really love and trust the level of research behind it. It's the only leading prenatal backed by its own human clinical trial. And it was clinically shown to deliver key nutrients folate, biotin and vitamin D. I also appreciate that it uses methylated folate and a patented capsule designed to dissolve in the small intestines, which I found makes it really gentle and easy to take. Especially, I remember that first trimester, it was kind of like a hard thing to wrap my head around that I had to take prenatals, but it made it a lot easier. So compared to other supplements I've tried, it's just been a better overall experience for me. So I highly recommend, don't settle for less than evidence based support. Save 25% on your first month of Ritual at ritual.com/almost30. That's ritual.com/almost30 for 25% off your first month. There are certain meals I never want to give up, like a really good sandwich, pasta dish, or breakfast bagels, but I'm always going to try to find ways to make those meals fit better into my routine and my health goals. And that's why I was thrilled to discover Hero Bread. So good. It has the same soft, fluffy texture you expect from traditional baked goods. But depending on the product, it has zero to five grams of net carbs, zero grams of sugar and up to 32 grams of fiber. Fiber is so important. So, so important. So it's an easy swap when I'm thinking about things like fiber goals or balanced meals. I've been using their sliced bread for sandwiches for my family, and I love their tortillas. They are just, they're phenomenal. They bake up so nice, so soft, so like yummy and chewy. I've been using those for veggie wraps or quesadillas. And I'm excited because their Hero Noodles, which have 12 grams of protein and just 80 calories per serving are new and they're phenomenal. I gave Mav their elbow noodles the other night. He loved them. He calls them elbows. So it's such a simple way to enjoy the foods you love without feeling like you're sacrificing flavor. Hero Bread is offering 10% off your order. Go to hero.co and use the code A30Pod, A30Pod at checkout. That's A30Pod at hero.co. So I want to explore this from a higher level of, when we think about culture, we're just gonna go on a journey. Okay, so if we think about what's happening now in culture, where thinness is back and the obsession with body is back, this is in response to the body positivity, what do you think about that relationship? I think it never left. I was writing about this in Feeding the Hungry Heart. That book was published in 1982. And in that book, now I'm really dating myself, but that's okay. There was a chapter called If Only I Had, and then fill in the blank, then I would be happy. And that was if only I had the job, the partner, the money and the body. If only I were thin, then I would be happy. That was going on then. It never stopped. Yes, the body positivity movement was a moment, a moment. And that might have been, and I might get in trouble for this, but I'll say it anyway, that might have been a reaction. And also, not exactly the truth. Because when you are 60, 70, 100 pounds over what your body's comfortable at, to just come out and say, I feel great, I feel happy, it might be hard for me to move, to walk, to dance, to breathe, but I'm happy. I think that was an overstatement. I do. I really do. And so, do I think it's great to cherish this body, to nourish this body? Do I think there's a particular size that is the right size? No, I think there's a natural way that your body likes to be at, that for some people would be heavier or fatter than this new, this newest iteration of the era of emaciation. But this era of emaciation now that we're seeing with stars like Ariana Grande, Lily Collins, Cynthia Ervio, they're only, only blasting out what we believe to. We worship thinness. I think it's really important that we don't blame, we don't say, well, if only they were, then my daughters wouldn't be. Yes, but it's our values that are being emulated and also exacerbated. I don't know if it's because of my previous disorder that makes me so adverse to that type of emaciation and thinness, but it's also weird culturally that they're very young. They look like very young girls. There's a removal of a woman. You know, Women Who Run With The Wolves, she talks a lot about that, like the body of the soft belly and the big hips and the thighs and all of that. And that's like representation of the woman. Like the true woman is to have that. And it's just weird because I'm like, these are supposed to be grown women and they're like emaciated like little girls. And that's who we're looking up to. And that's what we're like idolizing. And how are you in your power if you're constantly controlling and obsessing and reducing the amount that you're intaking from a food perspective? I'm not sure they're thinking about that question. No. How am I in my power? I think they are taking the ideal of the culture to the nth degree and feeling powerful because of it. You know, when I was at my thinnest, which was 82 pounds, I had spaces between my legs. I had, I mean, I was as thin as it was possible for me to be without falling over. And I felt great. Other people looked at me and thought I was dying. But I felt triumphant. I was enthralled. Even a couple of years ago, something else I write about in Love, Finally, due to the osteoporosis, I had a couple of vertebrae break. I couldn't move for about a month or six weeks, which meant I couldn't walk. I couldn't walk to the kitchen. So my husband, bless his heart, brought me food, but it was really hard to eat because I could only lean on one side and I could only eat with my hand, which got very, very messy. And I lost a hell of a lot of weight. I remember the day I finally could get up. And I write this. There was a group of girls where I went to high school called the Kilties, and they were the cool ones. They were much cooler than the cheerleaders because where I grew up, cheerleaders were not cool. Same. Yeah, but the Kilties were really cool. Yes. And they, cause they wore kilts. Sick. And they were only the in, in, in crowd. And I was not one of them. And they were all very thin. And when I got up and could actually take a look at myself, I felt, I just felt powerful all over again. This is just a, we're just talking a couple of years ago. Because I look like an aging Kiltie. And I, it was, there's some kind of power, you think, or I thought, in getting to that weight that is so idealized and worshiped in the culture. Mine was a weight that I heard about from a Victoria Secret model who did an interview in a magazine. Right. I was like, that's my number. Yeah, right, exactly. I was like literally 14 years old. I was like, we are the same. The mind decides. The mind decides. And that's been my number hook, even for my whole life. You know, just, it's funny, because I remember even too, like every single New Year's Eve, or every single New Year's, I would write at the very top no matter what my weight was, no matter what, lose 15 pounds. This, I won't even say the goal weight, because I don't even want a number in here, but it's like goal weight number. Yes. Like unconsciously. And then it would be like, make a million dollars. Like it would be like, this has to happen first, and then the rest can happen. And it would be like, this is housekeeping. 24 seven, this is always needed. We have to always have the number of the weight and the body be in the room and be as the goal. And then it would be crazy because as I become more successful, I would look and it would, I think I just stopped doing this probably three years ago, four years ago, but it would be like crazy successful things. And it would just be so hilarious to me now to look and be like, girl, that was like your thing. And then you're also like, win an award for whatever. You know, it was just like, that was like always the thing, but it was so unconscious, so unconscious. I would just open up the book and write it no matter what. Because you swallow it with air and water. And what I often say to people when they say that to me, I often say, and what do you think it's going to give you? Let's just go to what you think being that weight or having that money is going to give you. What is it going to help you relax? I remember, you know, when we lost every cent of ours to Bernie Madoff in 2008. You donated it? We, he stole it, all of our money. Bernie Madoff, he was the Ponzi Scanner. I remember feeling after that. I was thinking of Bernie Sanders. I was like, you know, my father's name was Bernie too. Okay, there we go. So now we've got three Bernie's in the room. Bernie Roth, Bernie Sanders, Bernie Madoff. We're going with the Bernie's here. I finally realized what enough was, that it was actually a relationship to what I already had. But before that, and this is what happens with people and their waves, they think that having a number on a scale in the bank account, a certain amount of success is going to help them relax, is going to help them be who they want to be. And I am forever saying to people, skip the middleman. Just go straight, straight for what it is you want. How do you get that? Let's take food, weight, money aside here. What do you want? I love that. There, you said something of having a, having a relationship instead of to what you want, to what you have. To what you already have. Yes. You're like, I became in relationship to what I already have instead of this mystery thing of everything that I wanted. And yeah, I think if I was to think about what did I feel like being thin would get me, that's what's so interesting about beliefs is when you really are like poking at yourself, you're like, you know, you realize you've been living as a frozen in time aspect. Yes, right. You know, you're kind of caught. You're like, success? And then you're like, what's success? And you're like, I don't know, you know, like. But then what would then the next question of Beyond That is, and what do you think success would give you? Yeah. Is it a feeling of worth? Is it a feeling of value? Is it a feeling of specialness? What is it? What is it that you think that all these external things are going to give you? Because whatever it is, and this is sort of like where the world turns, you already have it. You already have it. And that is the sword, so to speak, that so many women have a hard time falling on. I will often say to somebody, tell me something that's not wrong right now. I love that. Tell me something that's not wrong now, because what happens is, and this is part of the, if only I lost weight, I would be. We're so focused on what we don't have and what's wrong, that we actually don't take time to just be with what we already have, who we already are. I love that. I love that even thinking about my client work, because usually it's like, what's going on? And then you're like, you kind of know what we're going to talk about. Like if you're in a therapeutic relationship, you're kind of like, we're going to talk about what's wrong. But I love even starting like, what's going right? Like that's a complete, your brain has to think differently. It creates consciousness. You're like, oh, now I'm consciously scanning for what's right in my life and taking it in. I think that's the other thing because I can say to you, sitting right here, right now, well, if I was going to tell you what isn't wrong right now, I would say just sitting and talking to you, I'm having a great time. And am I taking that in and I noticing that? And am I allowing myself to receive it, to have it? A lot of times people just don't let themselves have what they already have. They don't. We all have that dream trip we've been wishing we could go on, but too often life, or usually price, gets in the way. That's why Priceline is here to help you turn your dream trip into reality. With up to 60 percent off hotels and up to 50 percent off flights, you can book everything you need for your next adventure. Don't just dream about that next trip. Book it with Priceline. Download the Priceline app or visit priceline.com and book your next trip today. Flowing ad budget on metrics that look great till the CFO sees them, that's bull spend and marketers are calling it out in Dashboard Confessions. I remember telling my boss, it'll be good for the brand when leads were slow. Yeah, it wasn't. Cut the bull spend. LinkedIn lets you target by company, job title and more. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to linkedin.com/campaignterms and conditions apply. I think, I don't know if you would agree, but I feel like that is the pause and then it's the somatic experience of it. It's like, oh, pause, I'm having an amazing time. My body feels relaxed. Like I'm in this moment with you. It is, it's like, there's such a, like, there's a, I'm like, yeah, I'm having a great time. Right. And then there's like, whoa, I'm slowing down. I'm pausing. I'm feeling and receiving like a really beautiful moment and a really beautiful time is so different. And there is sometimes it come up. It's like, keep, just keep going, you know? Like keep moving. It's like that. Because we're not used to letting ourselves. It's kind of what your friend said to you about cooking and nourishing. We're not used to receiving. Even this moment right now, we're not used to it. A lot of times with my retreat students, but I do this too. In fact, I couldn't sleep in the middle of the night last night. So I got up and I thought, okay, I'm not sleeping. I'm just going to get up. I'm going to walk outside and find my way to the door. And I walked outside and I just took some deep breaths. And we live in the country. And I realized, when's the last time I did this? Wow. When's the last time I actually noticed the beauty? That I was still enough that I let myself have it, let myself receive it. And when you let yourself receive it, then you're full. And then that's the answer to, well, the hunger beneath the hunger, there isn't. Because what if nothing was wrong? I would cease to exist. Exactly. That's exactly it. We're so identified. That's what I realized when I was writing this book. I loved hating my mother. And I hated hating my mother. But part of it was I was so identified with the wound of being an abused kid, with the wound of having a mother who didn't really want to be a mother. It made me special. It was my badge. It was my story that if I started letting go of it, what would be left of me? What's left when you stop identifying yourself with your wounds? I feel like collectively we're in a wound identification phase. And I think we're hopefully moving on. Because I feel like everyone's kind of identifying. They're aware of the wounds with their mother and their father and things. But it's almost like we need to kind of collectively move on a little bit. We need to feel it and then move on. So a lot of women might be listening that have struggled with their relationship with their mother. I know a lot of the women I've worked with, I've talked about the mother wound before. It's been a pain point for many. What was your journey to healing that relationship? Did you just focus on your own healing? Was it a mission you had? How did that work? I didn't want to die being angry with my mother. And I didn't want her to die. She's 97. I didn't want her to die with us not being open to each other. So it was a decision slash commitment I made that I'd been angry with her for 60 years. What was the anger about? Oh, what wasn't the anger about? You're like, actually, I don't forgive her. No, I actually do. But it was about her telling me my ankles were like piano stools. It was about her telling me that I was selfish. It was about the time that I stood at the end of her bed and she was crying, and she told me she was getting a divorce. She hadn't told my father yet. These were very different child rearing days. Totally. And I started crying and she called me selfish. She said, go to your room. It was about the installation I had that I was selfish, that I was fat, and fat meaning damaged. And what I did was I took it personally that her unavailability, and she really was unavailable as a mom. She really was. She didn't want to be a mom. And in the book, I talk about the phone call we had where she apologized to me and said, I'm so sorry that I wasn't there for those years. But by the time she said that, I had already opened up. And part of it was I realized that in order to heal my relationship with her, I had to first look at what I was telling myself that she had told me that I still believed. Fat, damaged, ugly. And I felt that I didn't belong here. I felt like my family was a wreck. And so there was a whole list of things about my mom, most of which centered around food and my body, but also around her neglect and her lying to me. You know, I tell people, I had a couple of therapists who said to me, you don't need to forgive your mother. You should never talk to your mother. You know, there's this whole era now of disengagement from families. This was before this became popular. And there were times I didn't talk to her for a couple of months, but that wasn't for me because I felt that it wouldn't heal what I was believing about myself. And that was the most painful part. So I stopped, and I didn't stop blaming her right away. I think the first thing that happened was I started really questioning what I believed about myself and how damaged I felt I was, how worthless, how without value I was, how I believed that being thin was going to give me value, give me worth, make me special, make me beautiful. And so that's the work that I did, the questioning of that and the feeling of that. You know, when you're a kid and your mom sends you to your room and tells you you're being selfish when you start crying, it's so painful to feel those feelings. And this is true for any kid, so we repress those feelings. They're just not, it's too painful. I couldn't feel those feelings for quite a long time. And even though I'd been in 40 years of therapy, much of which was fabulous. Somatic experiencing, body dynamics, IFS, psychotherapeutic, psychoanalytic therapy, Gestalt, I mean, you know, I'd really done it all. And it didn't get to the bottom line, probably because I wasn't ready. But I think each one of those things was a step for me, led me closer to being willing to look at, okay, it's not about my mother anymore. It's not about my mother. There are so many people in my retreats who are so angry with their mothers. They're in their 70s and 80s, and their mothers have long been dead. And I didn't want to be one of those. I didn't want to be talking about my abusive mother when I was 85 years old. And so in order to do that, I had to look at what I was telling myself about myself. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah, it's like, I don't know if it's like why. I have a judgmental part, and sometimes I'm just like, that is so cringe to just be like still, you know, be like, well, you know, when I was younger, my mom did this. It's like, yeah, you're frozen in time. Yes. Because that's not your current reality. But nobody understands that because it's like, if you're looking at the world with yellow lenses or yellow glasses, the world looks yellow. Yeah. And until you turn, take off those glasses, that is how it's going to look. Yeah. Whether you're 16 or 96. Yeah, I know. It's in the book, you have wounds as medicine. You know, how can the wound of this pain be someone's medicine? Well, you know, I love a quote from Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher emperor who lived 2,500 years ago, who said, what's in the way is the way. And that's stealing from him a little bit. I say, because I have a chapter called The Wound Meets The Medicine, which is about me meeting Coco, the 87-year-old near blind person who introduced me and would not take a second of me blaming my mother. Just, I mean, she'd say to me, oh, that sounds hard, or, oh, poo. I remember when she said, oh, poo to me, it's like, oh, poo. Who says, oh, poo, to anybody? What are you talking about? This is terrible. I'm outraged. It's horrible. How could you say, oh, poo? But she'd constantly say to me, this is about you. It's not about your mother. It's about what you are saying to yourself about yourself at this point. And until I was ready to look at that, the wound didn't feel like the medicine. The wound felt like the wound. And that it was an open gaping wound and that I was walking around with it. And as we said, attach to it, because that's what made me special. I think in order to look at that, I had to be willing both to look at what I was saying to myself, but also imagine a world in which I was happy. I was really happy. Now, I've been married and with the same man for 40 years. He told me when he first met me, he was going to love me like no one had ever loved me. And it's true, he did, and he's still doing that, and it didn't fix this. It didn't fix it because nothing coming from the outside is going to do it. So the wound is the medicine in so far as you realize, okay, what is this really about? Is it about my mother? No. She's not here anymore. She's dead or she's not in front of me. What is it actually about? It's about what I'm telling myself, what I believe about myself, the hunger to feel valued or the hunger to have worth or to feel like I belong, which tells me that I must not feel that. It's powerful that God gave you a man like your husband to kind of even have yourself test that out. Well, it's the same thing that happens when somebody loses weight. Yeah, that's true. It's exactly the same thing. It's their dream. You know, I got my dream. Yeah, dream body, dream weight. It didn't do it. Wow. So what will do it, it's just me at this point. What is your thoughts on affirmations? It's random, but for healing. Well, I have tried them so many times. Of course. Really, a lot of times. And they didn't work because there was a part of me that didn't really believe them. If I'm feeling like something is wrong with me, if I'm feeling like, you know, I'm not the right person to be living my life, it's sort of like that line in When Harry Met Sally for the people who have seen it where she says, I'm difficult. And he answers, but in a good way. You know, if I'm telling myself I'm difficult, something's wrong with me, I'm damaged. It doesn't matter how many times I say, I'm whole and I'm worthy and I deserve love. And I deserve to be cherished and I'm special. It doesn't matter because if I really believe, sort of like a lottery ticket, if you scratch away the first many, many, many layers, then what's underneath and what's underneath comes through with I'm not worth it. And no matter how many times I tell myself I am, if I believe I'm not, it's not going to change it. But everything is healable. So you can go straight for that. Anything else from the book that you were super surprised by or you were just kind of like, I did not see this coming? Well, I will say that I never, ever thought I would have a good relationship with my mother. Interesting. I could agree with that too. Ever. Yeah. That this was the mother I was born with, which I would think of myself as a waste of a human being. I mean, I had some pretty bad thoughts about my mother. I would go into, I would often say to my brother, it's lucky we're not serial killers with the kind of parenting we had. I love that. And then I looked up, you know, I could be Charles Manson. I could be somebody like that. And then I looked up that Charles Manson's mother traded him for a can of beer. And I realized, okay, well. A little bit. Okay. Okay. Well, maybe I didn't have that kind of mother. But close. I had a mother like that. Yeah. I remember being with my cousins one time, we were in bed and we were like, I want my dad to marry your mom. Right. Exactly. And it would put my mom and her brother being married. We were like, we want our parents. That would be great. Yes. Exactly. When I was a kid, I would look at other families all the time. Of course. And I would want their mothers. I'd be like a pseudo child to so many of my friends' moms. Me too. That was my, yeah. I think that happens. You find a maternal figure, like I remember Cynda, Tammy, like all these moms that I was at their house. I think that they were like, is everything okay at home? Because the way I'd be with them, I'd be so cuddly and lovey and wanting all the love. Me too. I had two different families who for four years set an extra place at their, as soon as I could start driving, set extra dinner places for me so that I could go to their houses for dinner. Because my mother was never home, she never cooked. She left the house oftentimes before, well, she'd leave when I'd get home from school and she wouldn't get home till three or four in the morning. So my brother and I found it for ourselves when we were growing up, and thus, Swanson's TV dinners, fried chicken and ice cream for dinner. Unlucky if I ate the fried chicken, because all I ever wanted was the sweets. Same. Yeah, all I ever wanted. So, yeah. So I never thought I'd have a good relationship with my mother, ever. So that's what surprised me that in the process of writing this book and doing, questioning what I believed about myself, my relationship both with myself and with my mother totally changed. Yeah, it's almost like, I remember that too. I didn't have the intention of ever. I think I was like so, it wasn't a priority for me to heal our relationship. I was like, whatever, you know, like I never, like some people are like, so how do I tell my mom or talk to my mom? I was like, that's not my priority. My priority is like figuring out me and healing. And in that process, we, she shifted so much. Like it's crazy how much she shifted, how much we shifted. And it re-calibrated us to like a point of peers almost. Or even like, I'm almost like the maternal figure now, which is kind of interesting. Or maybe I've become a maternal figure myself and she stayed in the younger child, but now I see it for what it is. Yeah, right. Because when you shift, what happens is the world shifts around you. When you change the way you see yourself, everything around you changes. That's what I think people don't quite get. I agree. That we see what we believe. It's not we believe what we see, it's we see what we believe. So when you change, when you change, the entire world changes around you. There's one other quote that I really loved. For more than 30 years, I loathe the word discipline because it connotes dieting. And we all know how I felt and still feel about dieting. And I've been espousing letters, hearts, flowers, and compassion about instituting practices. Believing that compassion is what we all need. Not more routine, not more discipline, but once again, I'm eating my words. I'm done with only hearts, flowers, and flowy, this and that. Being inspired is lovely, but it does not lead to transformation. What leads to transformation? What leads to transformation is knowing what you really want. And the true transformation is changing the way you see things, the way you look at yourself, which is utterly within your grasp. That's what I think people really, I really want people to know that. I said it before, I'll say it again, everything is healable. I used to feel like Pig Pen from the Peanuts comics. I don't know if you remember. I feel like Miss Piggy. What? She's kind of cool though. She's having a comeback. I know, honestly. I mean, I read about this yesterday, that Miss Piggy is really having a comeback. She is sassy. Sassy and powerful. I love Miss Piggy. Also, but I think it's confirming the dynamics between men and women that are kind of prevalent in our culture, where the man is really weak and docile and the woman is super dominant. So I don't love that. Oh, I might not know enough about Miss Piggy then. We could do a deep dive. I mean, maybe that's me and my distorted brain, but she's a powerful woman. I love that for her. She's embodied, sexy. Yeah. But where was I? Oh, I was with Pig Pen. That's right. Pig Pen, I don't know if you remember what Pig Pen looks like. Where it's sort of like it looks like there's dirt. He's a big dirt ball. He turns into a big dirt ball and sort of collapses. And I used to feel like that. I did. That underneath everything was this sense of collapse, really. I never thought that it was possible for me to be really happy, for my mother to be happy. But if you ask yourself continually, and this isn't the only thing, of course, what's not wrong right now. If you take in the good, if you be the one you're waiting for, really be the one you're waiting for. Sweetheart, hello, you know, if you talk to yourself very often, you know, Stephen Levine, a Buddhist teacher, used to say that the great American mantra was, oh shit. And I used to say to people, it needs to change from oh shit to oh sweetheart. And so this kind of tenderness, which, as you pointed out, is hard. It's hard to cook for yourself. It's hard. It's like setting down new neural pathways, really new neural pathways. Because I think in the process, you have to be like in self enough or like in like the objective enough to see the voices that are stopping you from it. For me, it's like, I don't have time. This is a waste of time. What's the point? I could order something and you have to be like, the mission is to nourish myself and to prove that I can through this. It's like see through the trees. You're talking about the awareness really, because you're talking about becoming the noticer rather than what you're noticing. And that is awareness itself. And with awareness, when you're really coming from awareness, there's spaciousness, there's clarity, nothing is wrong. There's room for everything. It's what Coco calls allowing. So you're not resisting anything, because the second you start making something wrong or even wanting it to be something else, like Stephen Levin also used to say, he was one of my favorite teachers. Hell is wanting to be some place that you're not. And what I talk about in the finally is the universal paradigm. There's a way it should be, this isn't it, and someone is to blame. And that's usually how we go through life. There's a way it should be, and this isn't it. And the second you start that, then you're in resistance, and you're suffering. So allowing, which is also awareing, if you want to call it awareing, is spacious, is clear, and nothing's wrong. So good. I'm so excited for people to get this. I'm really, I think, I would say women, food, and God this, and then feeding the hungry heart. What would you say your top three are? When food is love, women, food, and God. This is my favorite so far because in the writing of it, was actually in the writing of it, with some of my books, and that was true for Women, Food, and God, I sort of knew how the whole thing was gonna go before I started writing it. In Love, Finally, the writing itself was the flowering of my relationship with my mother, but most of all, where I felt like I became myself, where I stopped identifying with my wounds and I realized, this is the other thing, it was okay to be happy. Do you feel like it's okay to be happy? Or do you feel like the wounding needs to be held close? I think when I slow down enough, I'm like, yes, it's okay. But I feel like I'm not really, like if you would watch me, and if you were like an alien watching me, you'd be like, she does not think that. When I really am like, oh, it's safe for me to be happy. But I'm like, what's happy? Happy for me is satisfied. I like satisfaction. What about contentment? Contentment is good. Rather than happiness, because happy is kind of a- Drug. You know, yeah. For us meth-heads, us meth-and-phetamine addicts, it's really a drug. It's really, I was like, pop two of those guys, you're happy. So contentment. Content, contentment. And ease. And ease. God, yes. Yes. And I think it's a big step for people to allow themselves that. 100 percent. Because that's what we think, being thin, having money, being in a relationship, you know, living somewhere fabulous is going to give us. And not that anything is wrong with any of those things, but they don't give you that. It's one of those things, it's like every tale is old as time, it's like, you have to get to the top to find out. You know, like you see all the rich people are like, I had it all, but it wasn't making me happy. And we're like, we still want to find out. You know what? I was like that for a while. You know, for a while, at least with success. Oh, don't get me started. When Oprah had me on and called Women Food and Got a Hymnal, I don't remember. And then the book shot to the top of the bestseller list, that was something that I believed forever. Success, that kind of success was gonna do it. And it didn't. It was lovely. What was satisfying was that I felt like a lot of people were going to read the book and were going to get the message that there's something beneath, that it is about the food, but it's not about the food. And that made me happy. Also, we had just lost all of our money to Bernie Madoff. And so, Matt and I were trying to figure out how we were going to live. And so, the financial success of that allowed us to keep our house. Wow. And that was great. But did that give me a feeling of value? The kind of value that you and I are talking about that we believe losing weight would give us? That kind of sense of belonging here, of having my existence really matter to myself? No. I think as I've healed my relationship with my body and food, my little monster is like, success will make me happy. You know what? It's what we're talking about with the GLP ones. We're talking about that same thing. We're talking about people who have wanted to be thin their entire lives, and now they can be, and now they are, and now what? So true. Now it's time to serve a purpose of life. It's time to serve others. Well, I think you start by actually being authentic with what you actually want and want to give. I think I'm in that phase now. I want to cancel my whole life so that I can figure that out. But you're already doing it. I do. I feel on purpose and on path. I think there's just a deeper level of authenticity and expression that's calling for me, and I don't necessarily know what it is. So if you just had a blank slate and you said... If I had a blank slate, I would do... I want to do voiceover work for Pixar movies. Oh, across the street from me. Exactly. Skywalker Ranch. You're my in. I am your in because I know the head engineer there. You're my in. We knew there was a reason that I was doing this. In that I said this. Do they need an actress? That's my dream. I want to do that. I want to do comedy. I want to be on stage. I do love stage work. I love everything that I do. I think I just need to figure out a way that it's more sustainable and that I'm not pushing and forcing. I think there's a lot of the business stuff that I'm in that I don't need to be in. I just want to float around and I want someone to be like, you're supposed to go into this room. Then I go into this room and I serve and I speak and I teach. Then they pull me out and they say, good job. Then they take me and they put me in another room and they say, you do this. I'm like, yay. I just don't want any of the frills of anything else. That sounds good and that sounds possible. I agree. It sounds possible. It sounds like loving what you love and wanting what you want, but also following the impulse. That's true. Yes. I think the ways of being around my work are what need to retire, but my work stays. The pushing, the forcing, the doing too much, the overworking. But you know what? If success, did you say success was your drug? What was your drug again? Yes. Right. So this is the- I'm working on this so hard, so it's like, I'm beating myself with a head with it, working on it. Coco will often say to me, do what you do without concern for the results. If you're concerned. Thanks a lot, Coco. Go, go. Because if you're concerned about the results, and I have always been concerned about the results. Okay, well, I'll write this, but then what will happen? I'll write this and how many people will read it. Of course. But if you're concerned for the results, and if what you really, really want- now, of course, you shouldn't really ask me about this since- Well, this is my dream. The concern for the results will then steer you in a particular direction that won't really, this is my personal opinion, allow you to do just exactly what you want. Because it will be, well, how is it gonna turn out? Well, if I do this, then not that many people, but if I do that, and I'm happy, by the way, to talk to the head engineer at Skywalker because he and I really became friends. He's gonna be my friend. I'll send you a voice note and you can say, this is her audition tape, and I'll do characters. I loved it at Skywalker. That's a whole nother, that's a whole nother. It was lovely there to be there and Pixar and the whole thing. Our next door neighbor was one of the founders of Pixar. So you know what? You came to the right place. This is kismet. This is kismet. This is magic and miracle that I needed. This is life. I just quit my job. That's right. Exactly. But it's good to know what you love. Yeah, I love that. It's like, it is and it's that reminder of like what's true. And it's usually not what people expect. Like it's like people could be like Instagram growth or whatever. But it's like, no, like what do I love? I love creating. I love using my voice. I love express. You know, it's like, what is like in the essence of it all? Yeah. And then this essence can be experienced or expressed in other ways. Yeah. I say go for it, girl. You got me. You can be my agent, 10%. Yeah. Well, this has been a true dream of mine. And they say to never meet your heroes. And I've met heroes and I've been so pleasantly surprised. And sometimes I've been heartbroken. But this has been my favorite hero meeting of them all. I take that. It's true. Because I've seen who you've had on your podcast. Yes. They're amazing. Yes. But your work has just stand the test of time. And you're such a pioneer. And it's just impacted so many of the women I've worked with. It's the book I recommend to almost everyone that I work with, Women, Food and God. And now I'm excited for them to get the new book. I just appreciate you. I appreciate you as someone that's led so many people in like a deeper experience in life and soulfulness. And so thank you for coming on Almost 30. I've loved it. I've loved being with you. I know. I feel so lucky. Okay, guys, the book is out now. We got you guys. I love you. We'll see you soon. Bye. Thank you so much, Geneen. Again, the book is called Love Finally, Untangling the Knot Between Mothers, Daughters and Food. I would highly suggest also reading Women, Food and God, and When Food is Love, if you're looking to heal and look at your body relationship and your body journey. You can find more information of Geneen Roth at geneenroth.com. Again, thank you so much for being a part of our community, our lives. Thank you for writing a review and just giving us a kind little note. It means so much. Thank you for hitting us up in the DMs every time you do, for liking and subscribing and just allowing us to create and bring this work to you every single week. It means the world. My name is Krista Williams and you can find more about me and my work at itskrista.com. It's itskrista.com. And then it's Krista on Instagram. I talk a lot about body, body transformation, body liberation there. So you've got some content for you after you finish the book and I will see you on the next one. Bye guys.