June 13, 2026 • 49 mins
How many memories, opportunities, relationships, and experiences have been overshadowed by worrying about your weight, your appearance, or what someone else might think of you?
Morgan and body image coach Yasmine have an honest conversation about the hidden ways body image steals our presence, confidence, and joy... and what it takes to finally reclaim them. This episode isn't about loving every inch of yourself overnight. It's about learning how to stop letting your body determine your worth.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:14):
Personal duels.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Last week we did a deep dive into the feminine
and masculine and how alpha should die early. It's a
huge topic on social media lately. So now we're going
into another big topic that's been the primary focus of
I would bet most people's social media feeds, and it's
talking about the current skinny culture and body image issues
(00:39):
and the things that we all face. Yes all everybody
who's listening to this, male and female, and I think
it's a really important topic that we should be addressing.
So let's get into it. I'm joined this week by
(01:00):
Yes Mean, and she is a body image coach, and
let me tell you I found her content online because
in a world of people telling us how and what
we should be looking like, her content was a very
refreshing reminder that I needed. So thank you for joining.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Me today, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
I'm excited to talk about this because, like I just mentioned,
we're in a crazy world right now. We always are,
I think, in the world of body image, but this
conversation is more important really now than ever. But before
we kind of get into all the fun details of
all of that, talk to me about your story and
why you are a body image coach, Why this was
so important to you?
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Yeah, oh my gosh, Okay, we have to go back
a little bit. I was always very aware of what
people thought of me and always wanted to be liked.
In high school, I really wanted to be popular, like
it was a big thing that I wanted people to
like me, and so I think early on as a woman,
I realized that the key to people liking me was
(02:00):
to be attractive, and so I kind of became fixated
on that. It became a really big part of my identity.
And when I was fresh out of high school early
into adulthood, it was the slim thick era, so everyone
wanted curves but like a small waist and this very
particular kind of Kardashian inspired body type, and I did
(02:24):
not naturally have that. So I got really into lifting
weights to try to build that in the gym, and
I would say that just made me more obsessed with
what I looked like, and no matter how close I
got to that ideal body type, it was never enough.
I never felt better. I always had someone to compare
myself to. Social media added to the problem, and I
(02:48):
was just never satisfied with myself and with my body,
and I thought that my physical appearance was the most
interesting thing about me, the most what I had to
focus on the most to be liked and to be
accepted in the world. So yeah, I kind of experienced
what it was like to feel that desire to look
different and try to get closer to that and successfully
get closer to that and still have that desire. And
(03:10):
I saw through the illusion that looking a certain way
would make you feel confident and great all the time,
because that was not the case for me. And I also,
at the same time watched my mom struggle with muscular dystrophee,
which is a disease that makes it so her muscles
are just becoming weaker over time and she isn't really
(03:30):
able to have much of a life as a result
of that. And so it was this weird contrast of
I have this body that's healthy and capable of doing
the things that I wanted to do, and yet I'm
so fixated on wanting it to look a certain way,
and in the pursuit of that ideal body, I'm completely
disconnected from the body I already have. And here's a
(03:52):
very clear example of someone close to me that I
love who would give anything to have a body that
could take her around the block or take her for run. So, yeah,
I just realized what was happening. I'm a very I
think very deeply, and I'm all about working on myself
and changing things that I need to change, and so
I kind of embarked on a journey to completely change
(04:16):
how I viewed my body and how I related to it.
And it took a really long time. I have successfully
reached a point where I'm in a much healthier place
with it and much more accepting of it. And I
see I look out in the world and I see
how many women are affected by this, and I'm deeply
concerned by what's happening now with the trends kind of
(04:36):
veering back towards thinness again and just like the complete
switch up that the beauty trends have made in that regard.
So that's what got me into coaching. I was like,
I need to help women who are struggling with this
reclaim their energy.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
And you touch on so many things there, and we're
going to get into all of it, but I do
want to draw attention to that fact that you talk
about your experience with it. I think you could talk
to any woman in the world and she has experienced
some form of body image issue or any number of
the complications that come with that. Right there's on the
(05:14):
more intense spectrum of the eating disorders and things on that,
but there's also just the every day of comparing our
bodies to other people. And I really believe that there's
not a single woman in the world who has not
had this experience, unfortunately, But talk about that experience a
little bit more of like you were feeling that and
you were going through that experience while also watching somebody
(05:37):
that you really love go through really just a completely
opposite experience where they were frustrated with their body on
a different level. And I think that can give an
important perspective to this conversation because a lot of what
we have to remember is that a healthy body is
so much more valuable than anything else we could ever do.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Yeah, I totally agree. I think it's unfortunate that so
much of the messaging that women receive and that I
received was that you need to look a certain way
and if you don't look that way, you're not enough,
and you should be determined to do what you can.
Buy this weight loss drug, buy this workout plan, buy
the shape, where like there's countless things that are sold
(06:25):
to women to make them look better. We're taught that
that should be one of our main goals, and so
a lot of us really start believing that. And I think,
of course, there are so many downsides to my mom's disability,
and I'm so sad that she has to go through that,
But it has given me a really special perspective on
what really matters in life and what really matters when
(06:48):
it comes to our bodies. And it's shown me that's
not true what we're told about our physical appearance mattering
so much, It's just not true. And that belief that
it does matter that much completely disconnects us from ourselves.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Oh that's so good to hear. I love that perspective
because I really don't think, unfortunately and fortunately that a
lot of people don't get to have that opportunity to
see what is important. I talk about this a little
bit that I'm engaged and I'm going through what is
the happiest moment of my life, right, But when I
try on wedding dresses, all I could do was think
(07:24):
about all the things that were wrong about me. I
lighted all of the things that I didn't like about myself.
Instead of highlighting the happiness that I was feeling, I
loved that I was feeling the excitement. It was all about, Well,
my belly looks too big here, I'm going to show
my very big arms in every picture in this one. Oh,
I have backfat in that one. Okay, what am I
(07:47):
going to do about this? Am I going to cover
my whole body? I need to make sure I have
a tan?
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Like all of.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Those thought processes are going through my head when I'm
trying on a single wedding dress. I had an entire
breakdown of things that I had experienced over the course
of my life, right, but in this one moment, it
was all bundled up to show me how much it
was impacting every piece of my life. Have you experienced
(08:13):
those moments too? I imagine that at moments in your
life where you're like, I shouldn't be focused on this,
but I am absolutely.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
I love that you brought up that example, because it
really shows how much this affects our lives and affects
our experience of moments that You're right, they should be
moments that were fully enjoying and present for and we're
completely taken out of them. The one that comes to
mind for me is I have a boyfriend who's wonderful
and I love him, and when I met him eight
(08:44):
years ago, through that process of falling in love and
getting to know each other, which again I think is
one of the most special things that we can experience
as humans. I was so distracted by wondering if I
looked good enough in that time period my life, and
looking back on it, it's kind of sad to me
that that experience of falling in love with someone is
(09:07):
something that I won't experience again, hopefully, And I was
so distracted by it that I was kind of like
not fully there for it.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
And it's sad to think about because we can't rewrite it.
We can't do anything differently than what we had done,
and all you can do is hope to do better.
I think that was such a reason why I loved
connecting with your content, because there are so many young
women online, and I just my hope, even though I
know that that's not the direction that we're sadly heading,
but my hope is that they see us talking about it,
(09:40):
they see us trying to bring attention to say, hey,
don't follow the path that we follow. Do something different
and love your body and love who you are and
show up in the world so confident in that. And
it's funny because I don't think that that content didn't
necessarily exist as we were growing up, but I think
it was harder to believe in the things that we're sold.
(10:03):
Is really hard on our image. And you talk about
weight loss drugs. Any person can go online right now
in any capacity and be online for a max of
five minutes and have at least one or two posts
that come across our feed talking about weight loss drugs.
It's everywhere. So how do you escape something that's currently around.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
How do you, as a body.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Image coach walk people through the experience of constantly be
surrounded by things telling them that you don't look good enough,
how you are.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Yeah, I mean that's a great question. It's true, it's everywhere,
and with social media, it's like the ability to advertise
these things to us is like it never has been before.
They have us, They have our attention at all times,
right through our phones. So yeah, it's a huge issue.
I'm very adamant with my clients about the fact that
(10:55):
this is something that you'll never be able to escape.
It's always going to be all around us. If anything. Unfortunately,
I feel like it's getting worse in a way with
technology and with social media and with where that's headed.
So I think it's so important to not necessarily try
to run away from that or hide from that. I
think that's unrealistic in a lot of ways. Instead, I
(11:18):
really encourage my clients to use moments like that to
really fuel their growth, and I teach them something that
I think a lot of women don't see in themselves,
which is that we are capable of responding differently to
these sorts of things. We are capable of seeing a
commercial for a weight loss drug and feeling what that
brings up in us, and then choosing to respond differently,
(11:40):
choosing to react differently, choosing to not buy into what
we might have bought into in the past. So I'm
really adamant about helping my clients get to that point
where they feel confident in their ability to do that.
And that really comes down to I mean, sometimes it
is necessary that people take a break from social media
because it's so pervasive. If it's so like we're not
(12:01):
even really aware of the impact it's having on us
a lot of the time, so sometimes it is necessary
to take a little break from it, and then we
kind of work together to get people to a point
where they feel able to question the thoughts and kind
of work with them and see through them in a
lot of ways and see through the messaging as well.
I mean, it revolves around taking women's power away from
(12:24):
them and telling and convincing them what you look like
matters and this will help you solve that issue of
not looking good enough and then you'll feel amazing. And
in my opinion, that's a complete lie. So we really
work to see through those lies, see through the thought
patterns that have come to be within their own minds,
and get them to a point where they can experience
(12:46):
having something like that come up on their phone when
they're scrolling and not go down the spiral that they
might have gone down in the past.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
I think it's a really hard, complex situation. On the
other side of that too, I know there's a lot
of people in the world right now who are really
trying to focus on health and being health conscious, and
it's a really complex situation when you're trying to get
out of the negative messaging that we're receiving while also saying, Okay, well,
(13:15):
I want to be healthy and I want to feel good.
How do you handle that because that dynamic is really dicey.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
That is a great question, and I agree that's a
hard one. I personally, coming from a background of help
and fitness and being really into it and still being
someone who, hey, I love to take good care of
my body, and I'm very passionate about that as well,
I find that it's such a fine line between not
really I don't want to say not caring, but maybe
(13:43):
letting your help slide and not really putting a lot
of intention into how you take care of your body,
and then being very intentional about it to the point
where it's unhealthy and it becomes kind of toxic, which
I feel is where I was at with it in
the past. So that is a hard one. I think
it's more so about I really like to start not
even talking much about help and fitness and start by
(14:06):
just focusing on the mind and the patterns and the
past that each woman has that has kind of caused
her to think the way she does about her body
and really work through that stuff so that we can
get to a healthier mindset overall. And then I bring
help and fitness in, but more so from a perspective
of what do you enjoy, What did you enjoy doing
(14:28):
for activity when you were a kid, before you even
cared what your body looked like, what would actually bring
you joy? There are so many people who myself included,
who do certain forms of exercise or eat in a
certain way solely for the purpose of looking better or
changing their body. And I don't think that that has
to be the reasoning behind it. I think that you
(14:48):
can find a way to go about taking care of
your body that comes from a place of simply wanting
to enjoy yourself, wanting to connect with yourself, wanting to
feel good. We all feel better when we're moving our
bodies and eating healthier. So if we can find an
underlying purpose for that that's not centered around physical appearance,
(15:09):
I feel like that's a much stronger thing to kind
of have backing your efforts in those in that realm.
So that's a big That's how I address that. And
along the way, there's a lot of unlearning what we've
been taught about what health means and what a healthy
body looks like, and what you should be doing or
shouldn't be doing in the gym or in any other
(15:32):
type of setting well.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
And it's so difficult too, because we talk about healthy food.
We look at the idea of healthy food, and gosh,
until I think this year, in the last literally in
the last year, my idea of healthy food was not
actually healthy food. I just had this such a difficult
relationship with food that I've been a vegetarian since I
(15:55):
was eight, So I was what you would call a
crapputarian for twenty five years of my life. Horrible foods
and you know, carbs and cheese, and I love them.
They're my soul foods. That's what I go back to.
But I was not eating vegetables, I was not getting protein.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
I was not doing anything.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
That was good for my body. And I look back
on that now and like, I fell for so many
diet crazes. I felt for the protein tea drinks that
were diet crazes. I felt for the drink your greens.
I fell for the protein and everything. As long as
there's protein and everything, it doesn't matter. I fell for
everything because I didn't understand, genuinely what a healthy relationship
(16:34):
with actual and when I say healthy foods, I mean
whole foods. I mean foods that come from nature and
you're supposed to be consuming and you can consume so
many and it doesn't matter that those type of foods.
I didn't even have a relationship with them because of
how distorted my view was of diet and healthy foods.
And I think that's also a conversation around a lot
(16:57):
of this is the imagen that we're receiving around what
actually is healthy? Are you seeing that a lot?
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Absolutely? I think it's overwhelming. I talk to so many
people who are like, I can't keep up. One day,
I think this is healthy, the next day it's not.
It leaves people feeling really defeated and like they don't
have a lot of power or control in their relationship
with their body and with food. I've done a lot
of different diets as well, and I've gone through my
own journey with food, and I too, am a huge
(17:28):
fan of whole foods, But ultimately I'm of the mindset
of really just tapping into what feels right for you
and what feels doable for you. If it's the most
overwhelming thing ever to try to eat whole foods, all
the time, which for a lot of people it is
because that's so foreign to them. I really like to
limit stress. I think stress is worse for us than
(17:49):
bad food.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
So true stress is bad for us, worse than I
think like alcohol, sugar and everything else. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
I think it's up there with some of the worst things.
And this has from someone who has a tendency to
stress and get really anxious about things and overthinks. So
I'm very adamant about doing what we can to avoid that,
and of course factoring in what does healthy eating look
like for you? What are things you could do to
make it easier for yourself. I think one issue with
(18:18):
the body neutrality body acceptance movement is that there can
be a little bit of too much lenience around things
that are bad for you, in my opinion, and I
don't think that's necessarily good either. But I think that
taking care of yourself and eating healthy should always come
from a place of love and from a place of
(18:38):
wanting to connect with your body and doing what's best
for it. And so it's really important to me to
work with my clients to find what that looks like
for them specifically, not what all these other sources are
telling them that should look like and how we can
make that something fairly simple, something that doesn't feel like
it's adding on to all the other things they already
have to worry about in life. Life. Yeah, you talk.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
About that bottom layer of what your clients can have
as their reasoning behind why they do it, and maybe
this is an example that people could use that would
help them. I really had to change my thought process
around it. In my latest way of doing that has been, like,
I just really want to be healthy when I'm older.
I want to feel good in my body. I don't
(19:27):
want my bone steak, and I want to be able
to walk around and hang out with my friends and
travel and see the world, and I don't have limitations
that I see a lot of people have. I've tried
really hard to set my mindset on I want to
live a long, good life and I don't want to
be stuck paying the price for things that I did.
(19:47):
And that's helped me refrain reframe a lot of what
I've been doing, because, as you heard in the beginning
of this when I went wedding dress shopping, I do
have so much negative self talk that happens that I've
really had to, like when I go to the gym
or like a walk, so I do the things that
are fun to me. I'm like, Okay, we're doing this
for old Morgan. Old Morgan's gonna appreciate me one day.
(20:10):
And that's my mindset that I keep trying to train
myself to go into. And maybe that's one that will
help other people too.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Yeah. I love that. I think everyone has different things
that work for them. For some people that wouldn't work
for others it would And that's why so much of
what I do is about really finding what works for
the individual person. But I agree we need to find
what that is for us. And I think in the
process we need to be kind with ourselves, because when
it comes to fitness and eating healthy, we're so hard
(20:42):
on ourselves. We can make them very intense and be
really mean to ourselves when we feel like we're falling short.
So I always want to bring that kindness into the
process as well. When you're working with clients, how are
you walking them through that kind of kindness, that less
negative self talk. How are you getting them on a
(21:03):
path that they can start to recorrect that, because that's
a lot of gosh, young versions of ourselves that we're
trying to kind of get out of us. And it's
huge habits that I've built up over years, sometimes decades. Yeah,
oh my gosh, it's intense work. It's not these aren't
easy things to change, for sure, it's a lot of
(21:26):
I honestly think everyone can benefit from speaking about how
they view themselves and how they talk to themselves in
a safe setting with someone who was truly there to
just listen and reflect back to them what they're hearing.
Because so many times my clients will say something about
themselves and I reflect it back to them and they're like, wow,
(21:46):
I didn't even look at it like that. I didn't
even really pay attention to the fact that I'm saying
these sorts of things to myself. So that helps in
and of itself. I also really like to, like you said,
a lot of these patterns stem all the way back
to when we were chilled, and I like to kind
of encourage my clients to first of all, figure out
with me where some of these ideas came from and
(22:08):
who taught them when they were children, because it doesn't
come from us, it's taught to us from outside forces.
And then there's a lot of I feel understanding that
comes with that because they're seeing this child version of
themselves and they're seeing, Wow, she was just living her
life in the world, and she was taught these messages
(22:29):
and she started to really believe those And for whatever reason,
when they think of themselves in that place when they
were a child, there's so much more able to have
understanding and love and acceptance for that version of themselves.
But when it comes to their present adult self, they're
not able to show up in that same way. So
a lot of it is just talking through that and
(22:50):
talking through why that is the case. And I'm also
a really big fan of intentionally saying certain things day
after day. So when it comes to the body, I
feel like when our mind has been programmed to think
about it so negatively, I love to encourage my clients
to kind of flip the script, whether it resonates or not,
a lot of the times it doesn't, but I still
(23:12):
think it's so important to every day reflect on one
thing that your body does for you, or one thing
that you're grateful for, one positive thing, because our minds
get so wired to think negatively of ourselves, and that's
something that we have been programmed to do for so long,
and we're still programmed to do every day, and I
think we have to counteract to that. I'm very big
(23:34):
on intentionally counteracting that with how even if it's just
writing one thing in a notebook every night before bed,
that's positive.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
We need that more of that in general, but gosh,
to do it with our bodies, and like you say,
flip the script, I think is so necessary and helping
kind of rewrite, like rewiring your brain to think just
a little bit differently. I don't know if you ever
do this, but I I have these photo albums on
Facebook where I posted so much when I was a kid.
(24:06):
I loved taking pictures with a digital camera. And I
look at those pictures and you talk about the younger self,
and I was so hard on her. I look at
those pictures. I look at her in swimsuits, and I
see her and her cheerleading outfits, and I'm like, I
used to think that I was so fat. I literally did.
That's what I thought, like, I was huge. There were
so many things I wanted to fix about myself. And
(24:28):
I look at those pictures now and I was so small.
I was so little. I was just this little girl
who didn't know anything, And if I could just take
her and wrap her in a blanket and remind her
of what's important. It's crazy, those feelings. And I wonder
if all of us look back on our old photos,
(24:50):
which I know can be hard for some people too,
because it's such a negative time for a lot of people.
But to look back on photos and remember the things
that we used to say about ourselves and how how
we did, and that perspective is also a crazy game changer.
Do you ever do that with your old photos where
you're just really hard and you're like, what was I
even thinking?
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Absolutely, there was a trend recently that was like someone
was talking about the first time that they saw a
photo of themselves and thought something negative about their body.
And I have a clear memory of it, and I
pulled up the picture too, and it's just sad, but
sad to think back on that, but I agree that
it can also be healing. I think a lot of
(25:30):
healing happens when we're willing to face the really hard
experiences and hard thoughts. And I love what you said
about how you wish you could go back and wrap
her in a blanket. I mean, I've thought that many
times about many things, wishing that I could go back
and just comfort myself. But I honestly believe that we
can still do that today. I'm a firm believer that
we all have this inner child, that part of us
(25:53):
that felt that way is still within us and still
plays a role in how we view and act towards
our body today. So I'm a huge advocate for when
we're having a really hard day and our body image
is horrible, treating ourselves how we would want to treat
that younger, childlike version of ourselves, And maybe that is
wrapping yourself up in a blanket and watching your favorite
(26:14):
movie and anything that is comforting to you. I think
it's so important that we treat our current selves the
way that we would our child version of ourselves.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Yeah, and when the child version of us comes out,
I like to think that that's our soul moment. We
need to connect back to our soul, because it's like
something that's happening that our body's screaming at us that
it needs us, it needs to be supported, And the
soul is actually what needs to be supported, not our body.
In that moment, not with whatever's happening in the outside world,
but the inside of us, the literal internal moments are
(26:47):
screaming for us to pay attention. And it's scary, honestly
to feel those sometimes. And I think that's why it's
so difficult, because, just as there is with anything, when
we start to think about change, when we start to
think about all that's going to have to happen to
make that change necessary, is really overwhelming to think, Okay, well,
(27:09):
every day, I'm going to have to wake up and
say nice things about myself and I have to understand
that I need to love who I am, and that
becomes very overwhelming, and the process of it becomes overwhelming,
so much so that I think it goes back to
what you're saying about stress. We end up looking at
it and say, Okay, well, no, that's too stressful, I'm
not going to do it. But then the latter option
(27:30):
is to just keep living with it for the rest
of your life.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
Absolutely. I think that's why this work is so important,
and I think it's why it's so helpful to have
someone kind of hold your hand through it and through
those hard moments, because it can be lonely I mean personally,
I changed my relationship with my body alone, and I
mean there's good and bad that came with that, but
ultimately it took a very long time and it was
(27:55):
a very lonely experience. So I love that I can
be that person for my clients who's there with them
in those hard moments so they don't feel so alone
when I.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Want to talk about their relationships around us, because I
also think that that's a huge factor, because we hear
that we are who we surround ourselves with, and that's
obviously true, but even more so when it comes to
thinking about ourselves, I think there's a lot of people
that have relationships in their life that are adding to
their issues with how they see themselves. And I think
(28:28):
that's a very key part to healing. So walk me
through that kind of experience, because I'm imagining you've had
a lot of experience in that.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
Absolutely, I think because a lot of times the negative
things that we hear about bodies comes from people that
we love and comes from people that we care about
and we value their opinion on us, and so when
they say certain things, I mean, I've had so many
clients and in my own personal life where we have
(28:57):
received comments from our moms, which is really hard because
your mom is someone you look up to. Your mom
is someone that in a lot of ways, your relationship
with your body is determined by her relationship with her body.
And it's not to put moms down. I think everyone
does the best they can, but a lot of times
this stuff is so ingrained in people that they end
(29:20):
up pushing those beliefs onto others. And a lot of
times there is this cycle of women learn this and
then they teach it to their daughters and they're not
even necessarily meaning to, but they just make comments because
they've heard comments like that, and they believe things and
they maybe think they're protecting their daughters, whatever the reasoning is.
And that's a really hard experience. That's something that I've
(29:41):
experienced in my own life. That's something a lot of
my clients come to me about, and it is challenging,
and it's one of those things where we can't control
other people. We can't control what other people say to us.
We can't control how willing they have been to do
this work or to really look at themselves in their
own relationship with their body. All we can control is
how much we take what they say to heart, and
(30:03):
it's so much easier said than done. I think a
lot of it is having someone that's a safe space
that you can talk to about it and be like,
my mom said this or my friend said this, and
it affected me in this way and it was really hurtful.
We just need to talk about it and let it
out in order to kind of clear that energy. I'm
a firm believer that everything is energy, and a lot
(30:25):
of times energy needs to be cleared out. So sometimes
just a matter of talking about it. Sometimes it's a
matter of calming the nervous system. I'm really big on,
Like there's this notion that all we have to do
is just change our thoughts, think more positively, be stronger,
be able to show up in life differently, and I
think that's expecting too much of the mind. I think
(30:45):
the mind is programmed to think in certain ways and
to be really reactive and emotional. So I'm a big
believer and teacher of calming the nervous system in moments too.
And sometimes when someone close to you makes a comment
about your body or about their body and they're not
really able to see the impact of that, you have
(31:06):
to go to your own space and calm your nervous system.
You have to like tap on your body or do
some deep breathing, or jump up and down and shake
or dance. You have to do something with that energy
that they have just unwillingly maybe pushed onto you. So yeah,
I'm a big again. It comes back to kind of
working with the moment and using the moment to kind
(31:27):
of show up and react differently. And I also think
that in doing this work ourselves, in changing our relationship
with our own bodies, we inspire the people around us
to do the same, and maybe the same people that
once were a contributor to those comments and to that
way of looking at ourselves will become inspired by what
(31:48):
they see us doing and how they see us talking
and showing up. It can come around like that, but
ultimately it comes back to we can only control what
we can control, and what other people say and what
other people think is not in our control.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Yeah. Gosh, those relationships with our family members is a
really tough one because it's your people that you're surrounded with,
you're born into, and you don't really have a choice.
You're just kind of succumb to it. For at least
eighteen years, if not more, and you don't realize it
until later, and it's passed down generation to generation. I
don't think our moms or our grandmas or they're you know,
(32:26):
our great grandmas wanted that to be what they thought,
but it was what got passed down to them, and
it's what they continued on. And being a generational breaker
of that habit is also a responsibility, but it's a
hard one and it's more than just that. With you, you're
just breaking so many decades of that experience. I read
(32:47):
something the other day talking about a study of how
there were enough people, even just with their partners, who
would say something negative about themselves and over time, six months,
a year, whatever, they would start to then see themselves
that way if they never did before, because they're around
it so much that they start to think the same
(33:08):
way that you are thinking. And that also, like on
the other side of relationships, made me realize the role
and my responsibility that I have. I'm not only creating
this environment and hardship for myself, but I'm also creating
it for other people who are around me. And I
hated that. I hated the way that that made me
feel honestly, it made me sad to think, and which
(33:31):
is so funny because of course, of course I'm sad
to think about how it would make other people feel,
not how I'm making myself feel every day. But it's
a funny realization that maybe putting it on other people
made me finally be like, oh, I shouldn't be saying
those things about myself. And that's so unfortunate that it
takes us realizing the impact we're having on other people
(33:53):
to say, oh, we shouldn't be having that same impact
on ourselves.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Yeah. No, it's sad how easy it comes to us
to show up in our relationship with ourselves in a
certain way. There's so many things we say to ourselves
that we would never say to someone else, and it's unfortunate.
I really like to remind people of how much power
they truly have, though And when it comes to thoughts
are one thing. Thoughts are very hard to control, and
that's a whole that's a complex thing to address. But
(34:20):
when it comes to what we say out, there's more
of an opportunity to stop ourselves in our tracks. When
we have a thought and we think to ourselves, I'm
going to say this out loud about my body. I'm
going to say this negative thing about my body. We
have the opportunity to not and I really like to
remind people of that. I know it's hard. I know
that when you are in a pattern of saying, of
(34:42):
talking negatively about yourself, and maybe you're around people who
do and it feels normal to you, it's not an
easy thing to consider just not doing that. But we
are all capable of that, and I really like to
remind people of that, because at least if you make
a commitment to yourself to not speak out loud these
negat of thoughts that you have about your body and
about yourself, you're taking a step towards completely changing your
(35:06):
relationship with yourself overall. And I truly believe it's all
about small steps that take you in that direction over time.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
And talking about a small step that we have to take,
because obviously we're in a data with social media, everybody's
on it, there's things with that, but you talking about
that just reminded me. Obviously we all have to wear clothes,
and putting on clothes and having that whole experience is
an experience in itself, and going to a doctor's office
and being weighed, and those everyday experiences of trying unclothes
(35:38):
in a dressing room, of going to a doctor's office
and getting weighed, or being around somebody where you're having
to get measurements and it's deciding what your body looks
like like. Walk me through how we should handle those
as we're trying to heal and talk to ourselves better
and do the better steps, because those are everyday moments
(35:59):
that are personal that we have to experience to just
exist in life.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
They absolutely are. That is the things. This is something
that's triggered in so many different moments throughout our lives
and throughout our day that it makes it really hard
to overcome these tendencies. I again, I'm all about starting
to see these moments as opportunities versus horrible experiences, which,
of course they are really hard and they are really challenging,
(36:28):
and there's so much that comes with them. But I
am all about the fact that in life the only
way to grow is through discomfort, and so I really
like to encourage a different way of viewing those moments
and seeing them as opportunities and again applying that same
approach of taking baby steps. The first thing I encourage
(36:48):
people to do is just to bring more awareness into
those moments in general, because so many of these things
we're so used to feeling a certain type of way,
we're so used to responding a certain type of way,
We're so used to experiencing something like that, like trying
on an outfit or getting weight at the doctor's office
and then feeling horrible for the rest of the day
or the rest of the week and just kind of
(37:08):
sitting in that and not really acknowledging what's happening. And
so I think bringing awareness into it is such an
important first step just to kind of start to shift
things into a position of reclaiming your power in those
moments and in your life in general. And that can
really just look like naming what's happening. Like if you
are at let's say you're shopping for clothes and you're
(37:31):
in the changing room trying some on. That can be
a really triggering experience for women, and you notice yourself
looking at your body and over analyzing and having all
these negative thoughts come up. You name what's happening, and
you say to yourself, I'm having a negative body image
experience right now, and I am thinking all these things
that I've been taught to think about myself, and that's
(37:51):
what's happening, and that alone is bringing a little more
awareness into the moment. And through doing that more and
more over time and really almost coming back to the
present more in those moments and not kind of letting
yourself get carried away into the thoughts and go with
what they're telling you, then you start to have more
of an ability to bring in more tools grounding yourself
(38:12):
in the present moment. I'm super passionate about people doing that,
and that can be kind of through tapping into your senses.
You know, what do you hear, what do you smell,
what do you see? Really bringing yourself back into the present,
out of your mind, because your mind is where this
storm is brewing, and it's so important to kind of
get some relief from that, even if it's for a
(38:33):
short lived period of time, and after that you have
more of an ability to really come back into your body.
I'm so into tapping or massaging or kind of like
going against what your thoughts are telling you, right, because
your thoughts are telling you that you're the worst, and
you look horrible and no one's going to like you.
And they can spiral so easily. I'm sure we all
(38:54):
know what that's like. And so respondingly, when we.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
Have to cli on swimsuits, that's the first thing that
comes to my mind. I think every woman has hated
that experience at least once in her life.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
Oh my gosh, swimsuits are a big one. And again,
you have to work with yourself. You can't you can't
go Okay, Today, trying on a swimsuit is the hardest
thing I could ever do. But tomorrow I'm going to
make it be easy. I'm going to go in there
and love the experience. Like that, you have to work
with where you're at. And so that's why I love
the idea of taking baby steps. But I accompanied with that,
(39:30):
I'm very adamant about reminding women that you are capable
of changing these patterns, and you have to believe that.
You have to believe in yourself and your ability to
change these things. And so through bringing more awareness into it,
through responding by gently caressing yourself or being kind to
your body in the midst of those thoughts, you open
the door towards you being able to start to question
(39:51):
those thoughts and get to a point where you can
start to be like, Okay, I'm trying this on and
I'm having these thoughts, but I don't have to actually
believe them. I don't have to actually listen to them.
I don't have to decide that I'm not worthy of
wearing a bikini. And the step after that is getting
to a point where you're like, I'm still going to
buy this. I'm still going to buy this and wear
it because I want to and I haven't worn a
(40:14):
bikini for so long and I want that to be
a part of my experience, and I'm going to push
past whatever my mind is telling me I can't do
or I'm not capable of. But that's like the ultimate, Like,
I don't want women to go into this work with
the idea that they will be able to get there
in a second, because that's it takes time to get
to that point, and you have to consistently practice these
(40:36):
things to get to that point where you can do that.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
Yeah, and showing up for yourself and making that choice
every day, that's so important. Yeah, Man, I feel for
all the people out there who are listening to this
and they're like, yes, yes, I relate. I want to
get there. I want to do all these things, and
I do want to talk about that. We mentioned it
a little bit, the obsession currently with being very skinny,
(41:00):
being so skinny that it's almost not okay in the
way that it's not. I even have struggles with saying
healthy and unhealthy. I don't know if you've noticed that
over the course of this interview. It feels weird even
to say healthy versus not healthy. But there is a
moment when you are so skinny that you need to
be taking care of yourself. And we're seeing a lot
(41:21):
of images of that online, especially coming from our favorite
actors and our favorite musicians and artists. And that is
the world that we're currently in.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
Give me your.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
Thoughts on that, the obsession with way loss drugs, the
obsession with being skinny, and the idea that I think
there was a huge photo floating around. I think it
was of Demi Moore, and it was like, she's so
toned and muscular, and I was like, that is not
the tone and muscular that I'm aware of.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
It's concerning, It's deeply concerning. I'm having so many conversations
with women who have struggled with eating disorders in the past,
or who who have really struggled with their weight and
wanting to be skinnier, and seeing this in the media
is so triggering for them, and I really feel for them.
I'm fortunate in the sense that I haven't personally struggled
with an eating disorder, but I can imagine how triggering
(42:15):
this time period would be for someone like that. So yeah,
it's concerning, and it is one of those things where
everyone has such a different notion of women's bodies and
what they should look like. And I mean, even the
range of comments that I get on my posts is insane.
It really shows me how varied people's opinions are on
women's bodies and how much people feel like they deserve
(42:38):
to comment on women's bodies.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
But it is.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
It is challenging though, because, like you said, we don't
want to comment on women's bodies, we don't want to
add to the problem. Yet at the same time, when
we see women becoming so thin, and it's true, there
is a certain level of thinness that is not healthy.
Women need a certain amount of fat on their bodies
to be healthy and to have a menstrual cycle, and
(43:03):
so when we're seeing these sorts of things happen in
the media. It is concerning and it does need to
be talked about, and I think it's challenging to navigate
how you talk about that so that you are helping
the people who are being negatively affected by this, but
you're not adding to the problem that we already have.
Speaker 2 (43:20):
Mm hmmm, gosh. Yeah, you're trying to find such a
balance in a world where honestly, there's just not a
lot of balance right now. It's like black or white,
there's no in between, and that is the part that's
really hard. But I want to bring it back to
something you said at the very very beginning of all
of this was that you are more interesting than what
you look like. You are more than everything.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
That you look like.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
And we have become so accustomed because everybody is chronically online,
myself included, that we feel comfortable to comment on people
and who they are and what they look like. And
I personally could never make a comment on somebody's body,
knowing how much I personal they struggle, both my own
thoughts and everything that I don't need to add to
(44:02):
anybody else's. But you go to any comment section of
anybody posting a picture of themselves, and people have a
whole lot to say about it. And I think that's
also the other hard thing, because you have a whole
bunch of people out there who feel comfortable to be
posting themselves online and a whole bunch of people who
don't feel comfortable, and it's like they're all clashing at
the same time, and we're seeing that in real time
(44:23):
in so many different ways.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Yeah. Absolutely, it is challenging, and everyone's so different and
everyone navigates it differently. I have really gotten to a
point where I'm able to take what people say with
a grain of salt. I truly believe that anyone's opinion
on someone else, specifically when it comes to a woman's body,
is the result of what they have been taught throughout
the course of their lifetime, what they've been exposed to,
(44:48):
what they've heard people say, the type of media they watch,
And so I don't take it very personally because I
see through it in that sense. But it is hard
to get to that point, and we're all human, we
are all impacted by what people say about us to
a certain degree, and so it's challenging to live in
a world where never before people have opinions on you
(45:09):
and they can share those opinions with you, and there's
this disconnect because it's happening through a screen.
Speaker 2 (45:17):
But I feel like, right now what we all need
is yes, mean in our heads, just constantly all the time, reminding.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
Us, Hey, this is the thought process we're trying to
walk down. I'll work on figuring out how I can
get broadcasted into everyone's mind.
Speaker 2 (45:32):
Right. Maybe that's where AI can be used for good.
It's like you're in our head all the time being like, Hey,
you're beautiful, you look awesome, this is great, You're doing
good things. Yeah, I mean that like a little Polly
Pocket in my life.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
I love that. That's definitely what I'm trying to do
with my content. And I think it's great that although
we're seeing this concerning trend happen with women's bodies in
the media, there are so many women out there who
are also making the opposite type of content and spreading
this message to help women accept themselves more. And I
(46:07):
definitely see so much more of that now than I
did ten years ago when I was first getting on
social media. So that gives me hope. That gives me
hope that at least there's some balance there that maybe
wasn't there as much in the past.
Speaker 2 (46:21):
Absolutely, which is how I found you in the first place,
and why I loved your content was why I wanted
to bring you on. So I end the podcast with
it can be a piece of motivation, inspiration. It could
be something that we haven't touched on that you feel
really heavy on your heart to share. Let you end
us on something that really matters to you, or a
message you definitely want to make sure people get across
by the end of this episode.
Speaker 1 (46:43):
Home, I'm really passionate about doing what you can to
be present as much as you can. I think that
life is something that flashes by. I mean, I'm still
fairly young, but I've already experienced that in my own life,
and everyone I talk to who is older says the
same thing. They feel like life just flies by. They
(47:05):
don't know where all the time goes. And I am
a firm believer that being alive is one of the
most precious gifts there is. It's such a blessing to
be alive, to be in a body, to get to
experience the good and the bad, and so whatever we
can do to be present for that, we should do it.
I truly believe it does come back to the mind.
(47:27):
I have struggled so much in my life with anxiety,
with overthinking, with my mind getting in the way of
me just enjoying my life. And I think that our
thoughts are our greatest enemy in so many ways. And
so if you can find one thing that you can
do daily that takes you out of your mind, even
if it's just for five minutes, I think that that
(47:50):
is one of the keys to life. And for me,
it's being in nature. I love being in nature. I
feel the most at peace when I'm just like walking
amongst the trees. Different for everyone and sometimes you have
to explore things to find what that is for you.
But I think it's so important, and I think it
helps with your relationship with your body as well.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
Yes, thoughts being our biggest to me, absolutely yes, and
yes also to nature. I feel the smallest when I'm
in nature, and something about that makes me feel like
every problem that I have, that the negative thoughts that
I have are really so insignificant compared to everything else.
So I totally understand that feeling. But yes, I mean,
(48:30):
thank you so much for joining and being here today
and talking about all this and sharing your story and knowledge.
I really believe everything that you're doing is so important,
so please keep doing it.
Speaker 1 (48:43):
Thank you. Thank you so much for reaching out and
having me and I love this platform that you have
and what you're doing with it.
Speaker 2 (48:49):
Oh, thank you. Well, it's great to meet you virtually,
and I'm gonna be patiently waiting until you create the
AI poly pocket version of yourself so I can have
you along the ride with me.
Speaker 1 (49:01):
So until then, you'll be the first to know. You'll
be the first to know when I figure it out. Deal.
Speaker 2 (49:07):
Thank you so much. I really do believe if we
got poly pockets of the best versions of ourselves, we
would all be doing so great right now. So if
somebody could get on that little business side project, I
personally don't have time, but it would be awesome if
we could have those. I'm so happy that you're here.
I hope you loved this week's episode in honestly all
the episodes. Make sure you're subscribed on YouTube if you
(49:30):
want to watch these at web Girl Morgan. You can
now watch some of them on iHeartRadio if you want
to listen for free over there, or you can also
just watch clips on social media at take This personally,
all the things, all the content. If you want any
of it, or if you want none of it, that's
okay too. And you just like to play this podcast
while you're on a walk or on a drive to
soothe you and help understand you. That is the whole purpose.
(49:52):
So thank you for being here. I love you guys.
Speaker 1 (49:55):
Bye.
Personal duels.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Last week we did a deep dive into the feminine
and masculine and how alpha should die early. It's a
huge topic on social media lately. So now we're going
into another big topic that's been the primary focus of
I would bet most people's social media feeds, and it's
talking about the current skinny culture and body image issues
(00:39):
and the things that we all face. Yes all everybody
who's listening to this, male and female, and I think
it's a really important topic that we should be addressing.
So let's get into it. I'm joined this week by
(01:00):
Yes Mean, and she is a body image coach, and
let me tell you I found her content online because
in a world of people telling us how and what
we should be looking like, her content was a very
refreshing reminder that I needed. So thank you for joining.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Me today, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
I'm excited to talk about this because, like I just mentioned,
we're in a crazy world right now. We always are,
I think, in the world of body image, but this
conversation is more important really now than ever. But before
we kind of get into all the fun details of
all of that, talk to me about your story and
why you are a body image coach, Why this was
so important to you?
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Yeah, oh my gosh, Okay, we have to go back
a little bit. I was always very aware of what
people thought of me and always wanted to be liked.
In high school, I really wanted to be popular, like
it was a big thing that I wanted people to
like me, and so I think early on as a woman,
I realized that the key to people liking me was
(02:00):
to be attractive, and so I kind of became fixated
on that. It became a really big part of my identity.
And when I was fresh out of high school early
into adulthood, it was the slim thick era, so everyone
wanted curves but like a small waist and this very
particular kind of Kardashian inspired body type, and I did
(02:24):
not naturally have that. So I got really into lifting
weights to try to build that in the gym, and
I would say that just made me more obsessed with
what I looked like, and no matter how close I
got to that ideal body type, it was never enough.
I never felt better. I always had someone to compare
myself to. Social media added to the problem, and I
(02:48):
was just never satisfied with myself and with my body,
and I thought that my physical appearance was the most
interesting thing about me, the most what I had to
focus on the most to be liked and to be
accepted in the world. So yeah, I kind of experienced
what it was like to feel that desire to look
different and try to get closer to that and successfully
get closer to that and still have that desire. And
(03:10):
I saw through the illusion that looking a certain way
would make you feel confident and great all the time,
because that was not the case for me. And I also,
at the same time watched my mom struggle with muscular dystrophee,
which is a disease that makes it so her muscles
are just becoming weaker over time and she isn't really
(03:30):
able to have much of a life as a result
of that. And so it was this weird contrast of
I have this body that's healthy and capable of doing
the things that I wanted to do, and yet I'm
so fixated on wanting it to look a certain way,
and in the pursuit of that ideal body, I'm completely
disconnected from the body I already have. And here's a
(03:52):
very clear example of someone close to me that I
love who would give anything to have a body that
could take her around the block or take her for run. So, yeah,
I just realized what was happening. I'm a very I
think very deeply, and I'm all about working on myself
and changing things that I need to change, and so
I kind of embarked on a journey to completely change
(04:16):
how I viewed my body and how I related to it.
And it took a really long time. I have successfully
reached a point where I'm in a much healthier place
with it and much more accepting of it. And I
see I look out in the world and I see
how many women are affected by this, and I'm deeply
concerned by what's happening now with the trends kind of
(04:36):
veering back towards thinness again and just like the complete
switch up that the beauty trends have made in that regard.
So that's what got me into coaching. I was like,
I need to help women who are struggling with this
reclaim their energy.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
And you touch on so many things there, and we're
going to get into all of it, but I do
want to draw attention to that fact that you talk
about your experience with it. I think you could talk
to any woman in the world and she has experienced
some form of body image issue or any number of
the complications that come with that. Right there's on the
(05:14):
more intense spectrum of the eating disorders and things on that,
but there's also just the every day of comparing our
bodies to other people. And I really believe that there's
not a single woman in the world who has not
had this experience, unfortunately, But talk about that experience a
little bit more of like you were feeling that and
you were going through that experience while also watching somebody
(05:37):
that you really love go through really just a completely
opposite experience where they were frustrated with their body on
a different level. And I think that can give an
important perspective to this conversation because a lot of what
we have to remember is that a healthy body is
so much more valuable than anything else we could ever do.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Yeah, I totally agree. I think it's unfortunate that so
much of the messaging that women receive and that I
received was that you need to look a certain way
and if you don't look that way, you're not enough,
and you should be determined to do what you can.
Buy this weight loss drug, buy this workout plan, buy
the shape, where like there's countless things that are sold
(06:25):
to women to make them look better. We're taught that
that should be one of our main goals, and so
a lot of us really start believing that. And I think,
of course, there are so many downsides to my mom's disability,
and I'm so sad that she has to go through that,
But it has given me a really special perspective on
what really matters in life and what really matters when
(06:48):
it comes to our bodies. And it's shown me that's
not true what we're told about our physical appearance mattering
so much, It's just not true. And that belief that
it does matter that much completely disconnects us from ourselves.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Oh that's so good to hear. I love that perspective
because I really don't think, unfortunately and fortunately that a
lot of people don't get to have that opportunity to
see what is important. I talk about this a little
bit that I'm engaged and I'm going through what is
the happiest moment of my life, right, But when I
try on wedding dresses, all I could do was think
(07:24):
about all the things that were wrong about me. I
lighted all of the things that I didn't like about myself.
Instead of highlighting the happiness that I was feeling, I
loved that I was feeling the excitement. It was all about, Well,
my belly looks too big here, I'm going to show
my very big arms in every picture in this one. Oh,
I have backfat in that one. Okay, what am I
(07:47):
going to do about this? Am I going to cover
my whole body? I need to make sure I have
a tan?
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Like all of.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Those thought processes are going through my head when I'm
trying on a single wedding dress. I had an entire
breakdown of things that I had experienced over the course
of my life, right, but in this one moment, it
was all bundled up to show me how much it
was impacting every piece of my life. Have you experienced
(08:13):
those moments too? I imagine that at moments in your
life where you're like, I shouldn't be focused on this,
but I am absolutely.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
I love that you brought up that example, because it
really shows how much this affects our lives and affects
our experience of moments that You're right, they should be
moments that were fully enjoying and present for and we're
completely taken out of them. The one that comes to
mind for me is I have a boyfriend who's wonderful
and I love him, and when I met him eight
(08:44):
years ago, through that process of falling in love and
getting to know each other, which again I think is
one of the most special things that we can experience
as humans. I was so distracted by wondering if I
looked good enough in that time period my life, and
looking back on it, it's kind of sad to me
that that experience of falling in love with someone is
(09:07):
something that I won't experience again, hopefully, And I was
so distracted by it that I was kind of like
not fully there for it.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
And it's sad to think about because we can't rewrite it.
We can't do anything differently than what we had done,
and all you can do is hope to do better.
I think that was such a reason why I loved
connecting with your content, because there are so many young
women online, and I just my hope, even though I
know that that's not the direction that we're sadly heading,
but my hope is that they see us talking about it,
(09:40):
they see us trying to bring attention to say, hey,
don't follow the path that we follow. Do something different
and love your body and love who you are and
show up in the world so confident in that. And
it's funny because I don't think that that content didn't
necessarily exist as we were growing up, but I think
it was harder to believe in the things that we're sold.
(10:03):
Is really hard on our image. And you talk about
weight loss drugs. Any person can go online right now
in any capacity and be online for a max of
five minutes and have at least one or two posts
that come across our feed talking about weight loss drugs.
It's everywhere. So how do you escape something that's currently around.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
How do you, as a body.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Image coach walk people through the experience of constantly be
surrounded by things telling them that you don't look good enough,
how you are.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Yeah, I mean that's a great question. It's true, it's everywhere,
and with social media, it's like the ability to advertise
these things to us is like it never has been before.
They have us, They have our attention at all times,
right through our phones. So yeah, it's a huge issue.
I'm very adamant with my clients about the fact that
(10:55):
this is something that you'll never be able to escape.
It's always going to be all around us. If anything. Unfortunately,
I feel like it's getting worse in a way with
technology and with social media and with where that's headed.
So I think it's so important to not necessarily try
to run away from that or hide from that. I
think that's unrealistic in a lot of ways. Instead, I
(11:18):
really encourage my clients to use moments like that to
really fuel their growth, and I teach them something that
I think a lot of women don't see in themselves,
which is that we are capable of responding differently to
these sorts of things. We are capable of seeing a
commercial for a weight loss drug and feeling what that
brings up in us, and then choosing to respond differently,
(11:40):
choosing to react differently, choosing to not buy into what
we might have bought into in the past. So I'm
really adamant about helping my clients get to that point
where they feel confident in their ability to do that.
And that really comes down to I mean, sometimes it
is necessary that people take a break from social media
because it's so pervasive. If it's so like we're not
(12:01):
even really aware of the impact it's having on us
a lot of the time, so sometimes it is necessary
to take a little break from it, and then we
kind of work together to get people to a point
where they feel able to question the thoughts and kind
of work with them and see through them in a
lot of ways and see through the messaging as well.
I mean, it revolves around taking women's power away from
(12:24):
them and telling and convincing them what you look like
matters and this will help you solve that issue of
not looking good enough and then you'll feel amazing. And
in my opinion, that's a complete lie. So we really
work to see through those lies, see through the thought
patterns that have come to be within their own minds,
and get them to a point where they can experience
(12:46):
having something like that come up on their phone when
they're scrolling and not go down the spiral that they
might have gone down in the past.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
I think it's a really hard, complex situation. On the
other side of that too, I know there's a lot
of people in the world right now who are really
trying to focus on health and being health conscious, and
it's a really complex situation when you're trying to get
out of the negative messaging that we're receiving while also saying, Okay, well,
(13:15):
I want to be healthy and I want to feel good.
How do you handle that because that dynamic is really dicey.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
That is a great question, and I agree that's a
hard one. I personally, coming from a background of help
and fitness and being really into it and still being
someone who, hey, I love to take good care of
my body, and I'm very passionate about that as well,
I find that it's such a fine line between not
really I don't want to say not caring, but maybe
(13:43):
letting your help slide and not really putting a lot
of intention into how you take care of your body,
and then being very intentional about it to the point
where it's unhealthy and it becomes kind of toxic, which
I feel is where I was at with it in
the past. So that is a hard one. I think
it's more so about I really like to start not
even talking much about help and fitness and start by
(14:06):
just focusing on the mind and the patterns and the
past that each woman has that has kind of caused
her to think the way she does about her body
and really work through that stuff so that we can
get to a healthier mindset overall. And then I bring
help and fitness in, but more so from a perspective
of what do you enjoy, What did you enjoy doing
(14:28):
for activity when you were a kid, before you even
cared what your body looked like, what would actually bring
you joy? There are so many people who myself included,
who do certain forms of exercise or eat in a
certain way solely for the purpose of looking better or
changing their body. And I don't think that that has
to be the reasoning behind it. I think that you
(14:48):
can find a way to go about taking care of
your body that comes from a place of simply wanting
to enjoy yourself, wanting to connect with yourself, wanting to
feel good. We all feel better when we're moving our
bodies and eating healthier. So if we can find an
underlying purpose for that that's not centered around physical appearance,
(15:09):
I feel like that's a much stronger thing to kind
of have backing your efforts in those in that realm.
So that's a big That's how I address that. And
along the way, there's a lot of unlearning what we've
been taught about what health means and what a healthy
body looks like, and what you should be doing or
shouldn't be doing in the gym or in any other
(15:32):
type of setting well.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
And it's so difficult too, because we talk about healthy food.
We look at the idea of healthy food, and gosh,
until I think this year, in the last literally in
the last year, my idea of healthy food was not
actually healthy food. I just had this such a difficult
relationship with food that I've been a vegetarian since I
(15:55):
was eight, So I was what you would call a
crapputarian for twenty five years of my life. Horrible foods
and you know, carbs and cheese, and I love them.
They're my soul foods. That's what I go back to.
But I was not eating vegetables, I was not getting protein.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
I was not doing anything.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
That was good for my body. And I look back
on that now and like, I fell for so many
diet crazes. I felt for the protein tea drinks that
were diet crazes. I felt for the drink your greens.
I fell for the protein and everything. As long as
there's protein and everything, it doesn't matter. I fell for
everything because I didn't understand, genuinely what a healthy relationship
(16:34):
with actual and when I say healthy foods, I mean
whole foods. I mean foods that come from nature and
you're supposed to be consuming and you can consume so
many and it doesn't matter that those type of foods.
I didn't even have a relationship with them because of
how distorted my view was of diet and healthy foods.
And I think that's also a conversation around a lot
(16:57):
of this is the imagen that we're receiving around what
actually is healthy? Are you seeing that a lot?
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Absolutely? I think it's overwhelming. I talk to so many
people who are like, I can't keep up. One day,
I think this is healthy, the next day it's not.
It leaves people feeling really defeated and like they don't
have a lot of power or control in their relationship
with their body and with food. I've done a lot
of different diets as well, and I've gone through my
own journey with food, and I too, am a huge
(17:28):
fan of whole foods, But ultimately I'm of the mindset
of really just tapping into what feels right for you
and what feels doable for you. If it's the most
overwhelming thing ever to try to eat whole foods, all
the time, which for a lot of people it is
because that's so foreign to them. I really like to
limit stress. I think stress is worse for us than
(17:49):
bad food.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
So true stress is bad for us, worse than I
think like alcohol, sugar and everything else. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
I think it's up there with some of the worst things.
And this has from someone who has a tendency to
stress and get really anxious about things and overthinks. So
I'm very adamant about doing what we can to avoid that,
and of course factoring in what does healthy eating look
like for you? What are things you could do to
make it easier for yourself. I think one issue with
(18:18):
the body neutrality body acceptance movement is that there can
be a little bit of too much lenience around things
that are bad for you, in my opinion, and I
don't think that's necessarily good either. But I think that
taking care of yourself and eating healthy should always come
from a place of love and from a place of
(18:38):
wanting to connect with your body and doing what's best
for it. And so it's really important to me to
work with my clients to find what that looks like
for them specifically, not what all these other sources are
telling them that should look like and how we can
make that something fairly simple, something that doesn't feel like
it's adding on to all the other things they already
have to worry about in life. Life. Yeah, you talk.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
About that bottom layer of what your clients can have
as their reasoning behind why they do it, and maybe
this is an example that people could use that would
help them. I really had to change my thought process
around it. In my latest way of doing that has been, like,
I just really want to be healthy when I'm older.
I want to feel good in my body. I don't
(19:27):
want my bone steak, and I want to be able
to walk around and hang out with my friends and
travel and see the world, and I don't have limitations
that I see a lot of people have. I've tried
really hard to set my mindset on I want to
live a long, good life and I don't want to
be stuck paying the price for things that I did.
(19:47):
And that's helped me refrain reframe a lot of what
I've been doing, because, as you heard in the beginning
of this when I went wedding dress shopping, I do
have so much negative self talk that happens that I've
really had to, like when I go to the gym
or like a walk, so I do the things that
are fun to me. I'm like, Okay, we're doing this
for old Morgan. Old Morgan's gonna appreciate me one day.
(20:10):
And that's my mindset that I keep trying to train
myself to go into. And maybe that's one that will
help other people too.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Yeah. I love that. I think everyone has different things
that work for them. For some people that wouldn't work
for others it would And that's why so much of
what I do is about really finding what works for
the individual person. But I agree we need to find
what that is for us. And I think in the
process we need to be kind with ourselves, because when
it comes to fitness and eating healthy, we're so hard
(20:42):
on ourselves. We can make them very intense and be
really mean to ourselves when we feel like we're falling short.
So I always want to bring that kindness into the
process as well. When you're working with clients, how are
you walking them through that kind of kindness, that less
negative self talk. How are you getting them on a
(21:03):
path that they can start to recorrect that, because that's
a lot of gosh, young versions of ourselves that we're
trying to kind of get out of us. And it's
huge habits that I've built up over years, sometimes decades. Yeah,
oh my gosh, it's intense work. It's not these aren't
easy things to change, for sure, it's a lot of
(21:26):
I honestly think everyone can benefit from speaking about how
they view themselves and how they talk to themselves in
a safe setting with someone who was truly there to
just listen and reflect back to them what they're hearing.
Because so many times my clients will say something about
themselves and I reflect it back to them and they're like, wow,
(21:46):
I didn't even look at it like that. I didn't
even really pay attention to the fact that I'm saying
these sorts of things to myself. So that helps in
and of itself. I also really like to, like you said,
a lot of these patterns stem all the way back
to when we were chilled, and I like to kind
of encourage my clients to first of all, figure out
with me where some of these ideas came from and
(22:08):
who taught them when they were children, because it doesn't
come from us, it's taught to us from outside forces.
And then there's a lot of I feel understanding that
comes with that because they're seeing this child version of
themselves and they're seeing, Wow, she was just living her
life in the world, and she was taught these messages
(22:29):
and she started to really believe those And for whatever reason,
when they think of themselves in that place when they
were a child, there's so much more able to have
understanding and love and acceptance for that version of themselves.
But when it comes to their present adult self, they're
not able to show up in that same way. So
a lot of it is just talking through that and
(22:50):
talking through why that is the case. And I'm also
a really big fan of intentionally saying certain things day
after day. So when it comes to the body, I
feel like when our mind has been programmed to think
about it so negatively, I love to encourage my clients
to kind of flip the script, whether it resonates or not,
a lot of the times it doesn't, but I still
(23:12):
think it's so important to every day reflect on one
thing that your body does for you, or one thing
that you're grateful for, one positive thing, because our minds
get so wired to think negatively of ourselves, and that's
something that we have been programmed to do for so long,
and we're still programmed to do every day, and I
think we have to counteract to that. I'm very big
(23:34):
on intentionally counteracting that with how even if it's just
writing one thing in a notebook every night before bed,
that's positive.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
We need that more of that in general, but gosh,
to do it with our bodies, and like you say,
flip the script, I think is so necessary and helping
kind of rewrite, like rewiring your brain to think just
a little bit differently. I don't know if you ever
do this, but I I have these photo albums on
Facebook where I posted so much when I was a kid.
(24:06):
I loved taking pictures with a digital camera. And I
look at those pictures and you talk about the younger self,
and I was so hard on her. I look at
those pictures. I look at her in swimsuits, and I
see her and her cheerleading outfits, and I'm like, I
used to think that I was so fat. I literally did.
That's what I thought, like, I was huge. There were
so many things I wanted to fix about myself. And
(24:28):
I look at those pictures now and I was so small.
I was so little. I was just this little girl
who didn't know anything, And if I could just take
her and wrap her in a blanket and remind her
of what's important. It's crazy, those feelings. And I wonder
if all of us look back on our old photos,
(24:50):
which I know can be hard for some people too,
because it's such a negative time for a lot of people.
But to look back on photos and remember the things
that we used to say about ourselves and how how
we did, and that perspective is also a crazy game changer.
Do you ever do that with your old photos where
you're just really hard and you're like, what was I
even thinking?
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Absolutely, there was a trend recently that was like someone
was talking about the first time that they saw a
photo of themselves and thought something negative about their body.
And I have a clear memory of it, and I
pulled up the picture too, and it's just sad, but
sad to think back on that, but I agree that
it can also be healing. I think a lot of
(25:30):
healing happens when we're willing to face the really hard
experiences and hard thoughts. And I love what you said
about how you wish you could go back and wrap
her in a blanket. I mean, I've thought that many
times about many things, wishing that I could go back
and just comfort myself. But I honestly believe that we
can still do that today. I'm a firm believer that
we all have this inner child, that part of us
(25:53):
that felt that way is still within us and still
plays a role in how we view and act towards
our body today. So I'm a huge advocate for when
we're having a really hard day and our body image
is horrible, treating ourselves how we would want to treat
that younger, childlike version of ourselves, And maybe that is
wrapping yourself up in a blanket and watching your favorite
(26:14):
movie and anything that is comforting to you. I think
it's so important that we treat our current selves the
way that we would our child version of ourselves.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Yeah, and when the child version of us comes out,
I like to think that that's our soul moment. We
need to connect back to our soul, because it's like
something that's happening that our body's screaming at us that
it needs us, it needs to be supported, And the
soul is actually what needs to be supported, not our body.
In that moment, not with whatever's happening in the outside world,
but the inside of us, the literal internal moments are
(26:47):
screaming for us to pay attention. And it's scary, honestly
to feel those sometimes. And I think that's why it's
so difficult, because, just as there is with anything, when
we start to think about change, when we start to
think about all that's going to have to happen to
make that change necessary, is really overwhelming to think, Okay, well,
(27:09):
every day, I'm going to have to wake up and
say nice things about myself and I have to understand
that I need to love who I am, and that
becomes very overwhelming, and the process of it becomes overwhelming,
so much so that I think it goes back to
what you're saying about stress. We end up looking at
it and say, Okay, well, no, that's too stressful, I'm
not going to do it. But then the latter option
(27:30):
is to just keep living with it for the rest
of your life.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
Absolutely. I think that's why this work is so important,
and I think it's why it's so helpful to have
someone kind of hold your hand through it and through
those hard moments, because it can be lonely I mean personally,
I changed my relationship with my body alone, and I
mean there's good and bad that came with that, but
ultimately it took a very long time and it was
(27:55):
a very lonely experience. So I love that I can
be that person for my clients who's there with them
in those hard moments so they don't feel so alone
when I.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Want to talk about their relationships around us, because I
also think that that's a huge factor, because we hear
that we are who we surround ourselves with, and that's
obviously true, but even more so when it comes to
thinking about ourselves, I think there's a lot of people
that have relationships in their life that are adding to
their issues with how they see themselves. And I think
(28:28):
that's a very key part to healing. So walk me
through that kind of experience, because I'm imagining you've had
a lot of experience in that.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
Absolutely, I think because a lot of times the negative
things that we hear about bodies comes from people that
we love and comes from people that we care about
and we value their opinion on us, and so when
they say certain things, I mean, I've had so many
clients and in my own personal life where we have
(28:57):
received comments from our moms, which is really hard because
your mom is someone you look up to. Your mom
is someone that in a lot of ways, your relationship
with your body is determined by her relationship with her body.
And it's not to put moms down. I think everyone
does the best they can, but a lot of times
this stuff is so ingrained in people that they end
(29:20):
up pushing those beliefs onto others. And a lot of
times there is this cycle of women learn this and
then they teach it to their daughters and they're not
even necessarily meaning to, but they just make comments because
they've heard comments like that, and they believe things and
they maybe think they're protecting their daughters, whatever the reasoning is.
And that's a really hard experience. That's something that I've
(29:41):
experienced in my own life. That's something a lot of
my clients come to me about, and it is challenging,
and it's one of those things where we can't control
other people. We can't control what other people say to us.
We can't control how willing they have been to do
this work or to really look at themselves in their
own relationship with their body. All we can control is
how much we take what they say to heart, and
(30:03):
it's so much easier said than done. I think a
lot of it is having someone that's a safe space
that you can talk to about it and be like,
my mom said this or my friend said this, and
it affected me in this way and it was really hurtful.
We just need to talk about it and let it
out in order to kind of clear that energy. I'm
a firm believer that everything is energy, and a lot
(30:25):
of times energy needs to be cleared out. So sometimes
just a matter of talking about it. Sometimes it's a
matter of calming the nervous system. I'm really big on,
Like there's this notion that all we have to do
is just change our thoughts, think more positively, be stronger,
be able to show up in life differently, and I
think that's expecting too much of the mind. I think
(30:45):
the mind is programmed to think in certain ways and
to be really reactive and emotional. So I'm a big
believer and teacher of calming the nervous system in moments too.
And sometimes when someone close to you makes a comment
about your body or about their body and they're not
really able to see the impact of that, you have
(31:06):
to go to your own space and calm your nervous system.
You have to like tap on your body or do
some deep breathing, or jump up and down and shake
or dance. You have to do something with that energy
that they have just unwillingly maybe pushed onto you. So yeah,
I'm a big again. It comes back to kind of
working with the moment and using the moment to kind
(31:27):
of show up and react differently. And I also think
that in doing this work ourselves, in changing our relationship
with our own bodies, we inspire the people around us
to do the same, and maybe the same people that
once were a contributor to those comments and to that
way of looking at ourselves will become inspired by what
(31:48):
they see us doing and how they see us talking
and showing up. It can come around like that, but
ultimately it comes back to we can only control what
we can control, and what other people say and what
other people think is not in our control.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Yeah. Gosh, those relationships with our family members is a
really tough one because it's your people that you're surrounded with,
you're born into, and you don't really have a choice.
You're just kind of succumb to it. For at least
eighteen years, if not more, and you don't realize it
until later, and it's passed down generation to generation. I
don't think our moms or our grandmas or they're you know,
(32:26):
our great grandmas wanted that to be what they thought,
but it was what got passed down to them, and
it's what they continued on. And being a generational breaker
of that habit is also a responsibility, but it's a
hard one and it's more than just that. With you, you're
just breaking so many decades of that experience. I read
(32:47):
something the other day talking about a study of how
there were enough people, even just with their partners, who
would say something negative about themselves and over time, six months,
a year, whatever, they would start to then see themselves
that way if they never did before, because they're around
it so much that they start to think the same
(33:08):
way that you are thinking. And that also, like on
the other side of relationships, made me realize the role
and my responsibility that I have. I'm not only creating
this environment and hardship for myself, but I'm also creating
it for other people who are around me. And I
hated that. I hated the way that that made me
feel honestly, it made me sad to think, and which
(33:31):
is so funny because of course, of course I'm sad
to think about how it would make other people feel,
not how I'm making myself feel every day. But it's
a funny realization that maybe putting it on other people
made me finally be like, oh, I shouldn't be saying
those things about myself. And that's so unfortunate that it
takes us realizing the impact we're having on other people
(33:53):
to say, oh, we shouldn't be having that same impact
on ourselves.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Yeah. No, it's sad how easy it comes to us
to show up in our relationship with ourselves in a
certain way. There's so many things we say to ourselves
that we would never say to someone else, and it's unfortunate.
I really like to remind people of how much power
they truly have, though And when it comes to thoughts
are one thing. Thoughts are very hard to control, and
that's a whole that's a complex thing to address. But
(34:20):
when it comes to what we say out, there's more
of an opportunity to stop ourselves in our tracks. When
we have a thought and we think to ourselves, I'm
going to say this out loud about my body. I'm
going to say this negative thing about my body. We
have the opportunity to not and I really like to
remind people of that. I know it's hard. I know
that when you are in a pattern of saying, of
(34:42):
talking negatively about yourself, and maybe you're around people who
do and it feels normal to you, it's not an
easy thing to consider just not doing that. But we
are all capable of that, and I really like to
remind people of that, because at least if you make
a commitment to yourself to not speak out loud these
negat of thoughts that you have about your body and
about yourself, you're taking a step towards completely changing your
(35:06):
relationship with yourself overall. And I truly believe it's all
about small steps that take you in that direction over time.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
And talking about a small step that we have to take,
because obviously we're in a data with social media, everybody's
on it, there's things with that, but you talking about
that just reminded me. Obviously we all have to wear clothes,
and putting on clothes and having that whole experience is
an experience in itself, and going to a doctor's office
and being weighed, and those everyday experiences of trying unclothes
(35:38):
in a dressing room, of going to a doctor's office
and getting weighed, or being around somebody where you're having
to get measurements and it's deciding what your body looks
like like. Walk me through how we should handle those
as we're trying to heal and talk to ourselves better
and do the better steps, because those are everyday moments
(35:59):
that are personal that we have to experience to just
exist in life.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
They absolutely are. That is the things. This is something
that's triggered in so many different moments throughout our lives
and throughout our day that it makes it really hard
to overcome these tendencies. I again, I'm all about starting
to see these moments as opportunities versus horrible experiences, which,
of course they are really hard and they are really challenging,
(36:28):
and there's so much that comes with them. But I
am all about the fact that in life the only
way to grow is through discomfort, and so I really
like to encourage a different way of viewing those moments
and seeing them as opportunities and again applying that same
approach of taking baby steps. The first thing I encourage
(36:48):
people to do is just to bring more awareness into
those moments in general, because so many of these things
we're so used to feeling a certain type of way,
we're so used to responding a certain type of way,
We're so used to experiencing something like that, like trying
on an outfit or getting weight at the doctor's office
and then feeling horrible for the rest of the day
or the rest of the week and just kind of
(37:08):
sitting in that and not really acknowledging what's happening. And
so I think bringing awareness into it is such an
important first step just to kind of start to shift
things into a position of reclaiming your power in those
moments and in your life in general. And that can
really just look like naming what's happening. Like if you
are at let's say you're shopping for clothes and you're
(37:31):
in the changing room trying some on. That can be
a really triggering experience for women, and you notice yourself
looking at your body and over analyzing and having all
these negative thoughts come up. You name what's happening, and
you say to yourself, I'm having a negative body image
experience right now, and I am thinking all these things
that I've been taught to think about myself, and that's
(37:51):
what's happening, and that alone is bringing a little more
awareness into the moment. And through doing that more and
more over time and really almost coming back to the
present more in those moments and not kind of letting
yourself get carried away into the thoughts and go with
what they're telling you, then you start to have more
of an ability to bring in more tools grounding yourself
(38:12):
in the present moment. I'm super passionate about people doing that,
and that can be kind of through tapping into your senses.
You know, what do you hear, what do you smell,
what do you see? Really bringing yourself back into the present,
out of your mind, because your mind is where this
storm is brewing, and it's so important to kind of
get some relief from that, even if it's for a
(38:33):
short lived period of time, and after that you have
more of an ability to really come back into your body.
I'm so into tapping or massaging or kind of like
going against what your thoughts are telling you, right, because
your thoughts are telling you that you're the worst, and
you look horrible and no one's going to like you.
And they can spiral so easily. I'm sure we all
(38:54):
know what that's like. And so respondingly, when we.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
Have to cli on swimsuits, that's the first thing that
comes to my mind. I think every woman has hated
that experience at least once in her life.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
Oh my gosh, swimsuits are a big one. And again,
you have to work with yourself. You can't you can't
go Okay, Today, trying on a swimsuit is the hardest
thing I could ever do. But tomorrow I'm going to
make it be easy. I'm going to go in there
and love the experience. Like that, you have to work
with where you're at. And so that's why I love
the idea of taking baby steps. But I accompanied with that,
(39:30):
I'm very adamant about reminding women that you are capable
of changing these patterns, and you have to believe that.
You have to believe in yourself and your ability to
change these things. And so through bringing more awareness into it,
through responding by gently caressing yourself or being kind to
your body in the midst of those thoughts, you open
the door towards you being able to start to question
(39:51):
those thoughts and get to a point where you can
start to be like, Okay, I'm trying this on and
I'm having these thoughts, but I don't have to actually
believe them. I don't have to actually listen to them.
I don't have to decide that I'm not worthy of
wearing a bikini. And the step after that is getting
to a point where you're like, I'm still going to
buy this. I'm still going to buy this and wear
it because I want to and I haven't worn a
(40:14):
bikini for so long and I want that to be
a part of my experience, and I'm going to push
past whatever my mind is telling me I can't do
or I'm not capable of. But that's like the ultimate, Like,
I don't want women to go into this work with
the idea that they will be able to get there
in a second, because that's it takes time to get
to that point, and you have to consistently practice these
(40:36):
things to get to that point where you can do that.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
Yeah, and showing up for yourself and making that choice
every day, that's so important. Yeah, Man, I feel for
all the people out there who are listening to this
and they're like, yes, yes, I relate. I want to
get there. I want to do all these things, and
I do want to talk about that. We mentioned it
a little bit, the obsession currently with being very skinny,
(41:00):
being so skinny that it's almost not okay in the
way that it's not. I even have struggles with saying
healthy and unhealthy. I don't know if you've noticed that
over the course of this interview. It feels weird even
to say healthy versus not healthy. But there is a
moment when you are so skinny that you need to
be taking care of yourself. And we're seeing a lot
(41:21):
of images of that online, especially coming from our favorite
actors and our favorite musicians and artists. And that is
the world that we're currently in.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
Give me your.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
Thoughts on that, the obsession with way loss drugs, the
obsession with being skinny, and the idea that I think
there was a huge photo floating around. I think it
was of Demi Moore, and it was like, she's so
toned and muscular, and I was like, that is not
the tone and muscular that I'm aware of.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
It's concerning, It's deeply concerning. I'm having so many conversations
with women who have struggled with eating disorders in the past,
or who who have really struggled with their weight and
wanting to be skinnier, and seeing this in the media
is so triggering for them, and I really feel for them.
I'm fortunate in the sense that I haven't personally struggled
with an eating disorder, but I can imagine how triggering
(42:15):
this time period would be for someone like that. So yeah,
it's concerning, and it is one of those things where
everyone has such a different notion of women's bodies and
what they should look like. And I mean, even the
range of comments that I get on my posts is insane.
It really shows me how varied people's opinions are on
women's bodies and how much people feel like they deserve
(42:38):
to comment on women's bodies.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
But it is.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
It is challenging though, because, like you said, we don't
want to comment on women's bodies, we don't want to
add to the problem. Yet at the same time, when
we see women becoming so thin, and it's true, there
is a certain level of thinness that is not healthy.
Women need a certain amount of fat on their bodies
to be healthy and to have a menstrual cycle, and
(43:03):
so when we're seeing these sorts of things happen in
the media. It is concerning and it does need to
be talked about, and I think it's challenging to navigate
how you talk about that so that you are helping
the people who are being negatively affected by this, but
you're not adding to the problem that we already have.
Speaker 2 (43:20):
Mm hmmm, gosh. Yeah, you're trying to find such a
balance in a world where honestly, there's just not a
lot of balance right now. It's like black or white,
there's no in between, and that is the part that's
really hard. But I want to bring it back to
something you said at the very very beginning of all
of this was that you are more interesting than what
you look like. You are more than everything.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
That you look like.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
And we have become so accustomed because everybody is chronically online,
myself included, that we feel comfortable to comment on people
and who they are and what they look like. And
I personally could never make a comment on somebody's body,
knowing how much I personal they struggle, both my own
thoughts and everything that I don't need to add to
(44:02):
anybody else's. But you go to any comment section of
anybody posting a picture of themselves, and people have a
whole lot to say about it. And I think that's
also the other hard thing, because you have a whole
bunch of people out there who feel comfortable to be
posting themselves online and a whole bunch of people who
don't feel comfortable, and it's like they're all clashing at
the same time, and we're seeing that in real time
(44:23):
in so many different ways.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Yeah. Absolutely, it is challenging, and everyone's so different and
everyone navigates it differently. I have really gotten to a
point where I'm able to take what people say with
a grain of salt. I truly believe that anyone's opinion
on someone else, specifically when it comes to a woman's body,
is the result of what they have been taught throughout
the course of their lifetime, what they've been exposed to,
(44:48):
what they've heard people say, the type of media they watch,
And so I don't take it very personally because I
see through it in that sense. But it is hard
to get to that point, and we're all human, we
are all impacted by what people say about us to
a certain degree, and so it's challenging to live in
a world where never before people have opinions on you
(45:09):
and they can share those opinions with you, and there's
this disconnect because it's happening through a screen.
Speaker 2 (45:17):
But I feel like, right now what we all need
is yes, mean in our heads, just constantly all the time, reminding.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
Us, Hey, this is the thought process we're trying to
walk down. I'll work on figuring out how I can
get broadcasted into everyone's mind.
Speaker 2 (45:32):
Right. Maybe that's where AI can be used for good.
It's like you're in our head all the time being like, Hey,
you're beautiful, you look awesome, this is great, You're doing
good things. Yeah, I mean that like a little Polly
Pocket in my life.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
I love that. That's definitely what I'm trying to do
with my content. And I think it's great that although
we're seeing this concerning trend happen with women's bodies in
the media, there are so many women out there who
are also making the opposite type of content and spreading
this message to help women accept themselves more. And I
(46:07):
definitely see so much more of that now than I
did ten years ago when I was first getting on
social media. So that gives me hope. That gives me
hope that at least there's some balance there that maybe
wasn't there as much in the past.
Speaker 2 (46:21):
Absolutely, which is how I found you in the first place,
and why I loved your content was why I wanted
to bring you on. So I end the podcast with
it can be a piece of motivation, inspiration. It could
be something that we haven't touched on that you feel
really heavy on your heart to share. Let you end
us on something that really matters to you, or a
message you definitely want to make sure people get across
by the end of this episode.
Speaker 1 (46:43):
Home, I'm really passionate about doing what you can to
be present as much as you can. I think that
life is something that flashes by. I mean, I'm still
fairly young, but I've already experienced that in my own life,
and everyone I talk to who is older says the
same thing. They feel like life just flies by. They
(47:05):
don't know where all the time goes. And I am
a firm believer that being alive is one of the
most precious gifts there is. It's such a blessing to
be alive, to be in a body, to get to
experience the good and the bad, and so whatever we
can do to be present for that, we should do it.
I truly believe it does come back to the mind.
(47:27):
I have struggled so much in my life with anxiety,
with overthinking, with my mind getting in the way of
me just enjoying my life. And I think that our
thoughts are our greatest enemy in so many ways. And
so if you can find one thing that you can
do daily that takes you out of your mind, even
if it's just for five minutes, I think that that
(47:50):
is one of the keys to life. And for me,
it's being in nature. I love being in nature. I
feel the most at peace when I'm just like walking
amongst the trees. Different for everyone and sometimes you have
to explore things to find what that is for you.
But I think it's so important, and I think it
helps with your relationship with your body as well.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
Yes, thoughts being our biggest to me, absolutely yes, and
yes also to nature. I feel the smallest when I'm
in nature, and something about that makes me feel like
every problem that I have, that the negative thoughts that
I have are really so insignificant compared to everything else.
So I totally understand that feeling. But yes, I mean,
(48:30):
thank you so much for joining and being here today
and talking about all this and sharing your story and knowledge.
I really believe everything that you're doing is so important,
so please keep doing it.
Speaker 1 (48:43):
Thank you. Thank you so much for reaching out and
having me and I love this platform that you have
and what you're doing with it.
Speaker 2 (48:49):
Oh, thank you. Well, it's great to meet you virtually,
and I'm gonna be patiently waiting until you create the
AI poly pocket version of yourself so I can have
you along the ride with me.
Speaker 1 (49:01):
So until then, you'll be the first to know. You'll
be the first to know when I figure it out. Deal.
Speaker 2 (49:07):
Thank you so much. I really do believe if we
got poly pockets of the best versions of ourselves, we
would all be doing so great right now. So if
somebody could get on that little business side project, I
personally don't have time, but it would be awesome if
we could have those. I'm so happy that you're here.
I hope you loved this week's episode in honestly all
the episodes. Make sure you're subscribed on YouTube if you
(49:30):
want to watch these at web Girl Morgan. You can
now watch some of them on iHeartRadio if you want
to listen for free over there, or you can also
just watch clips on social media at take This personally,
all the things, all the content. If you want any
of it, or if you want none of it, that's
okay too. And you just like to play this podcast
while you're on a walk or on a drive to
soothe you and help understand you. That is the whole purpose.
(49:52):
So thank you for being here. I love you guys.
Speaker 1 (49:55):
Bye.
Hosts And Creators
Bobby Bones
Amy Brown
Lunchbox
Eddie Garcia
Morgan Huelsman
Raymundo
Mike D
Abby Anderson
Scuba Steve
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