August 17, 2024 • 41 mins
OUTWEIGH: Welcome back for Part 5 of the official crossover series of the "What’s God Got To Do With It?" and Outweigh podcasts.
This week we’re diving deep into a crucial part of the food and body image conversation—what Leanne likes to call your “body brain.”
If you’ve been following along, you know we’ve been exploring how faith intersects with our struggles around food and self image. Today, we’re turning our focus to the physical side of things, and how your body (and your perception of it) are deeply intertwined.
We’ll be looking at this from both a nervous system and physiological perspective, but we can’t ignore the importance of how you view your body and your relationship with it.
This episode isn’t about offering a quick fix; it’s about helping you understand the deeper layers that contribute to your struggles.
Leanne also shares her personal journey of overcoming her own body image (and chronic pain) battles, so you can see that real, lasting change is possible...but it starts with breaking the chains of your own harsh self-criticism, guilt, and shame.
The hope is that by the end of this episode, you’ll feel empowered to start dismantling your own beliefs and step into a new story about your body. Remember, this isn’t just about what you weigh or how you look—it’s about freeing yourself from the heavy burden of judgment and stepping into a place of peace and self-compassion.
HOST: Leanne Ellington // StresslessEating.com // @leanneellington
To learn more about re-wiring your brain to heal from the all-or-nothing diet mentality for good....but WITHOUT restricting yourself, punishing your body, (and definitely WITHOUT ever having to use words like macros, low-carb, or calorie burn) check out Leanne's FREE Stressless Eating Webinar @ www.StresslessEating.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I won't let my body out be outwait everything that
I'm made done, won't spend my life trying to change.
I'm learning love who I am again. I'm strong, I
feel free, I know every part of me it's beautiful
and that will always out way if you feel it,
(00:24):
but you are, She'll some love to the food. Why
get there? Take good day and did you and die
out way? I am so excited as this is the
very first official crossover series of What's God Got to
Do with It in the Outweigh podcast, Because if you've
(00:44):
been listening to me on Outwigh, you know that that
podcast is all about helping women break themselves out of
the food and body prison, end the dieting madness, and
take control of their health for good, but without all
that restriction, obsession, and shame, and without dragging it out
for years to address it. And if you've been listening
to me on What's God Got to Do with It,
(01:06):
you know that we are all about the fusion of
where science meets faith and where faith meets transformation and miracles.
So this is a beautiful opportunity to talk about the
crossover of where science meets food and body image and
self image struggles and where that intersects faith or what's
(01:26):
God got to do with all of that. And that's
exactly what this six part series is all about. So
Part one is really just an introduction where we're simply
going to set up this massive topic. Part two is
all about the big picture of where faith meets science
meets food and body image struggles. In Part three, we
(01:48):
go deep into the self image and identity that you
would need to actually step into the version of you
that would have that health, that would have that relationship
with food in her body, and who would actually be
at peace and feel free, and of course how that
fuses with this faith brain conversation. In Part four, we
dive deeper into what God has to do with what
(02:10):
I call your food brain and disordered eating patterns and
filling voids in your head hard in spirit with food
or netflix or wine or whatever your drug of choice is,
and it's a whole that will never be filled by
those things. In Part five, we dive into the complicated
relationship that women have with their bodies and their body
(02:31):
image and physical pain, which is not talked about enough
in my opinion, and how to heal all of that
from a faith meets science perspective and invite God into
the conversation, and then wrapping it up in part six,
we get into the strategy side of things, as in,
what does it look like to use what you've learned
about neuroscience and faith and healing your relationship with food
(02:55):
in your body image to go create a winning game
plan that sets you up to win and one that
your brain just learns so you can go live your life.
Food can be food and you can feel comfortable in
your skin and free from the chains of restricting or
punishing your body. So let's dive on in. Here's part five.
(03:18):
Welcome back to the Outweigh and What's God Got to
Do with It crossover series, and we are back to
go narrower and deeper into this food and body image
conversation while we invite God into the conversation. And so
if you missed parts one, two, three, and four, definitely
check those out because we talked about the big picture
of this entire faith meets science meets food and body
(03:42):
image conversation, and we took a deep dive into the
self image and identity that you need to actually step
into the version of you that would have that health
and that would have that relationship with food in her body,
and who would actually be at peace and feel free.
And then last week we talked about what God has
to do with what I call your food brain and
(04:02):
disordered eating patterns and just filling voids in your heart
and your head and your spirit with food or netflix
or wine or whatever your drug of choice is. And
it's a whole that will never be filled by those things.
And then of course how to fuse that with this
faith brain conversation. And today we're going to talk all
(04:23):
about what I call your body brain, which includes your
physical body. And we're going to talk about this from
a nervous system perspective and a physiological health perspective. But
I'm sure you're probably starting to understand that we can't
talk about the physical body side of things without also
talking about the body image and your view of your
(04:43):
body and your relationship with your body. And as you'll learn,
I believe that the physical body and your perception of
your body are one thousand percent intertwined. I want to
remind you that this is a massive topic and I'm
not here claiming that this podcast episode is going to
solve you know, years of struggles with your body or
your body image, or even chronic pain, because we're going
(05:05):
to talk about that too, actually, but this is not
even close to a substitute for actually getting the support
and the one on one guidance that you need. And
so a lot of women and of course men if
you're listening, have a really complicated relationship with their bodies.
You know, just keep in mind I work with people
very intensively for months at a time to help them
really heal this and put the problem to bed and
(05:28):
get off the put a band aid on it roller coaster.
And so to try to distill it down into one
podcast episode, you know, we're going to cover a lot
of ground. But this is not me promising like a
one and done solution, right. My hope again is just
to help you understand yourself better so that you can
approach your struggles with compassion and care rather than judgment
or shame. And that's why I'm gonna, you know, share
(05:50):
my own journey as we go. But first I'll start
by kind of bottom lining it again for you, because
you know I like to do that, and so if
I were to bottom line how to heal your your
body and your body image struggles through the lens of faith.
I would say this, First, you must end the love
hate war that you're in with your body and your
(06:10):
body image, and really, you know, die to your old
self and step into a whole new identity with new
beliefs and thoughts and behaviors. In a way, you have
to become a new version of yourself, and you have
to radically transform your being, and you must become the
version of yourself that thinks and lives and believes this
new way of being. And then from that place you
(06:33):
can address the habits and the behaviors. And yes, this
is the part that most people skip over because it's
not as sexy as a band aid or you know,
lose thirty pounds and thirty minutes, But again it is
so imperative. And then after that we can talk about
the other part of it, which is you have to
heal the cycle and the habits and the behaviors. And
(06:54):
you've got to address the wiring in your brain that's
causing you to believe what you're believing and seeing what
you're seeing about your body, and that's causing you to
move the way that you move or don't move, and
treat yourself in your body, the way that you treat
it or don't treat it, and just feel the way
that you feel or don't feel about yourself. And so
as you remember, you know I shared this from last week,
(07:17):
you've got to ditch what I call the weight of
the weight if you truly want to be free. Because again,
when you've been stuck in the food and body struggle
for years or decades, or you know, sometimes it's a lifetime,
it's like there's these heavy chains of thoughts and beliefs
and behaviors that you've been carrying around in your brain
and your heart and your spirit really for probably as
(07:37):
long as you can remember, if not many many years,
And those heavy, rusty chains are what feels so heavy
day to day. And so the weight on your body
isn't the real weight that needs to be ditched. The
real weight is all of this other stuff, like those
chains of beliefs and behaviors and shame that you've been
carrying around with you. And there is no shame in
(07:58):
this whatsoever. It's what I learned, It's what happened to me,
it's what happened to all of my clients too. They
learned it too. But until you break the chains, you
are going to keep walking around with them, and they're
just gonna keep getting heavier. And if you're anything like
I was, and like my clients were, you kind of
become desensitized to them and they start to feel normal
because they're disguised as you being air quotes, you know,
(08:20):
health conscious or I'm just getting fit or I'm just
you know, taking care of myself. Right, But these chains
are not normal. The chains that bog down your head
and your heart and your spirit and really inturn your body,
they are chains that also do not have to be there.
And so we're having these important conversations today because you
don't want to be carrying them around anymore. But again,
(08:42):
it's just been happening so long it finally like essentially
becomes normal. It feels like it's normal. Right, So let's
break those chains and so that we really can go
ditch that weight. And that's why we're gonna cover two
more weight of the weights that are so relevant to
this body, brain and body image conversation. But first, do
you remember maybe you don't, I'll share again, but in
(09:04):
part one I kind of shared how my first weight
Watchers meeting was the catalyst for everything. I was taken
there when I was seven or eight, and from there
on out, food and my body became this very personal
and emotional thing, and more importantly, you know, toxic shame
became a very integrated character in the story of my life.
But it's also when I started thinking that there was
something bad or wrong or broken about me and my body.
(09:28):
And I started from a young age also learning about
movement and exercise as something that you just did if
you wanted to work it off, work off what you ate,
or you know, try to lose some weight. I remember
in elementary school like thinking that was what exercise was,
and that in itself actually became a prison for me.
And even though I finally you know, I've shared this before,
but I hit my first enough as enough point, and
then through a lot of wrong ways and some of
(09:50):
the right ways, I went on and I lost a
lot of weight, close to one hundred pounds, and this
even inspired me to start my first business working with
women on their own weight loss journeys. But here's the thing,
I learned the same eat less, move more, no pain,
no gain equation that a lot of the mainstream teaches
young women who kind of think that losing weight will
magically solve all their problems. I mean, that's what I thought.
(10:13):
And even though yeah, I did technically lose the weight, like, yeah,
I lost one hundred pounds, I got to my lowest weight,
and I could wear sleeveless halter tops any days of
the week without feeling ashamed of my arms. But I
never addressed my addiction like pull to food and then
of course my punishment driven relationship to exercise. So I
still felt like I was a slave to whatever it was,
(10:34):
whether it was dieting or exercise, because I would bounce
from one extreme to the other, like I would restrict
and punish my body until let's face it, I just
couldn't take it anymore, like I had something had to give,
and so of course I would just rebound to the
opposite where for me it was like you know, care free, abandonment,
eating whatever I could get my hands on, and then
of course I would feel guilty and I would try
to go out exercise my overeating, and so of course,
(10:57):
like not only was I the opposite of free, because
this is not freedom, but I was the opposite of happy,
right And because yeah, like I lost the weight, but
I never transformed my identity and I brought all of
my old habits and thinking and behaviors with me. Now
keep in mind, at this point, I still didn't really
have God in my life, or you know, at least
I didn't know that I did. I didn't know that
(11:18):
God was there, even though I know he was there.
But by some divine miracle that I just have to
give glory to God, I did eventually have the insight
and the awareness to realize I was never going to
be able to outdiet or outwork or outsmart the wiring
in my brain and in my self image. And so
I hit my next enough is enough point, because I
(11:38):
had a lot of them right, and I finally drew
that line in the sand, and I just I made
a firm commitment to myself that day, even though I
didn't know what it looked like, that I would never
be in a place of that crazy restriction or obsession again.
And I decided to examine my habits and my mindset
around food and my body. But that was only one it, okay,
(12:00):
because yeah, I definitely had to go do that. I
had to heal my relationship with food, my body image,
rewire my brain all of that good stuff. So that's
what I did, and ironically, that's what God had in
store for me to help other women do for themselves
and what paved the way for my stressless eeding and
self image curriculum that I've been teaching for over a decade.
But like I started to say, that was only one
(12:22):
side of it. There was actually another curveball in the
mix that took place essentially smack dab in the middle
of the part of the story that I was just sharing.
So now I want to rewind back, you know, sixteen
seventeen years something like that. So it was like two
thousand and seven, two thousand and eight, and my anesthesiologist
(12:44):
had me counting backwards from one hundred as the surgical
team was getting ready to go in and microscopically remove
the calcified hardened disc fluid that had been sitting on
my nerves, the nerves of my lumbar spine for the
past eight months. And so now it's a seizure that
I endearingly call the cost of skinny, And I lovingly
(13:04):
call it that because I was so focused on getting
skinny or lean or toned or whatever words ruled my brain.
At the time, I didn't pay attention to or really
tune into what my body needed and what it was
screaming at me to do. And so, you know, I
look back and I'm like, if only I had listened
to the screams from my body to slow down and
(13:26):
chill out and actually just take care of my body,
because I really see now it was screaming at me.
Maybe it could have all been avoided, but at the
time I didn't care. Right at the time, I just
wanted to be you know, skinny or beautiful or whatever
vision I had in my mind of the thing that
would make me happy, and no back pain or injury
(13:48):
or pesky flare up was going to stop me until
it finally did stop me, and I didn't have a choice.
It didn't just stop me. It landed me on an
operating table at the Cleveland Metro Hospital for major spine
surgery the ripe old age of twenty five. But it
wasn't just that. I also afterwards had a lot of
neurological struggles after the surgery that no one could really
(14:09):
help me with. Like the original back pain wasn't really
there anymore, but now I had nerve damage. I had
all of a sudden, I had balance issues, I had
what I now would consider like a sensory processing disorder
that I never had before. And I had residual pain
in other parts of my body. So now it wasn't
my back, but it was like my knee, I hit
my foot whatever. Right, Plus the anesthesia is most likely
(14:30):
what gave me something called postural hypotension, which is a
very benign thing. It's just more annoying. But again, it
was more things that I was like, great, how else
is my body broken? But then on top of that,
emotionally and mentally, I just felt different. Like it was
hard for me to describe. But it's almost like when
the lights went out when I went under anesthesia, I
(14:52):
just felt different when the lights came back on. I
can't fully describe it, so I'm just doing my best
to describe it here. But so now picture that. Yes,
if you take a girl, a woman who already feels
unworthy and unlovable and undesirable because all she's ever known
is seeing herself through what I now lovingly call the
(15:12):
fat goggles of her self image, Like I literally was
calling myself fat from a young age, right, so that
became my fat goggles. And then now you throw on
the story that she's also you know, damaged goods or broken,
because that's how I felt because of my body. You
can only imagine how low my inner world God at
that point. But I will say the spoiler alert, God
redeemed all of that too, as you're going to come
(15:34):
to learn. Because that major spine surgery and what I
now call the face off between you know, my fat
head and my skinny head, it's really what drove me
to start obsessively studying the female brain, more specifically the
science of the self image that I talk about all
the time, and then what caused me to dive really
head deep into studying and getting to know this little
thing called the nervous system. It really started with the
(15:56):
physiological stuff that I was telling you, and I was like, oh,
there's something called a nervous system. I should know about
that because this is not a muscular skeletal thing. This
is higher up. Which also, like studying about the nervous
system completely transformed my life because it helped me take
ownership of my new physiological struggles that I mentioned, but
also my chronic pain, which is something I never had before.
(16:16):
I had a cute pain from the back injury, but
I never had chronic pain like this, and sensory issues
and balance issues and all the things. But the point
of me sharing this is that I promise you your
journey has a purpose. Even if you've been struggling or
suffering for years. God has been and will continue teaching
you through those experiences if you wake up to the lessons,
(16:38):
if you allow Him to teach you through those right.
And there are so many faces of disorder that have
nothing to do with food, And that's why I'm continuing
to just share the many layers of my journey because
they all have a place, and they all have a purpose.
And I truly believe there's a message for you in
your messiness, and there's clarity waiting for you on the
(16:59):
other side of your own chaos, and there's purpose for
you to find in the midst of your own pain.
But first you must break the chains, and you must
break the strongholds, and you've got to dismantle the beliefs
that are keeping you stuck in an identity that's just
perpetuating more and more pain and heartache and disorder. And
(17:20):
so you've got to break those chains and ditch the
weight of the weight and die to that old story
and step into a new one. So that's literally what
we're going to start doing right now. So let's dive
on in. And that's why the next set of chains
that we have to break, and the next weight of
the weight is the weight of being your own biggest
(17:40):
critic and the weight of being in a war with
yourself and with your body. It is the weight of
harsh judgments and self criticism and guilt and shame and
blame and comparisonitis and perfectionism in your self image and
your self talk. And so when I talk about ending
this war that you're in with yourself and waving the
(18:01):
white flag and stepping into a new story about your body,
this is what I mean. And I love this non
biblical parable because it just sums up what I'm trying
to say perfectly goes like this. One evening, an old
Cherokee Indian told his grandson about a battle that goes
on inside people. He said, my son, the battle is
between two wolves inside of us. All one wolf is evil.
(18:26):
It's anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, pity, self, pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies,
false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is good. It
is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion,
(18:48):
and faith. The grandson thought about it for a minute
and then asked his grandfather which wolf wins. The old
Cherokee simply replied, the one you feed. So really, I mean,
you can look at this darkness light, the enemy Satan
versus God, right like, so what are you feeding? You know?
Are you feeding your relationship with God and how he
(19:09):
sees you? And really the beauty and perfection that you
already are. And you don't have to hustle for it.
You don't have to lose weight for it, you don't
have to change a thing about yourself for it. And
I'll say this too, like, even if you don't like
what you weigh right now, or there's certain elements of
your body that you don't like, it does not have
to strip you of your right to feel worthy and
loved and known right now, Like two things can be
(19:31):
true at the same time. And so are you pursuing
your own pursuits of getting your you know, metaphorical self
image cup filled from your gene size or your scale
weight or your calorie count or whatever. And what are
you feeding? Are you feeding guilt by feeling guilty about
what you did or didn't eat or do, or you know,
feeding shame by feeling ashamed of your body and ashamed
(19:53):
of your habits or the behaviors or who you're showing
up as. And are you feeding blame by continue blaming
yourself or blaming others or blaming those darn irresistible cookies?
Are you feeding comparison ititis by constantly comparing yourself to
where you think you should be or what you should
be doing, or you know, just really comparing your worst
(20:14):
to someone else's best or the like what you think
are other people's best, like the highlight reel on social media? Right?
And are you feeding perfectionism by letting your inner perfectionists
run the show? And I promise you with her, it
is never enough, okay, you will never be doing enough
or good enough, or smart enough or skinny enough or
just enough period. And this is the part that's not working.
(20:37):
And this is what's causing you so much unhappiness, And
this is what's causing you to feel like you're in
a war with yourself and with your body, and this
is what's causing you to feel further from God, which
I promise you God just wants to be close to you.
And that's why, little by little we want to feed
this less and feed God's view of you more. So,
(21:00):
what's the faith meets science perspective of this look like? Right'?
That's my thoughts and I'm using a parable to describe it.
But let's take a look at the clues that we
kind of left ourselves little breadcrumbs from a couple weeks ago.
And so remember how I told you that the experiment
that when humans have what they call the ultimate friend,
and this is from the science based research that we
looked at a couple weeks ago, when humans have what
(21:22):
they call the ultimate friend on their side, it made
a big difference when it comes to self respect and
self worth. And how I shared with you, there was
literally a study that showed the impact of faith on
self image and self worth. And so if you miss that,
go ahead and listen to part two of this series.
But again, I want to point out that the kind
of relationship with God and Christ that this study specifically
(21:44):
talked about. They referred to having a relationship with Christ
where he was like the ultimate friend, and they called
it a divine being who cared about them. And so
this is relationship that's not religion. It's not a punished
or shame driven God. It's a relationship with a loving,
redeeming God and a heavenly Father who sees you and
(22:07):
loves you just as you are. And you don't have
to earn it or work for it. So let's look
at what God has to say about it by going
to his word. And so this is from First Samuel
sixteen seven, and it says, but the Lord said to Samuel,
don't judge by his appearance or height, for I have
rejected him. The Lord doesn't see things the way you
(22:28):
see them. People judge by outward appearance. But the Lord
looks at the heart. The Lord looks at the heart.
And so how often is our self image and body
image based solely on what we look like or quantifiable
things like skill weight or gene size. Right, remember, the
Lord looks at the heart. I love this from Isaiah
(22:49):
sixty one seven. It says, instead of your shame, you
will receive a double portion, and instead of disgrace, you
will rejoice in your inheritance. So you will inherit a
double portion in your hand, and everlasting joy will be yours.
And I promise you it is true. If you stop
(23:09):
basing your view of yourself based on your own worldly self,
or at least ask God to show you, God will
show you worthiness that you could never have imagined. And
scripture says double portion, but I honestly feel like he
one hundred xd my own self worth when I stopped
looking for the worldly ways and I started just asking
God how he sees me. And yeah, that started with
(23:31):
me going down the brain and science rabbit hole. But
when I started asking, you know, what's God got to
do with all this, you know, body image stuff and
this self image stuff, and what does God reflect back
to me in the mirror of my own self perception?
What happened is beyond description. And so I use words
now like you know, miracles, because that's what it felt
like after thirty years of toxic shame and having self
(23:54):
rejection and self abandonment as my emotional home. And that's
why I'm just inviting you to try this on, like
try on that you're not crazy or weak willed and
that you just have a brain, and ask God to
fill you with new beliefs and new elements of your
identity and step into your own rebirth, because the alternative
is simply walking around with more and more heavy, heavy
(24:17):
chains and the weight of the weight of your own
harsh judgments and self criticism and guilt and shame and
blame and ugly comparison itis and perfectionism. That's in your
self image and self talk and body talk. I get it.
You know. Most women take a look at this last
when thinking about food and body struggles. They think like, Okay,
what can I do? But it's like, no, if you've
(24:39):
been being your hyperjudgmental self critical, shaming, blaming and comparing
self your whole life, that doesn't just magically go away
if you lose weight or if you, you know, work
out for a few days, Because this is not just
in your mind, and it's not in your body. It's
in your brain and self image, and it's as you're learning,
it's in your spirit and identity. And you can't outdiet
(25:01):
and outperform or outsmart your identity. But when you invite
God into the conversation, that's when chains can actually break.
And that's why if somewhere along the line, your body
or you know, really the enemy tricked you into thinking
that it was unattractive or undesirable or a pain in
the butt, a nuisance, or a burden. And also like
(25:23):
for me it was like my body was like I
built stories like No, you're never going to be able
to trust it or predict it or like it. If
you feel any of those things, I truly believe you
need a better story about your body. And if your
body image was formed in the eyes of food shame
or fat shame or body shame, and it's really keeping
you from feeling beautiful and powerful and confident and worthy,
(25:45):
you need a better story about your body and a
new story. And if you're comparing your body to someone
else that you think is smaller or more desirable or
fit or perfect air quotes perfect, and it's not making
you feel very good, you need a new and better
story about your body. And if you're comparing your body
to something else like a number or a measurement or
(26:06):
a picture, or really just a common opinion of what
you think is good, bad, right, or wrong, and again
it's not making you feel very good. You need a
new and better story about your body. And really it's
time to end the war that you're in with yourself
so that you can stop fighting and restricting and punishing
it and blaming it and shaming it and comparing your
body and just go get right with it. And that's
(26:30):
why I invite you to push pause on starting that
new diet and hold off on starting that new workout
thing or membership or whatever, and go get right with
your body. Wave the white flag, get on the same page,
except that it's yours and you'll have to have it
the rest of your life, right, and that you get
to choose to take care of it the rest of
(26:50):
your life, and then commit to taking care of it
because you only have one, and then figure out after
that how you want to influence it if you want
to change it. But in the meantime, I'm inviting you
to stop being so cruel to yourself. In the meantime
and you know, quit with the mental jobs and the
verbal smack talking and really treating yourself like dirt, because
(27:10):
you want to change your body and lay down the
weapons of judgment and restriction and punishment and control that
food and exercise have become to you. And go get
right with your body, because you are only fighting and
battling and resisting yourself, and you deserve so much more,
so much more. So I'll just leave it at that
(27:31):
for now, because I could go on and on about
this subject, because once again it's a biggie, but I
want to head on over to the next chain that
we have to break and the stronghold, and really break
it down, break the chains, break the strongholds of the
next weight of the weight is what I call the
weight of waiting for the weight to go. Be who
you want to be and do what you want to do,
(27:52):
or live the life that you really want to live.
Are you waiting for the weight to go? Do that?
And this is again where I'll remind you what God
said when he said in Two Corinthians five seventeen. Therefore,
if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.
The old has passed, Behold, the new has come. And
(28:15):
I fell into the victim mentality for years, just kind
of waiting for that thing, that one magical thing that
I thought would make me happy, you know, or make
me go live the life I truly wanted to live,
and the life that was waiting for me right then,
like right now. And in my case, I thought it
was my weight that would make me happy, but it
kept me stuck in that victim mentality, feeling like I
(28:38):
had no choice, and it left me feeling like a
victim to my own circumstances. And trust me, I am
no victim, and neither are you. And so I'm just
here to lovingly ask you, like, where are you waiting
for the wait? Where are you waiting for things to
get better on their own, or waiting for someone to
do it for you or want it for you, or
maybe waiting for discipline or willpower to magically show up,
(29:02):
or you know, waiting for the perfect time that you
know this is in air quotes, of course, the perfect
moment or for things to be air quotes perfect, and
waiting to start fighting the beautiful, confident, powerful, worthy version
of yourself that you are right now, but you just
haven't seen her in a while, or maybe ever, maybe
you've never met her right and also waiting for the
wait to be who you want to be and do
(29:24):
what you want to do and feel how you desperately
want to feel. Okay, And I'm here to tell you
you don't have to keep waiting, like, don't make the
same mistake that I made, Like, don't wait for your
body to be a certain size or a certain shape
to go start living, and don't wait for things to
go magically. Go get better. Invite God into this conversation,
(29:44):
and go meet yourself right now, just as you are
at this exact weight or gene size, with your current
level of skills and experience, and just start living. That
is my invitation to you and the seeds that I
really want to plant into your brain before we dig
a bit deeper into some research that actually supports faith
(30:05):
meeting science on the physiological side of things, I really
wanted to get that planted in your brain first. But
now we're going to go into that side of it
because something that's happening to a lot of women and
again men, if you're listening, is this combination or it's
really like a sticky tangled web that happens with our
physiology as it relates to our emotions and our mental state.
(30:27):
And so here's what I mean. So we looked at
the ACC last week, the anterior simulate cortex as it
has to do with you know, coping mechanisms and filling voids, right,
But you really can't look at that side of the
ACC without looking at the part of your brain or
the part of your ACC I should say that manages
or soothes pain, right, So it's like seeking pleasure and
(30:50):
soothing pain. They're literally in the same part of the brain.
They're just two sides of the same coin. And so
something interesting about the ACC, as we talked about last week,
it has one of the highest densities of opiate receptors
in your brain, but it also has one of the
highest densities of pain receptors in your brain as well. So,
like I said before, if I hurt my shoulder, the
(31:13):
injury itself is in the shoulder, but a lot of
the pain that I'm experienced is actually being processed by
the ACC. And this is where I'll also say, and
I won't go too deep into this because it's also
a big topic, but there's a lot of evidence based
research that's being done and that has been done on
the social emotional pain that humans experience, where emotional pain
(31:34):
is actually manifesting as physiological pain. So, for example, take
something like fibromyalgia, which is typically regarded as a physical
pain disorder and still to this day it's almost like
a mystery to a lot of people, including the medical community.
But there's been studies that show There's this one particular
study that shows when a fibromyalgia sufferer is placed under
(31:58):
an fMRI machine, the brain scan shows that the ACC
was essentially firing and overdrive. And that same study, it
showed that the number one treatment for fibromyalgia wasn't physical
therapy or pain management meds, and it wasn't weight loss
or anything physical for that matter. The number one most
effective treatment for fibromyalgia in that study was getting them
(32:22):
connected with other fibromyalgia sufferers. It was getting them in
community and connecting their social brain their ACC to other
humans going through the same thing. That was the most
effective treatment for fibromiologia in that study. And what this
study concluded was that fibrobioalgia could very well be a
(32:44):
social emotional disorder, not a physical one. And so let's
break that down. In other words, the ACC was in pain.
It showed us on the brain scan, right, and there
was what would be considered like a sensory mismatch, meaning
that the the emotional pain centers were firing, but it
was just manifesting physiologically, because remember those emotional pain centers
(33:07):
and the physiological pain receptors are all a big like
they're in different parts of the brain, but they're predominantly
a lot of them are in the ACC. And so
when they attended to this social emotional pain in the ACC,
so remember things like loneliness or isolation or all of
this self image stuff that we're talking about, the physiological
pain decreased significantly when they attended to the social emotional
(33:31):
side of it. It decreased the pain way more than
with pain meds or PT physical therapy, right. And so
feeding and taking care of the social emotional brain is
what helped most with their physical pain, right. And so
this is so fascinating, right, Like this brain stuff to
me was revelatory because again it made me realize, like, Okay,
I'm not crazy, I'm not weak willed, I'm not weird
(33:54):
or different. I just need to learn how to take
care of my brain, including my social emotional brain, like
I take care of my body, right, like I brush
my teeth or wash my hair. But if you think
that's cool, let's take a look at another study where
faith meets science when it comes to physical pain. So
a study out of Canada in two thousand and eight,
and it was thirty seven thousand people aged fifteen years
(34:16):
and up. Okay, so it was you know, teenagers were included,
but thirty seven thousand people is a pretty good amount
of people, right, And so this is what it concluded
faith based individuals. And by the way, they literally defined
faith based individuals as people that had worship. It was
measured by worship frequency together with the importance of spiritual values.
(34:36):
So people that worshiped and had spiritual values. So faith
based individuals, based on that definition that I just shared,
were associated with lower levels of chronic pain and fatigue syndromes.
But on top of that, frequent warship attendance was also
associated with better psychological well being in the population that
(34:59):
had chronic pain fatigue. So it didn't just help chronic
pain and fatigue, it helped psychologically for the people that
had chronic pain and fatigue. That's like two different things, right,
And so faith was associated with the use of positive
psychological and positive physiological coping mechanisms. And so here's the deal.
The evidence based science is pointing to the fact that
(35:21):
having a faith life and our relationship with God and
prayer and worship is literally a pain reliever. So let's
take a look even further by looking to God's word
and seeing what God has to say about it. So
from Psalm six ' to two, it says, have compassion
on me, Lord, for I am weak. Heal me, Lord,
(35:42):
for my bones aren't agony. And I feel like this
is literally a prayer that we can call out to God. Right,
this is an example of asking God for healing and
strength and for relief from the agony, which we just
learned that faith and prayer is scientifically proven to help
alleviate pain, and the Bible just aligns with this. And
(36:02):
then in Philippians four thirteen, it says, for I can
do everything through Christ, who gives me strength. And this
just reminds me to look to God for strength, and yeah, like,
don't hear what I'm not saying. Definitely do all that
you can do for yourself physically and heal from what's
ailing you, like, use your free will. But to me,
this reminds me to let God do the heavy lifting
(36:24):
and he gives me true inner strength when I might
feel physically weak, For I can do everything through Christ,
who gives me strength. And then, of course there's this
scripture that has given me so much peace in so
many different situations. It's Psalm thirty four eighteen, and it
says the Lord is close to the broken hearted. He
(36:44):
rescues those whose spirits are crushed. Because let's be honest,
and like, when you think about it, pain or unexplained
illness or physical mental emotional distress and yeah, body image struggles,
they can all be this like soul sucking and you're
a crushing thing. And even when the circumstances feel like
it's more than you can bear, this scripture reminds me
(37:07):
that this is when God is closest to your reach.
The Lord is close to the broken hearted, and he
rescues those who are whose spirits are crushed. I don't
want to make a blanket statement, but I know for me,
I used to think that when I was broken hearted,
that's when God was the furthest And it's like, no,
that's when he wants you to lean in. That's when
he's the closest to you, like he wants to be
there for you. Right. So these are just some examples
(37:30):
of the healing power of God's word and the healing
power of faith and the healing power of Jesus. But again,
don't take my word for it blindly, like try it on,
like ask God to fill you with new beliefs and
new faith and new elements of your identity and step
into your own rebirth. And I'm sharing scripture that resonated
with me. But as you know, resonance is everything, So
(37:51):
just make sure that you find scripture that resonates with you.
But also it's up to you to meet God there.
That's really all I'm inviting you to do. And really
the big point of this conversation, like what if you
simply started looking at your relationship with your body and
your body image and even your chronic pain, Like what
if it was all a God and spiritual conversation and
(38:13):
a faith meets science conversation rather than just a strictly
physical one. You know, this is the stuff that's happening
in our own brains and accs, whether we're aware of
it or not. But this is also the part of
the brain that I believe if we invite God into it,
who like absolute miracles can happen, like our minds can
be renewed, and identities, lifelong identities can be reshaped and
(38:36):
hope and healing in our physical health and body image
can be something that we can continually invite God into
the conversation. And as always, it's an invitation without expectation
to just try on a new story or new perspective
and see what meets you where you are in your
own journey. But now you're also seeing that this is
the perfect place to invite God into the conversation because
(38:58):
He wants to meet you there. He delights in supporting you,
and again we know he's closest to the broken hearted.
So if you're still wondering what's God got to do
with your relationship with your body and your body image
and your body brain, I'm here to tell you it's everything,
everything you know and everything you didn't know you didn't know.
(39:19):
So we will be back next week for part six
to round out this series and our final weight of
the Weight, So I will talk to you then Bye.
That's it for today's episode of the What's God Got
to Do With It? And the Outweigh podcast crossover. Thanks
for tuning in, and if you want to learn more
(39:41):
about the work that I do, or catch either of
the podcasts on a regular basis, there's a couple of
ways you can do that. First off, if you want
to learn how to turn off the part of your
brain that's obsessed with food or obsessed with your weight
and rewire your own brain for peace and freedom, then
head on over to stresslesseeding dot com and sign up
to watch the Stressless Eating sneak preview, where I've literally
(40:04):
peeled the curtain and walked you through the exact strategy.
I teach my clients to heal themselves from the all
or nothing diet mentality for good, but without restricting themselves,
punishing their bodies, and definitely without ever having to use
words like macros, low carb or calorie burn. It's there
for you to access over at Stressless Eating dot com
(40:27):
and if you're listening to this series over on What's
God Got to Do with It? I also co host
the Outweigh podcast with radio personality Amy Brown, where we
help women break themselves out of the food and body prison,
end the dieting madness, and take control of their health
for good, but without all that restriction, obsession, and shame,
and without dragging it out for years to address it.
(40:49):
It's called Outweigh, and you can find it wherever podcasts
are streamed. And if you're listening to this crossover series
on Outweigh, check out my other podcast called What's God
Got to Do With It? Where I talk about all
this self image and body image stuff, but from the
perspective of where brain science intersects faith. It's called What's
(41:09):
God Got to Do With It? And you can access
it on iHeart or wherever you get your podcasts. So
that's it for this episode of the What's God Got
to Do With It? And the Outweigh podcast crossover series.
I'm your host, Leanne Ellington, and I'm so grateful to
walk alongside you on this beautiful journey. So thank you
so much for listening, and I hope you got whatever
you needed to get from it. Bye for now.
I won't let my body out be outwait everything that
I'm made done, won't spend my life trying to change.
I'm learning love who I am again. I'm strong, I
feel free, I know every part of me it's beautiful
and that will always out way if you feel it,
(00:24):
but you are, She'll some love to the food. Why
get there? Take good day and did you and die
out way? I am so excited as this is the
very first official crossover series of What's God Got to
Do with It in the Outweigh podcast, Because if you've
(00:44):
been listening to me on Outwigh, you know that that
podcast is all about helping women break themselves out of
the food and body prison, end the dieting madness, and
take control of their health for good, but without all
that restriction, obsession, and shame, and without dragging it out
for years to address it. And if you've been listening
to me on What's God Got to Do with It,
(01:06):
you know that we are all about the fusion of
where science meets faith and where faith meets transformation and miracles.
So this is a beautiful opportunity to talk about the
crossover of where science meets food and body image and
self image struggles and where that intersects faith or what's
(01:26):
God got to do with all of that. And that's
exactly what this six part series is all about. So
Part one is really just an introduction where we're simply
going to set up this massive topic. Part two is
all about the big picture of where faith meets science
meets food and body image struggles. In Part three, we
(01:48):
go deep into the self image and identity that you
would need to actually step into the version of you
that would have that health, that would have that relationship
with food in her body, and who would actually be
at peace and feel free, and of course how that
fuses with this faith brain conversation. In Part four, we
dive deeper into what God has to do with what
(02:10):
I call your food brain and disordered eating patterns and
filling voids in your head hard in spirit with food
or netflix or wine or whatever your drug of choice is,
and it's a whole that will never be filled by
those things. In Part five, we dive into the complicated
relationship that women have with their bodies and their body
(02:31):
image and physical pain, which is not talked about enough
in my opinion, and how to heal all of that
from a faith meets science perspective and invite God into
the conversation, and then wrapping it up in part six,
we get into the strategy side of things, as in,
what does it look like to use what you've learned
about neuroscience and faith and healing your relationship with food
(02:55):
in your body image to go create a winning game
plan that sets you up to win and one that
your brain just learns so you can go live your life.
Food can be food and you can feel comfortable in
your skin and free from the chains of restricting or
punishing your body. So let's dive on in. Here's part five.
(03:18):
Welcome back to the Outweigh and What's God Got to
Do with It crossover series, and we are back to
go narrower and deeper into this food and body image
conversation while we invite God into the conversation. And so
if you missed parts one, two, three, and four, definitely
check those out because we talked about the big picture
of this entire faith meets science meets food and body
(03:42):
image conversation, and we took a deep dive into the
self image and identity that you need to actually step
into the version of you that would have that health
and that would have that relationship with food in her body,
and who would actually be at peace and feel free.
And then last week we talked about what God has
to do with what I call your food brain and
(04:02):
disordered eating patterns and just filling voids in your heart
and your head and your spirit with food or netflix
or wine or whatever your drug of choice is. And
it's a whole that will never be filled by those things.
And then of course how to fuse that with this
faith brain conversation. And today we're going to talk all
(04:23):
about what I call your body brain, which includes your
physical body. And we're going to talk about this from
a nervous system perspective and a physiological health perspective. But
I'm sure you're probably starting to understand that we can't
talk about the physical body side of things without also
talking about the body image and your view of your
(04:43):
body and your relationship with your body. And as you'll learn,
I believe that the physical body and your perception of
your body are one thousand percent intertwined. I want to
remind you that this is a massive topic and I'm
not here claiming that this podcast episode is going to
solve you know, years of struggles with your body or
your body image, or even chronic pain, because we're going
(05:05):
to talk about that too, actually, but this is not
even close to a substitute for actually getting the support
and the one on one guidance that you need. And
so a lot of women and of course men if
you're listening, have a really complicated relationship with their bodies.
You know, just keep in mind I work with people
very intensively for months at a time to help them
really heal this and put the problem to bed and
(05:28):
get off the put a band aid on it roller coaster.
And so to try to distill it down into one
podcast episode, you know, we're going to cover a lot
of ground. But this is not me promising like a
one and done solution, right. My hope again is just
to help you understand yourself better so that you can
approach your struggles with compassion and care rather than judgment
or shame. And that's why I'm gonna, you know, share
(05:50):
my own journey as we go. But first I'll start
by kind of bottom lining it again for you, because
you know I like to do that, and so if
I were to bottom line how to heal your your
body and your body image struggles through the lens of faith.
I would say this, First, you must end the love
hate war that you're in with your body and your
(06:10):
body image, and really, you know, die to your old
self and step into a whole new identity with new
beliefs and thoughts and behaviors. In a way, you have
to become a new version of yourself, and you have
to radically transform your being, and you must become the
version of yourself that thinks and lives and believes this
new way of being. And then from that place you
(06:33):
can address the habits and the behaviors. And yes, this
is the part that most people skip over because it's
not as sexy as a band aid or you know,
lose thirty pounds and thirty minutes, But again it is
so imperative. And then after that we can talk about
the other part of it, which is you have to
heal the cycle and the habits and the behaviors. And
(06:54):
you've got to address the wiring in your brain that's
causing you to believe what you're believing and seeing what
you're seeing about your body, and that's causing you to
move the way that you move or don't move, and
treat yourself in your body, the way that you treat
it or don't treat it, and just feel the way
that you feel or don't feel about yourself. And so
as you remember, you know I shared this from last week,
(07:17):
you've got to ditch what I call the weight of
the weight if you truly want to be free. Because again,
when you've been stuck in the food and body struggle
for years or decades, or you know, sometimes it's a lifetime,
it's like there's these heavy chains of thoughts and beliefs
and behaviors that you've been carrying around in your brain
and your heart and your spirit really for probably as
(07:37):
long as you can remember, if not many many years,
And those heavy, rusty chains are what feels so heavy
day to day. And so the weight on your body
isn't the real weight that needs to be ditched. The
real weight is all of this other stuff, like those
chains of beliefs and behaviors and shame that you've been
carrying around with you. And there is no shame in
(07:58):
this whatsoever. It's what I learned, It's what happened to me,
it's what happened to all of my clients too. They
learned it too. But until you break the chains, you
are going to keep walking around with them, and they're
just gonna keep getting heavier. And if you're anything like
I was, and like my clients were, you kind of
become desensitized to them and they start to feel normal
because they're disguised as you being air quotes, you know,
(08:20):
health conscious or I'm just getting fit or I'm just
you know, taking care of myself. Right, But these chains
are not normal. The chains that bog down your head
and your heart and your spirit and really inturn your body,
they are chains that also do not have to be there.
And so we're having these important conversations today because you
don't want to be carrying them around anymore. But again,
(08:42):
it's just been happening so long it finally like essentially
becomes normal. It feels like it's normal. Right, So let's
break those chains and so that we really can go
ditch that weight. And that's why we're gonna cover two
more weight of the weights that are so relevant to
this body, brain and body image conversation. But first, do
you remember maybe you don't, I'll share again, but in
(09:04):
part one I kind of shared how my first weight
Watchers meeting was the catalyst for everything. I was taken
there when I was seven or eight, and from there
on out, food and my body became this very personal
and emotional thing, and more importantly, you know, toxic shame
became a very integrated character in the story of my life.
But it's also when I started thinking that there was
something bad or wrong or broken about me and my body.
(09:28):
And I started from a young age also learning about
movement and exercise as something that you just did if
you wanted to work it off, work off what you ate,
or you know, try to lose some weight. I remember
in elementary school like thinking that was what exercise was,
and that in itself actually became a prison for me.
And even though I finally you know, I've shared this before,
but I hit my first enough as enough point, and
then through a lot of wrong ways and some of
(09:50):
the right ways, I went on and I lost a
lot of weight, close to one hundred pounds, and this
even inspired me to start my first business working with
women on their own weight loss journeys. But here's the thing,
I learned the same eat less, move more, no pain,
no gain equation that a lot of the mainstream teaches
young women who kind of think that losing weight will
magically solve all their problems. I mean, that's what I thought.
(10:13):
And even though yeah, I did technically lose the weight, like, yeah,
I lost one hundred pounds, I got to my lowest weight,
and I could wear sleeveless halter tops any days of
the week without feeling ashamed of my arms. But I
never addressed my addiction like pull to food and then
of course my punishment driven relationship to exercise. So I
still felt like I was a slave to whatever it was,
(10:34):
whether it was dieting or exercise, because I would bounce
from one extreme to the other, like I would restrict
and punish my body until let's face it, I just
couldn't take it anymore, like I had something had to give,
and so of course I would just rebound to the
opposite where for me it was like you know, care free, abandonment,
eating whatever I could get my hands on, and then
of course I would feel guilty and I would try
to go out exercise my overeating, and so of course,
(10:57):
like not only was I the opposite of free, because
this is not freedom, but I was the opposite of happy,
right And because yeah, like I lost the weight, but
I never transformed my identity and I brought all of
my old habits and thinking and behaviors with me. Now
keep in mind, at this point, I still didn't really
have God in my life, or you know, at least
I didn't know that I did. I didn't know that
(11:18):
God was there, even though I know he was there.
But by some divine miracle that I just have to
give glory to God, I did eventually have the insight
and the awareness to realize I was never going to
be able to outdiet or outwork or outsmart the wiring
in my brain and in my self image. And so
I hit my next enough is enough point, because I
(11:38):
had a lot of them right, and I finally drew
that line in the sand, and I just I made
a firm commitment to myself that day, even though I
didn't know what it looked like, that I would never
be in a place of that crazy restriction or obsession again.
And I decided to examine my habits and my mindset
around food and my body. But that was only one it, okay,
(12:00):
because yeah, I definitely had to go do that. I
had to heal my relationship with food, my body image,
rewire my brain all of that good stuff. So that's
what I did, and ironically, that's what God had in
store for me to help other women do for themselves
and what paved the way for my stressless eeding and
self image curriculum that I've been teaching for over a decade.
But like I started to say, that was only one
(12:22):
side of it. There was actually another curveball in the
mix that took place essentially smack dab in the middle
of the part of the story that I was just sharing.
So now I want to rewind back, you know, sixteen
seventeen years something like that. So it was like two
thousand and seven, two thousand and eight, and my anesthesiologist
(12:44):
had me counting backwards from one hundred as the surgical
team was getting ready to go in and microscopically remove
the calcified hardened disc fluid that had been sitting on
my nerves, the nerves of my lumbar spine for the
past eight months. And so now it's a seizure that
I endearingly call the cost of skinny, And I lovingly
(13:04):
call it that because I was so focused on getting
skinny or lean or toned or whatever words ruled my brain.
At the time, I didn't pay attention to or really
tune into what my body needed and what it was
screaming at me to do. And so, you know, I
look back and I'm like, if only I had listened
to the screams from my body to slow down and
(13:26):
chill out and actually just take care of my body,
because I really see now it was screaming at me.
Maybe it could have all been avoided, but at the
time I didn't care. Right at the time, I just
wanted to be you know, skinny or beautiful or whatever
vision I had in my mind of the thing that
would make me happy, and no back pain or injury
(13:48):
or pesky flare up was going to stop me until
it finally did stop me, and I didn't have a choice.
It didn't just stop me. It landed me on an
operating table at the Cleveland Metro Hospital for major spine
surgery the ripe old age of twenty five. But it
wasn't just that. I also afterwards had a lot of
neurological struggles after the surgery that no one could really
(14:09):
help me with. Like the original back pain wasn't really
there anymore, but now I had nerve damage. I had
all of a sudden, I had balance issues, I had
what I now would consider like a sensory processing disorder
that I never had before. And I had residual pain
in other parts of my body. So now it wasn't
my back, but it was like my knee, I hit
my foot whatever. Right, Plus the anesthesia is most likely
(14:30):
what gave me something called postural hypotension, which is a
very benign thing. It's just more annoying. But again, it
was more things that I was like, great, how else
is my body broken? But then on top of that,
emotionally and mentally, I just felt different. Like it was
hard for me to describe. But it's almost like when
the lights went out when I went under anesthesia, I
(14:52):
just felt different when the lights came back on. I
can't fully describe it, so I'm just doing my best
to describe it here. But so now picture that. Yes,
if you take a girl, a woman who already feels
unworthy and unlovable and undesirable because all she's ever known
is seeing herself through what I now lovingly call the
(15:12):
fat goggles of her self image, Like I literally was
calling myself fat from a young age, right, so that
became my fat goggles. And then now you throw on
the story that she's also you know, damaged goods or broken,
because that's how I felt because of my body. You
can only imagine how low my inner world God at
that point. But I will say the spoiler alert, God
redeemed all of that too, as you're going to come
(15:34):
to learn. Because that major spine surgery and what I
now call the face off between you know, my fat
head and my skinny head, it's really what drove me
to start obsessively studying the female brain, more specifically the
science of the self image that I talk about all
the time, and then what caused me to dive really
head deep into studying and getting to know this little
thing called the nervous system. It really started with the
(15:56):
physiological stuff that I was telling you, and I was like, oh,
there's something called a nervous system. I should know about
that because this is not a muscular skeletal thing. This
is higher up. Which also, like studying about the nervous
system completely transformed my life because it helped me take
ownership of my new physiological struggles that I mentioned, but
also my chronic pain, which is something I never had before.
(16:16):
I had a cute pain from the back injury, but
I never had chronic pain like this, and sensory issues
and balance issues and all the things. But the point
of me sharing this is that I promise you your
journey has a purpose. Even if you've been struggling or
suffering for years. God has been and will continue teaching
you through those experiences if you wake up to the lessons,
(16:38):
if you allow Him to teach you through those right.
And there are so many faces of disorder that have
nothing to do with food, And that's why I'm continuing
to just share the many layers of my journey because
they all have a place, and they all have a purpose.
And I truly believe there's a message for you in
your messiness, and there's clarity waiting for you on the
(16:59):
other side of your own chaos, and there's purpose for
you to find in the midst of your own pain.
But first you must break the chains, and you must
break the strongholds, and you've got to dismantle the beliefs
that are keeping you stuck in an identity that's just
perpetuating more and more pain and heartache and disorder. And
(17:20):
so you've got to break those chains and ditch the
weight of the weight and die to that old story
and step into a new one. So that's literally what
we're going to start doing right now. So let's dive
on in. And that's why the next set of chains
that we have to break, and the next weight of
the weight is the weight of being your own biggest
(17:40):
critic and the weight of being in a war with
yourself and with your body. It is the weight of
harsh judgments and self criticism and guilt and shame and
blame and comparisonitis and perfectionism in your self image and
your self talk. And so when I talk about ending
this war that you're in with yourself and waving the
(18:01):
white flag and stepping into a new story about your body,
this is what I mean. And I love this non
biblical parable because it just sums up what I'm trying
to say perfectly goes like this. One evening, an old
Cherokee Indian told his grandson about a battle that goes
on inside people. He said, my son, the battle is
between two wolves inside of us. All one wolf is evil.
(18:26):
It's anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, pity, self, pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies,
false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is good. It
is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion,
(18:48):
and faith. The grandson thought about it for a minute
and then asked his grandfather which wolf wins. The old
Cherokee simply replied, the one you feed. So really, I mean,
you can look at this darkness light, the enemy Satan
versus God, right like, so what are you feeding? You know?
Are you feeding your relationship with God and how he
(19:09):
sees you? And really the beauty and perfection that you
already are. And you don't have to hustle for it.
You don't have to lose weight for it, you don't
have to change a thing about yourself for it. And
I'll say this too, like, even if you don't like
what you weigh right now, or there's certain elements of
your body that you don't like, it does not have
to strip you of your right to feel worthy and
loved and known right now, Like two things can be
(19:31):
true at the same time. And so are you pursuing
your own pursuits of getting your you know, metaphorical self
image cup filled from your gene size or your scale
weight or your calorie count or whatever. And what are
you feeding? Are you feeding guilt by feeling guilty about
what you did or didn't eat or do, or you know,
feeding shame by feeling ashamed of your body and ashamed
(19:53):
of your habits or the behaviors or who you're showing
up as. And are you feeding blame by continue blaming
yourself or blaming others or blaming those darn irresistible cookies?
Are you feeding comparison ititis by constantly comparing yourself to
where you think you should be or what you should
be doing, or you know, just really comparing your worst
(20:14):
to someone else's best or the like what you think
are other people's best, like the highlight reel on social media? Right?
And are you feeding perfectionism by letting your inner perfectionists
run the show? And I promise you with her, it
is never enough, okay, you will never be doing enough
or good enough, or smart enough or skinny enough or
just enough period. And this is the part that's not working.
(20:37):
And this is what's causing you so much unhappiness, And
this is what's causing you to feel like you're in
a war with yourself and with your body, and this
is what's causing you to feel further from God, which
I promise you God just wants to be close to you.
And that's why, little by little we want to feed
this less and feed God's view of you more. So,
(21:00):
what's the faith meets science perspective of this look like? Right'?
That's my thoughts and I'm using a parable to describe it.
But let's take a look at the clues that we
kind of left ourselves little breadcrumbs from a couple weeks ago.
And so remember how I told you that the experiment
that when humans have what they call the ultimate friend,
and this is from the science based research that we
looked at a couple weeks ago, when humans have what
(21:22):
they call the ultimate friend on their side, it made
a big difference when it comes to self respect and
self worth. And how I shared with you, there was
literally a study that showed the impact of faith on
self image and self worth. And so if you miss that,
go ahead and listen to part two of this series.
But again, I want to point out that the kind
of relationship with God and Christ that this study specifically
(21:44):
talked about. They referred to having a relationship with Christ
where he was like the ultimate friend, and they called
it a divine being who cared about them. And so
this is relationship that's not religion. It's not a punished
or shame driven God. It's a relationship with a loving,
redeeming God and a heavenly Father who sees you and
(22:07):
loves you just as you are. And you don't have
to earn it or work for it. So let's look
at what God has to say about it by going
to his word. And so this is from First Samuel
sixteen seven, and it says, but the Lord said to Samuel,
don't judge by his appearance or height, for I have
rejected him. The Lord doesn't see things the way you
(22:28):
see them. People judge by outward appearance. But the Lord
looks at the heart. The Lord looks at the heart.
And so how often is our self image and body
image based solely on what we look like or quantifiable
things like skill weight or gene size. Right, remember, the
Lord looks at the heart. I love this from Isaiah
(22:49):
sixty one seven. It says, instead of your shame, you
will receive a double portion, and instead of disgrace, you
will rejoice in your inheritance. So you will inherit a
double portion in your hand, and everlasting joy will be yours.
And I promise you it is true. If you stop
(23:09):
basing your view of yourself based on your own worldly self,
or at least ask God to show you, God will
show you worthiness that you could never have imagined. And
scripture says double portion, but I honestly feel like he
one hundred xd my own self worth when I stopped
looking for the worldly ways and I started just asking
God how he sees me. And yeah, that started with
(23:31):
me going down the brain and science rabbit hole. But
when I started asking, you know, what's God got to
do with all this, you know, body image stuff and
this self image stuff, and what does God reflect back
to me in the mirror of my own self perception?
What happened is beyond description. And so I use words
now like you know, miracles, because that's what it felt
like after thirty years of toxic shame and having self
(23:54):
rejection and self abandonment as my emotional home. And that's
why I'm just inviting you to try this on, like
try on that you're not crazy or weak willed and
that you just have a brain, and ask God to
fill you with new beliefs and new elements of your
identity and step into your own rebirth, because the alternative
is simply walking around with more and more heavy, heavy
(24:17):
chains and the weight of the weight of your own
harsh judgments and self criticism and guilt and shame and
blame and ugly comparison itis and perfectionism. That's in your
self image and self talk and body talk. I get it.
You know. Most women take a look at this last
when thinking about food and body struggles. They think like, Okay,
what can I do? But it's like, no, if you've
(24:39):
been being your hyperjudgmental self critical, shaming, blaming and comparing
self your whole life, that doesn't just magically go away
if you lose weight or if you, you know, work
out for a few days, Because this is not just
in your mind, and it's not in your body. It's
in your brain and self image, and it's as you're learning,
it's in your spirit and identity. And you can't outdiet
(25:01):
and outperform or outsmart your identity. But when you invite
God into the conversation, that's when chains can actually break.
And that's why if somewhere along the line, your body
or you know, really the enemy tricked you into thinking
that it was unattractive or undesirable or a pain in
the butt, a nuisance, or a burden. And also like
(25:23):
for me it was like my body was like I
built stories like No, you're never going to be able
to trust it or predict it or like it. If
you feel any of those things, I truly believe you
need a better story about your body. And if your
body image was formed in the eyes of food shame
or fat shame or body shame, and it's really keeping
you from feeling beautiful and powerful and confident and worthy,
(25:45):
you need a better story about your body and a
new story. And if you're comparing your body to someone
else that you think is smaller or more desirable or
fit or perfect air quotes perfect, and it's not making
you feel very good, you need a new and better
story about your body. And if you're comparing your body
to something else like a number or a measurement or
(26:06):
a picture, or really just a common opinion of what
you think is good, bad, right, or wrong, and again
it's not making you feel very good. You need a
new and better story about your body. And really it's
time to end the war that you're in with yourself
so that you can stop fighting and restricting and punishing
it and blaming it and shaming it and comparing your
body and just go get right with it. And that's
(26:30):
why I invite you to push pause on starting that
new diet and hold off on starting that new workout
thing or membership or whatever, and go get right with
your body. Wave the white flag, get on the same page,
except that it's yours and you'll have to have it
the rest of your life, right, and that you get
to choose to take care of it the rest of
(26:50):
your life, and then commit to taking care of it
because you only have one, and then figure out after
that how you want to influence it if you want
to change it. But in the meantime, I'm inviting you
to stop being so cruel to yourself. In the meantime
and you know, quit with the mental jobs and the
verbal smack talking and really treating yourself like dirt, because
(27:10):
you want to change your body and lay down the
weapons of judgment and restriction and punishment and control that
food and exercise have become to you. And go get
right with your body, because you are only fighting and
battling and resisting yourself, and you deserve so much more,
so much more. So I'll just leave it at that
(27:31):
for now, because I could go on and on about
this subject, because once again it's a biggie, but I
want to head on over to the next chain that
we have to break and the stronghold, and really break
it down, break the chains, break the strongholds of the
next weight of the weight is what I call the
weight of waiting for the weight to go. Be who
you want to be and do what you want to do,
(27:52):
or live the life that you really want to live.
Are you waiting for the weight to go? Do that?
And this is again where I'll remind you what God
said when he said in Two Corinthians five seventeen. Therefore,
if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.
The old has passed, Behold, the new has come. And
(28:15):
I fell into the victim mentality for years, just kind
of waiting for that thing, that one magical thing that
I thought would make me happy, you know, or make
me go live the life I truly wanted to live,
and the life that was waiting for me right then,
like right now. And in my case, I thought it
was my weight that would make me happy, but it
kept me stuck in that victim mentality, feeling like I
(28:38):
had no choice, and it left me feeling like a
victim to my own circumstances. And trust me, I am
no victim, and neither are you. And so I'm just
here to lovingly ask you, like, where are you waiting
for the wait? Where are you waiting for things to
get better on their own, or waiting for someone to
do it for you or want it for you, or
maybe waiting for discipline or willpower to magically show up,
(29:02):
or you know, waiting for the perfect time that you
know this is in air quotes, of course, the perfect
moment or for things to be air quotes perfect, and
waiting to start fighting the beautiful, confident, powerful, worthy version
of yourself that you are right now, but you just
haven't seen her in a while, or maybe ever, maybe
you've never met her right and also waiting for the
wait to be who you want to be and do
(29:24):
what you want to do and feel how you desperately
want to feel. Okay, And I'm here to tell you
you don't have to keep waiting, like, don't make the
same mistake that I made, Like, don't wait for your
body to be a certain size or a certain shape
to go start living, and don't wait for things to
go magically. Go get better. Invite God into this conversation,
(29:44):
and go meet yourself right now, just as you are
at this exact weight or gene size, with your current
level of skills and experience, and just start living. That
is my invitation to you and the seeds that I
really want to plant into your brain before we dig
a bit deeper into some research that actually supports faith
(30:05):
meeting science on the physiological side of things, I really
wanted to get that planted in your brain first. But
now we're going to go into that side of it
because something that's happening to a lot of women and
again men, if you're listening, is this combination or it's
really like a sticky tangled web that happens with our
physiology as it relates to our emotions and our mental state.
(30:27):
And so here's what I mean. So we looked at
the ACC last week, the anterior simulate cortex as it
has to do with you know, coping mechanisms and filling voids, right,
But you really can't look at that side of the
ACC without looking at the part of your brain or
the part of your ACC I should say that manages
or soothes pain, right, So it's like seeking pleasure and
(30:50):
soothing pain. They're literally in the same part of the brain.
They're just two sides of the same coin. And so
something interesting about the ACC, as we talked about last week,
it has one of the highest densities of opiate receptors
in your brain, but it also has one of the
highest densities of pain receptors in your brain as well. So,
like I said before, if I hurt my shoulder, the
(31:13):
injury itself is in the shoulder, but a lot of
the pain that I'm experienced is actually being processed by
the ACC. And this is where I'll also say, and
I won't go too deep into this because it's also
a big topic, but there's a lot of evidence based
research that's being done and that has been done on
the social emotional pain that humans experience, where emotional pain
(31:34):
is actually manifesting as physiological pain. So, for example, take
something like fibromyalgia, which is typically regarded as a physical
pain disorder and still to this day it's almost like
a mystery to a lot of people, including the medical community.
But there's been studies that show There's this one particular
study that shows when a fibromyalgia sufferer is placed under
(31:58):
an fMRI machine, the brain scan shows that the ACC
was essentially firing and overdrive. And that same study, it
showed that the number one treatment for fibromyalgia wasn't physical
therapy or pain management meds, and it wasn't weight loss
or anything physical for that matter. The number one most
effective treatment for fibromyalgia in that study was getting them
(32:22):
connected with other fibromyalgia sufferers. It was getting them in
community and connecting their social brain their ACC to other
humans going through the same thing. That was the most
effective treatment for fibromiologia in that study. And what this
study concluded was that fibrobioalgia could very well be a
(32:44):
social emotional disorder, not a physical one. And so let's
break that down. In other words, the ACC was in pain.
It showed us on the brain scan, right, and there
was what would be considered like a sensory mismatch, meaning
that the the emotional pain centers were firing, but it
was just manifesting physiologically, because remember those emotional pain centers
(33:07):
and the physiological pain receptors are all a big like
they're in different parts of the brain, but they're predominantly
a lot of them are in the ACC. And so
when they attended to this social emotional pain in the ACC,
so remember things like loneliness or isolation or all of
this self image stuff that we're talking about, the physiological
pain decreased significantly when they attended to the social emotional
(33:31):
side of it. It decreased the pain way more than
with pain meds or PT physical therapy, right. And so
feeding and taking care of the social emotional brain is
what helped most with their physical pain, right. And so
this is so fascinating, right, Like this brain stuff to
me was revelatory because again it made me realize, like, Okay,
I'm not crazy, I'm not weak willed, I'm not weird
(33:54):
or different. I just need to learn how to take
care of my brain, including my social emotional brain, like
I take care of my body, right, like I brush
my teeth or wash my hair. But if you think
that's cool, let's take a look at another study where
faith meets science when it comes to physical pain. So
a study out of Canada in two thousand and eight,
and it was thirty seven thousand people aged fifteen years
(34:16):
and up. Okay, so it was you know, teenagers were included,
but thirty seven thousand people is a pretty good amount
of people, right, And so this is what it concluded
faith based individuals. And by the way, they literally defined
faith based individuals as people that had worship. It was
measured by worship frequency together with the importance of spiritual values.
(34:36):
So people that worshiped and had spiritual values. So faith
based individuals, based on that definition that I just shared,
were associated with lower levels of chronic pain and fatigue syndromes.
But on top of that, frequent warship attendance was also
associated with better psychological well being in the population that
(34:59):
had chronic pain fatigue. So it didn't just help chronic
pain and fatigue, it helped psychologically for the people that
had chronic pain and fatigue. That's like two different things, right,
And so faith was associated with the use of positive
psychological and positive physiological coping mechanisms. And so here's the deal.
The evidence based science is pointing to the fact that
(35:21):
having a faith life and our relationship with God and
prayer and worship is literally a pain reliever. So let's
take a look even further by looking to God's word
and seeing what God has to say about it. So
from Psalm six ' to two, it says, have compassion
on me, Lord, for I am weak. Heal me, Lord,
(35:42):
for my bones aren't agony. And I feel like this
is literally a prayer that we can call out to God. Right,
this is an example of asking God for healing and
strength and for relief from the agony, which we just
learned that faith and prayer is scientifically proven to help
alleviate pain, and the Bible just aligns with this. And
(36:02):
then in Philippians four thirteen, it says, for I can
do everything through Christ, who gives me strength. And this
just reminds me to look to God for strength, and yeah, like,
don't hear what I'm not saying. Definitely do all that
you can do for yourself physically and heal from what's
ailing you, like, use your free will. But to me,
this reminds me to let God do the heavy lifting
(36:24):
and he gives me true inner strength when I might
feel physically weak, For I can do everything through Christ,
who gives me strength. And then, of course there's this
scripture that has given me so much peace in so
many different situations. It's Psalm thirty four eighteen, and it
says the Lord is close to the broken hearted. He
(36:44):
rescues those whose spirits are crushed. Because let's be honest,
and like, when you think about it, pain or unexplained
illness or physical mental emotional distress and yeah, body image struggles,
they can all be this like soul sucking and you're
a crushing thing. And even when the circumstances feel like
it's more than you can bear, this scripture reminds me
(37:07):
that this is when God is closest to your reach.
The Lord is close to the broken hearted, and he
rescues those who are whose spirits are crushed. I don't
want to make a blanket statement, but I know for me,
I used to think that when I was broken hearted,
that's when God was the furthest And it's like, no,
that's when he wants you to lean in. That's when
he's the closest to you, like he wants to be
there for you. Right. So these are just some examples
(37:30):
of the healing power of God's word and the healing
power of faith and the healing power of Jesus. But again,
don't take my word for it blindly, like try it on,
like ask God to fill you with new beliefs and
new faith and new elements of your identity and step
into your own rebirth. And I'm sharing scripture that resonated
with me. But as you know, resonance is everything, So
(37:51):
just make sure that you find scripture that resonates with you.
But also it's up to you to meet God there.
That's really all I'm inviting you to do. And really
the big point of this conversation, like what if you
simply started looking at your relationship with your body and
your body image and even your chronic pain, Like what
if it was all a God and spiritual conversation and
(38:13):
a faith meets science conversation rather than just a strictly
physical one. You know, this is the stuff that's happening
in our own brains and accs, whether we're aware of
it or not. But this is also the part of
the brain that I believe if we invite God into it,
who like absolute miracles can happen, like our minds can
be renewed, and identities, lifelong identities can be reshaped and
(38:36):
hope and healing in our physical health and body image
can be something that we can continually invite God into
the conversation. And as always, it's an invitation without expectation
to just try on a new story or new perspective
and see what meets you where you are in your
own journey. But now you're also seeing that this is
the perfect place to invite God into the conversation because
(38:58):
He wants to meet you there. He delights in supporting you,
and again we know he's closest to the broken hearted.
So if you're still wondering what's God got to do
with your relationship with your body and your body image
and your body brain, I'm here to tell you it's everything,
everything you know and everything you didn't know you didn't know.
(39:19):
So we will be back next week for part six
to round out this series and our final weight of
the Weight, So I will talk to you then Bye.
That's it for today's episode of the What's God Got
to Do With It? And the Outweigh podcast crossover. Thanks
for tuning in, and if you want to learn more
(39:41):
about the work that I do, or catch either of
the podcasts on a regular basis, there's a couple of
ways you can do that. First off, if you want
to learn how to turn off the part of your
brain that's obsessed with food or obsessed with your weight
and rewire your own brain for peace and freedom, then
head on over to stresslesseeding dot com and sign up
to watch the Stressless Eating sneak preview, where I've literally
(40:04):
peeled the curtain and walked you through the exact strategy.
I teach my clients to heal themselves from the all
or nothing diet mentality for good, but without restricting themselves,
punishing their bodies, and definitely without ever having to use
words like macros, low carb or calorie burn. It's there
for you to access over at Stressless Eating dot com
(40:27):
and if you're listening to this series over on What's
God Got to Do with It? I also co host
the Outweigh podcast with radio personality Amy Brown, where we
help women break themselves out of the food and body prison,
end the dieting madness, and take control of their health
for good, but without all that restriction, obsession, and shame,
and without dragging it out for years to address it.
(40:49):
It's called Outweigh, and you can find it wherever podcasts
are streamed. And if you're listening to this crossover series
on Outweigh, check out my other podcast called What's God
Got to Do With It? Where I talk about all
this self image and body image stuff, but from the
perspective of where brain science intersects faith. It's called What's
(41:09):
God Got to Do With It? And you can access
it on iHeart or wherever you get your podcasts. So
that's it for this episode of the What's God Got
to Do With It? And the Outweigh podcast crossover series.
I'm your host, Leanne Ellington, and I'm so grateful to
walk alongside you on this beautiful journey. So thank you
so much for listening, and I hope you got whatever
you needed to get from it. Bye for now.
Feeling Things with Amy & Kat News
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Amy Brown
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