382 - Trauma And Your Emails

This episode I talk about trama and how it affects our weight and relationship with food. Plus read some of your emails.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello there, Welcome into an episode of the Fasting Guy podcast.
I'm the Fasting Guy, so glad to have you here today. Today,
I'm just going to be if not reading in their entirety,
just talking about a couple of excerpts from some podcast
subscriber messages that I get. And you know, if I

(00:23):
may go ahead and say I love getting messages from you,
I guess the two best ways are either Facebook or Instagram.
Either one. Instagram will sometimes send the message to a
weird folder that I don't find for weeks or months
for some reason, but I will eventually find it. Facebook

(00:46):
I tend to find a little faster if you want
to send it on Facebook, But either way, it's Fasting
Guy podcast on either one of those. I love to
hear from you. Becky just sent me a nice, sweet message.
Was the stuff that I won't get into, but she
was announcing that she had hit a fifty pound goal

(01:07):
and that she had been doing it slowly and consistently,
and that my podcast is one of the few that
talks about that and she appreciates that. And I just
wanted to acknowledge and congratulate Becky on your fifty pound
weight loss and on your slow, consistent, sustained journey. Marsha

(01:29):
sent me a message about binge eating and said, thank
you so much for posting your experience with binge eating
and that you started talking to a therapist about two
months after I first heard you talk about that on
your podcast. I decided to try to find a therapist
that could help me, and while it took me a
while to find one and get settled in, I finally

(01:50):
did and it has helped me a lot with the
way I think about food and understanding why I eat
the way I eat. I still have a long way
to go to meet my goals, both emotionally and physically,
but I feel more confident in ever that I'm going
to get there, and I just want to give you
a big shout out and let you know that what
you do does affect people's lives. Thank you so much

(02:14):
for that message. I got permission from both of those
folks to read those experts. This next person I did
not get permission from. I replied and asked if I
could use it, and I waited and never got a
reply back. So I'm gonna go ahead and use it,
but listen, I'm not gonna use your name, and I'm
not gonna say where you're from. But if you're listening

(02:35):
and you recognize this as being the message you sent
to me, and you do want me to just delete
this episode or whatever, I will, but I'm going to
leave your personal information out. But I did like your
message and I wanted to read it. It's a long
one too, so I won't give the person's name or
where they're from, but they wrote good morning. Just a
quick note to tell you that one thing that you

(02:56):
said in one of your podcast episodes has completely changed
my way of thinking in the life of those that
I try to encourage in their health journeys, and that
was whatever you choose as a way to eat for
weight loss must be something that you can live with
for the rest of your life. How simply brilliant that is.
But for some reason, the way that you said it
finally clicks with me. How many times I've gone on

(03:19):
some fad diet and lost thirty pounds only to gain
it back plus more. I'm a recovering sugar addict and
I have not had any sugar or white flower since
December fifteenth, twenty twenty one. That's amazing. By the way,
that's kind of when this. My last iteration of my
journey begain was about a month before years, so our
start dates were kind of the same. I have not

(03:45):
had any sugar or white flower since December fifteen, twenty
twenty one, and it will be that way for the
rest of my life. I've lost eighty five pounds and
now maintained it for almost two years. That's amazing. That's amazing. Congratulations.
By the way, I've said it a lot, and I
don't mean it in a dismissive way, like I'm not

(04:07):
when I say it. I'm not like, yeah, anybody could
do that, it's no big deal. No, it's a big
deal to lose weight. But everybody loses weight. Everybody that
tries loses weight. Very few people keep it off, and
so that's the gold standard. And so two pounds of maintenance.

(04:28):
Thank you so much, and congratulations. She continues on. I
was a completely out of control diabetic with an A
one C of thirteen, all because of my sugar addiction
for forty plus years. Long story, but I had a
terrible fall and this led to me finally making the
decision that I needed to take care of my health.
So by the time I heard the podcast that I

(04:50):
referred to, I was actually living this way when I
heard your comment, but for some reason it just resonated
with my life, and I've shared it over and over
again with other people. Thank you for were a sensible,
down to earthway of looking at things. Whenever you put
up a new episode of your podcast, you can bet
that you're taking a walk with me that day. I
listened to your podcast from episode one while I walked,

(05:11):
and now it's fun. Whenever I see a new one,
I hope to be listening. On the day you announced
that you've reached your goals. Take care, keep up the
good work. You're doing things the best way, finding what
works for you. I really enjoy your podcast. Thank you
for sharing your journey with me and your success with me,

(05:32):
and for the words of encouragement. And again, if you're listening,
which you say you will be, and you hear that
and you wish that I did not share it, even
though I took your identifiers out of it, let me
know and I'll happily take it down. So it's just
gonna be a short episode of the pot. But I
just had these messages come in over the past few weeks,

(05:53):
and I just I'm like, you know, I never read
these or you know, it's always not me, me, me,
and I just wanted to share with you it's not
just me. There's other people. There's other people, and you're
not alone. I don't care if you've been trying to

(06:13):
lose weight for twenty years or fifteen years, or ten
years or five years or five days, you're not alone.
I begin this serious, serious weight loss journey and you'll
fregive me. I don't know if it was April or
May of twenty thirteen, one or the other. April or

(06:34):
May of twenty thirteen, so eleven years ago. And I've
done everything, and I've had successes and failures and setbacks.
I've had injuries. I've done I've done vegan. I've done vegetarian,

(06:58):
I've done raw vegan. I've done fruit Harry and I've
done keto. I've done carnivore. I've done intermitted fasting, I've
done extended fasting. Very when I very first started in
twenty thirteen, I was taking this product called Plexus. I've

(07:20):
taken uh, I've taken ozipic some, which is horrible by
the way, I've taken Manjaro, like I've just done a
little bit there everything. The one thing I would like
to say is if you're a person like me who's

(07:41):
weight losses one as a result of childhood trauma, that
there's just no doubt about it. Thanks to the work
that I've done over the past three years, I can
I can't go back and pinpoint the exact day because
I have a lot of days in my early childhood
that are blocked that us don't remember. Like I would say,

(08:02):
up until I was around U, I don't know seventh
eighth grade. I have tons of big, large chunks of
time there's blocked out, like I don't remember anything about them,
and a few memories I do have are not the
best ones. But I can almost you know, go back to, uh,

(08:25):
maybe what was one of the first triggers, because I
know not long after that's when the weight gain started.
Like I was perfectly fine weight until that happened, and
then once right after that, everything changed and I've gained
weight every day, every week, every month, every year from
then until now. But this this understanding that if you

(08:48):
are a lifelong overweight slash O B person, Obe's person
that understanding that it's it's not like a will power.
It's not because you're weak. It's not because you're gluttonous.
It's not because you're a slob. It's not because you
have no willpower. It's not because you don't have any
hard mental fortitude. It's because you are damaged a part

(09:09):
of your brain. Coincidentally, a part of your brain is
trying to protect you, and like it's not trying to
harm you. That's the irony of the whole thing. This
quote unquote lizard part of the brain. It's trying to
protect you. It developed this mechanism to try to make
you feel safe and surrounded, it secure and comforted. Food

(09:34):
was the way it did it. And then for the
rest of your life, just everyday things that other people
deal with normally you deal with with food. And then
after so many years of that, then not only are
you dealing with the mental trauma that causes that way

(09:56):
of interacting with food. Now that you've treated food that
way for Sloan, it has now caused a physical problem
in your body, namely metabolic syndrome insulin resistance, which leads
to a cascade of issues culminating in pre diabetes, diabetes
type two diabetes and worse. I was thinking after last

(10:26):
the last episode I recorded, where I played the audio
that I recorded three years ago, which just got rich
and to listen to. But that's where I was at,
and it's raw and it's honest. But you know, I've
given them some thought over the past few weeks about
you know, why why do I continue to record these episodes?
Like the last episode was three the last episode was

(10:48):
three hundred and forty or three hundred and forty one.
That's a lot of episodes. Why do I keep doing it?
And I think the reason I keep doing it is
one because it's cathartic for me, but two, it's because
I know that the person on the other end of
this you that we share something. The fascinating thing about

(11:20):
it is like like, for the long time, I didn't
understand what I shared. I just knew I had a
weight problem. But we share much much more than that.
We share. We share something deep inside the way our
brains work. We share physiological things, and we share a

(11:44):
common struggle. And I think it's important to connect with
people that you share things with. And there's just just
something powerful about not being the only one, something very

(12:06):
powerful about not being the only one. And because you're there,
I know that I'm not the only one. Because of
the messages I get, I know I'm not the only one.
And I hope that you know that you're not the
only one. You're not the only one that's experienced childhood
trauma or other trauma. Doesn't have to be childhood trauma.

(12:29):
Could have been teen trauma, could have been early twenties trauma,
could have been twenty five year old trauma. By the way,
physical or emotional, physical trauma does the same thing. I
got a message. It's been about a year ago now,
but I got a message from a guy who who
is always in fit his whole life. It's always fit
his whole life, and you know, I had a real

(12:51):
fit body, physique and all about his whole life. And
he was in a car accident and experienced physical trauma,
trauma to his back, and it caused depression, it caused anxiety,
caused him to not be able to be mobile, and
that physical trauma caused him to turn to these same

(13:14):
things that those of us who have mental trauma turned to.
Food was a comfort for a long time, couldn't really
get out of bed that much. And then once he
got to where he could get around me on a couch,
couldn't be off the couch. That much comfort was food.
His brain was trying to give him a big hug
with food. That's what our brains do. I don't know why.

(13:35):
I don't. I don't really understand the why behind it.
I don't know how we're wired up that way. I
guess it's because water and food or the essentials of
life and the most comforting thing that you can have,
or the essentials of life. I guess as a as
a human, it's a living being. So it's not just
childhood trauma or teen trauma or early twenties trauma. It's

(13:57):
not just emotional and mental trauma. It could be physical trauma.
It could be a combination of the two, by the way,
physical and emotional trauma. But we all share things, and
you're not alone, and I'm not alone. And I guess
that's my uh goodbye thought for today. I thank you

(14:19):
for being here, appreciate you being subscribed to the podcast.
I wish you the very very best, and we'll talk
to you next time.