Welcome to the Feel Good Podcast with Kimberly Snyder. Our goal is to help you be your most healthy, confident, beautiful and joyful! Our topics focus on health and wellness (physical, emotional/mental and spiritual), holistic nutrition, medicinal plants, natural rhythms and cycles, beauty, meditation, self care and rituals, spirituality and personal empowerment.
Feeling Good means we are healthy, balanced, peaceful, confident and joyful, right in the midst of our perfectly imperfect lives. Feeling Good requires us to tune in and nourish our whole selves, which is made up of the four Solluna Cornerstones: our food, our bodies, our emotional well-being and our spiritual growth. Feeling good naturally leads to also looking good, in a much more powerful way from glowing skin created from within, a beautifully healthy body, radiant energy, and a greater level of overall well-being and personal growth.
Thursday is our community show, where I cover a themed topic and answer four questions that come right from members of our community, just like you! We are here to support you in living your most beautiful, inspired and joyful life.
I’m your host, Kimberly Snyder, founder of Solluna, New York Times best-selling author and nutritionist. I’m so grateful and honored we found each other!
This week’s topic is: How Loving Ourselves Can Change Our Happiness
Have you been wondering about this very topic? If you want to know the answer to this question and 3 more sent in by Beauties just like you, listen now to find out! Remember you can submit your questions at https://mysolluna.com/askkimberly/
[Questions Answered]
Fran – Portland, Maine
I feel so guilty when I eat more calories than I should. I know you’re against calorie counting but I feel it’s the only way for me to lose weight and start liking the way I look. Is this thinking wrong?
Elizabeth – Jackson, Mississippi
I have such a hard time forgiving others. Is this because I have a hard time forgiving myself? I just want to get over this complex and be able to move on. Do you ever have moments like this Kimberly? How can I move through it and be more positive and happy?
Cindi – Springfield, Massachusetts
I’ve been down in the dumps lately and I think it’s because I yo-yo diet. One minute I do well and then some crisis happens which makes me fall off track. It’s hard to get out of this negative mindset of failing. I just want to be happy in my skin and stop this cycle. Please help!
Cora – New Orleans, Louisiana
I have a hard time expressing myself. Sometimes I feel like other people don’t want to hear my problems and other times I just get tired of hearing my own voice complaining. Do you have any experience with this? Any tips you can share on how to become more comfortable in expressing myself?
Inspirational Thought Of The Week
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Want to know what to expect from other episodes of the “Feel Good Podcast with Kimberly Snyder”? My passion is to inspire and empower you to be your most authentic and beautiful self. We offer interviews with top experts, my personal philosophies and experiences, as well as answers to community-based questions around topics such as health, beauty, nutrition, yoga, spirituality and personal growth.
The intention of the Feel Good Podcast is to well…help you really Feel Good in your body, mind and spirit! Feeling Good means feeling peaceful, energized, whole, uniquely beautiful, confident and joyful, right in the midst of your perfectly imperfect life. This podcast is as informative and full of practical tips and take-aways as it is inspirational. I am here to support you in being your very best! I have so much love and gratitude for you. Thank you for tuning in and being part of the community :).
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[RESOURCES]
- How to Love Yourself More
- How to Like Yourself More, And How This Improves Your Health
- Happier With Gretchen Rubin & The Shame Game
- How Certain Foods Can Change Your Mood
- Probiotics
- Detoxy
- Digestive Enzymes
- Feel Good Starter Kit
- FREE Gift: 7-Day Meditation Series (DIGITAL COURSE)
- Recipes For Your Perfectly Imperfect Life
- Be a part of the community Join the Feel Good Circle
Other Podcasts you may enjoy!:
- Mindfulness and Sustainability with Jason Wachob & Happiness and Numbers!
- Growing Through Difficulties with Elizabeth Lesser & How To Practice Nonviolent Communication
- Interview with Jovanka Ciares & Easy Meditation Tips
- Living Your Colors with Jennifer Butler and Superfoods Worth Trying
Transcript:
Note: The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate. This is due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
Kimberly: Hey Beauties, welcome back to our Thursday Q&A podcast, where we have gathered questions right from you guys, right from our community. Our theme today is, how loving ourselves can change our happiness and this is a huge topic for most all of us. We pick on ourselves, we take things really seriously, we have incredibly unrealistic expectations of ourselves and it really does affect the quality of our life, our joy, our happiness, our peace. Of course, just talking about loving ourselves can feel like a big concept. It can feel easier said than done. I’m sure we’ve heard it a million times but I will say that as someone that has been on this journey for over a decade, I definitely have a lot of tools and tips and strategies that I’m really excited to share with you today.
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Kimberly: This is a fundamental theme. This is a fundamental topic that really does affect everything. As I mentioned, our happiness, our joy, but also our health, also our energy, our wellness, and even our beauty. Our beauty is very much tied to our energy, so the quality of our skin, our eyes, our ability, even, for our cells to repair on a deep deep cellular level, is all interrelated. You could tell I’m really excited about this topic. Before we jump in, I just want to give a shout out to you if you had not yet left us a review on iTunes, please take a moment and do so. It really is a wonderful way to give back to the show, to exchange energy. It is a way that others can help find the show and that way, we can all come together as a community to help each other, to support each other. This information can definitely help a lot of people that may not know about it yet. Thank you so much in advance for taking a moment or two out of your day and leaving us a review.
Kimberly: You can also share the podcast directly with the share button on SoundCloud, iTunes, wherever you listen to our Feel Good podcast and that’s also a wonderful way to spread the love as well. All right, all that being said, we have our amazing Katelyn with us on the line. She is our general manager of Solluna. We have been together since the beginning of the podcast and she is with us here from New York. Hi, K.
Katelyn: Hey Beauties, hey K. Great to be back today. I’m really looking forward to this topic. As you know, I’ve personally been doing a lot of self work, as I know you are as well, Kim, and it’s going to be a great conversation and I think a lot of people will benefit from the tips and conversation we’re going to have today.
Kimberly: Awesome, K.
Question #1: Counting Calories
Katelyn: Okay, so with that, since we’re so excited, let’s just dive right in. The first question is from Fran and she’s living in Portland, Maine and her question is, “I feel so guilty when I eat more calories than I should. I know you’re against calorie counting but I feel it’s the only way for me to lose weight and start liking the way I look. Is this thinking wrong?”
Kimberly: Fran, thank you so much for your question. I really appreciate you being vulnerable and being really real here and posing this question because I know that counting calories is a safety net for a lot of us and I totally relate because I counted calories for years and I know how scary it can feel to get away from that practice because it feels like we’re out of control or it can feel like it’s unknown and as you wrote in your question, it may feel like it’s an easy way for you to lose weight, or a way to lose weight. I’m not saying it’s easy because I don’t think calorie counting is easy at all. I think that we can often feel hungry beyond those caloric needs. I definitely believe that food all digests very differently in the body, beyond the finite measurements of numbers but first of all, I want to say, is this thinking wrong? I wouldn’t say wrong. I don’t think that we need to qualify things as right or wrong.
Kimberly: I think that we all have a sense of what feels good to us, what feels right to us. Instead of saying, wrong, I will say that I think calorie counting is limited. I think it’s a certain way of measuring and controlling how much we eat but I think there are limitations to it because as I just mentioned, food digests very differently in the body and I also think that when we bulk up on plant foods, which have a lot of fiber, we’re able to feel full and we can lose weight, which has been my personal experience with my own body and with hundreds of clients and thousands of readers. I just think it’s a little bit limited but I don’t think that you need to beat yourself up or feel … If this is something that’s working for you … One thing that does concern me though is that you said that you feel guilty about eating more calories. The problem with these numeric systems, it could be counting carbs, it could be counting calories, is that there is that quote … that feeling bad when we don’t stick exactly to the plan and again, I think we are dynamic beings. Our needs shift every day.
Kimberly: We might be really active one day, we might be having our period the next day, we may be going through something emotional, it may be really hot in the summer, may be really cold. All these things shift the way that we need fuel and we need food, so I definitely think that if we’re feeling bad about trying to stick to a chart, it does create … It can potentially create a lot of negativity in our life. Guilt is a very low vibration energy. When we feel guilty, we don’t feel powerful. We don’t feel worthy of love. We don’t feel that we love ourselves, the subject of our talk today, and we also have a difficult time really connecting, being creative, tapping into our creative power, tapping into our intuition. We definitely want to avoid guilt.
Kimberly: Here’s what I say about this. I say, if you feel really comfortable counting calories, Fran, I wouldn’t … I’m not saying you have to give it up overnight but I will say, I would encourage you to learn about other ways of managing your weight and losing weight beyond counting. A couple things about that, first of all, starting with our morning routine is a really great way to set yourself up for a good, healthy day, including drinking the glowing green smoothie, which has lots of fiber and it’s filling and it gives you a ton of nutrition to start the day off right, taking your SBO probiotics, two every morning is a really great way to make sure that your microbiome is balanced and the healthier our digestion, the better and the easier it is for us to lose weight and to maintain our ideal weight. Drinking hot water with lemon and meditation.
Kimberly: I would get a really solid morning routine down, which doesn’t involve any calorie counting and so you can start to get into the experience of living your life, making healthy lifestyle and self-care choices that are outside numbers because remember, you are amazing, you are unlimited. There is so much depth to your being, there’s so much complexity to who we are, it goes so much more beyond numbers and then number two, I suggest checking out our 30 Day Roadmap for Healthy Weight Loss. This is a very … It’s like we’re working in tandem. You will see the numbers, you will see the calories there. They’re included in every day of the plan but it is teaching you to trust food, to trust healthy nutrient dense plant food. It is teaching you how to prepare these meals. There’s shopping lists, there’s recipes, there’s daily coaching videos from me, so that you can start to bridge into a whole new way of losing weight that isn’t about numbers. It’s about nurturing yourself and nurturing your digestion and your circulation and I promise, I understand that this is a big thing.
Kimberly: This feels very far off for where you may currently be but I understand it because I’ve been there myself and as someone that has been across the bridge and has been on the other side now for some years, I can say that life is so much better without the guilt. Life is so much better without the calorie counting. You may not feel completely ready today but like I said, maybe just start with a morning ritual, build from there. Once you get the roadmap online, you can check it out at MySolluna, you’ll have it forever. Even if you learn to make a couple recipes, even if you learn to shift a little bit here and there, I think it’s really worthwhile to move towards that way because otherwise, we just get obsessed with calories, we get obsessed with numbers, and this becomes a huge part of our life and I know in my heart, I’ve experienced it, it doesn’t need to be that way.
Kimberly: Now, if I want to indulge, I don’t say cheat, I don’t say bad, I don’t say wrong, but if I want to eat a bag of chips. If I go to a Mexican restaurant and I eat a bunch of chips, which is really my go to, I’m very much a savory, salty chip person. I love crunchy things, even to this day. I used to be addicted to pretzels and I actually ate a bunch of pretzels, K, this past weekend but here’s what I do, I always take three digestive enzymes first, our feel good digestive enzymes are very very powerful. They will help break down the food and then the next meal, I try to be on point. That’s what I do. I don’t beat myself up. I say, “You know what? I’m trying to go for 80/20 here, I’m trying to be on point 80% of the time, so you know what? I ate a bunch of fried stuff, I ate a bunch of chips, but I took my enzymes and the next meal I’m going to really get back on point.”
Kimberly: Over time, we start to shift our mentality. We start to shift our experience of food. We start to trust the food. We start to trust the fiber and the nutrients, getting full, loading up with a lot of veggies and eventually counting calories starts to feel obsolete but again, it’s a process and I would say to be gentle and to feel your body, to feel how it feels to you and just to know everything we’re talking about here is a long-term lifestyle.
Katelyn: I couldn’t agree more. It’s refreshing to hear food talked about in this manner. If anybody is interested in learning more, The Beauty Detox Solution, hands down, if you haven’t read it, don’t have it, that’s the book that I started with and read. I used to count calories, tried every diet and it was really freeing to me to come in and learn about whole foods and what to eat and not have to worry about managing every single thing and reporting on an app or something like that. I think you said it all there, K, but I just wanted to point out for anybody who doesn’t know about the books, definitely dig into the solution and get some more info.
Kimberly: Perfect. Yeah, it’s empowering and the dedication for that book, K, thank you for bringing it up, is for the freedom of women everywhere, and people, women and people everywhere. I was not free when I was calorie counting. I was obsessed, I would write it down, I would chart it. It was such a big part of my day to day-
Katelyn: Time suck, it took up a lot of space.
Kimberly: It’s a huge time suck and energy suck and worrisome and then beating myself up and feeling hungry. I mean it just sucked all around, so I will say that when you learn to apply some of these principles, when you incorporate a lot of, not just salad, but soup and a lot of veggie forward dishes and you’re eating filling, sprouted gluten free grains and nuts and seeds as well and healthy fats and it’s all mixed in the right combinations, like I said, calorie counting will be obsolete but we have to embrace where we are now and if that’s where you are now, Fran, I totally get it but like I said, starting with the morning ritual and poking around the roadmap. As K said, checking out The Beauty Detox Solution.
Kimberly: These may be the beginning of you turning the corner with letting go of it and just the fact that you asked this question and the fact that you submitted it into the community, I do feel like your time is coming to get past it, it’s just a matter of time and it may go in and out. It took me about two years, one and a half years, to really let go of the numbers and I can say, wow, you know you’re onto something when it’s sustainable and I have literally not counted calories since I wrote The Beauty Detox Solution, which was published in 2011.
Katelyn: Wow.
Kimberly: I have never had to go back and I was the biggest calorie counter ever.
Katelyn: It’s inspiring.
Kimberly: It takes time to transition but once you come over here, I will say that it feels so much better that you won’t want to go back.
Katelyn: Yes, there’s inspiration for everybody. I know, when you were talking it put a big smile on my face. That freedom that’s available to you guys.
Kimberly: Exactly.
Question #2: Forgiving Others
Katelyn: Okay, so let’s go into Elizabeth’s question. She’s living in Jackson, Mississippi. She says, “I have a hard time forgiving others. Is this because I have a hard time forgiving myself? Do you ever have moments like this, Kimberly, and how could I move through it and be more positive?
Kimberly: Elizabeth, thank you so much for your question. Really, thank you because I think that this is a big thing for us to talk about. Forgiveness is a huge huge part of creating peacefulness in our life because here’s the thing, we are going to be “wronged, slighted,” we’re going to be … If we tune into it, we can find all sorts of reasons to be mad at somebody. I was up at a weekend retreat, K, this past weekend and it was a group and I was there with my partner but I was still there with the 20 people. It was a group of investors essentially and I was the partner of one of the people. Anyways, but there was a lot of other people there and this person started a WhatsApp group and didn’t put me on it and didn’t put a couple of people on it, so I felt that sort of resentment. I could feel it in my body and it kind of really bugged me for a moment but here’s the thing about forgiveness, if we don’t kind of let it go and say, you know what? Maybe they forgot. Maybe they didn’t forget, even if they were being a jerk and didn’t put me on, the point is, if we don’t forgive, it is true that it really disturbs our happiness and we can hear that but it takes a while to wrap our heads around.
Kimberly: Here’s another thing, here’s another quote from Paramahansa Yogananda. He says and I’m paraphrasing here but essentially he says, “Emotional sensitivity is the silent root of all suffering.” When we have these little slights, when we’re like, “Oh that person spoke to me in a way that didn’t feel respectful,” or, “This person isn’t responding to my email,” or this or that, it starts to just eat away at us and as I mentioned in the new book, speaking of books, Recipes for Your Perfectly Imperfect Life, so much of our wellness, so much of even our beauty and our happiness is tied to our emotional well being. When we have upset and we hold onto it, it’s like a burn, like a fire that we keep on our skin. We have to get into the practice of letting things go as they come up and now the other thing that I want to address about this question … We’ll get into that in a moment but the other thing I love about this question, Elizabeth, you know the answer, you have so much wisdom inside of you, otherwise you wouldn’t have asked this question, when you say, do you … Is this because I have a hard time forgiving myself, 100%.
Kimberly: The way we are with ourself is the way we are with other people. If you have a difficult time forgiving someone, it’s because you are very hard on yourself and I know this very well. Katelyn knows this very well. We are very hard on ourselves. We have historically been. We are recovering perfectionists. If I was less than a perfect grade or gained three pounds over Thanksgiving or had a zit, I would just beat myself up endlessly. This comes back to connecting with ourself and having a softer approach to life in general. There’s a lot of tips and tools I talk about. This is a huge huge topic. It’s just this idea as well, if we’re judgemental with ourself, we’re going to be judgy of other people. If we can’t forgive ourselves, we’re going to be pretty harsh and rigid with other people and ultimately, we don’t want to live like that. We don’t want to be like that. It makes it harder to be around us. It makes us just more prickly, a bit more crotchety. It kind of repels people away from us and it repels gifts and joy and abundance from coming in.
Kimberly: I will say, the next part of your question was, do you ever have moments? I absolutely do, just like this weekend when that guy didn’t add me to the group. One of the tips I will say is, it’s important to sit with the feeling of it, sit with whatever it feels like. Don’t think it through, don’t justify it and say, “Well clearly this person is wrong, clearly they shouldn’t have cut me off, clearly they should have answered me this way or clearly they should have included me,” whatever it is. Get out of the thinking and just feel the intensity of being left out, being slighted, feel it in your body. This is part of the letting go technique that I talk about in that book, that Doctor David Hawkins talks about. We have to let ourselves feel because what happens is, our bodies will process it and we will move on.
Kimberly: It’s sort of like the studies … Peter Levine is this amazing … Doctor Peter Levine, this amazing psychologist and he talks about animals that are chased in the wild that are not captured. Let’s say a gazelle is chased by a lion. At the end, the gazelle goes to a quiet place and shakes it’s body, it feels that tension of being chased and then it shakes it out, it processes it, and then it gets up and it walks away and it doesn’t store it. As humans, we need a way to process the pain of whatever it was that we’re trying to forgive someone for. We need to feel it and acknowledge that pain but just by feeling it, which Doctor Hawkins says lasts about 10 minutes, it starts to cycle through, so then we can take a couple of deep breathes and move on and it doesn’t mean that we say, “Oh well that was the most awesome thing ever,” or, “This person is totally off the hook,” sometimes we do need to address it. We may need to have a conversation, be direct, take right action, but we can do it from a place of centeredness and just a lot more calm place to be from and then once we’ve addressed it and we’ve done all that we can do, we can allow ourselves to let it go.
Kimberly: It took me a couple minutes on my beach walk, this was yesterday, to process this thing with this guy. His name is Aaron, by the way, and I was like, “All right, whatever.” I was kind of annoyed. I let myself feel it but then I honestly just let it go and it still comes up, I still get annoyed but I do have that tool of feeling it. Again, 10 minutes, sometimes 15 minutes, sometimes even 20 minutes of annoyance but I really, in the past, I would justify it, I would talk about it, I would gossip, I would complain to my partner, whatever it is, now I don’t do any of those things. I just literally process it, I take whatever action is necessary, I remind myself, hey, if I hold onto resentment, it’s only going to hurt me. It’s a much bigger deal to me probably than him and those are all the ways that I move past it, which is just a much healthier way to be, a much more resilient way to be. It’s a way to feel peaceful a lot more of the time.
Katelyn: I think having tools and tips like this are really helpful, so in the moment we know what to do because inevitably, people are going to upset us and we’re going to get annoyed, something is going to happen and having-
Kimberly: For sure, like every day.
Katelyn: -your little toolbox. Yeah, all the time. It’s constant and if we let those people … It’s almost like stealing your peace. When we’re mad at somebody else or we’re resentful, sometimes that person is not even affected. They’re having a great day and we’re over here suffering because we feel whatever way we’re feeling from something that happened. I think those tools and tips are great and implementing them and I agree, forgiveness is such a big part of connecting to your happiness and just saying, “It’s okay.” I love myself more than letting somebody get to me and get under my skin.
Kimberly: And like I said, it is connected with the way that we forgive ourselves. Meditation and so many of the tools, the support of foods for grounding into your body that we talk about in the Perfectly Imperfect book are really helpful in that regard. I mean essentially the whole book is focused largely on self-love and connecting with yourself, as well as the recipes and the foods that will support that emotional wellbeing. If you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend it for sure around this topic, Elizabeth, and all you beauties out there. It definitely … Even if one thing, one tool resonates with you, it could make a big difference in your overall happiness.
Katelyn: Awesome Beauties, well we are going to take a short break and then Kimberly will be back and she’ll answer the last two questions.
Break
Kimberly: All right, beauties, we are back from our short break. We have two more questions for you guys around this super important topic of how loving ourselves can change our happiness. Let’s hear them, K. [inaudible 00:23:14].
Question #3: Yo-Yo Dieting and Negative Mindset
Katelyn: Yeah, let’s dive back in here. We have a question from Cindy living in Springfield, Massachusetts and she says, “I’ve been down in the dumps lately and I think it’s because I yo-yo diet. One minute I do well and then some crisis happens, which makes me fall off track. It’s hard to get out of the negative mindset of failing. I just want to be happy in my skin and stop this cycle. Please help.”
Kimberly: Cindy, thank you so much for your question, honey. I know that pain. I feel it. I’ve helped a lot of clients get past it. Let’s talk about the four cornerstones for a moment. When we don’t balance one of them, I feel that we overemphasize one or two of them, where we try to exert our control. Our four cornerstones are food, body, emotional wellbeing, and spiritual growth and when we start to connect with ourselves in a much more holistic way, then we naturally evolve past limiting diets. I find that we naturally want to live a holistic life. I feel that it really shifts our relationship with food. It’s not the enemy, it’s not something that we have to beat ourselves up about all the time, it’s not something that’s a huge source of suffering. It’s more something that is nourishing to us. It’s something that feels good and something that’s social but it becomes more about the bioenergetics and the way that we choose food to support our energy.
Kimberly: We can choose ginger to feel expansive, we can put lemon juice in our water to cleanse our liver and to feel fresh and to feel alive. We eat the glowing green smoothie because it gives us tons of sustained energy and so on and so forth. I will say first of all, Cindy, to look around at your life, about if you’re over weighting that because maybe there’s emotional imbalance, maybe you are not, right now, spiritually in touch with yourself. In this regard, we have a lot of offerings for you, we have free meditations, we have the new book, as I mentioned, we have something called the Solluna Circle, which is $5.55 a month to join and this is where we introspect and we talk about foods and herbs and spices and elixirs and journaling exercises and we have a private Facebook community to support our theme. Our theme in July was feeling and being whole, as an example.
Kimberly: I want to preface this by saying that upfront, when we work on these deeper parts of ourself, that is really the root of disordered eating and eating disorders, which I had through high school. I was bulimarexic. This is the root of an unhealthy relationship with hyper fixating on food and dieting. I can’t answer this question without mentioning that. I think that it’s really important. Number two, when a crisis hits and you’re falling off track, that says to me, you know the foods you’re choosing … or you’re over relying on food for treats and emotional stability. That’s what food cravings are. You’re following a diet that’s so rigid that it’s not supporting you through those times.
Kimberly: There’s a different way of eating, where again, in the Perfectly Imperfect book, some of these soups and stews and roasted dishes are really delicious and support you when you’re going through a crisis. There’s a roasted tumeric root vegetable dish in there, it’s in the side dish section and let’s just take that dish as an example. If we learn to eat this way, it means that when we’re going through a crisis, we want extra energy. We want extra sustenance to help propel us through navigating change. That’s what tumeric does, it cleans your blood, it basically opens up circulation but if we don’t ground it, we can start to feel flighty, we can just start to feel like there’s more energy but it’s not grounded, which is why we pair it with root vegetables, which have a lot of kapha energy, a lot of earth based energy and minerals and give us strength and ground us when we’re going through a crisis.
Kimberly: You can see that this is a very different way of looking at food, plus it’s all whole food based and nourishing and fibrous and filling. When we choose recipes and foods that nourish us through times of crisis, times of change, whatever we’re feeling in our body, it’s very different than being on a yo-yo diet, which is so limited. It’s just based on trying to lose weight, it doesn’t feel good to us. The transition is what we talked about in our first question with Fran, let us start with the morning ritual, let us shift from eating an RXBAR or an egg white omelet to having our morning ritual with a hot water with lemon, SBO probiotics, glowing green smoothie and meditation. Let us learn to eat this way, let us read the Perfectly Imperfect book or The Beauty Detox Solution, try some of the free recipes on our site and you will start to feel supported, you will start to feel that food is your ally and you will also have more tools with dealing with drama and unresolved emotions, so that you don’t go into this yo-yo cycle.
Kimberly: It’s not just about the food. It’s so much deeper than that, it’s about balancing all the cornerstones in your life and again, we have tons of tools and resources for you, Cindy, and I feel that when you do take a much more balanced holistic approach, you’re going to really begin to correct this yo-yo dieting, not just now but long-term in your life and your whole life will shift and you will start to feel a lot more stabilized.
Kimberly: Check out all these resources please, please beauty, please Cindy and keep in touch with us, let us know if you want more specialization, you can always also write to Izzie in our customer service if you want some specific recommendations about products and about offerings and then sometimes she sends them to me and I will send you a little video explaining what I think would be best for you. We really do care about you, we really do view our community as our family, so I really want you to break this cycle, Cindy, and to feel better, so listen to all these resources and please take advantage and please be in touch with me.
Katelyn: Awesome and if anybody is interested, you can reach over at love@mysolluna.com, that’s the email you can reach Izzy at if you have any questions there.
Kimberly: Awesome, K. Thank you.
Katelyn: All right, yeah this question really made me think about self-love and when you yo-yo diet, your moods are all over the place and you’re cranky because you’re either hungry or you’re too full and I was thinking, as you were talking, of shifting the mindset about how we eat about self-care and that’s what we talk here about at Solluna and the lifestyle is loving yourself and by what you feed yourself is part of that self-care and I don’t think a lot of people look at it that way. It’s a goal to be thin, it’s a goal to look a certain way and when you shift your mindset about self-care, I think that opens up, as we talked about with Fran’s question, the limitations of your life doesn’t have to feel so limited.
Kimberly: Exactly, exactly and then your body opens up and again, as I talk about in the new book, emotional well being is tied to research with bloating and inflammation and weight gain. When we take this holistic approach, the ironic part is even as you obsess less about your food and about your diet and about calories, it actually becomes so much easier to lose weight and to maintain your ideal weight because your body is in a much more expansive state. Your nervous system isn’t overcharged, your stress hormones, such as cortisol, aren’t being consistently over released and the other hormones, like ghrelin and leptin, which control hunger and satiety, you’re able to balance everything from this place. It’s very very powerful and that’s what I want for you, Cindy, and for all you beauties listening to this.
Question #4: Being Comfortable Expressing Yourself
Katelyn: I think that’s a nice segment into our last question today from Kora, who’s living in New Orleans, Louisiana and she’s asking, “I have a hard time expressing myself. Sometimes I feel like other people don’t want to hear my problems and other times, I just get tired of hearing my own voice complaining. Do you have any experience with this and any tips that you can share on how to become more comfortable in expressing myself?”
Kimberly: Kora, thank you so much. Thank you so much for this question. I think this is also a really big big conversation. First of all, let’s just step back for a moment and say that connection is really important with ourselves and with each other and there’s a big big paradigm shift here that I want to establish with this question, which is that all of us, all of us are incredibly powerful and we are creators. We create … or I should say we co-create our own reality with a divine, with creator, that’s what I believe and so the opposite of being a creator is being a victim and when we’re a victim, it means that we give away our power, it means that we try to fight against what is, we fight against reality, we complain constantly and we are in a negative head space a lot of the time.
Kimberly: When I hear your question, Kora, I feel like there’s a couple things going on here. I feel like you’re wanting to connect more and express yourself but I will say that if you feel like you’re not able to really connect and just by saying, “I get tired of hearing your own voice complaining,” being in a victim mindset is hard to be around, quite honestly. It’s disempowering, it doesn’t feel like … It’s just like woe is me. I know you want to connect. We all want to connect. We all want to feel empowered. We all want to support each other but I will say to sit with it, within yourself and ask yourself, “Where am I giving away my power? Where am I being a negative nellie?” Again, more in the new book is about dissolving those inner states before we just go around like a negative cloud, like a dark cloud, like Linus in that Charlie Brown show where he kind of had this dark cloud around. That’s just not attractive and again, it’s disempowering.
Kimberly: You are powerful, Kora. Instead of complaining about what is, what if you sit with it, this whole concept of surrendering to what is. Bryon Katie talks about it, Eckhart Tolle talks about it, the Zen Buddhists talk about it, and then from there, you take right action. You decide, what if any action you need to take. You become peaceful. You don’t complain but you move forward in whatever way that means and that is very peaceful to you. It means that you will like hearing yourself. It means that you will connect more with other people, that quite honestly don’t want to be around a negative nellie all the time and you will feel comfortable connecting and expressing yourself because you know that you are connecting on the level of being who you really are, which is a powerful creator. You are going to come forth and connect on a level of power, which is ultimately positivity or at least neutrality and not just like, oh this, oh that, complaining.
Kimberly: It’s giving away your power because there’s nothing that we can do about the current reality, so what we do is we accept, we look at it, we don’t run away from what is now, but then we come from inner inspiration about what action to take next and this is this whole idea of clarity. In August, has been a theme in our Solluna Circle and our theme in August is about tapping into our intuition and our knowingness and this is a huge part of communication and it will allow us to feel in tune with what we need to dissolve within ourself. We need to process and then also what we want to share and we want to share with each other, we want to have community, but we can’t let it be all negative, complaining, woe is me because that’s a hard thing for anybody to take. As much as people love you, we don’t want to be in a negative cloud. Again, remembering, Kora, that you are a creator, that you are amazing, that you are powerful just as you are and then really taking the time to process, to journal, to sit with yourself, but to decipher what is to be shared and what is to be processed.
Kimberly: Again, I say it because this topic is really conducive to the new book, Recipes for Your Perfectly Imperfect Life, there is a lot in there around this topic and about true connection versus attachment versus dumping on other people and when we do that, when we are connected and we share, and we come from that place of power, we’re connecting and expressing ourselves from there, we will develop such close, incredible relationships, maybe the best relationships you’ve ever had in your life, the deepest connections and that feels really good and then you will feel safe, Kora, to fully express yourself, to fully hold space for other people, expressing themselves to you when you’re coming from that powerful place and again, it doesn’t mean that everything in your life is perfect but it does mean that you can acknowledge what’s happening without the energy of victimhood. You can acknowledge what’s happening from a more empowered place, you can still be vulnerable but you can have insight and positivity about moving forward and taking action and it just feels a lot more connected to be in that place.
Katelyn: Yeah, it’s finding the balance. I know in the past I have walked away mortified from conversations where you have that instant guilt, “Oh I shouldn’t have said that,” or, “Why did I share,” and that’s the worst feeling you can have or when you have a true friend and solid relationships and you’re sharing in a dynamic way that’s helpful for problem solving, it feels so different and that’s where doing the work really makes a difference here and with the four cornerstones and the lifestyle, it all goes together because as Kimberly mentioned, it’s not just the food, it’s not just one box. We’re the whole circle, so you have to work on each area, otherwise this will come up and that’s a great way to round out such a big topic.
Katelyn: Obviously we talked a lot about a lot of different topics here, so in the show notes today, we will link to different vlogs and articles and resources, so be sure to head over to mysolluna.com. You can ask your questions, mysolluna.com/askkimberly, as always and before … I was getting ahead of myself, before we round out completely, we’ll have Kimberly just share her thought of the week.
Thought of the Week
Kimberly: Sure, K. The thought of the week is related to all of this, especially the last question and it is, we are all creators and acknowledging that is your point of power. It’s so easy to get wrapped up in frustration, agitation, annoyance with everything outside of ourselves. Our friends are annoying, the traffic, this diet sucks. There’s all this stuff outside but the moment that we start to acknowledge that we are very powerful, that we are creating or shall I say, co-creating our own reality to a large extent, we start to become empowered. We rise into our power and this means that we expand. We expand beyond the limit itself. We expand beyond the smallness of just one specific diet or defining ourselves by the number on the scale or the calories we’re eating. We expand. We become inspired to have a spiritual practice. We become inspired to follow the four cornerstones. We become powerful and when we acknowledge the creator that we are, our bodies open up, our beauty just blossoms. Our skin looks better, our hair grows, our energy starts to thrive. We start to manifest more of what we want in our life.
Kimberly: It’s very very powerful but we have to shed that victim mindset, which is easy to wallow in. It may be a pattern we’ve had in the past but we can make the choice today to acknowledge that we’re creators and to really step into our power. I’d love for you to sit with that. We definitely did mention a lot of different resources today, so please go over to mysolluna.com, which is our website with everything there. The show notes, links, direct links to everything we talked about today, other podcasts, vlogs, articles, free recipes, free meditations, information on the Solluna Circle, everything that you could have to really thrive and live this holistic life of wellness and beauty that is essentially what Solluna is all about. The sun and the moon, the cycles, embracing your wholeness, nourishing your whole self to feel good.
Kimberly: Remember, we’re also on Instagram, follow us there at @_kimberlysnyder for daily tips and inspiration. We are so grateful for you, we send you so much love and we will be back here Monday for our next interview podcast. Until then, take care. Remember how amazing you are. I love you lots and we’ll see you soon.
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