Episode 7: Strength Training and Intuitive Eating with Dr. Mary Morton

Dr. Mary Morton, Certified Sports Nutritionist and PhD in Biological Sciences, is passionate about coaching female strength athletes discover their true potential through strength training and intuitive eating. 

On this episode, Mary shares her own journey in her relationship with food from one of feeling out of control around food and despising her body to one of feeling peaceful around food, loving her body and discovering her own strength her own way. 

Mary’s shares her wake up moment, the moment she realized that everything she was trying so hard to do to lose weight wasn’t just not working, but was hurting her. In a single moment, she decided to stop everything.  

She now asks her clients to be honest with themselves about how well the traditional dieting approaches work for them. Mary knows from personal experience that macro counting, limiting food groups and restricting calories does more harm than good.  

Interestingly, Mary’s observes that the strength training community, #strongisthenewbeautiful, still holds unrealistic standards of being thin. 

Mary offers her own perspective on why weight loss can’t be prioritized over feeling peaceful in your body. 

Mary’s vision for her business is inspiring: to guide women to increase their strength and use intuitive eating to fuel their bodies. When they do, women have connected with a power within. 

You can find Mary at: 

www.femalestrengthacademy.com

intuitiveathletenutrition@gmail.com

Episode 6: Petra Lehman on Healing Your Relationship with Your Body with Yoga, Community and Inclusivity

Petra Lehman, founder and owner of Create Power Yoga in Providence, Rhode Island joins me around some unsuspecting ways to heal our relationship with our bodies.

Petra shares how her daughter was a catalyst for the shift in her own relationship with food and her body as she learned to take the time to nourish her body and make sit down meals a dedicated practice.

As someone who had a thin body most of her life, Petra shares the painful impact of our society’s value of a thin body. What happens when your thin body, the one that everyone notices and praises, is no longer thin? Petra’s heightened awareness brought her to the conclusion that everybody suffers under this system, no matter what our body size, because this system values our worth based on how we look, not who we are.

Recognizing how we can reclaim our power ultimately comes from what we choose. As Petra so brilliantly put it, “we have to know we have a choice to make a choice”.

Petra shares how critical inclusivity is in her business. She shares how she's made it a priority in her marketing, social media strategies and yoga teacher training. Inclusivity comes down to this: “It matters that you see potential in the world around you.”

We talk about why community is so important to women’s healing. What makes a powerful community? Feeling safe and being seen. Petra shares specifically how she’s created this container in her annual women’s retreat.

Yoga has been life changing and healing. It has taught both of us how to embrace our whole selves. Petra shares the value of being part of a yoga teacher training and the opportunity to share yourself. “You are going to share yourself to the extent you know yourself.”

Enjoy!

Follow Petra Lehman https://www.instagram.com/petralehmanyoga/

Check out Create Power Yoga in Providence, RI https://www.createpoweryoga.com/

Live locally and are interested in exploring teacher training at Create Power Yoga? Check it out here https://www.createpoweryoga.com/teacher-training/

During the pandemic, join Petra and her team for online classes! http://createpoweryoga.mykajabi.com/offers/Z3zP2JWh/checkout

Episode 5: How to Detect Diet Culture

Diet culture has been likened to the air we breathe. A set of beliefs that’s so embedded in our culture that we don’t even recognize them. 

Tara shares how she recognized diet culture. She used Byron Katie’s “The Work” by examining the question that was always running through her mind “I need to lose weight”. By investigating this stressful thought, Tara realized she had internalized diet culture. 

When considering just some of the ways diet culture shows up in our lives, we can start to recognize it in our TV screens, magazines and social media accounts. We can also hear diet culture’s whispers when we hear “you look great” when someone has lost weight. 

The most important thing we can do in our own relationship with food is to recognize diet culture as the origin of the thought “I need to lose weight”. We believe that thought because diet culture tells us that happiness and success comes in a thin body. 

Christy Harrison’s definition of diet culture is so comprehensive. You can find it here. 

Tara also mentions Annie Grace’s This Naked Mind. Annie Grace shares how confirmation bias affirms internal beliefs around drinking alcohol. 

Identifying diet culture helps you to understand where the stressful thoughts around the need for weight loss came from. You’ve been given this message over and over. Once you can put the blame where it belongs, without needing to blame yourself, you can dissolve the belief that your body needs to be different in order for you to be happy. 

You can find more about Byron Katie here. https://thework.com/