Welcome to
Beyond the Food Blog
A catalog of evidence-based articles written by Stephanie Dodier Clinical Nutritionist on all topics supporting the non-diet approach to health.
Welcome to
Beyond the Food Blog
A catalog of evidence-based articles written by Stephanie Dodier Clinical Nutritionist on all topics supporting the non-diet approach to health.
Our Most Recent Articles
Body Neutrality
Body Neutrality empowers you to embrace yourself as you are, including the parts you don’t like about yourself.
The focus of body neutrality focus is to avoid self-hate whilst simultaneously alleviating the pressure of having to love your body. The goal is to respect and accept your body for what it is – and that’s it.
Body neutrality recognizes that not everyone is going to love every part of themselves all the time. The reality is that some days you’re going to look in the mirror like ‘yess, thank you legs for taking me places, thank you arms for allowing me to reach for the biscuit tin, and thank you stomach for keeping my organs where they should be’, but then there’ll be those days where you stand in front of the very same mirror, focusing on that cellulite you hate, or the belly rolls that suddenly seem so obvious
Body Respect
My physical body is a vehicle for me to experience my life.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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The moment I realize that I had my self-worth all tangled up with the appearance of my body is the day that my new life began.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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The notion of body respect came into my life. Respecting my body was essential for me to feel better about myself. To increase my self-worth.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Body Neutrality is the safe bridge between body shaming and body positivity. It’s about being grateful for your body and everything that it does for you because it does a lot. You are alive right??.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
My body neutrality journey
To say that accepting my body was easy is a wild understatement…
The act of accepting my body required of me to be courageous. To be vulnerable and lots of tears.
Choosing to make peace with my body was scary. Scary as shit to be honest!
Frightening to be a health professional in a larger body. In a fat body. In an “overweight body” as my colleagues like to categorize my body.
Nerve-racking to stand up in front of my audience and say that I no longer recommended to chase weight loss. That the most efficient path to health was thru acceptance.
Body neutrality and intuitive eating
Going Beyond The Food has taught me that courage is not the absence of fear rather the ability to act in the presence of fear. That’s what accepting your body requires in a society controlled by diet culture and the concept of thinness=happiness & health.
Intuitive eating teaches to respect your body. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Intuitive eating switches our perspective from wanting to control our body to need to respect our body. We can’t respect what we hate right?!?
No matter, where you are now sister on your path of body acceptance, know that I feel you.
I hear you. I see you. I know how you feel and the fear of what could happen…. You aren’t alone.
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Be reminded of one universal law: Love always win in the end. Not hate, shame or fear.💞
“Show up, be seen, answer the call to courage… ’cause you’re worth it. You’re worth being brave.”
Brene Brown
What is intuitive eating?
Intuitive eating is proven and well-researched self-care eating framework that make YOU the boss of YOU.
Intuitive eating teaches us to have a healthy relationship to food empowering you to trust your ability to meet your needs, distinguish between physical and emotional hunger and ultimately develop body wisdom.
Get started with intuitive eating
If you’d like to explore intuitive eating and discover how it can help you make peace with food download our Get Started with Intuitive Eating Guide.
This free (and highly detailed) cheat sheet will give you a 3 easy to follow step process to help you get started with intuitive eating right away (and give you a shot of confidence to stop dieting … perhaps ).
Chasing Health
Chasing health instead of weight loss is very empowering yet confusing,
What if you took care of the body you have now, instead of the one you wished you had?⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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That was my coach’s question… and she added: What would happen if your weight wasn’t the problem?⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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I want you to ask yourself this question. Reflect. Go deep.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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I know for me it changed a lot personally and professionally. It actually led me to close my nutrition clinic in Toronto.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
“…. but I need to lose weight to be healthy”
To be healthy your body weight must be in the “normal” BMI range. That was my core belief since I can remember and this core belief was validated through my training in nutrition. That’s the core of Diet Culture.⠀⠀
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Diet Culture is is a system of beliefs that worships thinness and equates it to health and moral virtue.
The facts are you can pursue health at any size. We all have the natural person around us that although they maintain their “small body weight” all their life they still are sick today. If health was caused by normal BMI weight then these people would be healthy… right?
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So I strived hard, hustled and spent a whole lot of time figuring out how to be healthy.
As my level of health knowledge evolved the purpose of my hustle change to: “Be healthy and you’ll release the weight” because a healthy body doesn’t hold on to weight. That’s the core of Wellness Diet.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Wellness Diet is the sneaky, modern guise of diet culture that’s supposedly about “wellness” but is actually about performing a rarefied, perfectionistic, discriminatory idea of what health is supposed to look like.
That just another achieve false assumption. Being healthy doesn’t mean you’ll release the weight. That’s just another form of dieting beliefs. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
The truth is health is accessible at any weight. There is another body work dedicated to the research on this field: Health At Every Size.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Chasing Health with intuitive eating
Intuitive Eating teaches that health is more than the number of pounds on the scale. Weight is at best 10% of the contributing factors to health status. Quality and quantity of sleep, stress, emotional stability, quality of thoughts, inflammation level, exposure to toxicity, are just some of the other 90% of the factors that make up our health.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Intuitive Eating is shifting the focus from food and weight loss to honouring your health. By releasing obsession you are creating mental and emotional space to focus on 90% of the factors that contribute to your health.⠀⠀
Intuitive Eating invites you to honour your health. To chase health in your day to day interaction with your body.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Intuitive Eating teaches you to focus on behaviours that will bring you health including relationships with food, movement, stress, sleep, friends/family, etc. Not just food.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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I’m healthier today than when I was 50 lbs lighter. I’m healthier today than when I consumed 20+ supplements a day. I’m healthier today than when I was Keto, Paleo or Fasting.
What is intuitive eating?
Intuitive eating is proven and well-researched self-care eating framework that make YOU the boss of YOU.
Intuitive eating teaches us to have a healthy relationship to food empowering you to trust your ability to meet your needs, distinguish between physical and emotional hunger and ultimately develop body wisdom.
Get started with intuitive eating
If you’d like to explore intuitive eating and discover how it can help you make peace with food download our Get Started with Intuitive Eating Guide.
This free (and highly detailed) cheat sheet will give you a 3 easy to follow step process to help you get started with intuitive eating right away (and give you a shot of confidence to stop dieting … perhaps ).
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Cope with feelings without food
Cope with your feelings without food. Do you mean feel my feelings?
Food is legal… so it’s was ok for me to use it to cope with my undesired emotions.
I ate at night to cope with my complete exhaustion.
I ate when I felt lonely and bored.
I ate when I was angry with my partner or jealous.
Is that you too?
Emotional intelligence
I was emotionally unintelligent. Yes, that’s a thing.
Are you emotionally intelligent? ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Emotional intelligence is the skill that guides you to be able to feel all the feelings & emotions without judgment or wanting to avoid them. Emotional Intelligence gives you the ability to see emotions for what they are… just messages. Emotions are energy bursts.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Food distracted me from feeling… I fought my emotions with food.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Cope with feelings without food
Emotional eating made my emotions worse in the long run. I still had to deal with the source of the emotions plus the discomfort of overeating. Double trouble!
Intuitive Eating taught me to feel and stop fighting. That in itself was a huge relief emotionally and physically. Allowing myself to feel reduce my desire to overeat.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Intuitive Eating made me realize that food wasn’t really the issue… my inability to cope with my emotions was. No diet, way of eating was going to resolve that.
If you struggle with emotional eating I feel you sister. My journey with emotional eating started at 9 years old with deep feelings of loneliness.
I want you to know that it’s possible to overcome…but for that, you need to see emotional eating as you ally NOT your enemy. Learn from it. Grow from it.⠀
What is intuitive eating?
Intuitive eating is proven and well-researched self-care eating framework that make YOU the boss of YOU.
Intuitive eating teaches us to have a healthy relationship to food empowering you to trust your ability to meet your needs, distinguish between physical and emotional hunger and ultimately develop body wisdom.
Get started with intuitive eating
If you’d like to explore intuitive eating and discover how it can help you make peace with food download our Get Started with Intuitive Eating Guide.
This free (and highly detailed) cheat sheet will give you a 3 easy to follow step process to help you get started with intuitive eating right away (and give you a shot of confidence to stop dieting … perhaps ).
Seeking Satisfaction with food
Seeking satisfaction with food is a powerful experience when you’re seeking to become an intuitive eater.
My goal is to have “pleasure” in my plate.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Pleasure = Satisfaction= Feeling content.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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In my quest to become or stay thin and healthy, I overlooked one of the most basics gifts of living this human experience- the pleasure and satisfaction that is found in the eating experience.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Seeking satisfaction with food
I shifted from preparing food so that I can be 100% perfect to my food rules and diet way of living to prepare food so that I can have flavour full meal that will make me feel energized, satisfied and support my body.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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I coined the term of making love in the kitchen as it’s the perfect expression of this process to focus on pleasure and satisfaction.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Intuitive eating allowed me to embrace the pleasure that food is meant to bring to us as human.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Intuitive eating encourages me to have fun and enjoy preparing food instead of seeing it as another thing to do on my long “to do list”
What is intuitive eating ?
Intuitive eating is proven and well
Intuitive eating teaches us to have a healthy relationship to food empowering you to trust your ability to meet your needs, distinguish between physical and emotional hunger and ultimately develop body wisdom.
Get started with intui tive eating
If you’d like to explore intuitive e
This free (and highly detailed) cheat sheet will give you a 3 easy to follow step process to help you get started with intuitive eating right away (and give you a shot of confidence to stop dieting … perhaps ).
Ditch the Diet Mindset
Ditch the diet mindset… what? No dieting?
The most crucial step of Intuitive Eating was for me was rejecting the diet mentality.
That made no sense at first… and even when I finally understood why it was so important it still was challenging.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Letting go of restriction triggered a worthiness issue. To think that I deserve to eat anything I wanted, that I no longer needed to label my way of eating was scary. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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No more counting calories or macros (hello “healthy dieting”) and yes no more forbidden food groups. Yikes! You mean it’s ok to have carbs? My last diet was keto so you understand my dilemma with carbs.⠀⠀
Ditch the diet mindset
I needed to get mad at diets… diets had made me feel like a failure all of my adult life every time they stopped working. Diet Culture thrives on us feeling like a failure. It had worked for more than 25 years.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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I try to eat intuitively while holding the on to a small portion of the diet mindset… like that, I could eat intuitively while being on ketosis or that intermittent fasting was my body’s expression of intuitive eating. Doing that kept me away from truly being an intuitive eater. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Truly I was holding to the idea that permanent weight loss would come as a result of manipulating my food. I had to go full out and ditch diet culture altogether. NO grey zone on this one. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
What has dieting cost me?
The tipping point for me was self-discovery exercise I did to explore my dieting life… here’s a sample of the question I reflected on⠀⠀⠀
I plotted a timeline of my life and all of the
It was tough to admit that dieting wasn’t working for me. That restricting food only sent me down the path of wanting more food, overeating and binging.⠀⠀
It
Intuitive Eating is the “other” option to diet. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Intuitive Eating teaches you to become the guru of your own body and for that, the diet mindset must be released. We can’t have two master sisters!
What is intuitive eating ?
Intuitive eating is proven and well
Intuitive eating teaches us to have a healthy relationship to food, empowering you to trust your ability to meet your needs, distinguish between physical and emotional hunger and ultimately develop body wisdom.
Intuitive Eating requires that we let go of diet mindset so that we can fully embrace our body cues.
Intuitive Eating teaches to reconnect to your body so that you can feel your body cues. To trust your hunger and respect your fullness.
Get started with intui tive eating
If you’d like to explore intuitive e
This free (and highly detailed) cheat sheet will give you a 3 easy to follow step process to help you get started with intuitive eating right away (and give you a shot of confidence to stop dieting … perhaps ).
What is Intuitive Eating?
Intuitive eating is proven and well-researched self-care eating framework that makes YOU the boss of YOU.
Intuitive eating is an evidence-based approach that empowers you on to be the expert of your own body.
It teaches us to have a healthy relationship to food empowering you to trust your ability to meet your needs, distinguish between physical and emotional hunger and ultimately develop body wisdom.
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Intuitive eating fuels our innate ability to trust our body and meet our own needs. That’s what makes it sustainable.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Intuitive eating allows us the space to respect our innate body wisdom.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
The outcome of intuitive eating?
When I began my journey into learning and practicing intuitive eating it felt like I was coming home… home to myself, my body and my health.⠀⠀⠀
I stopped fighting my body: pushing it, manipulating it and shaming it. I stopped stressing my body into diets and crazy restrictive “lifestyle” way of eating.
I relieve my mind from the constant negative self-talk that came along with believing something was wrong with me and the anxiety to never be satisfied with my journey.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Intuitive eating offered me calm and peace in my mind and body.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
My journey with intuitive eating
Intuitive Eating is about eating “junk food” all the time. That was my first reflection when I was introduced to Intuitive Eating years ago. I was seeking an option out of dieting (today I know I call it Diet Culture).
What I found online were women eating pizza, chips, bags of Oreos cookies and drinking Pepsi on a cheat day while ”flexible dieting”. That’s how Intuitive Eating was presented online back then.
I was repulsed by it and walked away from anything Intuitive Eating. I went back to Keto and fasting (what I now call Wellness Diet).
Then a few years later, feeling completely consumed by food, weight and out of control eating behaviours I knew I needed help. Someone suggested intuitive eating.
I reluctantly went back, this time I sought a professional perspective and entered in my life Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch and their research on intuitive eating.
Today I live and teach Intuitive Eating because it’s in full alignment with my personal values and my proprietary methodology Beyond The Food.
Intuitive Eating is eating beautiful salads like this one but also eating chocolate and chips when I desire too.
Intuitive Eating is about health.
Get started with intutive eating
If you’d like to explore Intuitive Eating and discover how it can help you make peace with food download our Get Started with Intuitive Eating.
This free (and highly detailed) cheat sheet will give you a 3 easy to follow step process to help you get started with intuitive eating right away (and give you a shot of confidence to stop dieting … perhaps 😀).
Intuitive Eating and Body Image… FOR KIDS!
The foundational information you need to teach your children how to be competent eaters – with the ability to manage food, weight, & health successfully for the rest of their lives.
Majority of the women in my community share my story of being introduced to the world of dieting at an early age. And for years we believed that it’s the way to go to control our eating and improve our body image. Until such time we finally realized that diet doesn’t work. It’s just a band-aid solution to something that needs a permanent solution. We don’t want to pass this kind of relationship to food to our children. We don’t them to live their whole lives restricting, which actually brings about more craving. Instead, we want them to practice intuitive eating and learn to be competent eaters as they grow up.
But how do you raise your kids to become competent eaters and body confident? No need to Google the answer because I have the best suggestion for you.
Intuitive Eating and Body Image… FOR KIDS!
My friend and colleague, Dr. Jillian Murphy, ND, creator of The Food Freedom/Body Love Method for women, is sharing with us her 5-part podcast series on Intuitive Eating and Body Image FOR KIDS!
Recently, I interviewed Dr. Jillian on our podcast, The Going Beyond The Food Show. We covered the basics of integration of intuitive eating in a family setting. I’d suggest listening to this interview first then moving on to the specialized series below.
In this podcast series, Jill will acquaint you with the concept of Intuitive Eating for kids. She’ll introduce the Ellyn Satter Feeding Competency Model and address common misconceptions, objections, and mistakes made when implementing this model.
Here’s an overview of the podcast episodes:
- EPISODE 1: Competent Eaters. The skills and structure you need to raise competent eaters. We’ll discuss Ellyn Satter’s Division of Responsibility, why we want to raise competent (not healthy!) eaters, and the research on long term outcomes with regards to food management, weight, and health. This is the foundational theory you’ll need to move forward.
- EPISODE 2: Obstacles, Resistance & Nutrition: What about picky eaters? Compulsive eaters? WHAT ABOUT HEALTH?! We’ll trouble shoot common parental worries and discuss why HOW you feed your children is ultimately more important than WHAT you feed them.
- EPISODE 3: Understand Appetite, Weight, and How to Help your Child Without Harming. This is a BIG one. The majority of methods for helping children “manage their weight” actually backfire – resulting in children with more food issues, body image issues, and higher weights. So what to do? How can we help our children without interfering with their normal physiological processes?
- EPISODE 4: Body Talk. Learn how to talk to your children about their bodies, other bodies, and foster a sense of body confidence in your children – even while living in a thin-is-best, diet culture!
- EPISODE 5: Permission & Discipline. The key concepts you need to master in order to feed your healthy family and raise body confident, competent eaters. Here we take the theory and turn it into practical strategies you can get started with today!
Teach your Kids NOW!
Dr. Jillian Murphy is one of the Naturopathic doctors I know who shares my passion in teaching women to have a healthy relationship with food. Using a combination of research and clinical experience, she was able to discuss how parents can help their kids. Particularly, to develop intuitive eating and a positive self-body image, which they will carry until they grow up.
I highly recommend that you listen to Intuitive Eating and Body Image FOR KIDS! So, start NOW and teach your kids to become competent eaters with this 5-part podcast series.
Religion and Self-Empowerment: A Letter to Christian Women
Note: this article is a guest post written by Susan Sledge after working with Stephanie as a 1-1 client in 2018.
If you are a practicing Christian, you know that one of the greatest teachings of God is selflessness. As servants of our Creator, we should be enhancing our spirituality by selfless acts like helping our neighbors, forgiving people, loving our enemies and serving God, and less emphasis on our physical body and material things in this life.
Some people think that what I impart through my works about self-appreciation and self-empowerment does not sit well with the teachings of Christianity. One might think that by following the lessons I teach about loving yourself and knowing yourself better, they are doing the exact opposite of what God wants us to do.
I’m not an expert in religion, but I think there are important connections between our methodology Going Beyond The Food Method inside all of our programs and the teachings of Christianity. That’s why I want to share this letter from Susan Sledge, one of the students of Going Beyond the Food Academy to all Christian women who are doing the same work inside our program as a 1-1 client.
Written to Stephanie Dodier on August 1, 2018. It is a letter of clarification from me, as a student in the Going Beyond the Food Academy, to another Christian in the program who may be questioning the Academy’s teachings in light of Christian beliefs.
Dear Sister,
We have a mutual friend in Stephanie Dodier and I’m assuming a similar food freedom journey. I have spent the last couple of years reconciling what the Bible and Spirit of God has to say about our body, soul, and spirit. I’m passing along what I have come to understand in hopes that it will encourage you and enhance your walk.
Four Bodies, One Image of God
There is an excellent study by Andrew Womack on Body, Soul, and Spirit that you can get through his website or listen to by podcast. Materials are free and I think it is an excellent place to start. If you want the summary version then I suggest watching this Youtube video. Although the study goes into great depth proving three forms of our being, I have summarized it below:
1) Body – Physical body made of up bones, muscle, tissue, brain matter
2) Soul – Includes your mind, will, and emotions; Some think of it as your personality, how you think, how you process the world
3) Spirit (with a little s)– Innermost, eternal part of you. The part that God breathed into Adam at creation. After you became a believer, your spirit (little s) was perfected and you became a “new creation”.
4) Spirit (with a big S) – God’s Spirit that was promised to you as a believer. It was fused with your (little s) spirit. They are inseparable and form the new creation. His guidance is within you and part of you. He resides in you and your spirit.
In eastern medicine, Stephanie will teach you that there are 4 bodies. It is similar to Biblical teaching, but soul is a term used in the Bible to encompass both the mind/logic and emotions/will. In Christian thinking they are not delineated but so entwined that they utilize one term. Instinctively though, we know there is a difference between our “heart” and our “head” which is more in line with eastern teaching.
Every man is made in His image which includes Jesus, Father, and Holy Spirit. We are like beautiful diamonds that are multifaceted, multidimensional as He is. We all contain aspects of Him and in glorious moments, we demonstrate to the world who the creator is. Glorious moments can include spectacular moments or simply everyday life like, smiling at a stranger, the squeezing of someone’s hand to communicate love, passing on wisdom to another, being a helpmate, or interceding for someone’s need. We all, regardless of our religious beliefs, exhibit characteristics of God because he made us in His image.
In the Godhead, you will see Jesus who represents God’s bodily form. He had a form when walking around in the fiery furnace (Daniel 3). Jesus/God wrestled with Jacob (Gen 32) and of course was born into a human body which was later crucified. His body was resurrected, and he functions in it today. Father God is representative of divine thinking, wisdom, and emotions. It is the being that loves, protects, and provides for us. He is the one who administers justice. Holy Spirit is a gift. Holy Spirit is the creative, helpful teacher full of wisdom and guidance. Our three bodies (body, soul, spirit) have a purpose and together, we are able to move through life in communion with this world (Jesus). We are able to process past, present, and future to make decisions and to act (Father). We are able to learn from our innermost being to heal ourselves and others and live an abundant life (Holy Spirit).
Love Our Neighbors by Loving Ourselves
In my religious background, loving myself was a selfish act. I’m not sure if you can identify with that or not, but the higher calling was to love others and not to focus on self. I have come to believe that message is skewed.
When Jesus speaks of the Father and Spirit, it is with great love and adoration. When the Father speaks of Jesus and the Spirit, it is also with love and adoration. The Spirit also testifies of the same with regards to Father and Jesus. They love each other AND they are one being. So, it is fair to say that God (Father, Jesus, Spirit) loves Himself. Out of that love, He created man.
Jesus said the greatest commandment was to “love God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind (Matt 22:37)”. The second commandment is similar, “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt 22:39). Jesus was answering a religious lawyer who was trying to entangle him in legalistic, right/wrong thinking. Jesus knew the hardest part about keeping a law was that which the soul processes (heart, soul, mind) and if we focus on loving God, our creator/father/friend/savior then everything else falls into place in due time.
When Jesus told us to love others as ourselves, there as a HUGE assumption on His part that we love ourselves. That sentence can be rewritten to say “as you have come to love yourself, love others in the same way”. What does that mean?
It is what Stephanie teaches in the form of self-compassion, body neutrality, meditation to calm the mind, mindful movement to honor the body, nutrition to feed our body, and spiritual practice to nurture the spirit and commune with God.
Self-Sabotaging Behaviors Shut Spirit Flow
Womack’ study speaks of the body, soul, and spirit being a pipeline. He uses the analogy of a valve between the spirit and soul that we control the flow. We can either shut it off completely and not interact with the spirit’s wisdom or we can let it flow like a raging river. When spirit knowledge comes into contact with the soul there is a renewing of the mind (mind, will, and emotions) that takes place and when it is complete, it will be demonstrated in the body. So, the flow goes from spirit to soul then to body.
Sometimes, when we don’t see God’s promises manifest in our bodies, it is because we have turned down the flow or our minds haven’t yet fully embraced it as truth. Stephanie’s work is about helping us evaluate our valve control or belief system in the renewing of the mind. When she talks about the subconscious or self-sabotaging behaviors, I liken it to the pipeline analogy. Sometimes we know we are limiting the flow and other times, our soul is acting on our behalf because of what it believes to be best.
There are inner healing ministries dedicated to uncovering the lies we have believed and asking God to heal them. Beyond the Food program is about finding the lies we are believing about ourselves and being open to healing from different sources (self, food, higher power, breath, mindful movement). For me, I am able to easily transform the imagery from the different tools Stephanie presents to God’s provision and all the tools He has provided me on this freedom journey.
When God created Adam, He commanded Adam and Eve to take dominion and rule over all they had been given. Believers are given authority in spiritual matters. We are entrusted with the care of ourselves and His people. I think I understood it well when ministering to others, but I don’t know that I took dominion in my own life when it came to self-care. I placed others need above mine and I had come to believe that I was incapable of permanent change and because of past performance, I might not be worthy of it.
Of course, they are lies, but when we believe a lie, it becomes our truth, in a sense, and it’s not until the renewing of the mind that we have an “ah-ha moment” and the lie is replaced by truth and the valve opens up the flow a little bit more. It is difficult to stop moving water. As we get truth flowing through us, it is hard to stop the healing that transpires. When we know better, we do better whether we really intend to or not.
This is why Jesus is called the truth and because of it, He is the way, the truth, and the life. When He (Jesus, Father, Spirit = God) flows in us things truly change. When we see a dry, barren area (because of the exercises, reflections, journaling, meditation, etc), we can signal to Jesus that we have a dry spot. He will reroute the truth flow over that spot. Old will pass away and the new is now in the current. This is dominion.
Because our spirit and God’s Spirit are fused together and perfected, this search and rescue mission is symbiotic. It may feel like He is pointing out the dry spots while other times we are doing the excavation. Either way, spirit/Spirit are working in tandem to provide healing and life abundant.
Reaching God from Within Ourselves
Let’s talk about meditation and yoga. In Christian circles, we are taught to not go inward because we are taking our focus off God and onto us. I subscribed to this thought for many years because of the amount of scriptures speaking to focus and reliance on Him. I have had a few “a-ha” moments over the last couple of years that have changed my thinking.
First, if God, through His Spirit resides in us, then wouldn’t we go inward to seek Him in addition to other ways to access Him? Second, have you ever done a “soaking” session or silent retreat? The whole point of these sessions are to quiet the world, quiet the mind so we can hear from Him. Having this internal navigator was the miracle of the cross.
Old Testament believers couldn’t fathom the concept of God residing within us….actually taking up residence. Meditation, which can also be a part of yoga, is a prayerful act of calming the body and soul so that the spirit can speak. This includes your little S spirit and His big S Spirit. If the word meditation wigs you out, then try substituting the word prayer. If I recommended 10 minutes of prayer every night, you wouldn’t argue with it, would you?
In worship, there is a release where your mind is not racing around but focused on God. You release your cares for one moment (soul), let your body experience the movement (body), and your spirit has a moment to connect with the body/soul and God. Sometimes in worship, we get moments of clarity because the mind is focused and released for all other obligations, much like the act of meditation. If you speak in tongues, you have experienced how your spirit by-passes your mind to commune with God. It is a release, encouragement, and “reset” much like meditation.
He made us Capable of Self-Healing
Healing breath is another topic for discussion. When Stephanie says to send your breath to an area to break up anxiety, I say try it and see what happens. It is nothing short of a miracle. Scripture says that every good thing comes from God. Holy Spirit is described as a wind and fire. Breathing stirs up something in us. It purifies within us. When we circulate breath, we are circulating a healing power that God breathed into all men.
So God’s gifts are for everyone and not just us Christians? Whoa, now! I’m probably stepping on some toes. When He created man, he created them and said it was “good”. His relationship to them was perfect and the world was created for them.
After sin entered the world, there has been a continual process on behalf of God to restore us back to original design and relationship. Through Jesus, he took care of the relationship piece. Your spirit is in perfect unity with His but your body and soul are still in process of being restored back to perfection.
Think of it this way…..if you were stupid before believing in Jesus, you were stupid after, but over time, you learned more and got a little less stupid. If God is the creator of all good things, then He created them for all people not just Christians. Some people are able to recognize God’s gifts better than others and believers should be quicker at it because of the relationship they have with the Godhead and practice over time.
Wisdom is a God-given Gift
Wisdom is something that God gave the world and to every man. Wisdom is personified in the Bible as “she”. She cries out in the marketplace meaning she speaks in the busiest of places. This could be the nightly news, your business, your children’s school, a friend, and cultural trends. Wisdom has always been here.
I imagine wisdom was shouting at Eve when she started talking with Lucifer in the garden but with free will, she chose to ignore it. Wisdom wasn’t just in the middle east, it was everywhere. Could a man in China hear wisdom and apply it to his life in 1000 B.C.? If you have ever visited a museum of ancient cultures, you would have to confirm that wisdom must have been present and the people grabbed it.
What about eastern medicine and integrative medicine? Could it be that they have had their ears attuned to wisdom and picked up what she has been putting out? I believe this is why you see nuggets of truth in every world religion. They are picking up wisdom from God.
Jesus is the issue, however. Who we believe Jesus is….Son of God/God Himself removing all barriers between Himself and man….is the core issue of our belief and the monumental divide with other belief systems. Wisdom, however, is God’s gift to all of mankind.
I have gone on and one, but felt the need to share this with Stephanie in case she wants to pass it along to another curious, Christian mind. Feel free to reach out to me if you want to discuss this further.
Hugs,
Susan Sledge
[email protected]
817-219-7801
8 Powerful Questions For Your Life Transformation
The moments with the biggest impact in my programs such as Going Beyond the Food Academy or my retreats are when powerful transformation questions get asked at just the right time. These 8 powerful questions for transformation have allowed many amazing transformation.
The right question can do more to motivate a student into playing a bigger game than reading a whole bookshelf of inspirational books or attending several ‘how to’ seminars.
Why is that?
Transformation questions, when phrased and timed well, entice us to go inside and look around the many rooms of our body-mind. We emerge knowing ourselves better than we did before and willing to take on new challenges.
https://youtu.be/39E8OqyWPg8
Transformation Process
These questions are the kick starter to any profound and permanent transformation process and that’s exactly what I teach. I simply chose to use food as a tool to teach transformation. That you try to transform your diet or your love life or your health the process is all the same.
You must first get clear with yourself on what you want.
Then learn new skills and or make a decision that will allow you to reach your goals.
8 Transformation Questions
You will need a journal for this exercise, a place where you can gather your thoughts, observation, and feelings.
I would suggest reading all questions at first without answering any. Let the questions sit with your spirit for a few days.
In the following days take 1 -2 question at a time maximum per day and write your answer in your journal. Set the environment that will allow you to get the life-changing answer you are looking for: be alone, no one to disturb you, be in a relaxed state with no pressure about time, in a positive mindset.
When you write your answer leave plenty of space for each question to be answered as you may want to add to it in the process. Read your answers and add more thoughts as you go.
- Where do I want to be in five years?
- How do I want to feel on the inside in 5 years time? Where will I be emotionally, physically and spiritually?
- What bad habits do I need to stop? What do I need to take responsibility for?
- What mistake have I made? What would I do differently?
- What story have I told myself? What conditioning did I receive?
- If no one judged me, who will I be?
- Who would you be if you weren’t concerned with pleasing and caring for others?
- Why do I like food more than my own health (self)?
So, next time you feel stumped, stuck, or unsure where to go, ask yourself these powerful questions that will serve as a kick starter to your transformation.
If you ready to start your journey in transforming your health with nutrition you should check out my free Crave Cure Guide.
Increase Body Confidence: The Journey to You
The mind is the most powerful aspect of health. It’s more powerful than your stomach which digests the food, or your hands which prepare it, or your legs that carry you through exercise. As I teach to the ladies in my free and private community : truly your mind is the thing that determines you, and how you view yourself will mold the way that your body actually looks and feels, not to mention how long it lasts. If you want to increase body confidence, you need to start with your mind.A Never Ending Cycle
We are completely overtaken with images from the media and fitness industries that bombard us with ideas about what we should look like. Women literally can’t get away without seeing them. All you have to do it to walk into the grocery store and you’ll find dozens of images that tell you what you should look like. You don’t even have to leave the house – flip on the television or open your mailbox and you’ll see even more.
These images have a huge impact on our ideas of self, creating an inner dialogue and goals that we might not even be aware of. They’re presented as truth, as beauty and as the ideal of self worth. If we don’t look like these standards of beauty, then how can you be worth anything? Unfortunately we find that the language of modern culture is one that places emphasis on outward images of self rather than of inner strength of spirit.
The cycle comes when we see these unrealistic images and try to attain to them in an attempt to help us to feel good about ourselves, again most often without even thinking. Then when we do attempt to make changes in life to create that image that we see in our own lives we of course fail, because again they are unrealistic, which makes us feel bad about ourselves and cycles us into negative self image. The cycle goes on and on.
Breaking the Body Image Cycle to Increase Body Confidence
If this is a negative cycle, then how can you possibly go about freeing yourself from it? The answer is with a dramatic shift of understanding. Smart women like you know that the pictures that you see on the covers of magazines aren’t any more real than the images on Saturday morning cartoons, airbrushed and painted over as they are. And yet when you see them they tap into your subconscious, which doesn’t know that they aren’t real. Your natural inclination for self improvement kicks in and pushes you try to meet that goal, or you get a kick in the pants that tells you that you’re not worth much because you have already failed to look like that.
Understanding the connection between your body and your emotional self is how you break free and increase body confidence. Remember that your mind is the most powerful tool that you have when it comes to transforming your physical self, and you’re in control of it! Learning to harness the power of your mind to create a positive perception of your body will bring you into the reality of your beautiful self. For many women, it’s hard for them to comprehend the wonder and beauty of their own bodies.
“Stephanie has helped me make the connection between my emotional body and physical body, which has helped me heal and also lose weight.” -Shelley Langlois
Finding support is your first step in the process of creating a healthy body image. Realize that you are not alone in your struggle, and that there are people who have been there and who can help you increase body confidence. It’s possible for you to love your body and also to recognize that it needs to change so that you can feel better and live longer. That doesn’t mean that your goal is to look like some person who you’ve never met and who is for the most part a creation of a marketing company, but it does mean that you goal is to be the best that you can be. Emotionally and physically. You have the power to make it happen!
This is the first article in the series ” Journey to YOU”. You can find the next article of the series on Empowerment right here. Hope you enjoy!
Body Messages: A Personal Story
What are body messages?
As I teach the ladies in my tribe, think of it as a knock on the door. It is a way your physical body talks to you.
Let me give you an example from my own life…
Body Messages: My Personal Story
My latest project of taking my nutrition practices and my business in the stratosphere in the online world is so scary, yet so exciting all at once. I have fears just like all of you. Fear is an absolute normal emotion. Fear means that we are working outside of our comfort zone which also means that we are growing.
My comfort zone didn’t include being in front of a camera because of my body image. I had huge issues looking at myself in the mirror – let alone having someone take a picture of me.
I have conquered this fear by working on my body image during the past three years. Am I now super comfortable to be in front of a camera? No, I’m not but it is much better than it was. I can now see beauty when I look at pictures of myself… I can see now what others see…because we are all beautiful. Yes, we are.
This weekend was another one of these moments in my life – professional photo shoot with a designer, makeup artists, and the best photographer in town.
Body messages
I felt nervous for 3-4 days leading up to the shoot.
I was anxious and craving carbs.
My body was tense which, for me, equals pain in my lower back.
I had poor sleep quality the night before.
I listened and observed my body messages with interest. I realized through my body that this experience was a huge and significant step for me in my life journey because of the intensity of the messages. I didn’t worry about the “symptoms” (body messages) or take a sleeping pill or supplement to help me sleep. Rather, I enjoyed the process. I felt the sensation in my body of each body message and was grateful for the growth that was happening within myself.
How to listen to your body messages
What are your body messages when you are working outside your comfort zone?
Do you listen to your body messages or simply ignore them?
Do you find that your body messages are just an annoyance?
You just can’t wait to shut them down with food or another drug of choices?
Guess what happened the day of the shoot? I had the best time of my life with the best team…. I shared with my team of three brand new people that I had never meet before, my life journey and my anxiousness about the day.
I was vulnerable and shared in a positive manner so they resounded with nothing but love for me on my journey. Without their support, I couldn’t have put my true self out there and the pictures wouldn’t have been nearly as gorgeous and powerful as they are. I’m so grateful that I have crossed paths with these three professional and loving human beings – Nikki, Luis and Onna = xoxox. I will forever be grateful to have met you.
Listen and Feel
Listen to your body messages aka symptoms, disease, discomfort and imbalances with care, patience and love.
Feel your body messages – the intensity, the location, when, where and how it happens.
Learn from your body messages.
Make decisions in your life based on your body messages and on the communication between you and your body.
Everything happens for a reason for the best outcome possible.
Welcome!
I’m Stephanie Dodier
Non-Diet Nutritionist & Coach
I teach and coach women how to break free from the socialized thinking of diet culture and liberate yourself from unrelenting pressure to be thinner so that you can eat in a way that truly supports your well-being and start living the life you’ll look back on with no regrets.
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