Own It with Samantha Warren

Today’s episode is a training I held with my community on CONSISTENCY 101! During our discussion, I talk about our body’s rhythms and the amazing power of routine and consistency in helping us tune into our needs and honor our body’s natural cues. Your body has so many cycles and rhythms. Your period, sleep, metabolism, digestion and body temperature are all governed naturally by the processes within your body without you needing to lift a finger. Each of those cycles plays an incredibly important role in how we function day to day and when we work with them, we actually can really optimize our calorie burn in our metabolism and decrease our stress. Top Takeaways There is enormous power in finding a consistent routine. Think about your meal times. Do you sometimes skip a meal? Maybe some days you have two meals and others you’ll have five. What would it be like if you knew that you were going to have three meals a day and a snack and you built that into your calendar first before anything else? Creating your meal times as a ritual creates a routine for our bodies that they thrive on. If you know you’ll be eating breakfast, lunch, dinner and a snack every day, your body will learn to know what’s next and that creates less stress and energy for your minds. Our bodies are machines. They thrive on routine and predictability. Start developing consistent meal times and consistent meal sizes. Then you can start to either add a little or subtract a little, depending on how you feel. Honor your body’s hunger and fullness cues and. You'll notice when enough is enough. Skipping meals creates a scarcity mindset and triggers a sense of urgency to eat to prevent future hunger. We end up overeating because we might not be sure when we’ll be able to eat again or when we’ll have time to eat again. It’s important to remember that biologically, your body doesn’t know the difference between an elongated time between meals and actual starvation. Tweak your schedule to find that time to eat. Set boundaries for yourself throughout the day and carve out the time intentionally. If you know you have more time to eat lunch than dinner, then make sure you take an actual lunch break and eat mindfully. Humans are not meant to work eight hours a day with no break. Chill out, eat your lunch and then go back to work. Listen and honor what your body wants to do. If you’ve found your sleep pattern has changed or you’re now hungry at different times throughout the day, respect what your body is trying to tell you.

In this episode, I talk with Le’nise Brothers, a registered nutritionist, yoga instructor and founder of Eat, Love, Move. She’s an expert in women's health and well-being determined to help women fix their period pain. Growing up in Toronto, Le’nise saw her mom continually have very heavy, very painful periods and experienced the same thing when she started menstruating. Having grown up thinking it was normal, she watched her friends having light periods with barely any pain and started to think, “Why don’t I have that?” This started her journey to figure out why she was experiencing the pain she was. After trying the pill, supplements and a number of other methods, she eventually figured out a way of eating that calmed her body down during her period. She then went back to university and trained as a registered nutritionist, specializing in women’s health and menstrual cycle hormones. Top Takeaways Start to honor the menstrual phases: menstruation, the follicular phase, ovulation and the luteal phase. Start tracking your menstrual cycle and learn what affects it. It can be as simple as knowing when your period starts and when it ends or you can make it as detailed as you want it to be. It's really important to know that not everyone has a 28 day menstrual cycle and that the days will change. Tune into your body and understand what impacts your cycle. For example, stress is a huge factor. We’ve been taught that a certain amount of stress is normal so when you start tracking your cycle, you need to be really honest with yourself about how much stress you are actually under. While your diet can have a negative impact on your cycle, it’s not about restricting what you’re eating or removing foods. Le’nise works with her clients from a place of adding their diet, not taking away. Being a woman in this world, we get taught to restrict, to minimize, to try to reduce ourselves and this creates toxic patterns around so many areas of our lives, especially around food. When you start saying, “I'm going to add this”- it really changes your mindset around food. Period pain isn’t “normal” and you don’t have to stay in that place of frustration and pain. It’s something that anyone who has a period is taught to accept as a part of life and it is common but that doesn’t make it normal. If you’re experiencing period pain, this is your chance to take ownership of tha. Turn inward and ask yourself, “What can I do about this?”

Today’s episode of Balance With Sam is another snippet from a recent call with my amazing clients! We discuss eating over the holidays, the value of high quality foods and whether it’s better to just eat the food you’re craving (hello pizza!) or trying to make a healthier alternative. Top Takeaways If you're struggling with satisfaction around your meals, think about what foods you really loved growing up. Figure out what that food is and really eat them. Buy the highest quality ingredients and be mindful. Breathe while eating. Breathe before. Breathe during. Breathe after. You’ll notice you’ll only need one or two pieces as opposed to the ten you would’ve had (and still not have been satisfied!). Notice how the slowing down paired with the quality ends up actually giving you permission to eat the things you love, not go overboard and not overeat things that aren't really doing it for you. Start caring that everything you put in your mouth is the highest quality. If you're going to eat the donut, eat the high quality donut. If you're going to eat ice cream, eat high quality ice cream. Often if you find it difficult to buy the highest quality foods, it’s a pattern that shows up elsewhere in your life. For example, your wardrobe or where you go out to dinner.  If you buy the high quality versions, you won't have to buy it again because you’ll be satisfied. Eat what you love. As one of my mentors recently said, our relationship with food is often a lens into learning about yourself. It’s one of our greatest teachers. Often when we’re at social gatherings, we think to ourselves “What is wrong with me? Why am I thinking about food all the time?” It’s easy to get frustrated at yourself. If you notice that happening, take a step back and be grateful for that problem. Because without that problem, you wouldn't be seeking out help and support to figure out who you really are. It gives you the opportunity to turn inwards. That’s what all this work is. It’s your empowerment!

Today’s episode of Balance WIth Sam is a recording of a recent group coaching call with my girls! We talk about one of the most important parts of finding freedom from food, how to become more intune with your body and the parallels between your bank account and your body! Top Takeaways The only purpose of food is to satiate hunger and for our health. That’s it. If we’re not eating for these reasons, we’re using it as a way to fill our lives when something is missing. Whether it be something in a relationship or in our work, we use food to fill a void. Start practicing, listening, turning, inwards, asking yourself why you are eating. Are you really hungry? Or is it something else? Focus on and trust your intuition. Our bodies already have cues we need. It has the fullness cue that knows when it’s had enough. It has the hunger cue to let us know when it needs fuel. But sometimes we're just so disconnected from our bodies because we've been in our heads for so long that we have no idea. We make decisions based on what we've been told or what we believe. “I don’t deserve this” or “I’m not worthy”. But when you listen to our body, you open yourself up to being able to hear people when they say that you are enough and know that it’s true. Notice when you are avoiding and challenge it. One of the areas of my life that always caused a lot of anxiety was my bank account and I see this a lot in my clients. It’s the avoidance attachment pattern. For example, when your relationship with money is not as healthy as you would want it to be, it's easier to not look at it. It’s easier to not deal.  But it's not going to get any better if we don't face it. It's the same with what you put in your body. It’s easier to not observe and be mindful of what we eat but it doesn’t make us feel good. When you avoid, you don't fail but you can't make it better. One thing is how you do everything. If you are intentional with your eating, you're going to be intentional with your spending, with your communication, with your relationship, the sex you have and the clothes you buy. You're just going to be intentional. Remember, you have the power. You can take it one little baby step at a time. You’ve got the choice. Choose the woman you want to be over the woman you were.

Today’s mini-episode of Balance With Sam is a snippet from a recent group coaching call I had with my girl gang! We talked about the upcoming holiday season and discuss steps and practices they can incorporate throughout the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays to stay in control of their binging and enjoy themselves at the same time. Ensuring you have an intentional relationship with food opens you up to the information food gives us. Certain foods will make you feel satisfied and full. Some foods will make you feel crap. Tune into how your body responds to the food and the information it gives you. This will give you a guide as to how to navigate your eating through the holiday period. Top Takeaways When you want to eat chocolate cake, make it worth it. Eat some really good chocolate cake and enjoy it. Don't settle for something you don’t really want. It won’t satisfy you and because you won’t really enjoy it, you might end up going overboard on a food that you didn’t really want to begin with. Practice mindfulness. Especially during Thanksgiving, there’s going to be things at the table that are going to be outside of your control. Your only goal is to be mindful. Be mindful of the decisions that you’re making. Be mindful of what you’re eating. Think about what your boundaries are and what your relationship with food is. Know which foods don’t really do it for you but also which foods trigger you, which ones will set you off. Be intentional and mindful. At the beginning of the day, visualize what it’s going to be like for you at the end of the day. How did the day go? Imagine the highest version of yourself and think about what she ate. What did she drink? What can you do throughout the day to end it feeling good? Most importantly, remember Thanksgiving is just another meal and move into the abundance mindset. You can have those foods at any time. That mindset of “Oh I binge every Thanksgiving” is the past you. The past does not dictate your future. This is now. You get to create your reality this Thanksgiving, Remember, you are in control of you.

On today’s episode of Balance With Sam, I’m joined by the amazing Brid McNulty. Brid is a food and body coach, and she also helps high achieving women heal their relationship with food and their body. Brid grew up moving around a lot as a child but it was a move to Moscow in her teen years, taking her away from her friends and everything she’d known, when she started to feel alone. Turning to food for comfort, she started to double her dinner portions without realizing and gained 22 pounds in the last two years of high school. Like so many of us, Brid turned to dieting, quick fixes and extreme workouts to try and lose the weight but, as she experienced upheaval in her life, she spiralled even more in university She felt that urgent need to “fix” herself. Top Takeaways Mastering your mindset can make a world of difference. Be aware of what your mind and body are telling you and give yourself the space. It’s about creating an awareness of your critical thoughts and work towards letting go of them. They will always be there but you don’t need to subscribe to them. Remember, you don't have to control what you can trust. When you trust that your body will find a healthy weight and the food is going to balance itself out, it will. Find the balance and make the choice. Once we become more aware of our emotions and in tune with what we are feeling when the urge to binge hits us, we can start to move towards making a choice. It’s okay that sometimes you might want to eat that whole pizza and that’s okay. It’s about knowing that certain foods will make you feel good and finding that balance. Find body neutrality. You don’t necessarily have to love your body but if you can accept it and be neutral about it, the critical thoughts will quieten. Incentivize the shift for yourself. For example, Brid created a pot for herself and every time she brought herself back into neutral after a negative thought, she would put a dollar in the pot. Then, when she gets to a more positive place, she uses that money to pamper herself. Find the fun and reward yourself. Above all, remember to go easy on yourself and work from a place of love.

On today’s episode of Balance with Sam, I talk to one of the most beautiful souls, Stephanie Rae. Stephanie is a Somatic Experiencing and Embodiment Practitioner and an absolute ray of light in my life! We talk about how we can find healing for our trauma through tuning ourselves into our body’s sensations and how we can give ourselves permission to feel pleasure and enjoy our bodies. Stephanie has been in the somatic healing space for 13 or so years, specializing in sexual trauma and sexual embodiment. She has worked as a practitioner in yoga, breathwork, energy work and tantra. Somatic Experience was first introduced by Dr Peter Levine and is based on the theory that trauma is not cognitive, it’s actually held in our bodies. Somatic experience teaches us that until we can come into our bodies and be able to feel and release the trauma from our bodies, feel through the emotions in their totality, without the suppressing, the avoiding the dissociating, the numbing out, which we all do, the trauma will just stay there and wreak havoc on our physicality, our mental state, our mind, our body and our soul. It’s using the intuitive wisdom of sensations and experiences and using that to help find those emotional releases. Top Takeaways Everybody experiences trauma differently. You can have two people that have the exact same experience in every way and they could both walk away and process it 100% differently.  Women have been conditioned to feel unsafe in their lives and when stuff happens, it may not show up in ways that you may think. It may get buried within your nervous system and becomes invisible. It’s about noticing the sensations and noticing where you may be feeling stuck or feeling pain. Once you start paying attention to that, you can then begin to ask “How do I start to feel safe again in my body?” Befriending your body and allowing it to feel pleasure is at the heart of embodied network. Start small. What actually makes your body feel good? Maybe it’s sitting by a window and feeling the sun on your face. How does that make your body feel? How do you feel when you feel that sun or when you put your feet in the grass or what smells just really light you up? It’s really coming back to this idea of falling in love with different sensations on the outward. It doesn’t have anything to do with sex or with food or the way that you look. Take all of that off the table to begin with and just find this embodied pleasure in the sensory in our environment. Notice when you are in your head and you hear that voice that is telling you that you don’t deserve pleasure. The voice that says you don’t deserve to eat that nice meal or have good sex. That is not your authentic voice. Our bodies are meant for pleasure. We came out of the womb full of love, light and pleasure and it's other voices that have changed that. You should be able to walk outside and feel pleasure walking around on the grass, walking around on the ground and feeling the sun. That’s what our authentic voice and our bodies want us to do. Be present in your body. Listen to it.

Today’s mini-episode of Balance with Sam is another snippet from Breakthru The Binge where I discuss the power of acceptance, even when you don’t like your body. It can be hard accepting your current reality, especially if you are on a journey to food freedom and body acceptance. I remember constantly thinking to myself, “Why is it taking so long to get there?” or “Why can’t I just lose those last five pounds?” But here’s the thing- now is now. You can’t change what it is. It’s all we have so we might as well accept it. Top Takeaways Learn to be okay with your current body. You don’t have to love it. Or even like it. Just accept it. Practice body neutrality. We often get so fixated on what we aren't, or what needs “fixing,” and it feels a lot better to focus on everything you are already right now. Remember, you can be okay with your body and still have a goal to change it. Not being okay with yourself right now will only lead to so much frustration and negativity. Have compassion for yourself and remind yourself that your body is amazing no matter its form. Write down this mantra every day and repeat it to yourself: “I am becoming satisfied with where I’m at and eager for more”. If you’re consumed with where you “aren’t”, you won’t have the mental capacity or energy to make the changes. Take your power back and get in control. Grab life by the horns. You are good enough where you are. Then you can change from an empowered place!

Today’s episode of Balance with Sam is a recent recording of a group coaching call with my amazing girl gang. We talk about recent wins and individual struggles that have come up within the group through the month and discuss everything from internal/external motivations to what foods are “worth it” for us (spoiler- for me, it’s pizza!) Top Takeaways You are your purpose. You may feel like you need it to be more than that. But your life experience is your purpose. That’s all you ever need to be. One practice I love is making a life mission statement. Imagine if you were your own company. What would your mission statement be? Write it down on a sticky note and have it in on your desk. It will remind you why you’re doing what you’re doing. Who you are showing up for and why. It will affirm you are your purpose. To motivate yourself, motivate and uplift others. Sometimes when we need something, giving to others fills our cup with what we are filling for them. For example, instead of saying, “I'm going to wait until somebody motivates me”, think, “ I'm going to motivate somebody else right now. I'm going to inspire somebody else right now”. Create your own opportunity and use this time for “being”. Remember, every day you get to get a little closer to being the type of person that you want to be. Think about that future version of you. What would she be doing right now? Would she be making these certain choices? What is her heart? Turn inward right now and be in this “messy phase” of not knowing and enjoy it. Do things that make you feel good until you have some more clarity and some more answers. Use this time to sculpt the person you want to be.

This week’s podcast is another snippet from my signature course, Breakthru The Binge. I talk about the difference between getting healthier, feeling better on our bodies and just wanting to lose weight. Using the law of attraction, changing how you think of your journey will transform your success. What you focus on EXPANDS. Focus on getting healthier, stronger and making decisions and thinking things that the healthiest version of you would think. That’s it. Weight loss WILL happen as the outcome, but shift your focus to GAINING health, not LOSING weight. The law of attraction basically says what we think is what we get. So, if we think to ourselves, “I just want to get rid of this weight”, you’re thinking about something you don’t want and that won’t work. But switching our mindset to thinking “I’m doing this because I want to feel better and get healthier.”, it will happen. We have to shift our focus more onto the things that we can control and that we do actually want, which is getting healthier and feeling happy and confident. Top Takeaways Remember you’re human. Diet culture loves to catastrophize. It’s always all or nothing. Oh my gosh, if we had creamer in our coffee, it’s the end of the world, right?! No, that’s not how our lives work and it’s not how we think as humans. Learn to be kind to yourself and trust you’re on the right path. It’s okay if you had that extra creamer. You will mess it up but forgive yourself and get back on track. This whole thing takes practice. It is a skill. Imagine picking up an instrument and like expecting to be good at it. That’s not going to happen and you’d end up feeling really disappointed. Give yourself some grace and treat yourself like you would your best friend. If you mess up, take a lesson from it. Look at what it is teaching you. What could you have done differently? Then adjust and try it again. You’ll get there.