Polly Mertens: 0:27

hey, superstars welcome back polly here and sam pruitt what’s up? Beautiful humans, hey, you guys.

Polly Mertens: 0:33

So today, this, this is a topic that you had. The last conversation we had, our last episode was a lot on fitness, which you are the queen of, absolutely and I think this one steps in the realm where I’ve had some queendom around, especially with disordered eating. But we’re calling this one making peace with food, right and subline of making peace with yourself, making peace with thyself, right. So start us off. Why are we talking about this? What do you want to share?

Polly Mertens: 1:06

I just want to say that we should start taping these podcasts two hours before we tape these podcasts, because we prep for these things and then we spend time dialoguing about it, and the dialogue is next freaking level, as per usual, and then we take the podcast, which is kind of, but we don’t want to be a three hour podcast. So, to succinct matters, here we go. Here we go.

Samantha Pruitt: 1:32

Yeah, we hope you. We hope you guys get a lot out of this. This is a. So when Samantha and I first talked about oh, we should, I forget if we said you know we should have a food topic and the last episode we were talking about, like, your relationship with getting fit and fitness and redefining you know what fitness is at any age and for yourself, and not listening to the hullabaloo of marketing and stuff, but defining it for yourself and we said people have some jacked up relationships with food too.

Polly Mertens: 1:56

All right, so yeah, Well, I’m pretty sure I was confessing, you know mine.

Samantha Pruitt: 2:07

Well, mine’s on my website. I’ve had videos about it for decades. So my, my skeleton’s out, yours is pretty public, mine’s pretty public 20 year addict. Yeah, all right, all you know, and I’m not even shy about it. Why should we be shy about it?

Polly Mertens: 2:19

No, we should be Hell.

Samantha Pruitt: 2:21

No, we are here to liberate, exactly, exactly, it is.

Samantha Pruitt: 2:26

I went through that and I know so much more and I have helped people right in the course of this. That was part of why my part of giving other people having disordered eating getting out of it For me after 20 years, damn it, hearing the stories of people that had found their way to healthy living kind of quote, normal, whatever you want to call it just like back to themselves, I was so inspired and it helped me so much when the days were dark and the nights were dark, dark nights of the soul, many of those. To hear people’s stories I’m like I can do it. I remember this one gal reaching out to me. Sorry, I’m just a little tangential.

Polly Mertens: 3:13

We need a backstory.

Samantha Pruitt: 3:14

Well, so I was doing my eating disorder coaching at a website and I really welcomed people to send me their stories, send me questions, whatnot, and this one young gal and this was a time when I would make a lot of videos, like lots of videos. I really just wanted to help other people, you know, and they’re still up on YouTube somewhere, yeah. Yeah, there’s like a hundred. Yeah, I’m happy with them. A little different, you know, hair days and whatever you know, but every it’s it’s all from the heart, right, and I had this gal reach out to me from Australia, you know, and my website was one of the early ones where people from all over the world, you know, because it wasn’t so manipulated, let’s say, these days it was Google you know.

Samantha Pruitt: 3:52

It was like, oh, you have good content, like Google will serve it, type of thing. And so people were finding me and I’m reading my website and, you know, thank you for sharing and stuff like that and this one gal reached out to me and questions. I would always answer questions myself. This gal, uh, contact me from Australia. I think she was around 14, and she said, you know, so I had a video up there about, um, you know, I had recently interviewed a woman who had overcome bulimia after 40 years of having bulimia I had it for 20. I thought that was a fricking lifetime. She’d had it for 40. Interviewing her, talking to her, was so powerful for my soul that we were sharing this story. I was like, oh my God, we are going to help other people who, like, can this ever happen for me? I’m like 40 years, right, exactly. So this gal contacts me. She’s 14 in Australia. It probably feels like away from everyone in her family. Whatever she says, I have a therapist who tells me that I will never not have an eating disorder and the way she you know, and so that was just like the first you know comment, whatever.

Samantha Pruitt: 5:04

I jumped on YouTube, I made a video and I was like A I do not. So there’s disordered eating, eating disorder, whatever, whatever you want to call it. I’m like I do not have issues with food now and I like zero, like like there’s no hint of oh, maybe I’ll go in the closet, you know whatever. Like oh, oh, like an alcoholic, like maybe just one drink, like nothing, like no, do I overeat at times at thanksgiving, and you know, bountiful parties and whatever, right, everybody does, right. So, but there’s no.

Samantha Pruitt: 5:35

And I made this video. I was like, oh, my god, please, honey, yes, you can absolutely recover from an eating disorder and have your normal life back again. So I know that’s tangential, but I just wanted to kind of know that relationships with food can get very dysfunctional and they can heal and they can be transformed. And we’re here to serve and help people and really what we want to talk about is not like all the little micro questions that people have about like well, is this diet, and should I eat this, and when should I eat, at a time of day and timed eating and fasting and whatever, and I’m like hold up, that’s not. We are not that.

Polly Mertens: 6:12

Yeah, that is not what we’re about.

Samantha Pruitt: 6:15

All right, well, we’ll get us on track. Your journey is incredible.

Polly Mertens: 6:17

I know, but you took it out to the world, right? So you not only healed yourself after 20 years of just using a food, food substances in a disordered way, you healed yourself and then you turned it around to help other people. But you say it wasn’t about the food, it was about you. What was going on with you, the human being?

Samantha Pruitt: 6:39

yeah, yeah, and that that took a long time to really understand. You know, and phases, and I’d say after 20 years there’s lots of micro cycles. You know, I was in high school or, yeah, junior high school, high school when I started. Then I had a college phase and it looked different. Then I had a post-college phase that looked different. Then it was like my twenties, third, you know. So the phases of that look different. Towards the end it looked nothing like it did when I was in my.

Samantha Pruitt: 7:05

So it was 10 times a day I was binging and purging. I mean, just imagine like how many hours of that time of your life that must All consuming, all consuming. On the weekend I would get up, kind of have a little morning routine and then food would take the driver’s seat and it would run the rest of the day and I would not see any human beings for the whole day. It was me and a bag of chips, ice cream, you know, refrigerator, tv and toilet and it was like, well, that’s just not, that’s, that’s not very good, that’s not very good Now it didn’t look that way.

Polly Mertens: 7:46

When I finally ended it in a 34, I think was when I ended it it wasn’t that severe, let’s call it it. You were a higher functioning adult. Yeah, at that point you had to, you know, make a living and do things, have relationships whatever.

Samantha Pruitt: 7:50

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, but let’s get back healing.

Polly Mertens: 7:52

Addiction is no joke, yeah, but it’s not about the substance that’s being utilized, or the activity, or the behavior or the fill in the blank. It’s about the human being, and that’s what we’re going to talk about today. Yeah, healing. I got some things to say. Let’s do it, okay. First of all, I want to start off with something that maybe is obvious, but I’m going to say it anyway how you look has nothing to do with how healthy you are. Oh, amen, yeah, I mean it doesn’t. So my number one is reject diet culture, and there’s a lot of things we’re going to discuss that I mean by that, but rejecting diet culture, making sure that your wellbeing is your focus and not your weight or the look of your body.

Samantha Pruitt: 8:46

Your well-being is your focus I used to say what does your weight on the planet have to do with your well-being? Like who said that’s a metric for well-being exactly I?

Samantha Pruitt: 8:58

mean you know a value of a human being if you think of media I don’t know if you’ve seen some of these where they have pictures of a woman who’s five, five, that’s. You know, one, 30, you know five, eight, whatever the body types can look very different. Fitness, you know they had those with Olympic athletes, right. Shocking the variations. Weight should just be. I don’t know anybody that’s still doing it by weight or any of that stuff, or BMI.

Polly Mertens: 9:23

So archaic, so archaic, exactly. So let’s just start by opening the door there, in case people haven’t got the memo. We’re just throwing the first memo on the wall like yeah, and the scale.

Samantha Pruitt: 9:36

Thing that’s just stupid like oh sorry, that’s just stupid. Yeah, weight means nothing.

Polly Mertens: 9:44

And I know people say these things, but like we mean it, it’s reality, it’s the truth. Diets don’t work and the number on the scale has nothing to do with your health or your well-being or your value as a person or your beauty as a person Nothing, yeah. So maybe they need to hit pause right now and just digest that for a hot minute. Okay, all right. Number two understanding that your mental and your emotional health are linked to your eating habits and your nutritional profile. These two things work together. So no judgment, positive or negative, there. But your mental and emotional state is linked and the health of those entities is linked to your physical health and therefore what you eat, your nutritional profile and how you eat and things like that impact your mental and emotional state. That feels empowering to me.

Samantha Pruitt: 10:45

Well, you know and this was just one little eye opener for me when I went through my hypnotherapy training, one of the things that we were trained on around anxiety and helping people heal anxiety and not have anxiety attacks and all this stuff is freaking blood sugar. People do not understand the link between what you’re putting in your body and the blood sugar, like I used to have a friend friend she had huge anxiety attacks.

Samantha Pruitt: 11:06

She was one of those ones that would go to starbucks get the fufu, whatever with the big whipped creamy crap, crap I’m like, and you don’t know that that’s causing a blood sugar spike and your heart rate is probably just going through the roof. No, it’s not anxiety, it’s dysregulation of blood sugar.

Samantha Pruitt: 11:22

You know and like and caffeine response and all the things, all the things, but and she’s drinking that frap while she’s driving 80 miles an hour down the freeway way to a job she hates with her kids screaming in the back and this is a recipe for joy, not we’re, we’re making fun of it, but we make fun fun of it in the context of like no no, no, no. Like we can do better.

Polly Mertens: 11:50

We can do better, we can do better and we always laugh at things here on the Everyday Awesome Project because we’re awesome and we like to have fun, exactly Okay. So fitness is fun, food is fun. Hells, yeah. Hello, we’re into Fs. Yeah, the more, the better.

Polly Mertens: 12:16

Okay, things that affect your nutritional needs as a human being are your genes, your activity level, your age, your sex. Your age this old lady needs to eat a little differently these days your culture, your age, your sex, your age this old lady needs to eat a little differently these days your culture, your religion and your health state. If you have some health challenges and you’re up against that, changing your nutritional profile and intake is warranted. So there’s a lot of things that impact what’s going to work and what’s not going to work. What’s going to feel good, what’s not going to feel good. So all of those things are variables that change over a lifetime, never mind.

Polly Mertens: 12:51

For me personally, they change day to day, week by week. You know my training cycle is different. My hormones travel. I’m traveling. You know all the things called life that we’re all doing traveling. You know all the things called life that we’re all doing. So having consideration for all of that makes it pretty obvious that diets are a joke. They don’t work and not. Nobody should be on one thing there’s no prescription to what’s right and wrong, good or bad.

Samantha Pruitt: 13:19

Yeah, and you know it’s funny if you look back at history. Yeah, and you know it’s funny if you look back at history. Diets didn’t exist in the 1800s, the 1700s, 16, like. There’s no such thing as diet. It’s only when we started manipulating food and having an abundance of supply of it. You know, thank you lobbyists. You know the meat industry, the potato chip industry, you know whatever. Mcdonald’s yeah, like there’s so much that mega business that’s going on into these things that are pushing out chemically modified products. You know the way that they can make. You know, I remember eating Doritos when I was a teenager and being like I have to eat the whole bag.

Samantha Pruitt: 13:59

It was like it’s crack okay, what is in these things? Kind of thing? Right, I had never eaten a Dorito now, but it was like I knew it was stilating something. And food did not have that power over us in the 1960s, 1950s, you know. I mean like, yeah, you’d have a piece of cake at a birthday or you know, yeah, mom would make a special pie or something like that.

Samantha Pruitt: 14:19

But the fast food, fast consumption ease that we can put pure calories, yeah, into the body, totally like when they invented high fructose corn syrup game over. You know like people are, you know it’s it’s hard. It’s harder because of that damn invention. They can put it in a lot of things cheaply and people don’t know, you know, and so we have been under attack a little bit by our food system and whatnot. And then you marry that with a emotional context of a world that’s faster paced. We’re less connected, we’re less interconnected, there’s less religious faith supporting people’s hopefulness for the future. They’re like lost in the world.

Samantha Pruitt: 15:05

You know you create the rise of the industrial nation and success as a you know metric over people’s health and all these things. It’s like there’s a lot that’s been going on in the last 40, 50 years that have gotten things way out of balance. So why people might feel so diseased around food or disordered around eating and what to do? I mean, I still get, you know, I ask you. Sometimes I’m like, oh my God, there’s these people doing this fasting stuff. Oh my God, people are talking about these. Whatever you name it, protein. You know the latest thing.

Polly Mertens: 15:41

Yeah.

Samantha Pruitt: 15:41

It’s a lot of marketing and messages that come at us, and I think what you and I are really wanting to get across in this is we’re not choosing sides, we’re not shaming you know selling anything?

Polly Mertens: 15:53

Yeah, we just we’re selling one thing you uniqueness of the human being.

Samantha Pruitt: 15:59

we’re selling and taking back the power back. Just as we talked in that episode on fitness, it was like take back the power in your relationship with your own fitness. Like what is it for you, like for?

Polly Mertens: 16:09

me right now it’s freaking gardening.

Samantha Pruitt: 16:10

I’m having a blast, you know, in my garden Yesterday I did you grew broccoli in your own garden. I did 90 minutes of yard work last night I freaking high-fived myself. I was like I am giving up the gym, whatever, right. But like the relationship to food can feel so disjointed and what about this and what about that? And I want you to just kind of step away from the noise, right, step away from the franticness, the outside messages, the should I do this? Intuitive eating, fasting uh, you know, uh, you know. Windows uh, what about this person? Whatever. Just get calm and still a little bit you know, and take that power back and like self check-ins or with a coach or something, to really start to clear the deck of what your relationship with food can be and can look like and start to create it yourself, like as we talked about in the fitness.

Samantha Pruitt: 17:08

It was like what are my needs right now in my life, in my lifestyle? You know, like I can’t do, I don’t enjoy doing a lot of cooking for myself. I do more of my cooking in the morning and in the evening I’m like it’s gotta be simple, like I don’t have a lot of energy for the big. You know hooten show match right. So I structure things like that and I like to grow some food. Now you know it’s like what is it for you. Some people love to cook and they just take such joy in that and it’s like get after it. You know, sometimes we need a little education in what to put in the body that might be causing some inflammation, causing some dysregulation. We talked about the sugary things and substances. High fructose corn syrup causes blood sugar spikes that lead to emotional dysfunction. You know the peak and valley and I need a drink to get me back up and you know all these things that could happen. Step the hell back, man.

Polly Mertens: 18:01

Take a time out. Well, you went beautifully into number two.

Samantha Pruitt: 18:04

Oh, let’s do it, which I love that.

Polly Mertens: 18:07

Becoming aware, and I’m saying becoming connected so that’s exactly what you’re speaking to is like. How could you become aware, understand the connection to your body, how these things might be making you feel why you’re doing some behaviors versus others? What’s making it into your grocery cart and into your fridge? Are you cooking? Are you not cooking? If you’re not aware? And taking time, stepping back, clearing the decks and taking a look, how would you? You wouldn’t know. You’re just going to go on business as usual, repeating the same patterns, right the same behaviors, stuck in those ruts, if you will, around the same type of food consumption, the same type of grocery shopping. You know, all of those things that you’ve put into this giant bucket called eating and food are just on autopilot and food are just on autopilot and we do.

Samantha Pruitt: 19:12

You know one of the things I think that can happen in today’s, you know, high consumptive world, whether it’s food consumption, consuming products that we tend to, as Americans, do just a lot of consuming of work and business, and you know we’re just out there doing a lot these days.

Samantha Pruitt: 19:24

Yeah, just a lot of consuming, of work and business, and we’re just out there doing a lot these days. We like having things that we don’t have to think about. So it’s like oh, I’ve eaten the same breakfast for the same for six months or six years or whatever.

Polly Mertens: 19:34

Or I have a certain I’m laughing because when I first was on my weight loss journey, I totally did this. I was eating the same meal. I didn’t trust myself to go outside the lines. I was, you know, doing this prescribed control. You know it was a false sense of security, but nonetheless like regimented calories, all of this dysfunctional diet, mindset, behaviors, yeah.

Samantha Pruitt: 20:00

You know, and I think they have a place. You know we talked before we aired about you know we talked before we aired about. You know my experience. I’ve never been in a treatment facility but I’ve had a lot of clients who had been, so I heard a lot of the after effects and what it was like in their kind of things. And one of the things like you talked about, the structured eating. Or you know, I can’t tell you how many women reach out to me.

Samantha Pruitt: 20:19

Can I get a meal plan? Can I get a meal plan? I’m like, oh, for God’s sake, you know, but there is a time and a place, I think, for some people who it helps to slow some things down, kind of get on, so you can kind of like cruise and go OK, at least I’m not in chaos, at least I’m not at war with my body, at least I’m not disempowered around some choices, at least I’m not disempowered around some choices. Or you know what? I’m going to turn it over to this little meal plan that somebody has helped me thoughtfully prepare and I’m going to follow this so I can just get my training wheels on as I start to ride this bike for a little while and then I’ll feel regulated more in my body and in my nervous system. I’ll feel like I’m doing this, you know, like I start to get little wins, like okay, and then I’ll make some new choices later. You know, I don’t recommend meal plans for, you know, long-term, or forever, for sure, I think. Or calorie counting, yeah.

Samantha Pruitt: 21:16

Now, just like you know, like, for example you know, you and I both in our training for sport we do some nutrition planning as well. Right, it’s like, oh, I need you know things like that. So there’s times when it makes great sense. But when you’re not training, I know you don’t do the same protocol. I know you don’t do the amount of like mental masturbation around, like what am I eating every day? Like no, right, there’s a time and a place for stuff like that.

Polly Mertens: 21:43

Yeah, and as long as those things come without judgment, and we’ll get into that, but yeah, as long as those things don’t run you. So I use the word connected because to me it’s very, very important that the human, whether it be me or any other human it, starts to know thyself, right, what’s going on with their body. I personally had nutrition and digestive issues, and I have an autoimmune disease, and that happens to directly be linked to what I put in my mouth. So there was a very painful journey in my late twenties and I was very unhealthy and lots of crazy things were going on, um, but with my nutrition and my eating habits and my food choices, et cetera. It compounded my health problems and exasperated them to a level that was just insane, to the point where I really didn’t think I was maybe going to survive this. I didn’t know what was wrong, et cetera. Right, it was overweight, all of that stuff, but that that being said, it created more dysfunction around my eating behaviors and mindset, because food was now not just about starving myself to be thin or binging to find comfort. It was now also about this food’s actually killing me. I can’t eat all of these things because they make me sick and now I’m so sick. I’m sick all the time, every day. Food is the enemy. Wow, that was a freaking head jack and the mental and emotional suffering that went with the connectivity between the disease state and the food was incredibly painful and it took years to separate that.

Polly Mertens: 23:26

I remember the first year where I really knew I had to make some major changes to what went into my mouth.

Polly Mertens: 23:33

I was so pissed off at everything and you know you have to eat to survive, like you have to put some calories in nutrition, but I had gone through so many pendulum swings that like nothing seemed to be working and therefore I just had so much anger and resentment and fear and all these fear around food.

Polly Mertens: 23:54

And the first year was really incredibly difficult and honestly, I can’t even tell you when I flipped the switch to do it differently. Actually, now that I just said that out loud, I know when it did. You know when it really started to work for me and my perspective and my way of feeling about this body and how I fueled it was when I started to find sports, endurance sports and athletics and I shifted into a mindset of getting this physical body healthy so I could then become an athlete of some sort, you know, and so it was a very different mind shift for me, and that’s, of course, how I live now, but that’s 25 years ago now and that shift was very difficult. So I want to just show a lot of compassion. There’s probably people out there that the same thing food for them is a double-edged sword 100%.

Samantha Pruitt: 24:49

You know I can’t help. I, my mind went on a little bit of a tangent when you were talking and I’m just really present right now to something totally tangent, but I feel called to say it little woo-woo here, um, because I know you’re not alone. You know like, and I I didn’t have the destructive repercussions in my body that you felt right, from the food that I was eating, you know, and stuff like that. Mine, you know, was an emotional sort. You know all this stuff that went on my journey.

Samantha Pruitt: 25:20

But I think about the millions and millions of people in our country and probably around the world, not as much as if our food was exported back when you and I were younger, but caused by people manipulating our food system, you know, and it created this impact on us and our relationship with this body where it tore it down, like if the food hadn’t entered the food system that was, you know, ripping apart your digestive system, yeah, and creating, you know, massive blood sugar spikes and you know all these things.

Samantha Pruitt: 25:56

That people I mean the amount of people on diabetes right now just makes me so sad, right, like the food. That is like if there was a better gatekeeper and and an awareness early on. You know the amount of lives that could be saved in this broken health care system that we have. I’m just present to this really big sadness. I feel for what people not making smart choices that create food that gets into people’s bodies knowingly, maybe unwillingly you know kind of thing, and then their lives get on this downward spiral and a lot of humans aren’t aware enough.

Samantha Pruitt: 26:36

I know, you know, for gosh my parents, you know I would. My dad used to drink a two liter of pepsi, I think, a day.

Polly Mertens: 26:45

No, oh, yeah, okay, plenty of people were doing that in the 80s and even 90s.

Samantha Pruitt: 26:49

Yeah, my dad used to drink a two liter of pepsi a day like, and had no idea and I didn’t know. You know, as a kid you know, growing up watching him do that.

Samantha Pruitt: 26:58

I had no idea, you know I mean I knew the smoking he was doing wasn’t helping. I mean, like we knew then smoking, you know whatever but like the sugar and the pepsis and and all these things, and it’s like he wasn’t aware he couldn’t prevent it from getting into my body. You know, my mom, whatever you know, and my mom’s still unaware, you know, still like good to do, eating, you know whatever. I just wanted to say that, like, the amount of life impact these things have is just Well. You said the key word awareness.

Polly Mertens: 27:31

Yeah, so we have an awareness. Now the information is available free, online or whatever. Pick up a book, read you know, listen to a podcast. There’s a lot of information available to us. I think what’s so calling in this moment that we’re bringing shining a light on is, you know, become aware. You are the experiment of one. You’re N1. You’ve got to figure out this. I had to figure out what is going to heal this person, never mind being pissed off about how I got here and all the pain and suffering and who might be to blame and whatever.

Samantha Pruitt: 28:07

Get back in the driver’s seat.

Polly Mertens: 28:09

Get back in the driver’s seat, take ownership and agency over this one body and this life and make a choice to okay. At that point I wasn’t even 30, yet Am I? Is this how it’s going to go? And of course, that’s what Western medicine said is basically, this is how it is You’re going to live. No, no, just no. I mean to me it was basically I would have just signed my own death certificate, right? Literally that’s what they were. Oh yeah, that’s insane. I mean it’s totally insane. So you can any day become more informed about yourself and your own body. How does my body work? How do the organs work? How does the brain and the body work together? What happens with my blood sugar? When I do that, like you, can become a nerd. You don’t have to be a crazy nerd. You know information junkie like me. But you know the science is always changing and I’m fascinated by it. It is always changing, but you can get to know yourself and become aware about this one precious body that you have, right.

Samantha Pruitt: 29:13

And you know, one of the tests I I think that, um, I think you asked me off air you know, like about mindful eating or whatever, and I just want to insert this right now is like the test for should I be eating this Like as you eat it, like, do you feel a little shame about?

Polly Mertens: 29:26

what you’re about to put in your body.

Samantha Pruitt: 29:28

Do you feel a little sneaky about what you’re you know? Are you hiding what you’re about to put in your body from other people? Like, if you know, if you were sitting at a party, would you want people to know like you’re eating that, or as much of that as you are you know? Then you’re probably already aware, right?

Polly Mertens: 29:45

You’re just not, you know, taking care of yourself right, and I would say that because that wasn’t my experience, but I completely understand where you’re going. For me it was am I aware, when I eat the thing or drink the thing or whatever is happening with my food and nutrition, what’s happening? Immediately I would get flushed, I would get rashes, I would get constipated and then the next day I’d have diarrhea. I mean, literally. These things were so glaringly obvious how my body was responding to the things going into my mouth, and how could I ignore that?

Polly Mertens: 30:24

I did, by the way, ignore that for many years, which is kind of mind boggling. But once I became very aware and awake I was like holy shit, that thing immediately made me feel bloated, immediately gave me gas, immediately gave me a flush redneck immediately Like. These responses were quick. Yeah, and I couldn’t ignore them anymore.

Samantha Pruitt: 30:47

Yeah, some can be and some can be silent, but you know they can kind of be just, you know, ticking away at parts of the body, the inflammation a little bit here and there. But yeah, so I think we’re kind of talking about similar but two different. You know, checking in with yourself, how is this food going into my body? Like you may be eating that piece of food and feel totally fine eating it, like, oh, this looks like something that I would, you know, be happily, yeah, I could eat this but my body says a different story. That’s, that’s one way of knowing right, like, holy cow, I’ve got to go to the bathroom, you know. Or the bloating distension.

Polly Mertens: 31:22

Yeah, and now I mentioned you know I have this mindset about eating as an athlete would, but me myself not. Other athletes are not a comparison model, but so i’m’m I’m concerned about you know, how did I fuel and what was my performance physically and also my brain function and whatever. And it’s very obvious, if you do fuel for a workout or you don’t, you know I went through all the crazy fasted.

Samantha Pruitt: 31:47

Tell people what that means, cause I don’t think people who, and I don’t know if anybody cares, but like you and I know, when you’re not fueled uh, literally, for the workout, what does that look like? What are you talking about?

Polly Mertens: 31:58

Yeah, so quick. Uh, side. Tangential here too is, um, and being a post menopausal 55 year old female, my fueling has changed radically, for performance as well. But I went through all the fads of, like you know, fasted workouts and fat adaptation I was an ultra runner, all of these things that were like hot and sexy. I’ve tried all the crazy things, girl, but what we’re saying here and none of them work, by the way but what we’re seeing here specifically is that the human body to requires nutrition, energy, okay, fats, carbohydrates, all of these different fuel sources, protein, of course in order to function. There’s lots of functions that are happening all the time in the body, for the body to stay in homeostasis, to stay in a healthy form. So when you require more from it physical activity as an example of what we’re saying here so when you require more from it physical activity as an example of what we’re saying here the demands the increase in demand is naturally going to occur.

Samantha Pruitt: 32:58

Right, so what she’s talking about is bonking.

Polly Mertens: 33:04

Like you know, one of the things that you experience is bonking. Women are famous for under fueling.

Samantha Pruitt: 33:06

Yeah, so you go out on a run or something and you get past the amount of fuel let’s say that your body has on board.

Polly Mertens: 33:14

And depending on the level of exertion, the fuel source is different.

Samantha Pruitt: 33:18

So for me. Here’s an example of what this looked like. This was a dehydration one. This was the first day of Trans Rockies in Colorado.

Samantha Pruitt: 33:27

It’s the warmer of the days, right A little less Like 9,000 feet elevation yeah, a little less hill climbing, but good distance, but it’s a little less. Like 9 000 feet elevation yeah, a little less hill climbing, but well, you know, good, good distance, but it’s a little dry, whatever. So I made the mistake of uh, you know, I had my little backpack on with all my little snacks and it had a water bladder and I’m cruising along, you know, I feel like I got enough water and I think it was the first aid station or the second aid station, can’t remember what mile. Maybe it was like the third aid station, so I think it was about 16 or 18 miles that day, up and down hills and pretty hills, you mean mountains, right, not these weren’t the worst ones, these mild mountains, compared to what was the next day and the next day.

Samantha Pruitt: 34:06

But, um, yeah, so that’s why I’m saying mild mountains, um, but the temperature it was warmer, right, so you go, you were sweating a lot more that first day and I got past the second aid station and I think I was chatty. Cathy, at that aid station, did not refill my bladder, get within about two or three miles to the next aid station and almost could not lift my legs Like the pistons of my legs that need to get me up and down. It was like it was just like this. I was like I’m slowing down we can laugh about it now.

Polly Mertens: 34:48

It wasn’t funny at the time.

Samantha Pruitt: 34:49

Oh my god, it’s scary fucking freaking out, it’s scary, I was like, and you know, because I had been, you know, kind of trying to do this balance, you know I’m not gonna go too much, you know god bless people, you know, but it’s a. It’s a balance of electrolytes and water and so I take in a little too many electrolytes and not enough water and the imbalance created this friction, whatever, and so, literally, so I was like and I was so embarrassed to ask people for water, but I knew I wasn’t, I knew I didn’t know if I was going to make it, literally did not know if I was going to make it to the next aid station. This gal came up next. Like two or three people had passed me and I was like I’m gonna have to ask somebody for some water. I I’m not like these legs are just gonna lock up like that’s how it, they will.

Polly Mertens: 35:30

They literally will yeah.

Samantha Pruitt: 35:31

So this gal gave me a little bit of you know shared a little water. I was like I felt so embarrassed but my God, you know I’m dying here, bonking whatever. Start to feel it coming into my body a little bit. I drug my ass into the next aid station, got down on the ground and the nurse was like I had salt crystals. I was like I’m so dead. She’s like little over, you know, because I had been you know just so much salt anyway. So that’s just what when you’re not feeling properly, like the body knows and tells we got a little tangential, sorry, but oh my gosh, it’s fun.

Polly Mertens: 36:06

This is our show it’s fun that’s right but we’ve done some really stupid things. That’s why we like to talk about it and it’s hilarious. But I mean, the point is like we’ve learned a lot from our mistakes. Yeah and uh, you know we’re still alive. Yeah, I mean, I’ve done some things for sure, hydration and nutritionally, and extreme stuff where I thought I might not make it out of this life, but somehow here I am. Anyway, the point is, the demands of the body are always changing, okay, and so what someone else is doing, either other athletes or other people or other family members or other, what the hell does that have to do with what I need, based on my personal body? So, really, that’s the drive home point, which which we’ve, you know, banged it with a hammer, of course, become aware and become connected. Okay, there’s a lot of information. Inform myself.

Polly Mertens: 37:04

Number three I think you’re an expert at this Release. Guilt shame, this release. Guilt shame.

Samantha Pruitt: 37:22

Judgment of yourself and others. Okay, and others. Explanation point underlined okay, wikipedia, you need that. You need to explain guilt and shame. Give us those definitions before we begin. Yeah, you know, bourbon, a brown. This is so good yeah.

Polly Mertens: 37:33

So they are different, right. So shame is that really deep, deep stuff that a lot of us carry around and hopefully we have worked to release it temporarily, hopefully, yeah, yeah. So guilt is like I’ve done something wrong, so I’ve made a mistake, I’ve made a bad choice, I feel guilty about it, but I’m not a bad person, whereas shame is I am wrong, I am broken, there’s something wrong with me. It’s that very deep, deep, underbelly stuff.

Samantha Pruitt: 38:13

Yeah, for sure, and that leads to all sorts of self-loathing, that leads into other disordered behaviors, right. You know, coping yeah, yeah so addiction, self-abuse, so say that again. What was it Releasing shame, guilt? What was the one?

Polly Mertens: 38:28

Judgment of yourself and others around food and eating. It’s crazy how much of this there is flying around in the universe. We need to, we need to really reign this and all of us as individuals for ourselves, but society as a whole.

Samantha Pruitt: 38:43

Well, I think, you know, we’re in such an Instagram culture TikTok and Instagram and you know, you know the runway and all that stuff. It’s like what is being served and I’m just going to speak to women here. I know that men feel this in some degrees as well. So, um, but you know the categorical female body, or what it’s supposed to look like, or what they, you know, march across. You know videos or magazines. We just need to realize that that’s just selling magazines, that’s just selling advertisements.

Polly Mertens: 39:16

Right, it’s not selling well-being I would say it’s selling self-loathing comparison.

Samantha Pruitt: 39:25

You know stacking up, uh, you know helping realize what percentage of the population actually looks like any of those people and the rest of us cares yeah yeah, like, why did we even deem that those attributes were valuable?

Samantha Pruitt: 39:40

you know who said. I know, I said survival instinct in some cases, I think, is a culprit, if you will. But I, you know, and I also wrote this really long blog one time about I call her Miss Perfect, right? It’s this little nasty voice. We have females, especially in our head, you know, and it’s we’re never enough, we never do enough, we’re never pretty enough, skinny enough, rich enough, tall enough, whatever. You know, like she’s always judging who we are. Right, we have to put her in a little compartment and she has a little say. Because you know what, that little inner critic, she’s nasty but she’s probably not going away, right, and it’s having a new relationship with that voice and, however, it wants to shame you or whatever, because I don’t truly believe that a human soul and human spirit inside of us shames ourselves.

Samantha Pruitt: 40:30

I don’t think we ever guilt ourselves, we shame ourselves, we feel bad about ourselves? I don’t think we ever guilt ourselves. We shame ourselves, we feel bad about ourselves. It’s the critic that we, let you know, we’ve programmed into our mind. It’s probably some programming from behaviors of people that were around us when we were growing up and when we can set aside that, that’s that shame and that guilt. Oh, that’s just a thought I’m having, or that’s that, miss Perfect, in my head, or that’s the inner critic that I don’t need to listen to. That train of thought, right, like, oh yeah, I’m going to hear it, but I’m the one who’s listening. I’m not it. Who I am is the soul and the spirit that’s so much more and so much bigger than this little voice in my head. She doesn’t control me.

Polly Mertens: 41:09

I call it the evil twin. Everybody has an evil twin and I told you the other day I was out on a long run and I started. Oh everything hurts, it’s not going to go well and this is awful. And I got to be out here half the day, all these crazy things in my head, and then I was like who was talking?

Polly Mertens: 41:28

I’m listening to this person and I was like, oh, I think I just switched the voice and started having different messaging. Oh, this is going to be fine, doesn’t matter how long I take, I’m going to go slow, I’m going to look around, I’m going to enjoy the beauty, right, it’s so fascinating. But that’s that evil twin. You know dichotomy. Then the other thing is like but that’s that evil twin, you know dichotomy. Then the other thing is like. You mentioned other people. So the amount of influence, other external humans family members, loved ones, partners, girlfriends, peer groups, whatever children influence our eating habits and our relationship with food.

Samantha Pruitt: 42:19

Boundaries. Dude, this is a big boundary conversation.

Polly Mertens: 42:22

If you’re doing some weird shit. I mentioned eating little debbies on the sofa. I mean, what the hell? Plastic wrapped ho-ho, twinkie do-da.

Samantha Pruitt: 42:33

Tell the story, cause this one shows up a lot in the coaching that I used to do around, the mom who was coaching or was shaming her daughter, her adult daughter we were talking about.

Polly Mertens: 42:42

Yeah, yeah, one of my coaching clients was having a breakthrough about something completely unrelated but what came through in our conversation as she was talking about some things she experienced instantly. She had this wash over her of guilt and shame around feeling she used the F word fat while she was doing a particular activity and how she was being viewed and seen. And she realized that all of that was coming back to a childhood experience that was now becoming back in her life a relationship with her mother. When she was young, her mother would say you have to be healthy, strong, you know would push the food and then now that she’s skinny because she used to call her skinny.

Samantha Pruitt: 43:30

You’re too skinny, little girl. You’re too skinny. You need to put on weight right because she used to call her skinny. You’re too skinny, little girl. You’re too skinny. You need to put on weight right.

Polly Mertens: 43:35

Mom, influencing what Yep Keep going Okay Now that she’s mid forties and entering menopausal years and all that kind of stuff, and a little bit heavier and it’s been less active it doesn’t matter.

Polly Mertens: 43:46

Yeah, two children, businesses, all of this amount of responsibility and stress. Her body looks differently, of course it does. She’s gorgeous, I mean seriously. But she went to do this event and felt very uncomfortable in the outfit she was wearing spandex as a thing at these events and realized that her mom, who’s back in her life now, was still having a conversation with her about food, but this time her mom was telling her she’s fat, whoa. And here’s this grown, adult woman now raising children of her own. I mean, she wants to break the cycle, you know, and it was a really powerful moment for her to recognize this messaging that she had been receiving and she said that’s it. I will no longer tolerate being treated this way, being talked to this way, being put down and judged this way. I don’t want to judge myself this way. I don’t want to be judged this way and I don’t want to judge anyone. Stop, I’m putting an end to it.

Samantha Pruitt: 44:44

Good, good. All of this conversation, no matter what you get out of this, is taking your power back right. Food is what you’re putting into your body. That is a choice. If you’re mindful enough, you know as a choice. So take the power back, clear the deck. Don’t let other people’s behavior you know.

Samantha Pruitt: 45:01

One of the ones that just bugs me I’ve not been in this scenario myself, so I’m a little bit judgy about it is the people who make to me the excuse or the reason why they’re not eating the way that they want to eat. Well, I live with this person, or I have to do the cooking, or they, you know, or this, and I’m just like all this finger pointing and I’m just like hold up, does that person put that food literally in your mouth? And I’m like no, you, you know. So. It’s like and I know it can be more work for some people you know like oh, I gotta feed the kids. I know it can be more work for some people. You know like oh, I got to feed the kids, I just eat what the kids eat, or something like that. I’m like I’m sorry, that’s a pretty low quality excuse in my book. You’re worth more than that.

Polly Mertens: 45:42

Well, it’s a sign of giving up your power. And an example for me is when I had to radically change my nutritional program to get healthy nevermind lose weight and all these other things just to get my health back. I had to radically change the whole nutrition, and you know what was happening in the house, and, of course, I have children and I have a spouse and I have all of these things Right, and so there was some steep learning curves, but, most importantly, I had to continue every day setting my own boundaries and stepping up for myself. Well, these are what what I need. So I’m going to be meeting these needs, and I was going to say your, your hair is making a little.

Polly Mertens: 46:27

I have a wild hair.

Samantha Pruitt: 46:30

I was just hearing a little rubby rubby, so thank you for doing that, my dear yeah.

Polly Mertens: 46:33

So I hear you and I have been there too. I think it’s really important for people to decide what is going to work for them. So the flip side of what you were saying, and what I want to actually add to that, is that it’s not my job to convince the other what they should be eating. Even I have children, I have grandchildren. Okay, now, when they come to eat with me and they’re in my home, they’re going to be eating what I’m cooking and it’s going to be happening according to my grocery shopping and my habits. But whatever they’re doing over there, it’s not my job to change that. And if a mother type or a father type or somebody who feels a sense of responsibility for others, in whatever dynamic, even at work you know, in workplaces people bring food in and there’s just food sharing that happens a lot or going out to lunch together the other person’s doing them.

Samantha Pruitt: 47:32

You need to be busy doing you and stop yeah, and it can feel like some pressure.

Samantha Pruitt: 47:39

You know it can feel it can feel pressuring, it can feel intimidating, it can feel isolating a little bit. I remember, you know, when I was first I remember at 18, I wanted to be vegetarian because I felt so much for the animals I have studied a lot in the mistreatment of animals and all of a sudden I was like, oh my God, I can’t. I can’t eat animals. And then trying to eat around my family without eating what they were eating. There was a lot of discomfort and know it was awkward and whatnot. And I think we’ve come a long way right, but I think it’s fortitude in yourself. Like this is a relation, like your body is yours to take care of for the duration you, you came into it and you’re going to leave with it, and how you take care of it is up to you. And if you give that power over to well, this person and that person and uncomfortable here hold up. You’re solely responsible for this little, this meat sack that you’ve got here.

Polly Mertens: 48:40

And you’re going to have to explain yourself and you do not have to prove your worth to the other. Well, I’m going to, you know, pick something different for dinner. For example, if I go to a family function, especially in the beginning of changing my nutrition, I’m eating completely different meal than everyone else. They want an explanation, polly, yeah, right. And when we’re in training, to explain how awesome I am, what I need, or when I’m in training and I’m next level, like doing whatever, yeah.

Samantha Pruitt: 49:11

I’m not going out to eat at that food, Like I’m going this weekend. So the text chain has started with my college girlfriends. One of them, I think, listens to this, so this will be funny when I see her. Oh, awesome, Awesome, Okay. So you know, they’re like what should we make? And this, and that, you know, and they, you know, and they. Sorry, you know, this is super compartmentalized, you know, but I swim in the organic and you know I have preferences for the amount of food.

Samantha Pruitt: 49:38

you’re growing your own food and, yeah, the plants that I eat and stuff like that, and they’re a little more comfortable with a little more let’s call it mainstream America food and whatnot and and so it’s like we show up to these.

Samantha Pruitt: 49:48

We meet once a year, you know, for a little college girl get togethers and you know they’re like throwing around a recipe of this and that and you know and, and I know I don’t want any of it, I’m just like and there’s no part of me that is like, well, maybe I should eat what they’re eating, or it’s like you guys might want to look at what I’m eating. That’s what I want to say, but I don’t go in there with that either. I don’t. I’m just like you eat what you’re going to eat and I’m going to eat what I’m going to eat. And if there’s a meeting in the middle, you know, if you’re meeting with mixed households or you know preferences or something like that, like, sort it all out, but please do not give up the care for your body to the reason that somebody else in your life will say something or look a certain way, or okay, yeah, Like no, it’s your responsibility, take care of it.

Polly Mertens: 50:44

Well, that’s a full circle moment for us to close this thing out, because the show is about making peace.

Samantha Pruitt: 50:51

Yeah well, we have some things to say about that, so we’re not done yet. Oh, no, no, no, we have not said enough about making peace with yourself I know I mean so true because you know I I just want to say you know when we started talking about and we should have recorded the first you know hour or whatever we talked before we got on here, Because the real point is Paula.

Samantha Pruitt: 51:13

Well it’s not about the food the mentions that I saw, the people who came through my door, if you will, of struggles with this, struggles with that, you know, in the psychology world or in the medical field, they say the presenting condition is what? How they language it. They say presenting condition Well, and then they discover, you know. So that’s like a way of saying you go into your doctor and you tell them your symptoms I got a runny nose and some bumps on my neck or you know, or my tummy’s distended or whatever, and it’s like, well, that’s not the cause of things, that’s your presenting conditions, right, you know. And it’s like what’s behind that? And in all my years of eating disorder coaching, if I had to sum it up, where I am today and how I look at what helped me and what helps I think people is not so much focusing on food. It is about your relationship with food, making peace with food. But the underlying is, if you have a disordered relationship with yourself, if you’re not trusting yourself, if you’re not taking good care of yourself, if you’re not at peace with thyself, there’s going to be big and small manifestations of that, the symptoms of how your body looks, the way that you’re treating it, the decisions that you choose in the food, the coping mechanisms that you lean towards to, you know, suffice when you’re not dealing with emotional dysregulation in your life. At the heart of it is the peace you have with yourself. And if you can remember that state of peace because you, you know you and I were saying you’re like I don’t, I don’t have issues with you, know this and that and what I mean, and I was like, yeah, because you’re so at peace with yourself, samantha, you know, and I’m at peace with myself and who I am, right, not like boastful, but like we generally, like who we are, we, we recognize our flaws and our mistakes and our imperfect, beautiful imperfectness. Right, and when people get so microscopically focused or myopically focused on should I eat this, should I eat that? I need to do whatever? Um, I think it is a distraction. I think it’s a emotional distraction or an avoidance technique from maybe something else in your life that you haven’t picked up in the dark parts of your soul, in your closet, need some attention. You know something you may want to look at and it’s not usually solved easily like, oh, I’ll cut back on my sodium, sodium, you know. Or maybe I’ll add a little more protein in my diet. It’s usually not the work that’s necessary.

Samantha Pruitt: 53:54

So if you are having a not peaceful relationship with food, I think the core is where may you be out of peace with yourself? Where do you maybe need to make some peace with boundaries? Right, we talked about that. Self-love, self-care, self-compassion, self-trust, self-worth, you know all self-identity, like all of these dimensions of self, underlying cause or the underlying root of what will symptomatically show up as a disordered behavior food, alcohol, whatever, any other sorts of misbehaving. Let’s call it.

Samantha Pruitt: 54:38

So if we can do the work, the actual work, and know that, you know, maybe I, maybe it is because I need to eat more vegetables, and maybe it is I’m eating too many candy bars in the day or whatever. But what’s really going on there, you know, is it because I’m avoiding something that I don’t want to look at? So I just wanted to say that, so that I think that’s my underlying core message in a make peace with food is it’s a under a high level symptom. That underneath is probably pointing to something that my gosh, I hope you will address so that it’s not 40 years of a relationship you have that’s disordered with food. It, it can end and you can heal whatever it is. Maybe that’s not healed inside of you make peace with yourself.

Samantha Pruitt: 55:27

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and get help and do the work. And you know, stillness and quiet in those moments when we’re reaching for something outside of ourselves. You know, I find myself, you know, a little frantic in the afternoon. Still, you know, and I want to reach for something to calm me down or whatever, and it’s like like hold up, hold up. I know it’s like I’m spinning myself out. I need to get in my garden, I need to lay on my bed, I need to pet my cat and whatever, not as a distraction, but I need to settle myself down. I’m not at peace with myself in this moment. That’s why I want to ingest something Exactly.

Samantha Pruitt: 56:08

Exactly, that was beautifully said. Thanks for that rant. I just needed to. That’s the truth, girl. Yeah, I just didn’t want to wrap up before I got off my chest. Thank you Thank you Sweet.

Polly Mertens: 56:23

So what do we want to do in our closure today?

Samantha Pruitt: 56:29

What do we want to tell these people? Well, I just want to tease, because one of the things we’ve been talking about so stay tuned, because I know we’re going to talk about this, is one of our upcoming episodes is going to be about life as art. Oh yeah, right, so stay tuned, like get excited about that. So that turns me on, like the conversations we’ve been having in the background about that. So, but yes, you start us off with our reminder.

Polly Mertens: 56:46

We will never run out of topics. It’s hilarious and I remember in the beginning we’re like make a list of all the things we’re going to talk about. And I’m like, oh please, girl, I don’t care I mean we got our clients and our own life and the media.

Polly Mertens: 57:01

We are not going to run out of topics anytime soon. We have a few things to say, oh, yeah, okay. So for me, what I want to say is something I keep saying. Are they listening, though? Are they listening? Hey, humans, how your life feels is more important than how it looks.

Samantha Pruitt: 57:23

And every day is your opportunity to find your awesome.