Paige Stonerock: Finding Consistency and Freedom in Recovery

Prepare to embark on the extraordinary journey of Paige Stonerock, a trauma survivor who defied all odds and took control of her health. This episode invites you to listen closely as Paige candidly shares her inspiring story of determination, resilience, and healing. Having battled obesity and a myriad of health conditions, Paige turned her life around losing 170 pounds and putting multiple progressive autoimmune diseases, mental illness, PCOS, pre-diabetes, and fatty liver disease into remission, all through an abstinence-based recovery model.

Paige's transformation wasn't an overnight miracle, it came from consistently focusing on building sustainable habits and making the necessary sacrifices. She sheds light on the importance of meeting people where they are on their journey and how externalizing motivation was instrumental in her recovery. Paige candidly discusses the initial struggle to make her recovery program a priority and how, when she was in chaos with food, her life was equally in chaos. 

The episode concludes by exploring Paige's holistic approach to personal wellness and how it has played a crucial role in her recovery from addiction. Her journey underscores the importance of food control, self-care, and the need to celebrate the positive moments. It’s a powerful reminder that recovery is not just about making changes, but about finding joy, simplifying life, and reclaiming control over health and happiness. So, tune in for an episode filled with invaluable insights and inspiration straight from Paige's remarkable journey.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

Welcome to the Kicks Sugar Coat podcast. Join me each week as I interview experts who will share the science of sugar, sugar addiction and different approaches to recovery. We hope to empower you with the information and inspiration, insights and strategies you need to break up with sugar and fall in love with healthy, whole foods so you can prevent and reverse chronic disease, lose weight, boost your mood and energy. Feel free to go to my website for details on my coaching programs and to access free resources KicksSugarCoachcom. Welcome everybody. I have with me today Paige, who is very generously agreed to share her story of recovery from sugar addiction, food addiction, and I'll just do a quick little bio. If, literally, it could take me 15 minutes to capture the highlights of this fascinating woman's fascinating life, because she's had so many different careers, I'll hit you up with a few highlights.

Speaker 1: 1:02

Here she has been. She spent a decade in broadcast journalism and then she did a decade in nursing. She worked in a diabetes research lab. She was in a genetics lab studying circadian rhythms. She's worked for international nonprofits around coordinated disasters oh my goodness. She's a certified end of life care doula. She's also a birth doula. She's a health and wellness coach I mean, I could literally go on. She's also an RN and she's currently getting board certified in lifestyle medicine, holistic nursing. The bottom line is, as we are in the midst of a woman who, not just personally but professionally, really understands trauma. She's a trauma survivor. She understands obesity. She was morbidly obese. She has lost 170 pounds. She has put multiple progressive autoimmune diseases into remission, mental illness into remission, pcos into remission, pre-diabetes fatty liver disease into remission, all through an abstinence-based addiction model that has recreated a habit-based lifestyle for her that has created massive transformation and she's here to share her story with us today. Welcome, paige.

Speaker 2: 2:18

Hi, thanks so much for having me here and letting me share that story.

Speaker 1: 2:23

My pleasure yeah.

Speaker 2: 2:25

Go ahead. Well, first of all, I want to say that I am a survivor of trauma. I am not recovered. I am actively choosing every day to work on a recovery program. I am somebody who morbid obesity or excess adiposity, morbid obesity, whatever that you want to call it is something that I will battle for the rest of my life. It is a journey. It is not a goal, it is not a something I get to say. I have attained this ever, but we don't ever get to with anything in life right, and that doesn't bring happiness. So I think I just wanted to start with saying that, yes, I'm a survivor and I'm choosing to do this, and to the point where I did spend the first decade of my early adulthood like from age 18 to my late 20s living on disability, learning, you know, with PTSD and crippling depression, and I've struggled with excess adiposity my entire life. I became a lifetime member of Weight Watchers in fifth grade Wow, my parents sent me off to a fat camp. I'll just call it that. That's terrible.

Speaker 2: 3:46

And in high school I found anorexia and food restriction as a way that worked to give me a sense of control over my body, and it worked until I ended up in the hospital at 83 pounds and in adulthood, you know, or after that, I really I ate my way back into the hospital I ballooned to my highest weight, well over 300 pounds, while I was seeing a functional medicine specialist for obesity and autoimmune diseases. And you know, by age 40, I was, I say I was collecting autoimmune diseases like trinkets. I was trying to leave an abusive marriage. I was living in constant pain and I felt buried alive in my body, just always in pain and separated from life, like I was watching life happen over there on the bench and I didn't feel like I had any control over my body or over life, which felt very unfair. I did eventually leave that relationship and that winter I thought I got my freedom. I took back my life, moved into my own home and I was seeing this functional medicine specialist and I met with a bariatric surgeon to finally address these things. But I and I didn't have bariatric surgery, but I kept ballooning in weight and I went through. I got very sick. I went through pneumonia, two rounds of pancreatitis, my gallbladder ruptured and I just was in constant pain and I lost my job in nursing over being just constantly sick, swimming through that brain fog and fatigue all the time.

Speaker 2: 5:36

Well, a friend took me out to lunch for my 40th birthday and told me about a program that she had been doing and I had watched her lose weight and get really healthy in a really healthy way on this abstinence based program, giving up sugar and flour and building health through habits. And I was so impressed with her. But when she talked to me about the program, I like told her to take a cult somewhere else. Like the sugar, alcohol, flour, these are the things that bring joy to my life in an unfair world and I was not walking away from them and my community identity was as a liberal libationer and with the foodie groups and being experimental that way. But I didn't realize that exactly what she was talking about, that I needed to surrender to a total system of addressing health in a holistic way in an abstinence based program through habits, was exactly what I needed. So I told her to go take it somewhere else and that summer my divorce trial kind of came to a head.

Speaker 2: 6:53

We had the actual trial and that was really a big point of transformation for me in that my entire world shattered. Like I had domestic abuse substantiated but it was considered irrelevant to economic concerns, and I wasn't granted the legal right to move my son to town for accredited public schools and resources and having a village and all the things I thought were important values. I really learned the reality because I was reprimanded for trying to drag my child across state lines, out of God's country and all of those things, and I was sued for gaining weight. I was sued for not fulfilling spousal duties and it just my family and friends didn't show up to save me. It was me and the family law system in our society wasn't fair and that same. About a month later I received a terminal diagnosis of autoimmune liver disease, and so it just was sort of a realization that the world I was in was unfair and it was in that return to feeling a victimhood, of feeling like a complete loss of control, and I think it triggered quite a bit of reaching back out to food for coping, sugar and flour especially. And that addiction-based program to battling obesity came back in with some science information and so I joined the program for weight loss.

Speaker 2: 8:40

But what I really learned was that habits and surrendering to that system that really does kind of encompass the holistic picture of wellness through habits, gave me agency over my own actions and it gave me, and it taught me that that's all I have control over. I don't control the unfair world I live in. I don't get to change it. At this time. I choose to keep living despite that, despite what's going on around me, and committing to one action a day and following through with that, no matter what. Just committing to a shoeing flour, sugar, committing to the four rules of this program and a priority action each day, writing that commitment down, committing it to another person and then the next day following up, no matter what. That built integrity.

Speaker 2: 9:35

And I didn't have that when I came out of that divorce and it made me realize that I can be, or am the person that does show up and does follow through with things and I do have control over my actions and nothing else. But none of us do. I realize I come from a place of entitlement, but in some ways. But I am still doing this thing like everybody else. So over the next two years I did work.

Speaker 2: 10:10

This program shed 170 pounds, reverse terminal liver disease, cured fatty liver and PCOS, brought multiple progressive autoimmune diseases into remission.

Speaker 2: 10:21

You know, one step at a time.

Speaker 2: 10:25

And now we're over five years later here and I am seeing that it's not ooh, I got to some finish line and I'm done it is. You know, we learn in this circular fashion and as I face trauma in a different way, I'm in, you know, trauma therapy and working on a few things and as I learn to deal with those, the inclination to jump back into old coping habits is really strong, and we learn in this circular pathway. So I do see, you know, a little bit of weight gain coming back. I have been struggling more recently with the old autoimmune stuff, with migraines and in the heat this summer and things that I'm more sensitive to. But it's not a failure or a backslide. It's kind of part of this journey, because now I'm not facing trauma as a victim. I'm just, you know, susceptible to old habits that I have spent a lifetime building, you know, this riverbed of habits. So that's where I'm at is just trying to really appreciate those things and knowing I can step back in to the habits one day at a time.

Speaker 1: 11:47

Right, right, right. So what you're saying is that you, when we think about weight loss, when we enter into recovery for food issues, from the perspective I just want to lose weight so I can check that off on my to-do list and call that done and I can just move on with my other problems? Right, we have a beautiful awakening. We realize, oh no, oh, there is no finish line. If I'm hearing you correctly, you call it beautiful. I know it's a journey of discovery of who I am and my thoughts and what do I need, and my trauma, and how do I keep healing and how do I keep showing up for life, not as a victim, but as a woman who chooses to live. And when life's stuff comes up, how do I meet this? Without turning back to the food, without turning back to those old comforts? How do I keep bringing new tools, new awareness, new presence, new strength, new resources, new friendships, new connections to these problems? Right, so I don't go back.

Speaker 2: 12:53

Well, and the other thing that really sucks that I learned really quickly is that you know you think you set this up, you have this connection point, you have this community, you have you set up what we call the mastermind groups or a buddy accountability person or and that's a whole other topic and then life changes for them, or this changes, and you don't have that. You have to continually work at every single part of it. So it's kind of embracing that, yeah.

Speaker 1: 13:23

And it is absolutely a journey.

Speaker 2: 13:24

It's a continuation and it doesn't ever you don't ever get to a point where you get to say, okay, this is set up and now I can move on to this. Right, done, yeah, right, and it's okay that that's the door I came through Like. It's okay, that that's what got me in the door, and that's why it's important to me as and it's also why I feel like, because I'm surviving, I have a responsibility to support and empower other people to do the same, and why it's important to truly meet them wherever they are and respect them as the experts, wherever they come from and wherever they are.

Speaker 1: 14:05

Absolutely so. In the early days you finally think okay, I have a deadly autoimmune disease, I'm desperate enough that I'm going to even consider giving up the sugar flower and the alcohol. Talk to us about what the first couple months, or you know, let's say first three months, was like. What do you remember from five years ago what that was like when you first stepped on that path?

Speaker 2: 14:29

Well, like I said, I was completely shattered and realizing life is really unfair and I don't get what I think I deserve, like with with the divorce, with the right to leave an abusive partner, like that wasn't supported and I was really disillusioned and I was looking at going under to bariatric surgery when I could get insurance and stuff figured out, and so I never really intended to do this long term. I didn't. I was just going to try it as one last thing before I went for surgery, before I did this other thing, as I started a new job, as I, you know, I had nothing to lose, I had nowhere to go down to. I was literally laying on the floor, crying, you know, literally hit the bottom of and looking up from this bottom. Well, and that's what it felt like, and at first it felt like a lot of sacrifice. I don't get to eat this, I don't get to have sugar and flour, Well, but I'm only going to do that for now and it really and I know you said just the first few months but I want to say that it has been a continual road to realizing it's not sacrifice, it's getting to live life, it's getting to show up, it's getting to be present.

Speaker 2: 15:53

You know the habits, the things that I work on. When we practice a skill let's say I I'm going to practice a recipe so that when I'm making it the next day I'm not trying to figure out each and every part it lets me practicing it or doing or building a habit, lets you invite the rest of the experience in as part of the journey. It frees you up to have that journey and be part of the journey and be present for that journey and invite others into it. So if I practice, like I said, if I'm, if I'm going to do a recipe, if I'm the first time I'm doing it, I'm like, okay, well, if I, you know you're experimenting with every single part, you have to figure out and troubleshoot everything, but the next day, you know I can invite my son into the kitchen to make it with me and it becomes part of my life, not the entire focus of the moment. If that, if that helps like yeah, I understand it's.

Speaker 1: 16:59

It's. It's like in the early days of building habits it's a lot of work, it's a lot of focus, it's a lot of bandwidth, it's a lot of effort, it's a lot of grind, it's a lot of overwhelm, it's a lot of resentment. And then you think, if I cannot sustain this, there's no way this much of me can be tied up in just right, just just trying to get my three meals and no snacks in and like whole food, right Like I. Just there's no room for anything up. But over time what happens is, as they become habits, they literally, they literally simplify our lives so that we can actually take on. You don't know that in the beginning, but I think it's such a good thing that you said that page that it's hard, it's a grind.

Speaker 2: 17:47

You know what, like I often, and it's okay that you are focused on one thing. It's okay that, because you don't make big transformations overnight, you make them one tiny step at a time and it's not linear. And that's what I'm really coming to accept right now is crud, it's not linear. I didn't just get to come here. I have to, as I take on a new part, I have to go back and really solidify this part of the commitment or. But it's also not.

Speaker 2: 18:15

It's also it feels like such a sacrifice in the beginning, such a restriction, and the message you're going to that I got from healthcare providers. Actually, I can't say that I got a lot of support from healthcare providers on what I was doing all of the way when they heard what I was doing. But what I hear from other people are that they get told oh well, restrictive eating is not good for you and cutting out any whole food group sugar's not a food group. People, hello, it is the single most inflammatory substance we can put in our body to affect, to create depression and all sorts of things. But anyway, the the message we will get somewhere, probably from for me it was from family and such is that restricting, you're restricting, you're restricting, but you're not, you are building an opening, you are opening doors to run through later. You're creating opportunities.

Speaker 1: 19:16

I love that. Right, You're, you're, you're digging yourself out from all this weight, Right, All, all, yeah, all this weight, and then whoo, you get you burst out into the sunlight and some fresh air, and I think that's a great analogy.

Speaker 2: 19:29

Like you are just stuck in a tunnel in the beginning of abstinence. But the other thing, medically and and I'm not a doctor and I don't have any, I don't have all the initials behind my name but from my experience, the quickest way to reset ourselves cellularly, to rebuild mitochondria, to support our energy, to whatever is, is abstinence. That's why short-term fasting works. That's why, you know, total abstinence works. It's not always possible in every aspect as the first thing we do. Sometimes we have to try a lot of other things first or find our way into that, but abstinence in some form is the fastest. Just completely eschewing it is the fastest way to reset, whether it's our taste buds or anything that renews itself you know cellular turnover, anything and abstinence is the fastest way to, to, to reset the hardest and the fastest, the most effective, like the most potent.

Speaker 1: 20:37

but you got you. Yeah, you got to be ready for it and if for many people it's, it's a slow harm reduction journey that get rid of the, the sweet beverage, first, right, and then maybe they get rid of the sugar and then like, okay, I'll tackle the flower, and then maybe I'll write like and it's that journey and I love that you're saying that you meet people where they're at like. It doesn't matter where you're at your, as long as you're on the path you're heading there, you can trust the journey as you're ready to like right and I think it's important.

Speaker 2: 21:05

like I, you know people go oh well, you had already quit diet sodas and stuff. I mean, quitting diet sodas was harder than quitting smoking. But I was a. You know, I was a heavy smoker for 14 years of my life. I was. I was the fat vegan. I was not just fat vegan, I was the morbidly obese vegan. And I taught before, long before I did this journey, I taught whole food cooking. You know I I thought I was doing the. You know I have all these pictures of my son cooking stuff in the kitchen and being involved in healthy foods and growing a garden and I thought I had it together.

Speaker 2: 21:46

Sometimes it's about consistency, which is not my strong suit, as some of you with ADHD you know. I definitely fight the consistency in the habits. But you know, I've worked as a lactation consultant and it's the same thing. People, moms come and they are like I have tried everything and I cannot get my milk supply to feed my child. I have tried absolutely everything. And I say and I'm stuck and I'm desperate and I'm like I see that you have tried everything and that's exactly the problem you have, or that's exactly what you're struggling with, is that you have tried everything and you've thrown everything against the wall and nothing. No one of those things is being done at the dose with the consistency to make a difference. So let's back off, let's stop all of it, cut it all out and try one thing, you know give up one thing, try to add one thing, and it's night and day, you know.

Speaker 2: 22:45

But I think a lot of it is addressing stress, managing stress and the body's reactions To. We have that crippling fatigue in the beginning of any abstinence based program and some of that I mean people talk about detox, but I think more of it is one thing that you know physiologically. When we look at when you give up sugar, when you give and I say give up, I shouldn't use that language, I'm sorry when you walk away from sugar and you abstain from sugar, you or you would make any major dietary change, whether it's a big caloric restriction or adding a ton of fiber in your body for the first 24 hours. 48 hours can go into fight, flight or freeze every 17 minutes, and I think Dr Joan Iflund is the one who really talks about this in depth.

Speaker 2: 23:39

But we go into that crisis cycle of firing up our sympathetic system and shutting down our parasympathetic system, which is why we get constipation, why we get all these things when we add a bunch of fiber, because our body panics that we're about to go into famine. And that's the single biggest drive that we fight against for survival is fear of famine. So every 17 minutes your brain goes oh wait, we're facing famine, oh wait, we're facing famine. And goes into panic In that full panic alert every 17 minutes and then after 40 hours it kind of backs off a little bit and then after 72 hours it backs off a little bit. But we are fighting ourselves constantly, going into full fight or flight every few minutes, several times an hour for those first 10 days. That's exhausting and that depletes our resources.

Speaker 1: 24:34

And to long too. Yeah, and our willpower? Yeah, yes, yes, yes. I clearly recall back in my 12 step days there was an expression that whatever you put in front of your abstinence in the early days before it's a habit whatever you put before it, you will lose, and I remember thinking what that's so dumb, but you learn the wisdom of that and that's just taking.

Speaker 1: 24:58

Taking us back to that, that, that comment. You said that. Just one thing, right, just for now. Just narrow your focus to. I just have one job to do today to eat my three meals, no snacks, whole foods. Thank you, right. And and gosh, if the laundry doesn't get done and I kind of barely make it through my work day and my kids barely gets to bed in one piece like it's okay for today.

Speaker 2: 25:20

That's like, and that that is something I still I actually still really struggle with, because in the beginning I have a child and in the beginning, you know, it was like okay, I'm getting my life on track, I'm getting myself. So, for today, if you eat some crud cut processed crud for this meal, because I'm getting myself together, it's okay for today. But after a few years of that, it's started starts to be like okay, how can I better also bring him in? And it's a continual message that I really have to hear.

Speaker 2: 25:49

You don't get to put your recovery program on the shelves or mark it off as done and put something else in front of it. Okay, so this is in place. Now I can jump on this. It always has to come first and I have to say it's not been first most recently in my life and I'm struggling because of it. Yep, and I'm struggling to find that commitment piece and rebuild having that level of I don't like the word accountability. I say externalize motivation because I recognize with ADHD, I am strongly encouraged to show up for others and it is motivating to me to get something done, to show up. If I tell someone else I'm going to do it right. That's the motivation.

Speaker 1: 26:34

It's not accountability, because accountability is so punitive and we have enough of that Interesting, right, right, yeah, abstinence first, everything else second. And I'd be like come on, I've got a job. I was a single mom as well. When I first got absent, the first four to five years, it was just my sky, my dog, sandy, and I, and you know like, to me it was just whoo just long as everyone got to bed in one piece. I think you know, I did my, I did my job, I was, I was in survival mode. And then, all of a sudden, this program comes in with all of these demands and this is your new priority. And I'm like I don't have space for this time, for this priority. Right, like? Ain't nobody got time for all this, this work, just so that I can, you know, stay abstinent. And then you realize over time that it's such a foundation that it enabled me to be really clear about what my priorities were. There was a lot of stuff I was doing and spinning around on and not being smart about, because, because, when I'm in the chaos with the food, my life is chaos too.

Speaker 1: 27:39

What else would you like to share about your journey of coming into you know what? In a different conversation on another day page, you said you. I wrote it down. I thought she nailed it. You said that what my work around addiction and obesity and all those things brought me was peace, simplicity and freedom with food. I like that is exactly why we're doing what we're doing Peace with food, the simplicity around food and the freedom we feel, not the deprivation, the genuine sense of freedom. So is there anything more you would like to say about your journey to peace, simplicity and freedom?

Speaker 2: 28:18

Well, I mean, I think that idea of the habits give us the ability to open up our life, to be the journey, but give us the building that because, like I said with ADHD, I fight against the word simplicity, I fight against boredom and I'm always chasing the new, the novel thing and so kind of. One of my focuses right now in my own therapy is to celebrate every time I say notice something new to adding something onto my plate, because I do a few, I do, I am involved in a few things and instead choose to lean into simplicity or lean into a prior commitment and deepen that experience. And so that is what I am working on, celebrating every day, and I think you know I'm working on a certificate in applied positive psychology, and so that's where that comes from. Just complete bias there. But it is so important to celebrate each thing that we do each positive thing, because we have this negative bias right. We have this bias to be a victim to the society, to our world at large, to what's happening to us. But the world isn't happening to us. We are creating it from our own experience, in the moment, in the now, and I think that's the biggest thing I think about.

Speaker 2: 29:48

You know, one of the biggest critiques I have about 12-step programs and I'm not gonna like go into super depth but is this whole idea rectifying the past or reconciling the past? And while I feel like it's important for society as a whole to maybe reconcile some past indiscretions and that lead to current oppressions and things like that, we can't change the past and most of the time when we try, we're really only hurting ourselves or others or making it worse. The past is the story that we create in the now through the lens of trauma, through these other things, and we're the only ones that have it. We've written this story that no one else has read and that's what the past is. We can't fix it in the past.

Speaker 2: 30:39

We can only deal with it in the now and we can't deal with the future. So we can only commit to today, and that's okay. And I started this by saying, well, I'm not giving this up forever, but I can commit today to not doing sugar. But that's how I gave up or got rid of diet coke in my life, that's how I got rid of smoking, that's how I got rid of everything else was saying, okay, I'm not gonna do it right now, I can do it later tomorrow another battle, but today not gonna do it. And it's really hard to bring it back down to that level of in the moment, in the moment and also not just see this accumulation of moments as overwhelming.

Speaker 1: 31:26

That's so articulate. It's precisely why we use food, it's why we overthink, we overdo, we don't wanna be in the moment, we don't wanna be present, because that's where everything catches up with us. We notice I'm in pain or I need to make some changes, or I can hear. I can hear feedback from my body or my soul.

Speaker 2: 31:47

Well, but at the same time, the now is kind of the freedom from all that Timmy Liv stuff, because I don't know where I'm paying rent in two weeks. I don't know how this is gonna go. I've been in chronic pain, I've been all these things, but you know what, right now, in this moment, I'm pretty darn good. I'm sitting in an air conditioned home. Like I said, don't know where the roof is coming from in the future, and I've been going through so much, but right now, in this moment, I'm sitting in an air conditioned home with the ability to make food, and my dog and my kiddo are safe and healthy in this house in this moment. So in this moment, life is pretty good.

Speaker 1: 32:33

And that's the irony. That's the irony Is that we use food to keep us from being in the moment because we're afraid of it, but there's nothing to fear that it's actually learning how to come into the present moment and just to be present. And there's so much fear of our feelings, there's so much like, oh, that distress bounce, let me go hit the cupboards, right, I'm gonna go hit the cupboards.

Speaker 2: 32:54

Well, survival instinct, right. But I think also we can't compete with and this is, I think, something I've talked to you about too in the past we can't compete with high dopamine foods or responses or escapes. So if we're chasing the happy, if we're chasing the food may make us feel, may give us that dope, that super processed food is gonna give us a dopamine hit. I mean, just it's sugar is gonna give us a dopamine hit. Sexy food is gonna give us a dopamine hit. So that is one reason that for my program it's very absence based. I don't say black and white because I eat a lot of vibrant colors, right, but I keep my food very simple in the sense that I eat a big bulk of veggies and I have a small amount of protein and a weight and measured amount of these things. I don't cook recipes anymore. I became somewhat because I had to, at the beginning, decide that I'm not gonna be the person because I was a big baker. I was the person who brought the baked goods, I was the person who taught all this healthy eating, big meals and fanfare, and I realized a lot of my addiction was to the ceremony and the pump and the circumstance and the sexiness of making food. But that was celebrating the food, that was celebrating the thing I was addicted to. So to live with food cause, we still have to eat and I, as I mentioned, I've been on the other side of extreme restrictive eating, of just okay, I'm not gonna eat because that gives me control. I've seen both sides. I don't do the middle very well, so you know I forgot where I was going with that. But we can't compete with the dopamine. So I don't try to find no sugar foods or substitutes for comfort favorites. I don't try to replace food traditions with more food traditions. And one of the biggest things for me when I started this program and there are several abstinence based programs which say no sugar, no flour, no processed food, and all of that was to support the local community and make kind of get-togethers with those community folks not based around a meal, because where else in life do we go out and it's not around a meal or food. When do we get together? That's not a potluck or a you know well, at least pre-pandemic. But and I dated for the first time in like a decade and not that long ago, last year and when I was first starting dating, it was somebody who was not doing, you know, a food recovery program, and how do you go on a date if it's not meeting at a restaurant or doing things around food? So I've really worked to cultivate, you know. I go to hiking groups, yes, we. They often go out to eat afterwards, but then it doesn't mean I have to eat their food. I don't make recipes because I'm not a foodie anymore.

Speaker 2: 36:06

I had to break up with and really grieve that identity and I think that's the biggest thing I wanted to talk about, because that's kind of my specialty, you know, being my first degree in anthropology and then I did journalism and personal stories and now I'm, you know, a nurse and I care about people's stories and I really see human beings as storytellers. Like that's how we create our world. So that's how we create our identity and that's how we're gonna make life changes. Right Is through how we change our storytelling. We create our world around us. It doesn't create us, it doesn't make us do anything, it doesn't take anything away from us. We create it with our storytelling. So, and some people use parts work therapy, some people use expressive arts or storytelling therapies or art therapy or anything that really gets at that.

Speaker 2: 37:07

I think, that core of how we define ourselves to make the changes. It's. That's why mantra's help, too, is because it's reinforcing that I am a person who does this rather than all right, I'm giving this up for today, but for me, I had to. Instead of competing with the high dopamine choices, whether it's social media or food, I don't replace it. I don't try to find an alternative to it, or I do try to find an alternative to it. I keep the food simple. It is not just finding a sugar-free, flower-free version of this or that, because ultimately, if I keep chasing that, I'm gonna fall back to using that, the sugar, and the single biggest thing I can do for my health is to avoid those inflammatory suits.

Speaker 1: 38:09

Right that you just decided to stop partying with food altogether, that you stopped the expectation that there was a way to hang on to the pleasure without running the risk that you'll go back to the real hardcore, hard drug foods.

Speaker 2: 38:25

Yeah, and I started really celebrating and building up, finding joy in other ways that fit with my integrity. And I mean, if we look at I don't know the definitions of joy versus happy, the joy being that finding that those moments of pleasure in the moment that's in line with your integrity is so much better and more sustainable and wonderful and deep than happy joy or the comfort that I get when I go get something out of the freezer after a long day of work and collapse on the sofa. It's choosing to live this life instead of be entertained by it, Because that doesn't ever work.

Speaker 1: 39:14

That's good, mike. Yes, really great. Right, get off that bench, as you were saying.

Speaker 2: 39:19

Get off the bench, yeah yeah, but I mean it really was and it was scary at times to make, to continually make the choice I'm gonna step into life when you've lived your entire life sitting on the bench and I think about like sitting on this bench on the side of a swimming pool or something and watching everybody splash around and have fun. And I was the one sitting on the sideline because I wasn't gonna get a bathing suit. I wasn't gonna, you know, and I really chose okay, I'm gonna step into the bathing suit, I'm gonna be exposed and I'm gonna jump into life. But you have to always make that decision and it's scary and it's hard, but there's so much greater pleasure and wonderful things on the other side of making that decision and doing that step and you know, greater joy comes. You have to go through something hard to get there, I think.

Speaker 1: 40:12

So how long did it take you to lose your 170 pounds?

Speaker 2: 40:16

I didn't, because the journey very quickly became not about losing weight. Very, very quickly I realized, oh, like I may have come in for this but it is giving me so much more. I tossed the scale out the window. I mean like I stopped weighing myself. So I shed it over two years, I would say about. But you know, I went from like a 4x women's size in America to a size four you know jeans Like if we're looking at 4x to size four or 28 to size four, whatever you know measure, and I know sizes have changed over time and it's not a good. But from that size body to that size body, and it was about two years. But there were plateaus in there and there were periods of really successively lost and then there were periods where I might have stayed the same weight for six months. So it was not a like but it was a steady decline.

Speaker 1: 41:24

Yeah, and my next question was gonna be at what point, at what point did you let weight loss go, as Eva, I know it got you in the door. And then you almost everyone says at some point I uncoupled what I was doing with food for my desire to lose weight. When did that uncoupling happen for you?

Speaker 2: 41:42

They want to boot camp, they want to doing the program Like. I got in it and I really quickly realized the integrity that well, and I think there were talks. So the program I did has had an introductory boot camp, which is your abstinence program, which is your initial step in your first 28 days, your first but this. It was 12 weeks but and it was all. I committed to doing the abstinence for right and but it where you, cold turkey, went to these rules of life and shut out these and like, for this eight weeks, eight to 12 weeks, I'm not gonna stay up late, I'm gonna go to bed every night and I'm gonna get up every morning really early. I'm gonna be a person who sees the sunrise every day. That is my sign that I am successfully walking the path is that I am getting up to see the sunrise. When I start missing sunrises, I know that I'm falling into the old comfort habits of staying in bed, trying to wrap myself in those dreams of affection or comfort or whatever else that I'm staying in bed and getting on social media or watching TV or streaming whatever. Yeah, it was really quick.

Speaker 2: 43:02

Once I got into the program and started the program, like truly started it I was like, oh, it's not gonna be about this, it's the habits in the system that's saving my life right now and that's the biggest thing I've also learned this past year with feeling like you know, I said I was backsliding and I was doing all this and no, it's really that we talk about. If we put food first, you know food has to be the first thing we do. But now I have the lenses of lifestyle medicine with the six pillars of wellness or the wellness wheel with the eight dimensions of wellness, or you know I have all these different ways to define it now. But basically we don't ever just tackle the food or the weight. We are having to interweave the sleep, the activity though the amount of different activities that we engage in and the connection piece right. The these different dimensions of wellness have to be part of it. But we put the food first is like a cornerstone habit and it's the first thing we get control of or that we realize, we control our actions around this and it's the last thing to go out the door and what I'm realizing because I'm never touching sugar and flour that's not negotiable, that is. That is.

Speaker 2: 44:25

That is disgusting to me now, but I do relent on the other habits. I have been staying in bed late regularly and then not making time for my mental wellness, my what I call pre-reactive time to external stimuli, like I'm jumping in and up. Now it's time to run to this, and it's really crucial to kind of nail down that that it's all of the habits, it's the holistic approach that it really is. You're just using food as a bookend, and so I'm in that phase of like I can let these other habits go and it's not working, it's not creating. I'm on this treadmill of trying to get the food back. Trying to get the food back, but I need to do it all.

Speaker 1: 45:14

Got it that self-care piece is an essential part of making it possible to stay on our path.

Speaker 2: 45:21

Yeah, and it's really comes down to realizing self-care is not about selfishness or selflessness or oh, I'm going to create time for myself. It is really refilling the cup and making the rest of it possible. Really, the sustainability piece.

Speaker 1: 45:39

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, absolutely Regulate through a nervous system. It recharges our battery. It gives us a feeling of having given to ourselves before we go out in our busy lives and give to the world, and life isn't worth living. You can give up sugar flour, turn your health around, lose all your weight. It just won't be worth living if the self-care is not there. It's so tied to our quality quality of life.

Speaker 2: 46:07

Well, you won't sustain it if self-care is not there, and self-care includes connection. Self-care includes everything else, but I'm not going to be able to show up for my son, which is, again, when it comes to my. What I know motivates me, it's showing up for others, it's being able to support and empower other people to make the same changes, and I know we talked about this before the recording, but I just went to this health conference that really talked about recognizing people where they're at but truly respecting them. So if we take and I'm just going to use the word addict, I'm an addict, you know, if we take an addict and respect them.

Speaker 2: 46:49

As for their living experience of that, they are the rebels of society. They're the ones who are experimenting with different coping and recognizing the society is not working for me. They're the ones standing up to that. They may not be choosing healthy choices in a healthy way. Maybe they are for them, but the choice they're making may not be healthy, but they're the ones who are going to change it because they're the ones who are opposing it.

Speaker 2: 47:17

So they called addicts folks with neurodivergence, folks on the LGBTQIA, two-spirited plus community, all of these folks trying to live life outside of the model of wellness that our sixth society creates are rebels and respect them as the ones who are going to make the changes to society to make it better for all of us. Right, because we live in a sixth society and we're choosing every day to survive and lean into life inside a sick society. It doesn't support this wellness, our healthcare system does not support this life of wellness and everything we do rebels against it and that's hard and it's exhausting and it's a continual choice, and Bravo to everybody who does that, even if it's for one day at a time, or one day you did it, you can do it again, just for today.

Speaker 1: 48:21

Mm-hmm, ah, fantastic. Are there any final words you'd like to share, paige, before we wrap up today?

Speaker 2: 48:27

Oh my gosh, I feel like I've talked ad nauseam so I tend to be pretty verbose, so I can't think of anything. I'm sure I'll think of 20 things in five minutes.

Speaker 1: 48:38

Totally, totally Well. Thank you for sharing your story, your wisdom, your time with us today. It was really appreciated.

Speaker 2: 48:44

Oh well, thank you for all the work that you do in getting just a message of wellness, life and vitality out there. There are ways out and through, mm. Thank you.

Speaker 1: 48:58

Thank you. Thanks for tuning in this week. If you would like more interviews, more information and more inspiration on how to break up with sugar, go to my YouTube channel, kicksugar Coach or my website KicksugarCoachcom. See you next week.