[Intro] Hi, and welcome to my podcast.  I'm your host, Corinne Powell.  I'm an intuitive guide and the owner of Change Radically.  My intention, both here and in private sessions, is to come alongside you in a way that feels safe and empowering. 

So many of us are experiencing similar things and feeling common emotions, but we won't know that unless we talk about it.  You aren't supposed to have to go it alone. I specialize in helping people pleasers change patterns and create a life they feel good about. Life should not be consumed by doing things you feel obligated to do. Do you want to feel a lot less frustrated? Then stop living in a way that benefits everyone else at your expense. Empowered to Thrive is a place of safety. 

Conversations focus on topics that impact our mental, emotional, and spiritual health.  Parenting comes up too, because I'm a mom to four kids, and it's natural for me to  talk about the impact that has on life. Bottom line, you're always welcome here, no matter what type of day you're having. 

Your friends and their friends are welcome too.  Please share the podcast.  Let's create a place of community and connection that is saturated by authenticity and transparency.  I'll start.  

Corinne Powell: Now, on to today's episode. Today's episode starts by Joanna telling her story in how she began her own journey helping women to heal their bodies through food and lose weight.  But right after that, she's going to jump into the meat of this topic, how we can understand ourselves and what's going on at the deeper level. 

She has a beautiful technique she's going to share with you.  I hope that you will stick around and listen to the full episode.  I'm so glad to have you here with us to jump into the conversation with Joanna Wen and I. Joanna is a weight loss coach. She helps busy moms lose weight permanently in a healthy and sustainable way.  Joanna uses her unique approach, which she'll talk about today, to help her clients love  their food and lose weight without deprivation. 

She also helps her clients get to the root cause of their overeating and remove those blocks so that they can keep the weight off once and for all.  And that's really the reason Joanna and I connected because she goes deeper. She goes to the root cause. What's behind the response? 

And I hope that you'll stick around and enjoy the story she's going to share and the insight she is going to give.  For today's episodes, here we are. I'm very glad to be with you here, Joanna, and excited to talk!

Joanna Wen: Thank you so much for having me, Corinne. I just want to start with some of my background stories so you can understand how I got into helping moms to lose weight. 

I've actually had a pretty intense interest in using food to heal my body for over two decades.  At the time, what I wanted to do was to just improve my skin, clear my complexion. So I did the juicing for about two weeks. 

And it made my skin just really glowed and radiated.  This was in my mid-20s. And so it made a huge impression on me that I was able to get to my goal of glowing skin and better complexion in just two weeks.  However, I couldn't keep up with the juicing.  I could not keep up with that habit. And so when I was about 30, I again turned to food and also traditional Chinese medicine. 

And this time was to lower my blood pressure.  I had a strong genetic predisposition for high blood pressure. And I didn't want to rely on a pill to control my blood pressure for the rest of my life. 

So what I did was I started to look at different types of food that I could add into my diet,  even peas that I can add.  And I was eventually able to lower my blood pressure and got off the medication. And I've been off the medication and been able to maintain a healthy blood pressure for over 15 years.  

Corinne Powell:Wow.  That's great.  

Joanna Wen: Yeah.  And then when a few years later, like in my early 30s, that's when I learned about green smoothies. And I just fell in love with green smoothies because it was so easy to make. This time, the habit stuck.  And after I drank it for about a year, I learned that I healed my nearsightedness.  And that was definitely unexpected. Like I broke my glasses and went to the optometrist and they said that, OK, these are way too strong for you.  

And so I went back to see, OK, what did I do differently? I realized that maybe it was the smoothie. Then I look at the ingredients I was putting in and I realized that the combination of ingredients I was putting in actually had health benefits for vision. 

So move forward to when I was about 40.  I had my twins when I was 40. And my weight loss journey started about a year, over a year after I had my twins. I basically stayed visibly pregnant, like so much so when I walk into crowded subway cars, like kindhearted New Yorkers, like you continue to get up for me to offer me their seats because I looked pregnant.  And while I appreciate their kind gesture, like it made me feel self-conscious and down about how I looked. So that's when I said, I'm going to make a change. 

And what I started out with was counting calories, avoiding carbs, eating smaller portions,  just all the things that I thought I was supposed to do to lose weight. And I just ended up feeling so deprived and exhausted all the time. 

And at the time, I was also working a demanding ID job where I worked nine to five during  the day, but also I would often have a Skype calls with my software development team on  the other side of the globe.  So and I was also taking care of the young twins at night. So I was barely keeping up with my busy working mom life, let alone finding the extra time and energy to go to the gym and exercise.  

So I had almost like resigned myself to accepting my post baby body when I remember my experience with healing my near sightedness. And so I use that experience as the motivation that I needed to just go all in on trying to figure out how to use food to solve my weight loss problem. And what I stumbled upon was this amazing world of spices, herbs, and nutrients, rich foods that just turned the conventional wisdom on weight loss upside down. 

I was able to eat delicious and satisfying meals and I lost 10 pounds in the first month and then a total of 28 pounds in seven months. I was able to drop four dress sizes and shed my still pregnant look without doing a single set up. So now, yeah, so now people no longer get up for me on the subway. 

I have more energy to keep up with my twins and I started getting questions from fellow moms on how I lost the weight.  And so now I help fellow moms to lose weight in a way that works for their busy lifestyle and without deprivation and spending hours at the gym. 

Corinne Powell: Awesome.  

Joanna Wen:  In terms of mastering your emotions, getting control of your food, when I first started out coaching, I was really focused on just all the nutritional requirements that will help your body to heal physically. But what I realized over time was that in order to get people to even do that part of I had to first figure out how to really motivate them and get to the root cause of why they had the overeating problem in the first place.  And yeah, and so that actually was what led me to get certified as a life coach. And that is actually what I learned a lot of my mindset and emotional mastery skills. 

Because what I realized was that just a lot of the overeating that we do is it's really emotional eating, right?  We're using food to comfort ourselves so that we can feel better. One of the key concepts that I learned from life coaching was that our thoughts are actually what's causing our feelings. So we're often taught that outside circumstances, things that are happening outside of our control are what's causing our feelings. But it's actually our thoughts, our interpretation of the circumstance that's causing our feelings. 

So the first key skill in order to master your emotions is developing the skill of separating out the facts versus the thoughts or the stories around these facts. 

Once you are able to do that, you'll find that it's a lot easier to neutralize your negative emotion. So one of my own personal example that really hit home for me, and I think a lot of fellow moms can relate, it has to do with my son and his struggles at school.  So when my son was seven years old, he's now eight. And this was when he was in second grade and he struggled at school with focus, attention, and being able to sit still.  And for me doing homework with him, it was a struggle.  And what happened was that he would often reverse letters, Bs and Bs, Ps and Qs. But also words, words like was versus saw, W-A-S versus S-A-W. 

And the teacher had said that it was common for students to make these mistakes when writing. Although he was also making these mistakes when reading, which the teacher said was less common. And when in second grade, they started to deal with three-digit numbers, right?  They started to get into the hundreds. And when I was doing homework with him, I noticed that he would reverse the numbers too. Like literally when we're doing math problems, I see the number 235, he would read it as 523.  

And so in my mind, with all this evidence piling up, I was starting to really believe that he had dyslexia. And I just remember that I had a really strong reaction to it, this sinking feeling in my stomach. And I would just cry when I talk about the problem with my husband or with healthcare providers. But I didn't really understand why I just had this really strong feeling. It was like the circumstance was causing me to just get emotionally hijacked is what I used to say. You know, I just had no control. And I think luckily at that point, I had learned some life coaching skills and I had access to other fellow life coaches to help me work through the problem. And so it took a lot of probing. 

And what I had to ask myself was, what am I making this mean, right? The fact that he was reading these numbers in reverse. And what I realized finally was that I had a whole story around him reversing these numbers. So I'm a trained engineer. I study bioengineering and specialize in biomechanical engineering.  So when you talk about building engineering structures, you know, accuracy, right? Math and accuracy is really important. 

If the math is wrong, like, you know, in my mind, I'm imagining catastrophic failures, like, you know, collapsing bridges, buildings, and whatnot. And I realized that if he cannot read numbers correctly, he can't have a career in engineering. 

And then, you know, my star started going to, okay, what other careers require math and engineering?  Like, just math, really, accounting, business analysis. So because I had all these stories in my head, I just started to panic about his entire future. 

And so once I was able to like finally realize, okay, this is what I'm making it mean.  Like, it wasn't just about reversing numbers, but I had a whole story around, you know,  how his life will be impacted. Then I was able to say, all right, now I can separate the fact from the story, right, or the things I was making it mean. And once I realized that, I also realized, okay, you know, these are stories that may or may not be true, right? And I get to decide how to think about it, right? 

And how can I think about it in a way that is not just about numbers?  That will cause me to panic, right?  Because it doesn't serve me.  I don't feel calm. I don't show up for my son as the mom that's able to support him, right? 

Because I'm falling apart myself. And so what I did was that I started to look for evidence of people that, you know, have struggled with dyslexia, but were actually able to still have a fairly successful career in life, right? So people like Tom Cruise, I think he's one of the well-known celebrities that struggled  with dyslexia. Barbara Corcoran, Shark Tank, I think even Kevin O'Leary, a couple of other Shark Tank investors also had struggled with dyslexia. 

Especially Barbara was told that by her teacher that she was just not smart.  So, you know, it's seeing all these evidence just helped me to think about the circumstance differently. And it helped to neutralize the negative emotions that I had around it. 

And the truth was, eventually, you know, we did get him tested for dyslexia, and he tested negative for it.  So it did turn out that, you know, that whole story that I made up, you know, luckily, I  mean, it just wasn't even true. And so I had myself all worked up because of all the story I was telling myself. 

So that was definitely like a huge aha moment for me.  Yeah, so I realized that, yeah, just this whole feeling of panic, it was just so strong,  and it just turned out that it wasn't even based on facts. So, yeah, so then I learned that, yes, in order to do that, once you're aware of the facts versus the stories, then you can say to yourself, the first thing is, right, check if the story is true, right?  A lot of times, often, it's just imagined, right?  Our worries are often imagined, right? We're always thinking about the worst case. 

And that's just really, you know, our brain, our primitive brainless desire to keep us safe, right?  You don't want to be, you know, back in the days, you don't want to be chased by tigers and what have you out there.  So stay in the cave, right?  So it's our brain just trying to protect us. However, you know, in our modern times, the dangers that we face is not at the same level. 

So we want to be able to manage this primitive part of our brain that's constantly looking for danger.  So first check if that story is true, right?  First, you find out what the facts are and what the stories are. And then you check if the story you have in your head is true or not. 

And then also ask yourself, right, is the story serving me? Is it helpful, right? Because if it's not, you know, can you let it go? Can you release it? And then you can move on to what can I think instead that's going to serve me, that's going to help me feel a little bit better. So, like another example I have is, it's like client examples when it comes to relationship with food, right? Sometimes I have clients come to me that says, I just like the taste of Coke. 

And the thing is, that actually is a thought, right?  Like a can of Coke sitting in front of you is just a neutral circumstance, right? Your desire for that Coke is from your thought about the Coke. 

I just like the taste of Coke.  So it's that thought that's creating that feeling of desire.  Now, that's not to discount the fact that yes, food manufacturers do design these foods  so that they increase your desire for them, right? It gives you that dopamine hit that your brain looks for as reward. 

So there is also that chemical component to it.  However, there's no one in there forcing you to have that can of Coke, right? So that part is you have a thought, you have a desire for that Coke, which leads to the action of you picking up a can of Coke and bring it closer to your mouth and drink it,  right?  It starts creating that result of you drinking it.  So notice in this process, you actually do have complete control of your thoughts and feelings and then the action and the result, right? 

Your thought about the Coke, I just like to taste it, which leads to that feeling of desire,  which leads to you picking up the can of Coke and drinking it.  So that's one thought, right?  I just like the taste of Coke. It's really just one thought you can have about Coke. 

But most of us also know that drinking a lot of Coke can cause you to gain weight, right?  And there is a lot of associated health risks with being overweight. It can also give you a sugar crash too, right? 

Because it's sugar water, right? So you can decide to think a different thought about Coke, one that's not going to cause you to want to desire it, right? And I will say that I'm one of those people that used to like the taste of Coke and I still do, but I just don't tell myself that all the time, right?  And sometimes what I think about is, it's just sugar water and there's no nutritional value, right?  And then that's one thought. And then there are plenty of other drinks that I get to choose that are both nutritious and tasty, right?  And I like the bubbly texture of Coke, but I can also get that by making my own sparkly water and adding other fruits to flavor it. And the thing is, I can choose to drink it and I can choose not to. 

I don't recommend trying to restrict yourself because a lot of times then we just want to rebel.  But you can choose to drink it, but sometimes I just think that my body deserves better,  so I wouldn't do it.  So I still drink Coke from time to time. I like to pair Coke with pizza, but I do it once a week. 

And when I'm done with it, when I drink it, I try to really enjoy the taste.  But I find that also, if you really take the time and really pay attention and focus on the pleasure that you get from it, it actually dissipates after two sips. 

So, also another way to think about it, it's also fortune control.  A lot of times we just think we want it, but we just don't even think about whether we're actually enjoying it or not. So that's also another little tip there, that if you really want to enjoy something, take the time.  It's quality over quantity and it definitely loses its allure after a few sips.  So that's the first key, separating facts from fiction. And then the second skill that you want to learn is to watch your self-talk and also learn how to stop this negative self-talk.  Because a lot of times we overeat due to negative emotions that we're feeling. And we often feel negative emotions because we are having judgments about ourselves. 

It's because of our negative self-talk, all the thoughts and judgments and stories that we have around ourselves, around the things that we do and the things that we say and whatnot. That's why they say sometimes we are our own worst enemy. 

And so one of the first steps that you want to do here is to become aware of what you're telling yourself about you. And what you can do here is what we call a thought download, or it's basically a brain dump of everything that's in your head.  So just get it all out of your head, put it on a piece of paper or write it on your digital device. This way you can get physical distance between you and the sentences that are in your head. 

And this is actually a really powerful exercise because it helps you to get out of your head and become an observer of your own mind. And when I do this with my clients, sometimes after they write everything out and they look at it, maybe a day later and they're like, I can't believe this is what I'm telling myself. And the thing is, once you are aware of the negative judgment or the self-talk, then you can change it.  If you're not aware of it, you wouldn't even know what needs to be fixed.  

But once you know it's there, it's hard to unsee it.  And then we can go on to the next step of changing it and fixing it. So a lot of times when we see what we have written down, we actually end up having judgments about it.  It's like, wow, I can't believe I just said that.  Like I say that to myself and it was like, I don't want to look at it.  I just want to put it away.  

And then you are not able to move on to the second step. So one of the key to get you to move on to the second step is to use this feeling of curiosity because curiosity helps you to fight judgment.  You want to get really curious and ask yourself why you're thinking these thoughts.  Be curious, even be fascinated. Like, wow, why did I think that? 

It must be, what's the reason?  Keep asking yourself why multiple times until you get closer to the root cause. And so, for example, in my case, as soon as I realized, wow, I just made up this whole crazy story about collapsing buildings and bridges.  Like, why did I do that?  Things like kind of crazy.  But then I said to myself, OK, let me just look at it. And I realized that it's because growing up, my dad was an engineer, my mom, they were both math teachers at one point. So they definitely focused math heavily as opposed to reading. And so because of that focus on math and we all ended up with careers in engineering, we all study engineering or computer science. 

Like that was our whole future.  We had plans.  And so for me, it's like that was the way to go.  And I realized that I was just passing that down to my son.  And so when I realized that, wow, he may not be able to do this, I was like, “Oh, my God!”, that's why I had such a reaction to it. 

So once I can get curious and then I can get compassionate and realize, OK, this is why,  that's it.  You don't have to judge it, that it's too crazy and out of this world. And it's just about getting really curious and fascinated about how your brain works. 

You know?  Yeah.  So really, curiosity is just a really powerful emotion that helps you to take the actions you need to change your thought and then create the result that you want. 

So that's the second tip on mastering your emotion, being able to recognize the self-talk that you have and also be able to stop negative self-talk. The third skill I want to share is the skill of learning how to process your emotion. 

Right?  When most of us encounter a negative emotion, instead of processing them,  we avoid, react or resist them.  Right? So avoiding a negative emotion, especially could be, you know, eating, overeating or binging on Netflix or overworking.  Right?  And then reacting to an emotion would be like, you know, yelling from feeling angry or frustrated. Whereas resisting an emotion is like, you know, using willpower. 

Like, for example, you know, people go on no sugar diets.  Maybe they can do it for two weeks.  But after, you know, the program is done, two weeks, they end up binging because your willpower is limited.  We test it to the limit.  Right? So we were never taught like how to feel, right? 

They don't teach you that in school.  But frankly, I'm, you know, it's really important skill to have.  So the first thing that we want to do is to just better understand what a feeling is. Okay. 

So just as thoughts are the language of the brain, feelings are the language of 

the body. And when you truly get in touch with your feeling, you'll learn that your feelings are nothing more than just, you know, vibrations in your body.  Like, you can think of emotion as, you know, motion.  I mean, energy, emotion, right?  E-motion, energy, emotion. And, you know, once you understand that, like, you won't be so afraid of, you know, feeling anymore, feeling your feeling anymore. And the thing is, if you're willing to allow an emotion to vibrate through your body, instead of avoiding, reacting, resisting them, you'll be able to process your emotion in a healthy way. 

And it usually takes minutes to process them. Yeah.  And how do you do that?  Right?  What you do is, you know, you find a quiet space and you focus, right? You sit with your eyes closed. And what you do is first you scan your body, scan your body from top to bottom.  And you want to find out where you feel your emotion, right?  Which part of your body is this emotion? Like, for example, a lot of times, you know, with anxiety, a lot of us feel it in our chest or some of us feel it in our stomach, right?  It manifests differently in different people.  Okay.  So first you find where that emotion is. And then you, you know, really take the time to like study the characteristics of the emotion. You know, what color is it? 

What texture?  Like, is it hard?  Is it soft?  Is it moving?  You know, is it fast?  Or is it slow?  How intense is it?  Right?  Is it strong?  Or is it soft? And you want to, you know, rate it on a scale of one to ten. 

And then kind of follow, follow along with the vibration.  And so what you do is you just keep focusing on it, stay with it, study it until it starts to move. And then eventually vibrate and fade away. 

And yeah, the whole process, I mean, I've done this multiple times and it really doesn't take more than 10 minutes.  And you could do this with all types of emotions, not just, you know, positive ones,  but also negative ones. You want to see how your body expresses these emotions. 

So, I mean, I recommend starting with positive ones because sometimes it can be somewhat intense.  And the first time you do it, maybe it's a good idea to do it with a coach. But, you know, I can give you an example of a negative one, but it actually didn't turn out to be so scary after that.  So I know the one thing that my mentor had taught me was that, you know,  once you're able to process negative emotions like fear, terror, and shame,  you're going to feel unstoppable. So I sort of took that to heart and I decided to feel terror. 

And actually this kind of came up because at the time I was processing some PTSD from childhood. So for me, yeah, at the time I was processing PTSD from an accident that I had. 

I was hit by a motorcycle as a pedestrian when I was eight years old.  And, you know, luckily I survived, you know, meaningful recovery.  And really don't remember, don't really much about it. I actually did remember, my brain has this eternal sunshine of the spotless mind button. 

That's what I call it.  So I remember all the positive aspects of it.  I remember all the people that came to visit me at the hospital,  even the guy that was on the motorcycle, poor kid,  probably like only 20 years old.  And I ran in front of the motorcycle.  So, but he came to visit. And then even, you know, my second-grade teacher and the whole class came to visit me at home when I was recovering.  So that's basically what I remembered.  I just remembered it as an event and I had all the happy memories.  But I would say like, this is almost 30 years later when I was working with a psychologist to process other PTSD, then this story came up. 

And I was doing this exercise when I had to write out the story because she wanted me to go back and rewrite the story.  So first I had to recall the story. But as I was recalling the story, I started getting all these flashbacks that I had, you know, archived away in the back of my head. And it turns out that what happened was that when I was, you know, since when I was seven or eight at the time, I lived in Taiwan. And I was stuck in the middle of a road in the middle of the fence. So and there was no street light. And this was at night. And usually it's not busy because there was a new development area.  

But at night, for some reason, it was busy. And so I remember I had to cross to the middle of the street, but then realized that, you know, there were cars coming to my right.  And then when I look to my left, what I found was that there were three cars coming straight at me.  And they're not turning because I'm standing at the fence. So they don't turn until they get to me.

And so on the one hand, I look to my left, there are three cars coming straight at me.  On the other hand, I saw a motorcycle and a faraway car.  And so I said, I got to make a decision here.  I have a better chance of survival.  So I went for it.  And I got in front of the motorcycle. And so I realized that it was that was a feeling of terror that I had to. 

I was reacting to this feeling of terror.  So I made a decision and went for it.  And so when I was trying to process this feeling of terror, I sort of just use that flashback to process this terror. And what I saw was that, you know, for me, like terror turned out to manifest itself as, you know, a white colored egg-shaped object that felt like it was kind of like in my throat. 

And so then I was like slowly, you know, processing it.  And yeah, it was intense while I was processing it.  But then once I processed it, and, you know, it disappeared. It felt like I felt a lot of peace and relief. And it was like, okay, I was able to let go.  All right, I learned what terror is like.  I felt it and I process it under 10 minutes.  And now I say I eat terror for breakfast or snack, right?  Hard-boiled eggs. And now I realize, okay, that's all terror was. 

It was a hard-boiled egg. So now I can like, you know, actually kind of see how it manifests in my body. And it's like, once you see it, once you see your enemy, you're less afraid of it. And so that's kind of my takeaway from that exercise. So I think it's a good way to just get to know all of your emotions and see how they manifest in your body. And it's actually a great way to learn how to generate your feelings on purpose. 

And also how to think on purpose, right? Because how you think generates your feelings.  So this is how you master your emotions, right? You want to think on purpose and then be able to generate these feelings on purpose. And by that, I mean, you just see how it feels in your body. 

And once you get really skilled at it, you can actually just do the vibrations in your body on the fly. Like you can just call it up and say, all right, I want to feel proud today.  Or I want to feel grateful, some of the positive ones. So I highly encourage that you go through, get to know your feelings, pretend like it's a stranger, you're inviting them in for tea,  and just have a chat with them, get to know them.  Because once you know them, you're not so afraid of them anymore. And the thing is, you won't feel like you constantly get emotionally hijacked like a victim. 

Which is how I used to feel, right?  But now that I know I'm the one that's in control of how I think and how I feel, then I don't need to seek food for comfort. I don't need to seek any outside circumstances to change in order to feel better. 

It's in my control because I get to change how I think and therefore how I feel.  And so that's, these are really to me the three keys of really mastering your emotions so that you don't need to look for food or any outside circumstances to help you feel better. 

Corinne Powell: Yeah, oh, that's great. Very, very practical, good stuff.  Yeah, I remember the first time that I recognized, oh, I'm comfort eating. I was in a program where the program was geared for weight loss. And I think I was trying to lose weight after maybe my third born was like two or something.  But we were being asked to like consider what's going on deeper for us as we've become mindful about our eating. 

And I was reaching for ice cream in the freezer and paused and recognized, oh my goodness, there's chaos around me, three or four little kids screaming,  things going on, I'm feeling stressed. And I'm going to this sweet treat because it's going to help me feel a little bit better and going to bring me some joy for this moment.  And I was like, it was just that aha moment where I'm like, whoa. And it was the start of a beautiful awakening to like just the noticing. Right, the awareness.   Why am I going for this?  What's going on around me and within me?  And so profound. And yet at the same time, it's like it just, it was just in that moment that I realized, you know, okay, there's a lot more to this than me going to get a bite of ice cream.  

Joanna Wen: Right, right.  Yeah, you're avoiding something.  

Corinne Powell: Yeah, yeah. Just trying to find the joy in that moment, right? Instead of like, right, right.  How else can I find the joy in this moment too? Or how can I release the stress through, you know, there's plenty of other means. And like you were talking about, then having the ice cream at a time where I can actually like, enjoy it, not just like shovel it down in the middle of the stay on. 

Yeah, so well, I love what you shared.  I love the just, obviously, a lot of it aligns with some of the work I do and helping people discover like what's going on deeper. 

But then how you're helping women and individuals in reaching their goals and actually like healing their whole person through the process.  So it's a beautiful work you're doing.  Thank you. 

Joanna Wen:  Yeah, I mean, I do find that when you're able to get to the root cause of the problem, which, you know, in this case, it's not just a physical problem, not just about the food you eat,  but there's also an emotional component. And then also really a mental component too, right? You have stories about who you are, you know, your self-image, right? 

That also will change as you do this work, because instead of thinking that you're someone that's just always, you know, I always struggle with weight, then you can slowly shift that thinking to, okay, you know, I can trust my body to manage its weight, right? 

Because my body does have its wisdom. Once you restore the body, right, once you eat healthy food, and you restore your hormonal  balance, and return it to its, you know, homeostatic state, then, you know, you want to outsource all of these chatters about food, chatters about, you know, how you maintain a healthy weight, just outsource it to your body, because your body has the wisdom and knowledge to maintain itself.  It can heal itself if you feed it the right food.  

So it's also about kind of slowly changing that mindset to, you know, someone that's always going to struggle with food to someone that has a naturally slim body, because, you know, your body is designed to be naturally slim. Obesity is not an issue, wasn't an issue until, you know, the 70s and the 80s.  It's a recent phenomenon. And part of it is also all the, you know, the new foods, the processed foods, convenience foods that came out on the market that's also, you know, causing, wreaking havoc on our hormones and our system.  So, yeah, so it really requires looking at the body holistically, you know, physically, emotionally, and mentally in order to get the permanent result that can help you to really like live a life that's free of any food chatters and just having peace and freedom from food.  

Corinne Powell: Yeah, yeah, yes. It's so liberating to just be able to enjoy your food without being in, you initially, you may be in your head about it, and then you come to a place where you're not because because you have started to heal the relationship and come to terms with it.  Yeah, it's a beautiful thing.  It's really a beautiful thing. Just the lightness of it compared to the heavy weightiness of what it once was is so worth the energy it takes to go through the healing process.  Yeah.  So if someone's been listening and they're very curious to, you know, connect with you more, what's the best ways that they can reach you? And I'll include these also in the show notes. 

Joanna Wen: So the best way to reach me is on my website, and that's spicesandgreens.com. And you can also find me on Instagram at Spices and Greens, and on Facebook at Spices and Greens. And I also have a free recipe, a free five minute recipe to help you lose your, you know, first three pounds in a week, you know, using fat-burning spices and other healing foods to help your body to reset itself.  Yeah, so you can get that from my website, SpicesandGreens.com.  

Corinne Powell: All right.  Thank you.  That's great. So, well, Joanna, it's been nice to chat with you. 

Joanna Wen: Thank you, Corinne.  It was great to be here.  Thank you.  

Corinne Powell: If you enjoyed this conversation Joanna and I had, I wanna highlight a few previous episodes that I’ve recorded that talk about similar topics to what we were speaking about today. If you are interested in expounding more on what you heard and hearing my perspective on it go ahead and go to season 3 episode 2  and listen to Name those feelings, season 3 episode 4 - Intrusive thoughts go away and from season 3 episode 7 - Reparent your Inner Child.

Well, we've come to the end of another episode. What did you think about what you heard and what resonated with your heart? 

If you were touched by this episode, is there a friend that you can share it with?  Remember, between now and when we speak again, that who you are is good. And I am so glad that you're alive.