Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - Why You Can’t Stop Using Food for Comfort with Kelly McDaniel

Episode Date: September 14, 2026

Why can changing the way you eat feel so emotional, even when you know exactly what you want to change?In this conversation, I sit down with therapist and Mother Hunger author Kelly McDaniel to explore the deeper emotional and relational layers that can become intertwined with food.Through Kelly’s Mother Hunger framework, we look at how early experiences with nurturing, safety, attachment, and caregiving may influence the way some of us relate to food later in life—and why food can sometimes become connected with comfort, connection, routine, and relief.We also talk about emotional eating, body image, nervous system regulation, fasting, food noise, GLP-1 medications, and the messages about our bodies that can be passed from one generation to the next.This conversation gave me an entirely new way to think about some of the struggles I’ve seen women experience when changing how they eat, because sometimes there may be more happening beneath the surface than what’s on the plate.In this episode:Kelly’s Mother Hunger frameworkWhy food can become emotionally significantWhat Kelly means by “surrogate comfort”Why changing eating patterns can bring up difficult emotionsFood and nervous system regulationWhat mothers can unintentionally teach daughters about their bodiesKelly’s perspective on food noise and GLP-1 medicationsHow support and connection can help us create new patternsMORE ON KELLY MCDANIELInstagram: @kellymcdanieltherapyMother Hunger, Revised EditionFor more resources related to today’s episode, visit the podcast episode page: drmindypelz.com/ep369Connect with Dr. Mindy:Join Reset AcademyWatch the episodes on YouTubeFollow Dr. Mindy on InstagramSubscribe to Dr. Mindy’s newsletterDisclaimer: This podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before making changes to your diet, fasting routine, or lifestyle.

Okay, I have something I've got to say that I really think a lot of women need to hear. If you've ever followed a health program and it didn't work, check this out. This is not your fault. I promise you, let me explain. Most fitness programs, most fasting protocols, most dietary advice, it was researched on men. It was designed for men and then handed to women with a shrug. and I here you go, hope this works for you. But here's the thing.

You operate on a 28-day hormonal cycle. The foods you eat, the length of your fast, even the intensity of your workouts, all of it needs to be timed to where you are in that cycle to actually get a result. This is the science I teach inside my reset academy. This is the science that I have researched for over a decade. and inside my academy every month, I walk you through it in a very practical and actionable and way. And it's actually built for your body, for a feminine body.

So it's going to work. I promise you, I see it over and over again. So no more guessing, no more following advice that was never designed for you. This is a moment to get back into relationship with this beautiful body that you are so, blessed to live in. So if you're ready to finally understand this incredible body of yours and work with it instead of constantly fighting against it, come find me over in the Reset Academy. It's resetacadacademy. Dot, Dr. Mindy Pells.com. That's resetacadademy. Dot, Dr. Mindypels.com. I'll see you there. Hey, Dr. Mindy here, and welcome to the Live Like a Girl podcast, where I bring

you icons, disruptors, educators, scientists, and doctors that show you what can be possible when you love and celebrate the female body you are blessed to live in. Let's dive in. I'm six years old, maybe seven, and I'm sitting on the floor of my mother's bedroom. She's standing in front of the mirror in her bra and underwear, and she's going through the list. the list of every part of her body that she hates. Her stomach's too big. Her breasts are too big. Her muscle tone is anemic. Her butt was sagging. Every body part she hated was called out over and over again for years. I can see the whole scene 50 years later. Now here's the shocking part of the story. every time she went through the ritual of criticizing herself, she would turn around, look at me and say,

you're lucky, you don't have this problem. Now, here's what I want you to notice about that. I did not hear reassurance. What I actually learned sitting on the floor of her bedroom was that there is a problem, that a woman's body is a problem, and that mine just didn't. hadn't shown up yet. Now, I've never told this story on this show. And what many of my followers don't know is that for most of my adult life, I was about 30 pounds heavier than I wanted to be, largely because I was an emotional eater. My mom was a woman who, when I had a hard day, would say,

come sit with me. And she would put food in front of me. And she would give me her complete undivided attention wrapped in a whole lot of mother's love. So when I went off to college and she wasn't there and moments got challenging, I did the only thing I knew how to do to get back to feeling well again. I ate. And it wasn't until years later, years and years later, when I did my first 24-hour fast that I realized that I realized, I used food for so much more than nourishment. At hour 19, when I felt horrible, I heard a voice. And I realized it wasn't my voice.

It was the voice of my mom saying, you are suffering. It's time to eat. At that moment, I didn't have a blood sugar problem. I was wearing a monitor. I could see my blood sugar was fine. I wasn't lacking discipline. and I have plenty of that. There was a deeper attachment to food that I had never looked at.

Food and love were mixed together. Without food, I felt unloved. What I have now come to realize is that for many of us, our mother is the first person to feed us. When we were babies, we cried when we were hungry, and mom responded. For an infant, a full belly meant feeling heard, cared for, and loved. An emotional attachment that doesn't go away as we age.

My guest today will tell you that this food and mother's love connection is one of the strongest biological drives in the human body. Stronger than just hunger by itself, which means that when a doctor looks at a woman in the eye and says, you need to go gluten-free, or you got to get off the ultra-processed foods. That doctor is not just asking a woman to change a harmful habit. She is asking her to break up with the first thing that ever loved her back. This is why I have brought you Dr. Kelly McDaniel. Now, Kelly is a therapist. She has spent decades in the room with women who tried the nutrition.

tried the doctor, tried the eating disorder program, and nothing helped. In 2021, she wrote an iconic book called Mother Hunger that changed the way the mental health world looked at food addiction and obesity. Today, she sits with me to talk about her new revised version of Mother Hunger that was released this week. In this new version of her book, she has added some change. chapters like surrogate comfort, where she helps us all understand how we use food as a surrogate mother. This may be one of the most impactful interviews I have ever brought you. If you are struggling to fast, you can't seem to make that lasting food change, or the food noise is not quieting. I promise you, you will free yourself with this conversation. And if you resists,

with this conversation, please grab Kelly's book. It's life-changing. And if you want to dive deeper into Kelly's work, join me in my Reset Academy, where Kelly has graciously offered to come into my community and answer questions. And as always, please share this podcast out with friends you know who are struggling with food addiction. It's conversations like the one you are about to hear that drastically changes lives. I am so proud. I am so honored to bring you this incredible woman and this life-changing conversation. Without further ado, Kelly McDaniel. Kelly McDaniel, first, let me just welcome you to my podcast.

I am dying for my audience to hear this conversation. Well, thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to it as well. Yeah. You said something to me when we met a month ago. that I literally cannot stop thinking about. And you spoke about how our relationship with food is intimately attached to our relationship to our mother because our mother was the first one to feed us. That literally blew my mind and has me thinking so much about what that relationship might have looked like for me as a newborn.

Can you explain that so people can understand that because I think it's really freeing when we're trying to overcome major food cravings and food addictions? Yes, I would love to. When I was thinking about writing a book around mother hunger, the clients I was at the time working with unilaterally said, oh, Kelly, please include a chapter about food. because I think working with me, they were learning a new way to reframe the issues they had around food. So the way I see this is that when we're born, we're designed for our mother's embrace and we're designed for our mother's milk. In fact, the milk her body makes is designed for her baby.

So I know there are lots of folks that didn't necessarily, they weren't breastfed. and this applies whether it's a breast or a bottle. But generally the way we are fed begins immediately when we enter the world. And the first experience is going to be in our mother's arms if she is alive, survived the birth, or it'll be the next caregiver. And whatever that eating experience is like is going to be our first experience of love. So if we're fed on a schedule, let's say, as lots of babies are, babies are given parents are given feeding schedules by well-meaning medical team. But those feeding schedules were actually designed around formula-fed babies because formula is a denser substance than mother's milk.

So if a breast-fed baby is being fed on a schedule, that's going to be a hungry baby. babies are coming into the world designed to be fed on demand, meaning when a baby cries, babies hungry. And so if you're met with receptive caregivers who are there with milk, then your first experience with food and love is going to be pretty pleasant. But if you're on a schedule or people are just too busy and you're hungry a lot of times, or the feeding is unpleasant. You're allergic to the formula and babies are throwing it up, but keep getting it anyway.

That is actually confusing the infant because it's not just about nutrition. It's not just about feeding. It's also about, is this world a safe place for me? Whoa. So what I hear is, my first thought is, is there a difference between breastfed and bottle fed? And I think you answered that in the sense that there's a difference if there's a schedule or no schedule is the important piece. That is one of the big pieces. The other piece, though, is that breast milk is designed for that baby.

Right. So the mother's body is already getting to know her infant in utero and creating milk for that specific baby. Right. The breast milk has properties that will help the baby. immune system that formula does not have. Right. So, yeah. So if you're, let's go bottle fed, and I'm just intrigued on that because I was bottle fed.

And, you know, bottle, what I know about bottle fed is it doesn't fill you up as much as breastfed does. That can be, it depends on what formula you're using. Then are you attaching the experience of food. with the person who is delivering that food to you. Given that a baby in the first year and the first three years actually is purely sensory. Right. Everything we learn about the world, about whether or not we're safe, about what it is to be in the care of our family, is coming without language.

sounds, smells, and food. And sometimes, as little ones, when we're crying, it's because something's wrong, right? And a lot of times that's a hunger pain. It's indicating to our caregivers, we need food. And if that's not tended to, hunger pains hurt. They don't feel good. So the cries intensify. Okay.

When food comes, it's such a relief for the baby that a lot of times, little ones learn, the only time I feel relief is when I have a full belly. And this is what can lead to issues later on if the rest of the environment was alarming and the only relief was a full belly. But to backtrack to what you said about formula, formula has a denser protein than human milk. So sometimes it actually fills up a baby's tummy longer than breast milk. What that does is sometimes give a caregiver the idea, because the baby's full and the baby's asleep, but they don't need the adults around them. Breast milk is digest really fast because nature's plan is we need a lot of touch, we need a lot

of holding, so it digests really fast so that we're fed often. Formula-fed babies sometimes aren't hungry. They're not crying and they're left alone a lot. That's not optimum for brain development. Right. And then you have a statement that when that fullness gets attached to love. And I find that fascinating because as somebody who has taught millions of women how to intermittent fast, I have watched a lot of women take their own agency back, take their own power back, by actually learning how to fast in short spurts as a gift to themselves because they have been

overeating because when they feel full, now they are feeling loved. Help us understand how that neurologically gets connected. Definitely. Food and being full is an instant enhancement in dopamine. which we all need to feel good. It goes right to the pleasure center of the brain. Eating is supposed to be enjoyable. We're supposed to want it just as we're supposed to want human touch, which increases oxytocin. So dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin gets put in there. These are all the feel-good hormones that infants are supposed to be flooded with. Touch and food, pleasure,

safety, love, all of that. So, What happens for lots of us as we grow up is there's a deficit in that. We don't have quite enough dopamine. We don't have enough touch, so our oxytocin levels are low. So as we grow up, we learn to replace that ourselves. And one of the first things we have available to us as little ones is food. Right. We can sneak food.

We can hide food. We can eat. We can enjoy ice cream. We can start to administer our own dopamine, not knowing we're doing. doing that, of course. But then as we become adults, that becomes something we're really attached to. We're attached to the dopamine hit that comes with food and may substitute that for other ways of feeling good because we just didn't learn other ways. Right. So intermittent fasting, I think that gives a break to that dopamine hit. Right. We're in a deficit. I guess you're

teaching people there are other ways to feel good. That's it. Thank you. Like, and so what I used to say to people all the time when I taught fasting and to my patients is I would say, actually, it's a break from food that is a gift to your body where it can start to heal itself. And so many women struggled with the break, and they still do. Women listening to this right now are still going to have this, where the break from food is really challenging because it means a break from love. It means a break from dopamine. It means a break from, you know, I always tell people don't use food as your therapist.

Like we don't, when we use food, I think the biggest thing that I don't know if the world has completely understood this yet is we're not always using it for just nutrients. No, in fact, usually we're not. So one of the ways I like to frame it so that women can feel compassion for themselves, reduce the shame, when they struggle with giving up a certain food or a certain behavior, it's a heartbreak. When you decide to take a break, whether that's an intermittent fasting, or maybe it's, I'm going to not do wheat, flour, sugar, you're facing breaking up with one of the first relationships that ever gave you comfort.

It's a heartbreak. And what's worse for humans than a broken heart? Right. Nothing. Wow. So I really look at eating patterns as telling a story of love. Wow. Say more because, again, I've spent the last 30 years helping women redefine their relationship to food. And it's complex for us. I think it is one of the most difficult things we face. Because for a lot of us, food was our first love. Right. And we don't get up our first love easily. Yeah, there's really, we've written a lot of music about that. There's a lot of songs about the first love.

There is. And we think it's a romantic thing. And for some of this it is. Yeah. But when we start to experience trouble with our eating habits, they're not working anymore. And I guess this is when women will find you and try your programming and need coaching and need help.

I think it's really helpful for women to have a framework. that this is like giving up a lover. Ideally, our mother is our first love. But for so many of us, we had mothers that were unavailable for multiple reasons, busy or depressed or addicted or too many other children or a busy career. And so we're designed for her to be our attachment figure. But if she couldn't be our attachment figure, a lot of us created another one. and the first thing was food.

This is all unconscious. We do this before we know anything and before we can speak. It happens very young. Wow. So when we're helping women work with food, we're really working with a very small little child inside that person. Wow. And so what if knowing this,

I think people already, you know, 10 minutes into this podcast, their mind is blown. What, I mean, do you approach it like you? would approach a heartbreak when you go to change the way you eat. I mean, we have a really huge metabolic mess in our world right now because of the abuse of food. And it's a fascinating way to look at it like what if we grieve the food, the old food that we know we need to let go of, like ultra-processed foods? And how, is there a ritual we can do? Is there an understanding that a journaling we can do to really grieve that.

First of all, I love the way you just said that. Is there a way we can grieve? Even just pausing right there, that this isn't as simple as a diet or a new way, this is first of all grieving the old way. And really having an understanding of what it is. What is your food of choice? What is your primary love? Right.

Right. So our food in Western North America is designed to make us addicted. Yep. It's full of preservatives and sugars and things that attack and give us a dopamine hit. So it's one of the most powerful withdrawals to pull back from, we'll call it a love drug. Right. Yeah. And anyone who's letting go of something that is.

is habitual and addictive and soothing, which food can be, is going to grieve before a new behavior can start. So I think you hit the nail on the head. How do we help women grieve? Yeah. And I think we start by naming it that this will hurt. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, in full transparency, I feel just based off this part of the conversation, I feel like I haven't been empathetic enough. to the patients that I was like, you need to get off gluten. All I could see was when you get off gluten, you'll feel so much better. Or even my followers on YouTube, it's like, you know, they've all been playing with the different fasting tools and coming up against hurdles. And I feel like I've had more of a mechanistic approach to, oh, this is what you do to get over these hurdles. But you just offered a really intimate way for us to ignore.

knowledge that food has been such an important part of our life way more than nutrients. So I really love that. And I think that will actually change the way I talk about changing your patterns of food. So thank you for that. And I, in the last, this is a total side note, but in the last two years, I've had, I've had fortunately or unfortunately, a real intimate experience with grief. And I never had an experience so deep with grief. I lost a very good friend. And 52. And somebody said to me that you should learn how to dance with grief.

Like, it's a skill to learn that. And I spent a year, year and a half, really practicing what that looks like to overcome the heartbreak of losing this friend. And I'm now thinking deeper as you're talking, like, wow, we need to do this with the people who are learning to fast, who are learning to overcome ultra-processed foods. Like, let's just acknowledge that there's heartbreak here. Yes, well said. And this might be a good time to talk a little bit about the difference, and you're probably more of an expert than I am, but I have some insight around this as it relates to our body chemistry. There's a difference between fasting, like intermittent fasting,

and giving up. Oh, yeah. Thank you. Gluten or dairy or sugar completely. Like that really is, wow, this person, this relationship is going to be gone, grief. And you're going to spiral down. Whereas intermittent fasting sometimes can bring someone's body chemistry up a little. It can be in upper.

And so it won't feel like the same grief necessarily as giving up. a whole food category. Have you found that? Oh yeah, absolutely. My principles are actually quite flexible because I don't take a dogmatic approach to nutrition or fasting. I think everybody needs to find their rhythm. And so what I love about fasting is it's temporary to your point. Yes. And it's a good reset. Yeah. But here's what's really interesting. I've never had this discussion with anybody, but I've really spent so much time helping women see that there are times in your day you go without food. And that is a gift to the body so the body can rest and repair and recover. And then there are times that you nourish your body with food in this 24-hour cycle.

I call them eating windows and fasting windows. But here's what's crazy, Kelly, is the movement from a fasting window to an eating window and from an eating window back to the fasting window is the hardest thing for a woman to learn. Well, if you think about it, think about what is the hardest thing for a child. It's when mom leaves and when she comes back. So good.

So if you think about a child being dropped off at daycare or kindergarten or watching mom go out the door to work and they're left at home, perhaps with a caregiver, they're not excited about. Think of how hard that separation is. And then they do okay for a while. And then the minute they see her come back, and we can see this in the still-faced baby experiment

that lots of people have watched. Right, I've seen that. Yeah. You see the mother come back, and almost the baby then realizes you were gone. And so even the coming back hurts for a minute before it feels okay. Yeah. Is there a way we can re-pattern this relationship with food if we know that it's attached to mother's love?

We talked about the grief side of it. But when we talked a month ago, I really thought about my own eating. And, you know, I told you that I had a mom that would say, you had a really hard day. Come sit with me. And she did that for all the way until I was a teenager. And so when I first started learning how to fast, I really felt all her messaging in my brain come up. And I always say that fasting is like a mirror. It shows you your relationship to food.

And before I even knew of your work, I was like, wow, my mom taught me to be an emotional eater because I got unconditional mother love with a meal when life was bad. how do we begin to uncouple those things? Okay, I want to make sure I understand what you're saying. Yeah, okay, go for it. So rich, you would have had a hard day. Your mother says, come sit with me. Was she also offering food at that time? Oh, yeah.

She was offering me food. And the other thing she offered me was undivided attention from her. Well, what's interesting is what you actually needed was her undivided attention. Yes. But it was linked to food. So fast forward, I go off to college. She's not around. I start overeating, start gaining weight.

Okay. And that was like it was in those moments that all of a sudden I realized that I was an emotional eater because I was trying to reproduce what she gave me in my childhood. You wanted your mom. Yeah. Yeah. I want my mom gets translated into, I'll have some Cheetos. I'll have some ice cream. I'll eat a pizza.

Yep. Yeah. So how do we uncouple that? I mean, for me, it took awareness. That's the first step. Yeah. The first step is awareness. And then I think there is some second step is grieving. A real kind of, oh, I've got this awareness, but this is not the awareness I wanted. I don't like this. This doesn't feel good. Right. I didn't choose this and now I have to deal with it. So I find that women can be. sad, angry, a lot of anger can come up. I now have this burden of problematic eating and I didn't choose this. Which is where I think people really struggle with, I didn't do this to myself, but now I have to fix it. A lot of anger comes up with that. Right. So what I have found is that big change will not happen without a lot of emotional support. Beautiful. What does that look like? Is that

a therapist? Is that a community? It can be all of that. It can be a community. It can be a coach like yourself. It can be a podcast where someone's talking about these issues. They understand and you can listen to it at two in the morning when you wake up lonely and who do you call. So I think all the things you've designed. You have a statement that I also resonated with, which is food can rescue a hungry heart. Yes. Have you seen in your clinical practice that if we understand that it's the heart that's hungry, not the stomach, that we then see we have access to a new set of tools?

Yes, we can understand that we now have access, and that's a cognitive process. the body doesn't really care. The brain's like, okay, now I get it. The body's like, I want food right now. And so it can feel like there's an internal warfare going on. And there is. And sometimes that warfare gets externalized and women who are beginning to modify their eating

get angry with other people. Some women get angry with themselves. and turn it inward and whatever was going on with eating can either anticipate. So if I was overeating, I'm going to just rebel and do it more. Or I'm going to go the other way and I'm going to starve. I'll show you. Right. So that's all an expression of anger that there's this warfare going on. If I understand I need to do this and the body's like, oh no, no, no, no, no. We have already found what works. This food works and we're not changing this. Right. Oh, yeah. I mean, I watched that in clinical practice. I was like, like, it was so crazy. I'll never forget one day I came up to my front desk and I'm like, why is everybody so attached to their oatmeal and orange juice in the morning?

I, it seems like everybody on the planet wants their oatmeal and orange juice. And I couldn't understand if I wanted, that's how I got into fasting because I was like, could you push your oatmeal and orange juice back? an hour maybe because they were like gripping it they wouldn't let go of it it had it was a ritual they had been doing it forever and it was really difficult to break that apart well yes because the first thing we want when we wake up in the morning is love yeah and as children if we woke up to an angry mother an absent mother a mother who was stressed or perhaps we woke up and were fed donuts. Whatever it is we learn to replicate or fill in, either replicate the love she gave us or fill in for what we didn't get. We're going to attach to that. To the food. Yeah. And we need rituals as humans. We need them desperately. It's why we love holidays and we like

to create habits. We're creatures of habit. And so when you're asking someone to modify their eating, they're facing a loss on many levels. Relational loss, heartbreak, and the ritual. So there needs to be a replacement there, which I'm sure you have figured out that if you're going to fast in the morning, what are you going to do instead that will bring some dopamine? Yeah. What can you do instead that might bring some oxytocin and serotonin? Well, this is why I think all, now you've giving me another layer to understand like fasters are like gripping their coffee in the morning. That makes sense. And it's like, what else can I put in the coffee?

Oh, I can put collagen in there and creatine and like MCT oil. And the coffee becomes like this thing that is the anchor. And if it's healthy and it's done in a healthy way, again, you're giving me new thought that potentially when you're drinking your coffee, you. could say kind words to yourself like, this is love. This is what love feels like. I think it's really important to think of those morning rituals or any ritual with food as a surrogate mother. So good. Yeah. I want to invite you to something that I am crazy excited about. This October 3rd and 4th, I'll be joining an incredible group of speakers at Empower Your Life,

live event at the Alex Theater in Glendale, California. We'll spend two days exploring health, personal growth, mindset, and practical tools to help you create meaningful change in your life. I'll be there alongside speakers like Susie Orman, Jim Quick, Jamie Kern Lima, Brendan Bouchard, Nancy Levin, and many more. It's going to be an amazing weekend filled with learning, connection, and inspiration. I'd love to see you there. I'd also love to give you a big hug, and you can grab your VIP or general admission ticket by visiting hayhouse.com forward slash Dr. Mindy. That's hayhouse.com forward slash Dr. Mindy. I can't wait to see you. What if you had a mother that was abusive or a mother that died early or a mother that died early or a mother that

wasn't emotionally available. That's what creates mother hunger, and that is what's going to intensify the need for other replacement rituals, processes, and substances. Again, food being the first one, we usually have access to as little ones, imagination and fantasy we have access to, touch we have access to, we learn to touch ourselves. But as we get older, that can also, we start adding alcohol. we add other forms of addiction, other drugs. We add conclusive exercise or perfectionism.

I mean, there's a whole host of things that take the place of the attachment we're actually craving. So if we didn't have that from our mother. And again, this is kind of on a spectrum that I'd like to differentiate the mother who was busy or tired from the mother that was abusive physically and emotionally. That's two different forms of mother hunger, and I call one of those, the one that's more extreme, third-degree mother hunger. Because it's one thing if your attachment figure's not available. It's another thing if your attachment figure is frightening to you.

Because if you need to, the strongest biological drive we have in our whole body, it's stronger even than eating, is attaching. And if the thing and person we have to attach to frightens us, we're going to attach anyway. Oh, interesting. Think of what that does for women relationally over the lifespan. So that gets into relational difficulties. Yeah. But if we had to attach to something because we couldn't attach to her and it's food, this is a big ordeal. Yeah.

Because that attachment system is stronger than any other system in our. our body. So when you're asking someone to give up a food or fast, you're really working with their attachment system as well. And the attachment system was determined by the relationship with mom. Well, the attachment system is in us because we're mammals. Yeah, well, there's that, yeah. We all have it. Yeah. Yeah. How we develop the attachment system, whether it thrives or whether it suffers, happens in the first care with whoever our primary caregiver is. Generally, I call it mother, but mother represents whoever's nurturing, protecting, and ultimately guiding us. So I like to think of a mother more in what that function is rather than who the person is.

So the function, so that we have a secure attachment, which would then label, that would stabilize our eating, It sets the success rate for our whole nervous system so that we have good relationships. We can trust. We know when we're hungry, when we're full. A lot of us lost those cues because our attachment system didn't have enough nurturing. Soothing. Didn't have enough protection. We were scared a lot, so we had too much adrenaline.

And food brings in a calming, relaxing substance to bring that adrenaline down. And ultimately, later guidance. we may not have had good guidance around what is healthy eating or nutrition and things like that. So that's a later, the first two being nurturing and protection are where food will come in if a caregiver can't. We'll use food for nurture and protection. Talk about the protection piece of food. What would that look like? What it looks like is that when we're scared, when we're really little, or anytime, really,

fear is designed for action. So when we're afraid, our body becomes flooded with hormones that are designed to run or fight. If those two things don't work, we can't, let's say, as little infants can't run, as toddlers, we don't want to fight the person we depend on. We're probably going to lose, although that's what a tantrum is. That's basically the fight response in action. This is a baby in distress. Not a problematic baby. It's a baby who's in distress.

So what's going to calm down the nervous system? Infants can't self-sooth. So if the caregiver can't calm down that little one, what will? The next available thing is either for them to have some form of touch or food. And food brings in all the good hormones of dopamine, serotonin, and it literally calms down the fight, flight, reflex of adrenaline and noroburnethrin. Well, cortisol, cortisol and adrenaline, which is norabrenethr. Right. Yeah.

So this is fascinating because when I put Fast like a Girl out into the world, it will be four years in December. I really got a big lens of how women used the principles. And the intention behind Fast Like a Girl was to fast according to your hormones. And where I have landed now four years later and what I'm starting to teach here on my channel is how to fast for your nervous system. Because, right? I know. And I'm like, oh, I didn't even have this conversation. It fits so perfect.

because what I have seen is if you go into the polyvagal theory and you look at green state, which is balanced, or you look at yellow state, which is you're in fight or flight, or you look at freeze mode, which is red state. People in a red state should not fast. That is what I have come to conclude. That's right. So if, and so just for my audience listening, I have a whole questionnaire now. can put in the comments, NSQ, and we'll send you a copy because this is the evolution of my work, is that you need to understand your nervous system state because if you're in freeze mode,

fasting is not your tool, and you will only go deeper into that state. And you just gave me another layer of language for that. well exactly and also if you're in a fight and flight mode fasting is going to make that go up yes so shorter fast is what i you know or easy fasts that's when you really need a cup of beans right and we've been doing that i've been bringing back in what we call a fasted snack now and food that can actually keep your blood sugar stable but will keep you in a fasted state and you get all the benefits of it and you get all the benefits of That's actually the evolution of fasting right now, and it's really beautiful, where we're saying, hey, there are some things you can have.

But what, for the sake of this conversation, food as a nervous system regulator is an important part of the food craving, food addiction conversation. because if I'm a 52-year-old woman and I all of a sudden start fasting, but I've been using food to regulate my nervous system and I'm struggling in a fast, I better have some other tools. You need them because food has been soothing loneliness. Yeah, yeah. Food has been the primary relationship for probably a very long time that has been keeping this

person from knowing how lonely she is. So if she's going to modify that, she's going to come right in face to face with the very thing she's been avoiding. So there's going to be a lot of nervous system dysregulation. And if you have someone who literally grew up with abuse, then you're going to have some significant trauma pop up if you start modifying food. And that goes back to my theory that I always say fasting is like a mirror. If you want to know your relationship to food, try some intermittent fasting and all the thoughts will come up. When I did my first 24-hour fast, I had researched it, I understood what it was, and I was about 19 hours in, and all of a sudden I heard my mother's voice. I heard, you are going to die if you do not eat.

You are uncomfortable right now. You should probably eat. My mom was constantly running around with food to help us soothe whatever mental state we were in. And I did never knew that until I started fasting. So it's really profound, which is why when I found out about your work, I was like, oh, my gosh, this was my experience. Now, another thing that my community really has been transparent about is what our mothers have taught us about our bodies. And I remember as a child, my mom standing in front of her mirror criticizing her body. Yeah, yeah.

I remember that too. I think it's important for us to kind of remember our mothers were first daughters, and they grew up watching their mothers who were. their mothers. And we come from different backgrounds and different standards of beauty. But if the beauty standard in your family and your maternal ancestors was being thin, then there's this really difficult navigation around the way our food supply, which is designed full of fat, and what the beauty standard is. Not every culture has that same struggle. But we do as daughters learn how to feel inside our own skin by watching our mother, not by what she says, but about how she dresses, how she talks to herself, and how she feels in her own body.

And I think it's really difficult in patriarchal structures for any woman to have a good feeling about her body. Yeah, right, right. I did a video one time where there was a statistic that said like only 2% of women, meet the media standard for a pretty woman, like only, like an acceptable weight, like only two percent of us meet that standard. Good gracious. It's crazy. It is.

But I remember as a child watching this woman that I admired criticize herself when she got, and I thought she was so powerful in other areas, but if you put her, I can still to this day remember her bra and her underwear. and her body as she looked herself in the mirror and I would be like hanging out in the room and she would be telling me all the things she hated about her body. And as you picture that, this is so great. Thank you. As you picture that, can you imagine how old you are in that moment and what you're thinking as you're watching that?

Yeah, I was about six or seven years old. That sounds right. That's when the prefrontal cortex is coming online and starting to make sense of the world so that totally lines up. So you're watching this. Your body and mind is starting to make sense of what this means. And what are you telling yourself in that moment? Well, it's interesting because she would turn to me and she would tell me, you don't have this problem. And so I just identified that it was a problem and that I somehow didn't have it. But if you go back and my my audience doesn't really know this. I should probably share this sometime. I was, for most of my life,

I was 30 pounds overweight. And because I was an emotional eater and I had all these body image issues. And it wasn't. You didn't have that problem. Right. I know. Right. Exactly. Right. Yeah. So this is partly what's also interesting is that I asked you what you were thinking and your answer was what your mother told you. That speaks to the power that as daughters, our thoughts come from her. Right. Yeah. Our ideas about ourselves come from her. We can't appreciate it. I have to tell you something really trippy. Oh, good. My mom is actually calling me right now. Oh, I'm sitting here in this interview and all of us and I look down at my phone is buzzing and it's my mom. Okay, there's a psychic connection there. There's no accident. Do we need to hit pause? Do you want to

no, we're fine. It could be really truthful. It could be fascinating. Hey, Mom, I want to know how you messed up my body image and my relationship to food. Can we talk about it with Dr. McDaniel right now? Yeah. And what was really beautiful is that somewhere along, as I understood the human body, I really made sure that I changed the messaging for my children. And I was very aware of this. I mean, you're talking to a woman who's done a lot of therapy and a lot of work on this. But I hear it a lot where, I mean, so many women, Kelly,

oh, my God, in my reset academy, they're like, my mom was on me, like white on rice to be thin, so I could be loved, so I could be accepted. and so she could feel good. That's right. That's right. Over and over, I've heard these stories of little ones being put on diets, very young. Oh, yeah, my sister chronically on a diet.

Yeah. Yeah. So how do you unwind that? Because one of the other things outside of the relationship with food that I've been working with my audience to redefine is a love for their bodies. and how do we measure what it looks like to love your body because like we said before we have been taught if you're a size two or you're a size four then you are acceptable but i have i always say i don't care what size you are as long as you look in the mirror and you love what's staring back at you and as long as you when you put clothes on you're not criticizing yourself and if and if your blood work

is looking great and your hemoglobin A1C is in balance. Like, we're not all meant to be so thin. So there, what can you help? How can we help the woman who's listening to this and is like, I don't even know how to begin to love my body? Well, my first reaction would be, of course you don't. Of course you don't know how. Where have you seen it modeled? So I think one of the most powerful ways to help women develop a love for our body is to model it, which is why it's really powerful that you're offering a program that would model what that even looks like. I mean, a lot of us just haven't seen it. And then I think it's important to keep in mind that as women, our relationship with food is as unique,

as our relationship with our mother, and there's no mother-daughter relationship that duplicates another. It's as unique as our own DNA. Yeah. So the path for me to heal my body and the path for you to heal your body are going to be as unique as Kelly and Mindy are. So it is very individual, and I think that's where it can get tricky when we're in a group and we want to kind of, we're group-oriented mammals. You know, we really want a role model and we want to do whatever he's doing and whatever works for Sally better work for me, right?

Yeah, right. Sometimes it doesn't, and that doesn't mean I'm failing. Yeah. It just means I might need to be learning more about myself. Right. Yeah, and dive deeper. And what have you seen? Because you, you know, not only are you an author, but you are, you know,

a practitioner and in clinical practice. What do you see that it's just like untangling a really knotted up ball of yarn and you just have to keep pulling the threads until things start to loosen up? Is there a process that we can all go through to unwind this way in which our mother has taught us food and how to love or not love our bodies? Right. well, this is why I wrote the mother hunger book, because mother hunger is really a way to name insecure attachment. And 50% of us, if you'll keep in mind, did not attach securely. 50% of the people that did are probably not in your program or mine. So that's not who we're talking about. We're working with folks who did not have their attachment needs met, and therefore

food has become a substitute for maternal care. So what we're really doing, and if you want a path, is rewiring the attachment system. We are creating and earning our own secure attachment. And that is an inside job. And the more we become secure within ourselves, our eating starts to stabilize. Now, sometimes it's what goes first, the cart before the horse, you know, chicken or egg. what goes first. Sometimes we might need to modify our eating to calm our nervous system, enough to start to understand this and to engage in a therapeutic process that would help us

attach better to ourselves. Sometimes we're going to have to attach to ourselves better before we can modify our eating. And again, that's so unique for each person that I can't, I can't give a formula that works for everybody. I can simply say that what we're working with here is a lot more than what might be on the plate. Right. If you are loving the conversations on my podcast and you want to go deeper with me, come join me over on Substack. It's where I share the conversations I'm having behind the scenes,

the research that I'm obsessed on and paying close attention to, and really the thoughts I don't always get to unpack here on the podcast or any of my other social media. We're taking women's health, fasting, hormones, food systems, mindset, aging, and what it really means to live like a girl in today's world to a whole new level. You'll also get early podcast access, deeper essays on my thoughts around how we can all stay healthy in this modern world. You get community, you get conversations and exclusive content that I only share there. I'm not joking when I said this is my new. favorite place. It is currently where I am at. So you can head on over to substack.com or just search

Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pels directly in the Substack app. I'm super excited to have you over there. Please introduce yourself and let's dive in to some really good conversations. So if I was supposed to get nurturing, protection, and guidance from my mother and I'm listening to this and I realize I didn't get that and I attached that to food. What I think you're offering all of us is the possibility to actually turn it within ourselves and to nurture ourselves to protect ourselves, to guide ourselves and to do it outside of a person or food or anything that that's where the work really is, is. And this is a human problem, I think, because everybody wants to attach themselves to something else.

Well, we have to. We have to. It's not elected. We have to or we die. If we're not attached, we die. This is why infants die when they are not touched enough. Right. It's failure to thrive syndrome. It's a problem. So I just want to let this. This is a relational injury that happens from not having our attachment needs met. And it does have. have, it does need a relational solution. So we can do some of this on our own, but not all of it. We are not designed to do this on our own. We're not designed to heal by ourselves. So the formula is, oh, now that I know I missed out on some nurturing, I'm going to need to find some. And that might mean, I find a good coach. I get a massage therapist. I need to work on who my friends are. Do I have any friends? I need to look at my primary relationship. Do I feel loved and safe?

So that is a relational issue as well as am I good to myself? That's beautiful. But for women, we learn to nurture ourselves based on how we were nurtured. So we have to unlearn some things usually before we learn the good ones. Right. So that's if we realized we lost out on nurturing. You know, maybe our mother was a great guide. We had a caregiver that kept us safe, but they were cold and we were never held.

nurturing. Okay. Perhaps we had a mother that was very cozy and playful and loving, but we weren't safe and our uncle had access to us and we were abused as a child, but she didn't notice. She was just, you know, lovey and sweet and not protecting us. Then it's going to be our job to protect ourselves. Right. But we live as women in a world where we are sexual prey. So to tell a woman, oh, you ought to just learn how to feel safe without understanding the cultural context that most women I know walk us out their home and are immediately vigilant. They've got their keys ready or their spray ready. When they're in their home, their doors are locked. I mean, the truth is, you can do your best to try to feel safe and you're working against a lot.

So I think keeping in mind the cultural context here that it's more than just when you realize you missed out on some protection, you can make yourself feel safe. With that sense, there are things you can do. If you realize you were not safe as a child, minimize how much of the news you're watching. So smart. Try not to watch things on TV that amp up your nervous system. Because you're already on high alert. So what your work will be is to bring things down. And probably you've been using food to do that. Right. Eating things like a lot of cheese, a lot of ice cream, a lot of bread, things with carbs bring down the nervous system and numb us out. Calms it.

Yeah. Yeah. So it's going to be hard to give that up unless you've got something in place that helps you feel safe. So if you, you know, a lot of people are seeing functional medicine doctors now, maybe they have some digestive problems and they go into the doctor and the doctor says you need to go gluten-free. But you've been using that bread to calm your nervous system down.

This is where I'm like, oh my God, all practitioners need to hear this conversation and get your book because you need to understand what you're asking of this person and offer up other tools of protection because they've been calming that nervous system. That's right. I think this is why a lot of people have come to me frustrated that they worked with a nutritionist. They worked with a doctor. They've worked with an eating disorder place and nothing worked. Well, nobody was treating the nervous system.

and looking at this. So keep in mind, I didn't write a book about food. I have one chapter called, it's chapter four, it's called surrogate comfort because I do think of food as a surrogate mother. Yeah. So, yes, it'd be really great if the world were more aware of this, but a lot of things would have to change. Yeah. Well, I'm going to do my best to make the world aware of this. You're doing your part. I'm so glad. I'm just thinking even what pediatricians would have to do differently with parents and what what we'd have to do with our education system that is that is really toughening kids up and making them independent when really those dependency needs are not met. So we got a bigger issue here.

Yeah, we got a lot of work to do. What are your thoughts? I don't think it was in the revised book, but I'm curious what you think of the obsession with the weight loss drugs right now. and specifically food noise. I really dove into trying to understand food noise from a physiological standpoint. And, you know, there's a lot of interesting things like ultra-process foods destroy microbes that actually give off a byproduct that stimulates the internal cells and cause them to make GLP1 hormone.

So we now have more food noise because of the toxic. of our food system. But there's also the food noise, as we have, you know, said is there's an emotional piece. So what happens when I take a drug and I cut that food noise off? Well, you tell me, what are you seeing? Well, you know, there's, I've done so much research on this because there's many different things. Depression kicks in. That's a big one where, because, because people were using food to soothe themselves for all the reasons that we've talked about. So are you seeing that alcohol use goes up? No, actually addictions go down. Okay, well, that's good. Okay. Yeah. But there's something that's happening that is called the

meh personality where people on these drugs don't have enthusiasm for life. They don't have excitement for their relationships or their careers. So they get a very muted personality. Now, I've only looked at that through the lens of pharmacology and potentially how that's affecting it. But if we look at it through the mother hunger lens, you've now shut off this primal need that has all these emotions attached to it. And it's like taking a trauma.

And like pushing it down even deeper in my sense. Well, that's one way to look at it. And I also want to just throw out kind of the obvious. Yeah, yeah. Is initially, what a relief. Right. I have to honor that. I agree.

Yes. You've spent your whole life hungry for something you didn't understand. Yeah. Trying to fill it in ways that really didn't work. And now here's something that. just dials it down, what a relief. Yeah, agreed. Yeah, and thank you for saying that,

because I don't want to be insensitive to people whose life have changed. Sure, sure. Same. And I think that's why I come at it more as a therapist and less as a medical person, because I'm seeing a reduction in some trauma symptomology and initially that's going to look like progress, that's going to look like mental health, and it's going to look like relief.

And I think we might be too young in this whole relationship with the GLP ones to know what the long-term effects are going to be. Right. But in the therapy room, you're seeing that progress is being made. You're offering me, again, another insight into maybe the benefits of these, because now can you go to deeper work? Like how to speak to this through the trauma lens? Right, right.

And I think that different clinicians are going to see it differently based on the kind of therapy they're doing. But one of the things that I have seen is there's also an increased for some women. Again, this seems really different, so I can't generalize. But I've seen some women struggle with anger that have. had never been angry before. And they're like, where is this coming from? And sometimes they're not even noticing it, but the people around them are. So it's different than the, nah, impact that does impact some. Some are finding that they're irritable and angry. So I haven't yet come up with a general theory about these medications, because, again, I look at the relationship of a woman is navigating

with food as a story. And this is a new chapter. This is a new chapter in the story. I'm going to read it with my client. I'm going to see where this goes. And I'm going to read her story and then read a different client's story and not really say, I think, unilaterally, these are good or these are not. Right.

The jury's still out. Jury's out for me. Yeah. Yeah. With this new revised book of Mother Hunger, what was it that you felt like you needed to add into the book that you didn't have the first time? That is such a great question. I loved the book and felt like it was pretty complete. And most people love the book too. But when women would write into me, I was hearing a lot of women say, help me break the cycle with my own children. Yeah. Oh, I was going to ask you about that because I have a daughter. Yeah. It's a lot of people, you know, even though I say, read this book as a daughter, this is not a parenting manual, would still write in and say, I need parenting help.

So I'm not a parenting expert, but I did talk to some and do some research, and I included a chapter for parents who already know they have some mother hunger and they want to try to break the cycle of passing it down. And then I got a lot of women writing and saying, you know, I know you wrote this. for me, but I think my husband needs to read this, or I think my brother needs to read this, or, you know, what do I do for my son one day? So I included a chapter for men, beautiful, which was kind of fascinating because I wanted to co-write that chapter with a man. I talked to colleagues, other psychologists. I talked to men in recovery. They weren't ready to look at mother hunger. That taught me a lot. These are well-educated, highly trained, or psychologically aware people. And they have not even been given language or permission to look at their

relationship with their mother. I couldn't find a man to help me with this. So I took a stab at it. And even the fact that men don't have language for this and resist it was fascinating to me. I think the relationship boys have with their mothers is so taboo to look at. Ooh. This is really tricky. So I'm not even sure they're the ones reading this chapter. I think it'll be written. I read it.

I know that women will read it because they want to understand their men and the men in their lives. Right. Well, and you bring up a good point because we've been talking about the mother-daughter relationship strongly here. And that is my audience. It's mostly women. I want to. But men do have. dysfunctional relationships to food and their body as well. And would you say that stems from

mother hunger as well? Well, I would have to say yes, because I think we're all babies. And gender doesn't really weigh in when it comes to how we first experience love. We have the same need for nurture. We have the same need for protection because we're vulnerable little mammals. gender doesn't matter a whole lot. So, yes, I think the primitive relationship we have with eating, and you can see men really overeating, indulging, medicating their mood with food. But because they have more testosterone or more muscle mass,

it takes a while for that to catch up and become problematic, maybe. Yeah, yeah. And they're living in a patriarchal society that treats them different. Totally different. They can have food issues and nobody's going to say a thing about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. It's just a different, it's a double standard.

Yeah, for sure. Anyway, then the third chapter is written for firstborn daughters. Because that's another population I was hearing a lot from. There's a unique loneliness for firstborn daughters in their families. And I looked at the biological reasons why this happens, but the sociological reasons why this happens and included a chapter for them. Yeah. as an author I'll tell you and I know you know this it is no easy task to write a book yet I think we all just like our children

hope that it's going to blossom into something someday something great what are you hoping the revised mother hunger will blossom into a new cultural conversation compassion for women have for themselves. Like, what do you hope it does in the world? I think you just named it that when I'm writing, first I'm a therapist more than an author. So when I'm writing in my mind is a conversation I want to have with each woman I won't ever get to sit with in psychotherapy. Yeah, yeah.

My hope for this book is that it touches the hearts who needed. Yeah. And that's what it's been doing. I hope these new chapters don't undo that. So I just, because they're very different chapters. They weren't my original plan. I'm responding to what people asked for, but I was a little outside my expertise. So I just hope that it lands gently and that women or men who read the book take what's useful.

And what's not useful doesn't undermine what is. Right, right. You know, one of the things I love about being an author more than anything is that somebody picked up my words, a person I will never meet that may have only spent, you know, 30 bucks on a book, will never come into my world and they change their own life because I made the decision to sit down and think through a concept that I knew would help people. I think on the day I die, that's going to be one of those things that I look back on and feel the most proud of. Yeah. It gives your life meaning and purpose. Yeah. Yeah. So I think I'm really excited that you revised this.

I'm super excited that I got an opportunity to chat with you. I'm the type of person that when I get obsessed about something, I can't shut up about it. And this will be one of those things. So people who have listened this far are going to. to hear me keep coming back to this. I'm so happy you're coming into my membership group, so thank you for that. But most importantly, thank you for taking the time to put your thoughts down and what you've clinically seen so others can heal. And I just, it's profound. So thank you for that. I appreciate that you understand that commitment and that dedication. And I also appreciate your

effort to help me spread the word. Yeah, thank you. Oh, I got a megaphone for you here, Kelly. That's wonderful. I really do. Needs it. Yeah. Yeah. And if people are still listening this deep in, share the episode out because, you know, I think in just a few things you said in here, women will free themselves from that food noise,

potentially as deeply as they do with the weight loss drugs. Like just that awareness is so profound. So I appreciate that. So, okay, so the topic of the name of my podcast is LiveLivLive. like a girl. And I named it that because one of the things I'm trying to take back for women is that being anything like a girl is a bad statement. It's derogatory. So when you think of living like a girl, what does it mean to you? I think this is such a great title. Thank you. And it's connected somehow for me with mother hunger. Yeah, for sure. I think healing from mother

of hunger, helping your children heal, is a countercultural endeavor. To live like a girl and own that in a world that is patriarchal, in a world that is misogynistic, is countercultural. You're actually going against the culture. And in that way, for me, living like a girl is really tuning into the rhythms of my own body. And so when I was still menstruating, that meant understanding my cycle, taking it out from hiding, not being ashamed of it, and understanding what the ludial phase was teaching me, and understanding that when my period was about to come, I needed to rest more and not apologize for that,

not try to overachieve during that time, but really understand I'm a cyclical creature and honor that and be playful when I was ovulating and then sleep more when I wasn't. Now that I don't have that cycle anymore, I've had to relearn. Well, what is it to live like a girl as an older woman? I'm not a maiden anymore. I'm not in the mothering mode anymore.

I'm a crone now. Yeah, you are. Right? Which means crown, by the way. You know crone means crown. Well, okay, I'm going to go with it. See, that's a good example of how I have to relearn. Yeah.

What is it to live like a girl as an older woman? And so I think I'm figuring that out, Mindy, and that's why I love the question. because it means that I look at exercise differently. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Exercise rather than being kind of this, I don't know, it's now my playtime. I've had to make it playful, make sure that whatever it is I'm doing, I actually enjoy it. Which is girl-like.

It really is. It really is. Yes. Yeah, you know, I wrote, the last book I wrote was Age Like a Girl and the purpose behind that. was to show women that the brain rewires itself as it goes through menopause. And that rewirement actually lets you go back into your childhood and take parts of you that maybe the patriarchal culture took away. And it allows you to grab those parts back and say, I'm going to own these now.

I'll tell you this one story. When I first moved here to Santa Cruz, we have a really beautiful long driveway. and I looked at my husband and I said on my 56th birthday, I'm going to get a big wheel, and I'm going to ride a big wheel down that driveway. And he's like, no, he told me all the reasons I couldn't. I'm like, no, I'm doing that on my 56 birthday. Sure enough, I posted on socials on my 56th birthday. I put a helmet on.

I could barely, I ordered a big wheel off Amazon. I got on the big wheel and I went down my driveway. Okay, that is probably one of the most inspiring stories I've ever heard. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Like, I felt like I was 10 again. Exactly.

It was amazing. It's amazing and perfect and such good role modeling. That's what we need. Role modeling of what it does look like to live like a girl as we get older. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Wow.

Well, Kelly, I could talk to you for hours. I just hope we meet in person. one day. And I just, I really thank you for bringing this topic to light. I know this episode is going to help so many women. So the standard question is, where do they get your book? Is there anything that they need to know about ordering your book? As far as I know, the pre-orders are going well and are happening now. The book will officially launch on September 15th. And I think a lot of women, the feedback I'm getting is they like the audio book. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, they're very popular. My books are actually doing better in audio now than hard to ever. I think people want to hear our voice. Yeah. And women have told me who had the original book that they use it to go to sleep at night, which I love that. I'm taking that as a compliment. I think that's wonderful.

That's amazing. Okay. Beautiful. Well, thank you for your time and thank you for your knowledge and your heart. I just really, I've thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. So have I. Thank you for coming with your whole heart and intellect. Yeah.

Thank you. I hope we get a chance to hug someday. Yes, we will. Okay. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends,

and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.