Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - Breaking Through Your Mental Barriers When Fasting - With Jessica Ortner

Episode Date: May 16, 2022

For full show notes, resources mentioned, and transcripts go to: www.drmindypelz.com/ep121/ To enroll in Dr. Mindy's Fasting membership go to: resetacademy.drmindypelz.com This episode is all about EFT Tapping to break through your mental barriers and improve your fasts.  Jessica Ortner is a stress-reduction expert and one of the leading voices teaching EFT Tapping. She is a New York Times best-selling author of The Tapping Solution of Weight Loss and Body Confidence and The Tapping Solution to Create lasting Change.  Please see our medical disclaimer.

come from a place of love and find the pleasure. You can't hate yourself healthy or thin. You can't criticize yourself to be good enough. We have to work on that voice inside of us because that's the voice that's getting in the way. Resetters, Dr. Mindy here. And I am on a mission to teach you just how powerful your body was built to be. This podcast is about giving you the power back and helping you believe in yourself. again. Let's jump in. On this episode of the Resetter podcast, do I have a treat for you? In this interview,

you are going to hear Jessica Ortoner. Now, if you're not familiar with her work, she and her brother have brought tapping EFT, Emotional Freedom Technique, literally to the world. She is a New York Times best-selling author and a true tapping expert as you will learn here in this episode. And it is tapping. If you're not familiar with it is something that I have been experimenting with in my morning meditation time. I've used as a stress relief tool. It is a free and easy tool to use to bring cortisol down quickly. And as many of you who have been listening to my podcast for a while know, cortisol is the enemy of most hormones. It's also the enemy of insulin if you're trying to fast. So I wanted to bring the premier expert to this podcast to enlighten us on why tapping works,

how you tap, and then I have a treat for you. At the end, we walk through a tapping experience for fasters. So this was Jessica's first interview since she had her baby, which was I was such an honor. And she's just so filled with love, so informative. Tapping has been obviously around for a very long time. They're science as starting to prove why tapping works. And you'll hear us talk in this episode about some of the science and especially the science on women. Oh my gosh, I can't wait for you guys to hear this. And we also, one of the specialties that she has is using tapping for overcoming hurdles around. food, body image, and how to use tapping to accelerate weight loss or even to tap into weight loss. So get ready. I took you through a process that I hope will change your life because tapping can be that solution that you use as you're learning to make better choices in your world.

And Jessica is so full of love. I can't wait for you to listen to this. The last thing I'll tell you is I got so into this conversation that I forgot to ask her what her gratitudes were at the end. We did a whole tapping session. I loved everything she was saying that I totally forgot. So I have to bring her back. And she has a pretty cool gratitude practice. She told me after the interview.

So we'll bring her back for another session. But Jessica Ortoner, tapping, the tapping solution is her app. And this is an absolute gift to bring this to you all. So let me, I just really, truly, I was so excited to see you on my, on my schedule. I have been following your work, your brother's work, like what you guys are doing, the tapping for years. And I just, let me just start off by saying welcome. Thank you, Jessica, for being here.

Well, thank you for such a warm welcome. I'm happy to be here. I was mentioning earlier that this is the first podcast I've done in about a year because I had a baby. So I decided to take a little break. but I'm excited to chat with you and to connect with your audience, which seems like such a group of lovely people. So I'm thrilled to be here. Yeah, I may be a little biased, but I do think they're a group of very lovely people. And, you know, it's so interesting because a lot of what

we've tried to do with, you know, what we're teaching on social media and through this podcast is really unite women and men too. We don't leave the men out. But in a community setting. So what I love about your story is that this is your first interview since having a baby. What you may not know is Jessica, who runs my whole podcast, is probably nursing her baby right now while she's listening to this. And we have a whole group of women that have just formed this beautiful community. So I'm truly honored that I get to be your first interview in a year. Yeah, it feels divine. And yay to the moms out there who are doing it all.

Yeah, I love it. So like we said, you know, before we hopped on, I do want to dive into how we can use tapping around diet changes and fasting. But for my audience who may not know what tapping is, can you just start with the basics and explain to us what it is? And more importantly, why does it work? Yeah, absolutely. So this is not like an aerobic tap dancing. It's called tapping because we're using our fingers to stimulate these acupressure points. They're acupressure points that help relax our whole body. And a lot of us intuitively use them.

When people are stressed, they tend to rub their temples or they squeeze the bridge of their nose. There are certain points of your body that help you relax. Now, what happens when we're stressed is that stress is that stress is not an experience that just lives in the brain. It's not that we have a thought and our brain feels stress. No, our body feels stress, right? We feel it like a tightness in our stomach or our chest.

And it's a very physical response, which is why sometimes, just trying to talk our way out of it isn't enough because our body's having this reaction. So what tapping does is you actually spend a short amount of time getting clear on the thought that's creating that physical response in your body. And while focusing on that thought, you begin to stimulate these acupressure points, which sends this calming signal to your brain, letting your brain know that you're safe. Because when we're in this stress response, I know many of your audience, probably know this already, but we're having this response, which is the fight or flight response,

which is really helpful if we're on a hike and we see a snake. I mean, the fight or flight response, everyone always is like it's a horrible response, but it's good. We should feel stressed in certain situations. The challenge is we see something on social media. We get a phone call. There's something that's not life-threatening, and our entire body begins to act like it's life-threatening. Our heart begins to race. We have that overproduction of cortisol, that adrenaline. And so what we're doing with tapping is we're reprogramming our response to that thought. It's really this beautiful combination of ancient Chinese acupressure and modern psychology. And the modern psychology aspect is that instead of saying, I don't feel this way or just jumping into the positive,

just saying, like, I'm enough, I'm confident, everything's okay. You're giving your space to honor your feelings and say, even though I feel this anxiety, I accept how I feel. I accept myself. And by bringing in that language while you tap on these acupressure points, it lowers that stress response. And this now, we talked a little bit earlier, in the last five years, there's been an explosion of science and research where we know without a doubt that by tapping on these acupressure points, you're reducing cortisol in your body. And I have a great study. I'd love to share with you.

But I feel like I'm on a tangent. No, no, no, please. Yeah, go for it. Because we love the science. So my people really dig the science. So go for it. Well, I'll give you something for your show notes. I have, there's, you know, so much science and research, but we compiled 49 pages of kind

of the top studies. But one of the studies that I found so fascinating, there's this one, woman, Dr. Peda Stapleton in Bond University in Australia, and she specializes with women who have eating disorders, mostly women who are struggling with obesity. And I'll talk about the brain scan study when we talk about fasting. But first I want to talk about this first study she did around stress. She had this group of women. It was 53 participants. They were divided into three, and they had one group that was reading about stress relief. So this is like the blog about how to think positive,

how to reframe what's going on. So just kind of some tips on ways to think differently. They had another group that was just reading magazines, the control group. And then they had the third group that was using tapping. So cortisol is pretty easy to measure because you can measure through your saliva. And what they found is that this group, the people who read about stress relief, Their stress did go down.

Their cortisol went down by 19%. So it's pretty good. 19% and went down. They're feeling less stress. The control group that just sat there in red magazines, it actually went up 2%, which I think says a lot about what people are reading nowadays. Yeah, that's pretty good.

But the third group who used tapping, their cortisol levels went down by 43%. That is really significant. That's a big shift. And was that in one sitting? So that was in one sitting. That's measuring cortisol before and then after. That's crazy.

And I'm so, oh gosh, okay. So there's two things you said that were like light bulbs in my mind. The first is I'm so happy you said why we don't, why we say the negative, even though I'm feeling this way, because that has been something that I've like, as I've been tapping, I've been like, why am I, I don't want to say that I'm feeling this way. And you now actually gave me some context. to why we say that. The second thing I have to say is, do you know how nice it is to hear a woman study?

We don't, in the fasting world, this is what we are constantly asking for is give us more women studies. And because you take studies and you lump men and women together and when you look at us hormonally, we are vastly different. And cortisol plays out really different in each one of us. So I just love that. That was amazing. So, okay, tell me.

Explain tapping. So we, what I heard from you is it lowers cortisol. We're tapping into the body's reaction to stress. But why do we do the top of our head? Why do we do above our eyebrow? Do I need to do both sides? Do I have to do, you know, like there's so many of the mechanics that I've had questions about. Yeah. So the, the acupressure points are symmetrical. So some people prefer one side over another. Some people like to do both. I like to do both. It just. feels like personally, like I'm more engaged, but you can do one or the other and it's personal preference. Tapping has evolved. It started in the 1980s by this man, Dr. Roger Callahan. And depending on what your challenge was, you would tap on different points. So if you had a

problem that dealt with a certain kind of anxiety where you felt it in your stomach, you would tap under the eye, which is the stomach meridian. You know, if you had something else, it would be a different sequence, which was great. The challenge is it was very hard to learn. And in the moment when you're stressed, you don't think clearly, right? This is the thing about being stressed. A lot of us feel overwhelmed. And then it's hard for us to do the things that we know, how to be resourceful.

So then this man, Gary, Craig came along who learned from Roger Callahan and was like, let's through experience, through working with people, find an algorithm that is easy to remember and that anybody can do. And so they took some of the major meridian points and these nine points and they do these nine points. There are so many tapping practitioners out there and you'll find some that might add a point that I don't do. And one of the interesting things about our app, we have this app.

And the reason I bring it up in this context is it's something I'm interested in because we get to test people tap and then they measure their stress before and after. So I'm also curious as we evolved to continue to test to be like, what happens when you spend more time doing this or more time doing that? So it is evolving. But these nine points are so powerful. They're easy to remember and they're easy to access. So that's why we stick with them. Yeah. So if you do, okay, so if you do an extra point, that's not a problem. What if you're, do you have to be exactly on the point? No, no, it's such a forgiving process. And that's why I like it. Like I remember. I learned tapping from my brother who was like, I found this weird thing on the internet, which was not like a good opening line to convince me to try anything. This is maybe like 15 years ago. And he had me tap on these points.

And he always plays practical jokes on me like since I was born. So he had me tapping on the top of my head. And I was like, really? Like, are you just seeing how ridiculous I can look? And he's like, no, no, no, just give this a try. And I ended up having this really amazing breakthrough where I physically felt the stress leave my body to the point where sometimes when you live with stress so long, you don't know how bad it is until it's gone. Because then you have that point of reference. So I had this experience, but like anything, I just got busy with life and I forgot about it.

And then seven months later, I'm going through a really tough breakup. And I'm in bed and I'm crying. and I'm like, what is that thing again that really helped? And I remembered like half of the points. I did not get it right. And I just felt such relief from just tapping the few points I knew and saying, even though I'm heartbroken, I accept myself. I accept how I feel.

I love and accept myself. And just tapping through those points, I had a shift. And that was a moment where I was like, wow, I'm not even doing this right. And I'm feeling better. So anyone, you know, if someone just listens to this interview and they never do anything else with me, they never grab a book or tap with the app, if they just learn the nine points with us together, they might have a moment where they're like, I don't remember all of them, but I remember four. I just got rear ended and I'm stressed. I'm going to tap on my collarbone point and they're able to self-soothe. Oh my gosh. I love that. Okay. So take us through the points. What are the points? Okay. So the very first point is the side of the hand. And it doesn't matter what side you tap on. So for those who are not watching, but listening, it's underneath your pinky on the flesh part.

Perfect. And then the next point is the eyebrow point. So I'm using two fingers and I'm tapping where the hair of my eyebrow begins. So right on the bone. Exactly. Now follow your eyebrow until you're on the side of the eye on the bone. Perfect. Now follow that bone again until you're underneath your eye.

then underneath your nose between your lip and your nose, underneath your mouth, the crease between your lip and your chin, then your collarbone point. If you find your collarbone and you go down an inch, you're going to feel it. You can also just use your whole hand and tap on your chest if you're on trip,

you have it. And then the next point is a hand width from your armpit. It tends to be where your bra strap lies. and then the very top of the head. So the under the arm one is the one that always got me. I'm like, do you put both, like it's a little awkward and it's like,

how do you, do I put both hands? What do I do? Yeah, it can just be on one side. So I'm just like tapping on one side. Okay. Yeah. And if you,

if you have trouble reaching across your body, you can also just use kind of like a monkey. Remember, we don't have to do this in public. You can do this. But if you kind of do the monkey move, you can stimulate that point. Okay. And you do them in that order.

So you start with the side of the hand, the eyebrow, the side of the face under the eye. Yes. Okay. But then as you go around, the side of the hand, you only use at the very beginning when you say the set up statement. So the setup statement sets you up for the process of tapping. And this is your opportunity to kind of say to yourself, I'm going to have an honest conversation. I'm going to say how I feel and accept how I feel. You don't have to believe

that it's true. The power is within the tapping. There was some research studies where they took away the words and they just did the tapping and people were getting great results with just the tapping. So the key is the tapping. The words are helpful so that you don't think about emptying the dishwasher so that you're, you know, so that you're having this honest conversation and you're really focused on what is causing you that stress. So you tap on the side of the hand and usually the setup statement is something like, even though I feel so overwhelmed about work, I accept how I feel. Or in traditional tapping, it was always I love and accept myself.

I sometimes feel like when you're starting, I mean, I burst into tears the first time I had to say that because it was just so far from my reality. which was amazing for my healing and something for me to work towards. At the same time, if you're like, I just want to focus on this call that my boss gave me that is irritating me and I'm frustrated, you can simply say, you know, even though I'm irritated, I accept how I feel or I honor how I feel. The point is that you're not pushing it down anymore. You're giving the emotion some space.

And then you tap on the rest of the points and you always start by giving a voice to how you feel. You want to weed before you plant. So you're not going to bring in any positive affirmations until you can say them and they can sink into your body. Because when you're stressed and someone says, just trust life, everything's going to work out. You want to punch them in the face. You know, you're just like, no, you're not honoring how I'm feeling. So you give yourself some space to say that and then you can move to the positive. Yeah, I always say when people say, stop stressing, I'm like,

that is the most unhelpful statement ever. Or the other one is calm down. Like, has anyone actually calmed down from being told to calm down? That's right. But it's such a, we use it all the time. So when you are making that statement, and I love this because I have your app. I've watched your guys videos. I've read your books.

Like, and I always wondered like, because the positive part of my brain is like, I don't want to say this out loud because I don't. I don't want to integrate it into my neurology. But you this really make, go ahead, it seems like that's part of the whole process. It's already there. You wouldn't be feeling it if it wasn't already there. You're not ingraineding anything. It's there.

So what you're doing is you're able to let it go. And if you want to cultivate a feeling, you can go, you know what? I just want to be, I'm feeling good. I just want to feel some more joy. I'm going to do some positive tapping with affirmations. You can do that. tapping sends a calming signal to your brain. So if you're stressed and you get this calming signal, it gives you this space for you to step back and go, is this true? Is this really how I want to look at

things? You can begin to think clearly because you're not emotionally hijacked. The same way that if you're feeling good and you're tapping, again, it's just a positive, it's just a relaxing feeling, which aligns to that positive feeling, that positive thought. Excuse me. I love that. So, can do you take one one thing you're thinking what if you're thinking like 10 horrible thoughts what if like 10 things are bothering you how do you line those all up you always want to go with the one that has the highest intensity if you think about a forest sometimes when you cut down the biggest tree it takes down some other trees with it so if you can just focus on that one thing and you do want to be specific with one thing right if we kind of feel too overwhelmed what we can do is actually

actually start with, even though everything is bothering me, even though everyone's annoying me, I honor how I feel and I give my body permission to relax and you give yourself that space. A lot of times what happens is when people tap and they start to feel more relaxed, they start to realize that what they thought they were upset about wasn't actually what they were upset about. Right? So it tends to go a little bit deeper and something else might come up. And, you know, you think like, oh, this reaction.

I'm having to fasting, I thought I was mad because my blood sugar is lower, because I'm having these feelings. But in reality, it reminds me of when my mom put me on a diet at 14. And so it has nothing to do with an educated decision that you're making and a commitment you're making. It has everything to do with something that happened a long time ago that is there unconsciously creating these emotions. And it's not until you slow down that you can connect the dots and actually address the

feeling or the belief that is really bothering you. Yeah. And isn't that true that circumstances are often just, we're just triggered by some past trauma that has our bodies have never resolved. So I just love that. How long do you, before you go into the positive statement, how long do you keep going until you're a little more relaxed and like how do you know, okay, because there is a transition where you, you make a positive statement. Yeah. You want to switch to the positive when you can say it and it feels a little more true. It doesn't mean that you have to jump into the positive and like completely move into it and be 100%. You have to be able to feel like you're not being repelled by it.

So sometimes when I'm working with someone, the transition I might, I might create a transition by saying maybe this can be easier than I thought. maybe there's room for all of these feelings. Maybe I can also make room for this excitement. And that maybe statement kind of stops that critical mind that's like, no, you can or all the doubts because it's like just opening up to that possibility. There's like a softness to it. You want to go with how you're feeling. If you say something positive and you're annoyed by it, then you went there too soon.

If you say something positive and you're comforted by it, it, then stay on it. Yeah. So don't lie to yourself. Don't lie to yourself. And your body never lies. Yes. Right?

Like our mind does. Our mind plays tricks. We try to convince ourselves that we're okay, but our body is always telling the truth and lets us know. Yeah. And I do want, you and I talked about going into how we use this with changing nutrition and how we can use this for fasting. Before I do that, tell me the other place that I've struggled with is like,

do I do this in public? Do I do it in my morning time? Do I do it? Like if somebody's bothering me, do I just start tapping on the side of my hand? Like, I realize it's going to help me in all those situations. But is there a way I can start my day off using this and put it into my meditation time? And how would I use it when I've been triggered and I want to scream or yell or be angry? How would I use it when maybe it's not appropriate to use in that moment? So if you already, have, we'll start with the morning. You mentioned meditation. Tapping is such a wonderful thing to do with before you meditate. You just spend a few minutes giving yourself space to honor how you feel while you tap. And if you'd like, we can have a tapping experience together so people can listen and

they can tap along and just get an idea of what the process is like. But you can do a few minutes of tapping before you meditate to help you get into that state. Personally, for me, at the end of the day, that's when my thoughts come. Like, kids are in bed. I'm on my own. That's when I can begin to worry about something that I might have been too busy during the day to think about. So for me, tapping at nighttime, being able to do it with some journaling, writing down what's bothering me, writing down about my day, and then taking that and doing some tapping feels really great. Yes. And then there's SOS tapping, which is like, I just got rear-ended. I just got a phone call. like I'm feeling triggered in the moment.

And I cannot tell you how many emails we've gotten about people saying that they ran into the bathroom stall to tap. Something happened at work. They were on the verge of tears and they needed a break and they went into the bathroom stall and they did some tapping and they were able to just feel centered again, get back into their body and go have that difficult conversation. I make a rule when I'm upset to not speak until my body's feeling. better because oftentimes we think that we need to speak and create a resolution before we can feel

better. We need to solve that conflict with that person. But when we are not centered and we're feeling the stress response, our brain isn't actually functioning properly. We're in that fight or flight response. So the moment we try to communicate with someone, it doesn't come across well. You know, we have some kind of reaction. We later regret it. And so it's always about checking in with your body before you have any conversation. And that's when I find happening to be amazing before going on stage, before having a difficult conversation, just to get your body into that centered space. I love that. In fact, there's been a lot of conversation in my community recently about how cortisol plays out on our sex hormones, testosterone, progesterone, estrogen.

And ironically, this is how the universe works, right? I'm interviewing John Gray tomorrow. men are from Mars, women are from Venus. And in his new book, he talks about how cortisol plays a massive difference for testosterone compared to estrogen. And one of the ways that women specifically are able to bring estrogen up when they're in a stressful situation is through verbal processing, which, duh, we know this. But what I just heard from you is like a blending of two really cool ideas, which is, If you are stressed and you want to verbally process, sometimes you can just yuck all over your

partner or you can, you know, say something you regret. So what I hear is before you go and verbally process run through a couple rounds of tapping. Yes. And that both are important. Like the verbally processing is important. But it depends like where you're starting, right? Like if you're starting at a more centered place, you can process with the other person. it's a it's a two-way communication when we're really upset we tend to shut down that other it's like

we're going outward right we're like letting this frustration go we're letting this anger go and there's difference between a communication that's about processing and a communication that's just like unleashing this energy so you can if you feel like you need to process to unleash energy tap first it just it doesn't mean that you you have to be completely calm and zen before the conversation, but take the edge off, right? Yes. If we're at a 10 and now we just, so we measure zero to 10, how stressed you feel.

If you're at a 10, it's very hard to communicate in a way that even benefits you. How many times have we been mad and we said something and we look back and we think, that's not even how I feel. Like, I really wish I didn't say that because that's not even true. That was just this emotion, this idea that hijacked me in the moment. If you can go from a 10 to a 7, that's a huge difference with your ability to communicate. Yeah, yeah. Oh, well said.

One last thing on the mechanics before we move into how do we use this with the habit changing of nutrition and fasting? Do you have to say it out loud? You don't have to say it out loud. No. Saying it out loud is using another form to stay focused on something. But it's not necessary. You can do it in your own mind. Okay. And then, oh, I know one other question I have on the science is we have the research on cortisol.

Do we have research on tapping on sex hormones? And or do we have research on oxytocin? Because oxytocin is like this beautiful hormone that makes everything better. I'm reluctant to say no and then find it because there's so much science and research that's coming. But not that I know. There's no studies that jump out. I'm going to share another study when we talk about fasting, but this woman, Dr. Peter Stapleton, wrote a book called The Science of EFT. And what's so fascinating is that there's been, I think it's around 200 studies in English, but there's also been a lot of studies in foreign languages. So she's been working on translating those as well. But when it comes to sex hormones, there's no studies that I know about with tapping.

So offline we should chat because one of the things that I'm passionate about is teaching women how to fast and eat around her menstrual cycle. And when you look at where the different parts of the menstrual cycle are, cortisol specifically, we could just take that first study you talked about, affects each hormone differently. So cortisol is absolutely hands down the enemy of progesterone. and progesterone comes in at the back half of our, like the week before we actually start our period. So what would be really interesting is that, and I will be sharing this with my community, is if you hit a stressful moment that week, tapping from what you just told me is going to be your go-to because you can bring cortisol down so you can preserve estrogen. And that's the kind of thing that would be so funny, fun to see on a research study.

Yeah, definitely. It would be really cool. So, okay, let's, let's, I want to run a scenario here. Okay. I feel like I know my people, well, when people first come to fasting, for starters, we have so many limiting beliefs that have been put in our mind. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, eat six meals, and you, you'll speed up your metabolism.

So we have these pre-programmed ideas. Combine that with, let's just be real. food is a state changer. So when we want to change an emotion or a mood, we need food. Okay, or many of us, I was, I mean, I was totally that way before fasting. So now we know, gosh, we want to intermittent fast. We want to feel better in this fasting window, but you've taken my state changer away from me. And I have all these thoughts coming up about, is this right for me?

I thought I was supposed to eat six meals a day. Is that, you know, like, so you're going against a paradigm. How would we use tapping in that scenario? So there's a lot to, there's a lot in that scenario, right? There's the limiting beliefs. There's our own relationship with food. So I think it would help. Let me tell you a little bit about my story with food because it relates to that.

Yeah, please. I went on my first diet when I was 14 and I would. I was just a, I would binge eat and then I would diet and then I would binge eat and, you know, when I say binge eat, it was like food was just the way that I could regulate my emotions. I felt a lot. I was very sensitive. I was always aware of everything that was going on in the world and with my friends or my family. I took it all on. And so food was this way to feel grounded. You know, you stuff your face and all of a sudden all the blood is going to your digestive system. And, you know, you just kind of feel that like that laziness, that calm, it's that drug.

And so for so long, I would, I would go through this pattern. I called it the pattern of panic. And so I would, I would panic and think, oh, my gosh, I have to lose weight. I have to do something. And so I would jump on a diet, right? I would do anything. I would just, whatever was the latest thing at that moment. And for a short time, those kind of diets work, right? Because you're, you know, anyone can do it. We've all had like a little bit of success. But because I wasn't dealing with the panic and what was happening was I was only fueled by panic. Like my fuel was I am not good enough. I hate my body. And unless this changes, I am worthless. And so all of that pressure led me to try to use kind of like

motivation and toughness to stick with something. What happens is I would sabotage myself. We've all been there. Yeah. Sabotage is simply misguided self-love. I had so much pressure and stress that there was a part of me that was like, honey, this is too much. Go back to the food. And so food was misguided self-love.

It was my way to go, gosh, I hate hating myself so much. Like I'm tired. And so I'd go back and then the pattern would continue. And it was a pattern on and on and on. And I was using tapping for so many things, but I wasn't using it for my relationship with food because I was so brainwashed to believe that it was only about willpower, that that was it, that I was just born with less willpower than the average person. And it wasn't until I had a lot of painful experiences.

It's like sometimes life, if you don't get the message that you need to look at something emotionally, it just kind of hits you with the baseball bat again and again and again until you're finally like, okay, I have to try something different because I can't hate myself thin. So true. Hate myself thin. That's a really good statement. Yeah. And so I had to take a step back and look at my relationship with food, my relationship with myself. Because everything, like if you put me on a fast in my 20s, it was out of hate. It was punishment for not being good enough. If you start something because it's punishment for not being good enough, there's only a certain amount of time you'll let yourself suffer until you have to fall back onto something that's comforting,

which for most of us is food. So the only way that we can sustain these changes and create a lifestyle change is to come from a place of love and find the pleasure. So if something's not pleasurable, it's not sustainable. it's not sustainable. We can only force ourselves to do something for a certain amount of time. I guarantee that those in your community who've fallen in love with fasting have fallen in love with how it makes them feel, with the energy, with the changes they see in their body. It's driven by this love that keeps them doing the thing. It's not the same person who is still

criticizing themselves so much for not getting the results they think they should have by certain amount of time that they suddenly go what I quit. Oh my gosh. Because it's not coming from the right emotional place. And so for me with tapping, I wrote this book called and it's the book that became a New York Times bestseller. It's called The Tapping Solution for Weight Loss and Body Confidence. And it's a pretty thick book because there's so many layers to our relationship with food. right and I think it all begins by just having this awareness that like I said before you can't hate yourself healthy or thin you can't criticize yourself to be good enough we have to work on that voice inside of us because that's the voice that's getting in the way and so being able

to have a place where you're tapping and expressing that voice giving that what you try to shut that voice down it comes up when you're tired and hungry right and it's loud yeah you need to find way to comfort that voice because that voice is fear. Yeah. And you have to. So, you know, it is a, it's a, it's a practice of self love and honoring where you are and knowing that your goal is not shedding the pounds. Your goal is creating a relationship with your body that it feels pleasurable to take

care of it. Because we all know that one person who freaking loves their car and they're always washing it and they're always doing all this stuff to it because they like it. we take care of what we value, we need to start valuing ourselves. Oh, so well said. So, okay, so if I start the process of trying to intermittent fast, where I'm just like going to push my breakfast back an hour. And I have so many thoughts come up about how it's not going to work for me or, you know,

I'm fearful, whatever the thought is. Everybody has a little different thought. Then in that moment, it's probably, I would think, the most impactful to realize the thought first. I think a lot of people don't even, I mean, what you just said was one of the most beautiful explanations of why changing our food habits is so flipping hard. And I would think even before you can even come up with a statement, to tap to, you got to understand what it is that's agitating you in the moment.

Or can you just jump in and start tapping? I think it's helpful to have that self-reflection, but I'll say that sometimes we get too hung up on getting the answer before tapping. When tapping calms your body is easier to get answers. So it's better just to tap to a general, I'm stressed tapping meditation than sitting in your kitchen and trying to analyze why you're having a hard time to figure out exactly what to tap on. We often don't know until we're able to get into that better state and reflect from that place. For someone who's deciding, I'm going to put off breakfast, what tends to come up

first is past disappointments. How many times have I told myself, I'm going to try something new? And so we already go with this defeated mindset where sometimes we're scared of even trying something because we're scared of the own pain of disappointment, how hard we're going to be on ourselves when we mess up. Right? So true. And this idea, a lot of us that struggle with this also I have found working with so many women, I started to see this pattern.

And it's like the perfectionist pattern. It's this idea of like, I have to fast perfectly for the next year or else I'm an absolute failure. Yep. And that mentality destroys all joy. And it's not realistic because we're not robots and things happen. And sometimes we do something that's not ideal. It's not, we almost have to plan for those moments and really get clear on how we're going to treat ourselves in those moments so that we can get back on track faster. and then maybe have a longer period of time where we feel like we're on a routine that's

supporting us. Oh, it's so well said. You know, one of the big things that we preach on my platform is fasting variation, that, and especially for women, that, you know, if you look at everything in life, there's an ebb and a flow. And so when we make a diet change, whether it's fasting or a food change, there is a rigidity that people get about it. And if you get success, you're going to be even more rigid because you're going to be like,

I got to keep doing this because it got me where I wanted to be. But what I just heard in your statement that was so beautiful is that we really want to teach humans, especially women, I'm going to say, because we already have a natural flow with our hormones, that we want to learn how to ebb and flow with everything from food to stress to exercise. And that rigidity is so ingrained in our culture when we make diet changes, right? It's awful. I remember tapping with this woman and she remembered that her dad would always say, go big or go home. And, you know, face value, you're like, that's not a bad statement. Go big or go home.

But the pressure, I mean, this actually, now I think about this woman, it was starting, she had a career idea. But the pressure of perfection, the pressure of doing it big or not at all, it made her not do anything. Right. Right. That's what happens. It's, the pressure we put on ourselves becomes so overwhelming that we rather not try than have grace and allow ourselves to figure things out as we go and to ebb and to flow and to find our own rhythm. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I love this. I feel like this is like a conversation I've been like wanting to have with somebody forever because what I see from a neuroscience standpoint, you know, one of the gifts that that has been given to me is this incredible ability to see all

these humans apply fasting and look at all the millions of comments that they've left on my social media. And the success with a tool like a free tool, which let's also point out that tapping is a free tool that you can use to heal yourself is mind, mind blowing. But there's one hurdle. You have to do it. How do you get over your favorite breakfast? And what do you do when you are in an emotional state. So I just, this is. I will, I, I want to mention it. If you're getting stuck on something like, how do I get over my favorite breakfast? I want you to think about what it would feel like to tap on what you think it would feel like to not have it. So a lot of times, we are living a life where we're always giving and we're always sacrificing ourselves and

we're there for everybody else. And maybe the only time that we feel like we're giving to ourselves is we have our special breakfast. Right. So maybe it's not about focusing on what I can't have, but focusing on how do I feel the feeling that that special breakfast gives me without the special breakfast? How do I bring more of that feeling into my life so that it's not dependent around what's on this plate? And oftentimes, too, there can be emotions to it. Oh, that special breakfast, my nana, every time I go to her house, she gave me that special breakfast. and by not having it anymore, it feels like I'm losing that love. Okay, well, we don't want that to happen.

We don't want to lose Nana's love. So how can we feel her love? So the question shifts, how can I feel her love in a way that doesn't have to do with this egg in a hole? You know, how can I feel this love in a different way? But sometimes what we have to do is tap on the feelings of, I just don't want to. I don't want to do this because it makes me feel like I'm giving up this love. It makes me feel like I'm punishing myself and I'm already stressed.

And now I have to use this willpower. And then moving towards what if this could feel easy? What if I could bring this positive feeling in a different way? What if something else can make me feel like I'm nourishing myself in the morning? Right. If breakfast was the only way to nourish yourself, well, maybe you need to take that time that you would have breakfast to just take like a longer shower and get and, you know, just get that night. aromatherap soap that's the expensive kind and just like give yourself to spend some time with pleasure. The thing about fasting is that we have to get away from this mentality of deprivation.

Yeah. Because that's what's going to trip us up. Yes. And you know, I always say that because you just hit the nail right on the head. So thank you for saying that. I grew up in a household where my mom would literally, I remember walking in the door after the bus dropped me off. And if I had a bad day, she would scoop me up and be like, sit down and let's have a snack. And so she did this so many times, she didn't know any different. So I literally, in my upbringing, learned that if you're feeling sad, eat because, and that was also mother's love. So it was like a combination. So when I came to fasting, it really triggered me. And I came, I didn't, I should have used tapping. I knew about tapping at that point. And so what the switch that eventually happened in my mind was that I was actually feeling more

love in the absence of food. I actually started to feel better in the absence of food to your point. Yet that transition from food to no food, it can be very difficult. So yeah, let's do this. Oh, go ahead. You have something to say. Well, I just want to mention like I think it's okay when things. things are hard in the beginning, right? Just because something's hard in the beginning doesn't mean it's always going to be hard. In life, we all have some discomfort. And so what we can do with tapping is just create a little bit more ease so that it feels easier. It doesn't, if it's your first time fasting, maybe it doesn't feel easy. But what if we can make it feel easier? Yeah. And so we kind of self-soothe enough that we're like, okay, this is enough for me to just kind of get back into my body,

you remember why I'm doing this, you know, stay in that positive mindset because I gave myself this moment to vent my frustration, to tap, or simply not saying anything, you're just tapping on these points and taking deep breaths. And then it's like we can find a little more ease. Because I think we sometimes fear that. And I find with in my own experience when I had these kind of big changes in my life when it came to like my relationship with food, there was like a There is a chemical addiction. Like we can't ignore the fact that the certain amounts of food that we have to stop eating are designed to be addictive.

So we have to counterbalance that. We have to, we can't just say that doesn't exist or it's just us. It's just willpower. Like, no, it is hard. It is hard. What we're doing is finding more ease until it's much easier.

Oh, just so many gems. I don't know if it's because your first podcasted a year, but I feel like I'm like, yes, I hope you all are listening to this. Okay, take us through. Let's run this scenario.

Let's say somebody's new to fasting, and so they're going to give up breakfast, and we're going to go to just a 13-hour mark where we're trying to get 13 to 15 hours, where that's the first step of intermittent fasting. But we got a lot of hurdles around breakfast. Is there like, can you take us through? Or you might even have a different idea of, like, take us through how we would use tapping with fasting. Okay. So a lot of us have this rebellious spirit.

So we'll be into something. And then the pressure will be too much. And we'll just be like, you know what? I hate this. I like, I hate the rules. I hate everyone telling me what to do. And now this doctor's telling me that I can't eat. And so like there can be this just kind of like irritation that can come up.

And so I think we can just honor the irritation of like someone is telling me that I can't do something. and I really want to do it, right? I love it. How about we start there? Okay. So let's just take a deep breath in, just center ourselves, center ourselves, and get ready for the process. And if you're listening to this and maybe you're fasting, maybe you can relate to this in the moment, notice, you know, someone, you're supposed to do something and what's that kind of irritation on a zero to 10 scale? 10 being, I'm really irritated.

I do not want to do it. it zero, you're feeling at peace. You're feeling fine. Zero to 10, where do you feel when you think about this feeling of irritation around having to do something? And I will go through something where I'm going to try to say general so that everyone can kind of relate. And we'll see where we land.

So let's tap on the side of the hand. And if you can repeat after me, that would be great. Okay. So tapping on the side of the hand, even though part of me wants to fast, even though part of me wants to fast and another part of me is tired of people telling me what to do and another part of me is tired of people telling me what to do i accept all these parts of me i accept all these parts of me even though part of me wants to make this change even though part of me wants to make this change and another part of me is rebelling and another part of me is rebelling i accept

all these parts of me. I accept all these parts of me. And we're just going to do this one more time, even though part of me is ready. Even though part of me is ready. And another part of me doesn't want to do this. And another part of me doesn't want to do this. Because I don't want to be disappointed again. Because I don't want to be disappointed again. I accept all of these feelings. I accept all of these feelings. Okay. We're giving a voice to how we're feeling. Okay. So we're going to be negative for a moment to try to get it out. So tapping on your eyebrow point, I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this. Side of the eye. I've tried so many things in the past. I've tried so many things in the past. Under the eye. And I've been so disappointed. And I've been so disappointed. Under the nose. So I might as well quit now.

So I might as well quit now. Under the mouth. Because I'm sick of all of this pressure. because I'm sick of all of this pressure, collarbone. I'm sick of all of these rules. I'm sick of all of these rules. Under the arm, I'm tired of trying so hard. I'm tired of trying so hard. Top of the head and I just want to break. And I just want to break. Eyebrow. I just want to rebel. I just want to rebel. Side of the eye. I just want to eat whatever I want. I just want to eat whatever I want. Under the eye, I acknowledge this tension in my body. I acknowledge this tension in my body. Under the nose, I honor the stress. I honor this stress. Under the mouth. And I'm open to letting it go. And I'm open to letting it go. Collarbone. I don't have to fast. I don't have to fast.

Under the arm. But it's something I can choose. But it's something I can choose. It's something I can choose. Half of the head. I'm willing to take my power back. I'm willing to take my power back. Eyebrow. I release this struggle. I release this struggle.

Side of the eye. I release this pressure. I release this pressure. Under the eye. And I'm willing to give this a try. And I'm willing to give this a try. Under the nose, I release all expectations. I release all expectations.

under the mouth and I simply choose to show up. And I simply choose to show up. Collarbone, I'm showing up for myself. I'm showing up for myself. Under the arm, this choice is to honor my body. This choice is to honor my body. Top of the head. This choice is an act of love.

This choice is an act of love. Eyebrow, I don't need to do it. I don't need to do it. Side of the eye, but I choose to. But I choose to. Under the eye, I am in control. I am in control. Under the nose and I choose what's right for me.

And I choose what's right for me. Under the mouth, releasing all this stress and pressure. Releasing all this stress and pressure. Collarbone. Feeling open to a new experience. Feeling open to a new experience. under the arm excited about the possibilities. Excited about the possibilities.

Top of the head. Moving forward from a place of love. Moving forward from a place of love. All right. Now just take a nice deep breath in. And exhale. And just check in with your body. Maybe as we were tapping,

some thoughts came up or something I said really triggered a feeling. But right now when you think about not. having breakfast in the morning, a choice you're deciding to make. Notice if the irritation has gone down if you can look at the experience in a different way. I feel more relaxed. Me too. I actually have to laugh because I listen to your app and I'm like, oh my gosh, this is like a live version of the app. That was really fun for me because I was like, oh yeah, your voice is so soothing to me because I've heard it so many times. So that was amazing.

Here's what I'll tell you I feel. And I hope you guys that are listening can kind of tap into this. I literally feel like a tingling in my body, like just like a like an energetic shift that might be happening. Is there do you get that kind of body feel after? I do. Yes. I absolutely feel it in my body. And I also have experienced and heard a lot that the more that you tap, the quicker you get to that space as well.

Wow. So if let's say you're going to do a day where you're like, we do, I teach six different fasts. And so let's say today we do and we do these 15 day experiences with people on how to vary their fast. And there are days we're going to elongate the fast. So if we decide today's the day I'm going 17 hours, I'm going 24 hours. You start the day off. This is what I'm thinking, tapping. And then 10 o'clock comes and all the noise shows up. Yeah. Do you do you just go back to what we just did? Do you do try to honor that noise? Like, can you tap too much? Like, do you tap 10 times a day? Like, how often do you need to do it? Yeah. I think it's a personal preference. It's an, and it's something to experiment with to see what helps you. We get those moments when we're fasting when, you know, we're feeling irritable. And maybe we're having or, or we have fear. about how we will feel.

And so I think it's a great place to just honor how you're feeling in the moment. It's also a great distraction too. You know, you're just getting back. Instead of being in your head and focusing outwardly, you're getting back inwardly. You are centering your energy in your body. So you're making better decisions and you're able to remember why you're doing something, right? That's what we have to remember. We have to remember why because that's going to keep us staying.

course. It's when we feel that when that anxiety wins is usually when we cave. Yeah. Yeah. It's so well said. So tell us a little bit about your app. Again, we've talked about it. I use it. I have a whole morning ritual that I do and it's part of part of that ritual. You have so many tapping, do we call meditations? Yeah, we call them tapping medications over 400. Yeah. So how I, my ADD brain was like, well, I could start with the intro one, but look at all these other ones here. So talk a little bit about what people can find on your app. And if nobody's ever, if they haven't tapped before, where do they start? Yeah. So the reason that we created the app is that so many people were saying, oh my gosh, I had this incredible experience with tapping with a practitioner at a live event,

but it's been six months and I haven't tapped since. It helps us to have someone guide us. So it's not on our own. And sometimes we don't have access to somebody else that's guiding us. So these are guided meditations where we just focus on a certain topic. You can download the app for free. We have over 30 free tapping meditations. We also have a free trial that you can experience and unlock all 400. And I really believe in just trusting your instinct. Go through the library or if you are having a specific struggle like sleep or work, you can use the search function and find those examples. taping meditations. We try, we have so many because we like to be really specific, like clearing the energy from someone else. You just finished hanging out with someone who feels

like they drained your energy and you want to do some tapping. We have that. We want to do tapping for fear of the dentist. We have something you can do right before you show up at the dentist. So that's really why we get 400 is we kind of break down the different stressors. So you can use the search function to find what you're looking for. And we've had over 10 million tapping meditations played already. And it's my pride and joy because it's an, you know, I love my, my book is the tapping solution for weight loss and body confidence. And I think for your community, it would be a, it's a great read.

A lot of what we talked about today, even if your struggle isn't weight loss specific, but more body confidence. It's a really great read about the mentality around your body and around food. But I love the app because you can actually. just have an experience with it. Yeah. And that's one of the things. I love the app too.

And I'm going to ditto what you said. Like your work for the work that I'm doing to move fasting into the world, I feel like is pivotal. It's just pivotal because we've got to have a toolbox to be able to overcome the monsters in the head that show up as you go to make these changes. So this is like been. I know it's your first podcast at a year, but this was a total geek out moment for me. Well, thank you because I'm like, okay, I still got it.

I can make sense. I'm not. I also don't have any spit up on me. I feel like that is a win. So I feel really good. Thank you. Have you taught your kids how to tap? How old are they?

They're three and then 10 months. So my three-year-old, I do, like we do, we have a great children's book called gorilla thumps and bear hugs. And so I call it the gorilla thump. And so like thump on his chest. And we have a great children's book. So we do. And also like the psychology of just being okay with your feelings, making space for feelings has been really interesting to be a parent. I had that knowledge for myself, but now raising a child with that concept has been just just fascinating. And I feel like there's a lot of parents you're doing that. And we're going to, there's a lot more emotionally intelligent children that are entering this world.

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.