[DR. CRISTINA CASTAGNINI] Behind The Bite podcast is part of a network of podcasts that are good for the world. Check out podcasts like the Full of Shift podcast, After the First Marriage podcast and Eating Recovery Academy over at practiceofthepractice.com/network. Welcome to Behind The Bite podcast. This podcast is about the real-life struggles women face with food, body image and weight. We're here to help you inspire and create better healthier lives. Welcome. Hello everyone. Welcome to the show. So every then and again, I fall down some rabbit hole on the internet, which I really do not like to do. I'm being honest, I really don't. But this one headline of an article caught my attention and from that point on, I was just lost. I simply just was lost. It was trying to understand why women feel invisible after 50. Now, I've talked on this topic several times on podcasts before this topic about how there are unrealistic, ideal images blasting us all over the place about how women are supposed to look. Yes, typically these images are of young women because our society tends to value youth, especially, it seems for women, way more than men and this is not lost on me. I think this is really sad because it's yet another pressure and unattainable goal. But I am not here today to get into this topic myself. No, our guest today is just the person to delve into this one for us so I cannot wait. So let me introduce you to Nina Manolson. She's a body peace coach, and she helps people end the war with food and body, and finally feel truly at home in their body as it is. She is known for her deeply feminist, anti-diet, body piece approach and she brings her 30 years’ experience as a therapist, Nationally Board Certified Health & Wellness Coach, Body-Trust® Guide and Psychology of Eating Teacher to helping women create a respectful and trusting relationship with their food and body. [DR. CRISTINA] Well, Nina, welcome to the show. [NINA MANOLSON] Thank you, Cristina. It is a delight, delight to be with you [DR. CRISTINA] Well, I am really excited We have not had this topic ever on the podcast, and I am just curious, would you mind sharing a little bit with the audience about, well, who are you and how did you get into the field and where you're at today? [NINA] So who am I, I'm Nina Manolson. I am a body peace coach. Why I'm a body peace coach is essentially because I was at war with my own body and food for decades and decades. My pursuit of feeling at ease and relaxed in my body became not just a personal pursuit, became a professional pursuit. I became a therapist, and then I became a health coach and got into psychology of eating, embodied trust work and intuitive eating work and all of that woven together not only healed my relationship with my food and body, but also helped me do that with other women. So I have been working with women and their relationship with their body for 30 years. [DR. CRISTINA] Fantastic. I mean, here you are. I'm curious, is there, when women come to you and they're working on body image, do they ever specifically come to you because they're struggling with getting older and their age? [NINA] So it's woven together. That piece around I'm aging, my body is changing gets woven into old messages that happened when they were younger. So yes, when we're over 40, our bodies start to change. That is a normal thing that happens. Menopause happens, change happens. If we're living, we're changing. That's the reality. It's a concept that I call being body current. What's my current body? I am living in this body now and so many of us. This is this what happens earlier, we're taught, oh, we should be in that earlier body of when we fit into those skinny jeans when we were 13 before we even hit puberty, or 12. So some of these messages that when women come to me and I work mostly with women in their 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, and they are struggling with their body, most of those messages got embedded very early on, which is, this is what an acceptable body looks like and that body that you're changing into, mmh, not so great. You should do something about that and you should do something now. In fact, not only do we have a diet culture that's going to help you do something, we also have an anti-aging business that's worth billions and billions and billions of dollars that's going to also try to help you never change, which really, that's never going to happen. We are always changing human beings. That's a reality for us. [DR. CRISTINA] Yeah, that is so interesting because I'm wondering where that message even comes from, because as you're talking, I'm just going, yes, yes, yes. There is that underlying message that for some reason, like, you're doing something wrong if your body changes and you're looking older, and it's like there's this pressure right to stop that. [NINA] Yes. Stop that, stop that aging. My mother says, my mother who just turned 91 says, if you're lucky you're aging. That's a totally different spin on it than, oh, oh my gosh, you're aging? Something is wrong. Stop that. Anti-age right now. Now, if someone said to you, okay, now Cristina, you go back and be your 18-year-old self, your 25-year-old self, would you want to? [DR. CRISTINA] No [NINA] Right, but that's the reality. We have gained so much wisdom. We have so much more self-awareness. We have so many more tools to navigate this complicated world as we age. So no, of course we don't want to go back. It is really interesting, like what you're saying, like, where does this come from, this idea like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you should still look like a 17 Magazine, which is the magazine that I was pouring over when I was young that I thought, oh my gosh, I'm supposed to look like them and even when I was 17, I didn't look like them. So it's a real mind bender that we're in that takes some unlearning, it takes some countercultural feminist thought to really unravel this experience of, oh, my job as a woman is to always look younger as though the ultimate compliment is she doesn't look her age. [DR. CRISTINA] Right [NINA] What is that? Covid has slightly, for those of you listening on the audio and not seeing video, I have very silver hair, long silver hair. Covid, I was already going silver before Covid, but Covid made silver be a little more accepted, but before that, ah-ah. Silver hair, oh, you're showing your age. And frankly, after doing a lot of work on myself, I am happy to show my age. I have earned this age. I have earned the wisdom and the experience that come with this age. Does it come with a more complex body? For sure, for sure. That's when aging gets really interesting for us around working with women or men around body image, around their relationship with food is we have a little bit of a more complicated body that's had a few more miles on it. It's like people, not to compare humans to cars, but I'm going to do it anyway. It's like when people have these like dear cars that they are like, no, but this has been my car forever. I love this car. I am willing to put in the extra energy or the super gas or the whatever it needs to support this car in going. It's loving, it's supportive. [DR. CRISTINA] It's interesting because I don't think that's the conversation that we have. When I work with people, I'm constantly hearing this pressure to like, doc, help me figure out how to like what am I doing wrong, this like their fault. There's a lot of shame and guilt instead of the conversation of why I hurt me, educating ourselves about what the changes are that are normal to be expected that, hey, this is what happens, just like we educate kids about puberty. Like, okay, this is what your body's going to go through. This is how like a 10-year-old looks different than a 15-year-old. That's a big difference. So why aren't we doing that in our society to say, hey, this is what your body shifts into and this is normal instead of like demonizing it and steering it and then hating ourselves forward and like trying to do so many things to undo it and I must be doing something wrong that this is happening. [NINA] Right, I'm failing, I'm failing at this project of having young body forever as though that that was an achievable goal. No, we will not have a young body forever. We can be strong, we can be agile, we can create flexibility, we can create mobility, we can do a lot of things, but young, if you're aging, you are not getting younger. So even just to change the verbiage of this youth culture, that a young person is a better person, that a young body is a better body, no. Your body with you feeling truly at home and comfortable in it is the best body there is. [DR. CRISTINA] Well, I'm just curious, like, how much do you think it is perpetuated to, and like you were talking about 17 Magazine back in the day, and I can totally relate to that too, but how much do you think it's perpetuated by some of the messages out in social media in terms of how older women are portrayed or maybe even like absent? [NINA] Yes. I was literally going to say that, Cristina, we get disappeared. We get disappeared. People don't pay any attention. So it's very, there's a couple of things, one, I actually find it extraordinarily liberating because there's no pressure on me. I can be whoever I am, there's a sense of freedom in it. You don't expect me to be anything? Great, then I'm going to be exactly who I want to be now. I'm not conforming to your expectations, which is very powerful because it's part of, when you're talking about how does the culture bind us, how does it imprison us? Social media is saying you need to be looking this way and you need to be wearing this thing to be youthful so when we claim our movement into, and this gets into archetypal psychology into the queen stage. When we're in our 20s and 30s, we're in that princess stage. What do you think of me? My definition of myself is based on what you think. When we move into our forties and 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, we're moving into queen, and then Crohn's stage. Queen is I know who I am. I'm not dependent on your definition of me to tell me my value. Me knowing my value empowers me, gives me agency to actually be out in the world making a big difference. I'm not waiting for your stamp of approval so that I can go and have agency in the world. No, I know who I am. I know my power, I know my wisdom. Well, let's go, let's do something. Let's change this world. But Cristina, there's one other thing I want to circle back to when you said, wouldn't it be great, if we talked about these different stages that we go through? And there's two stages that are really important for women to know about. Margo Maine talks about two parts of our cycle as women where we're most susceptible to eating disorders and disordered eating. They are two times where we're going through the most physical change into puberty and out of fertility. So into fertility and out of fertility, our body is going through a normal gigantic biological shift and with that comes normal changes. Young girls are supposed to gain weight at that time. Our whole body and hormones are changing through menopause. Those are normal times of change and our culture with this constant message of no change for you, nope, no change, oh, you're changing quick. Do something. It comes down hard at those particular moments because we're going through such a big change and so women's try to control it, and how do we try to control it? With food, with restriction? That, as we know, ends up nowhere good. [DR. CRISTINA] So why do you think that's not discussed at all? Why do you think that it's not like an open conversation anywhere? [NINA] Because it changes how we view women totally. Our culture, and this gets into my feminist brands, our culture is very patriarchal. It's based on mostly men having power. Then it's also based on this idea that we can make money. That's tied into capitalism. We can make money off of objectifying women. Look at bikini women in front of sports cars, we objectify women, and then that makes money. So the conversation for it to shift means truly changing how we view women as not an object, but a whole human being. When we shift that, not just the culture, which is where we got that view, but our own perspective of us being an object, of us seeing ourself through that external gaze, that male gaze. I'm forgetting her name, anyway, there's an amazing researcher out of Toronto and she talks about external embodiment and internal embodiment. Well, let me do that one again, there's an amazing researcher out of Toronto, Neva Perran, and she talks about internal, internalized embodiment versus external embodiment. External embodiment, what do you think about me? What does the culture think about me? That's how I see myself. I see myself through other people's eyes. Internalized embodiment, internal from the inside, subjective, embodiment, not objective, not from the outside, but from the inside. That's empowering. So if we can shift the culture to be like what your experience of your body is, your experience not somebody else's, and somebody else's perspective does not define you, then we can start to shift, I think the aging conversation. [DR. CRISTINA] Gosh as you were talking about that, I'm just thinking, oh wow, what a hurdle with this day and age with so much social media and the need for likes and all these comments? I'm just thinking, how on earth do we even do that? [NINA] Yeah, yeah. Well, I think part of it is what we're doing here, is raising awareness, having conversations, where two women over 40 talk about things that are not based on youth culture, but are based on what it means to feel whole in your own body, comfortable in your own skin as you age. There's a poem that I wrote about this, of I can share it with you, Cristina, is that okay? [DR. CRISTINA] Oh, please, yes, please. [NINA] Just as a preface, I write body peace poem. So I write about our relationship with our body, I write about how women talk about their bodies because I want to change the conversation. I want to do exactly what we're doing here. I want to change the way we think about it. I want us to start having vocabulary to talk about our bodies in a totally different way than how we've been taught. This poem is called she Let Herself Go, because that's often what people think, oh, you're old and you've let yourself go. So here it is. "He said, you've let yourself go. Yes, I have let myself go. I stopped wearing spanks, I stopped counting macros, points and calories. I said no to the Botox. I let the gray show. The truth is, I did let myself go. I let myself relax. I let go of expectations. I've let myself be at home in my skin. I let myself have pleasure. I let myself feel and rage. I let myself listen in. I let myself not care about what everyone else thinks. I let myself free." [DR. CRISTINA] Wow. [NINA] That's the process. That's the process that we want to do, we want to be in as we age. We want to let ourselves free because for those of us who have struggled with disordered eating, with eating disorders, with body image issues, with an inner critic that will not quit, we want to get free. The work that both you and I are doing is body liberation work, how do we feel at home, how do we feel freed from the prison of all this? [DR. CRISTINA] Right, because just as you were, I was listening to your poem thinking, my gosh, how much time, effort, energy, money, is all of the things you just, were said in your poem that somebody's spending time on? I mean, just, yeah, that's a lot. Just like you said, the freedom is just like this release, this like, wow, how much do you get back in your life? Just stand a breath, like, oh [NINA] Yes, it's so important. How much do you get back in your life? I was speaking to a client of mine who said, oh my gosh, I cannot spend one more minute obsessing about food and my body. She said, honestly, I could have fed a, figured out world peace, fed a whole village in Africa with the amount of energy I have spent thinking about what I just ate and what I should eat next and what I did wrong and what's wrong with my thighs. She's like, such a waste. There's a huge amount of grief in this work because there we did, we got caught, we got caught in the cultural think of our bodies not being okay, about this idea that if we could just control it, if we could just control ourselves, all will be well. We will get that golden ticket to love and fame and wealth and community and all the things that are promised if you're thin. Ouch. [DR. CRISTINA] And I could imagine somebody listening, going, well, yeah, of course. That would, my life would be so much better if I had seen a certain look or I can't imagine like letting go, like you said, I can't imagine stopping. Like how could I possibly do that? I can't. [NINA] Yes, and for some people they never will. It's not for everybody, but for some people, like the people that I work with, they're like, I'm exhausted by it. When I knew I was really ready to make change was like, I am so bored with my thinking. If I think one more time on a Sunday night, what diet I'm starting the next day on my Monday morning diet, I'm like, no, I cannot. I have more important things to do. I really do. Also, it's painful. It's very, very painful. So for some people, they're ready. They're like, I can't, it's just, it's brutal. It's brutal to be in my own head. It's brutal to look at myself in the mirror every day and feel terrible. It's brutal to open my closet and getting dressed feels just torture. That doesn't have to be that way. It really doesn't. We're allowed to feel good in our body. It is our right. We're born that way. We learned how to feel bad. We learned how to be at war. We didn't create the war. [DR. CRISTINA] I want to get back to what you were saying that it's a grieving process, a lot of this work. I have one idea about what that means, but I'm wondering for you, when you said that anyone was going, what does that mean in grieving? [NINA] Yeah, that's a great question. So the way I think about it is, we're grieving for the, if we were once in a small body, oh, I wish I had that small body again. I'm sad. There's a loss there. We're grieving for the young body for aging, oh, I miss her. I miss that body that could jump on a trampoline for 20 minutes straight. I miss that young body that could walk forever and ever and ever all day and there wasn't an ache in a foot or a leg or a hip or in anything. I miss her. We're allowed to grieve that. We're even allowed to grieve, oh, I'm a little sad that I won't, that I'm going to let go of that dream of being, as I grew up with this idea that I was supposed to be tall and blonde and thin, I was none of the above ever, ever, never. At some point I was like, oh my gosh, I have to give up the dream. Well, I'm going to grieve that dream because that tall, blonde, and thin, that was the dream that if you're tall, blonde, and thin, then you get it all. Then you get the magic prize, you get the gold star on your forehead and you get total success. In this day and age it would be, and then you get all the TikTok followers in the world. To grieve that dream, even if it wasn't a very healthy dream, even if it wasn't a very productive dream, there was still that desire. So there's a lot of loss. There's even the grief of, wait, nobody's going to tell me exactly what to eat when? I actually have to listen to my own body? I actually have to tune in? Well, bummer. I just want someone to tell me what to eat and when, and then not think about it anymore. To grieve that, oh, grieve the dream that somebody else has the answer for my unique body. There's so many layers of things to grieve in our relationship with food and body. There's even, there's food I grieve. So I love broccoli, broccoli does not love me back at all. I use broccoli. There's other foods, but I use broccoli because it's a pretty neutral food in general. Most people would be like, yeah, broccoli, that's a good thing to eat. Broccoli does not love me and I'm bummed. I go to a lovely Chinese restaurant, they have garlic, broccoli with garlic sauce. It looks amazing and there's still a part of me, still to this day that I go, that's sad. That's a bummer that I can't eat that. We can grieve broccoli. There's layers and layers of it, of letting ourself feel what it feels to be a human being that changes that can do things that we couldn't and that can't do things that we used to be able to do [DR. CRISTINA] Just as you're saying that, I'm wondering as part of what the work you do also like appreciating what your body can do that's different when you get older. [NINA] Yes, so one of the things that I see a lot in women as they age, this may surprise you, is pleasure. Pleasure opens up, when we let go of what we think we should look like or how we think we should behave. There's a place of sort of the way I think of it as like a juiciness that opens. Because again, it's that idea of moving from that princess stage of what do you think about me and me trying to fit into a certain box of cultural beauty ideals. Instead, we're free. Oh, well then life is really juicy. Then I can do what I want and do the things that delight me. There's more access to pleasure. There's a lot of power in claiming our aging process. There's also claiming our voice fully. There's a certain wisdom we've lived a decade or two. There's something we know and it's worth exploring. It's like you having a podcast. I'm ready to say something. I have a platform, let's talk. That's part of the power of aging. There's also, when we can really sink into being connected to our body as it is, being in our current body, being body current. There's a place of really diving into the sensitivity of what works for my body, what makes my body feel good, what foods work, what movements work instead of like, let me try this new thing and that new thing. It's, I have an inner knowing, and what that does is it creates a stable relationship with our body and food, which is such a relief. That's what I call body peace. It's that sustainable, yummy, like, ugh, I'm at home in my body. I know how to take care of her. Life is good. [DR. CRISTINA] I'm just thinking I have all these I guess voices of people I've worked with or heard running through my mind thinking, yes, that all sounds amazing and wonderful, but how am I going to ever get to this like, place of utopia you're talking about, which sounds amazing. I have to say too, I agree with you, like when you ask me would I go back to my 19, 20-year-old self, no, I laughed. But yes, of course as I've gotten older, there's so much more I've gone through in the wisdom and it's so much richer to be older. But I do see the struggle of the magazine covers of like all the do this to combat aging and this and that. I hear my patients struggling with like my spouse left me for a woman 20 youngers than me. How do I compete with that? There's the pressure to like, okay, if you're newly divorced in your 40s or 50s and the pressure to date again and wanting to feel like, oh my gosh, if that's your situation of like, oh my gosh, I look so much older now, my body's older. I'm having body image issues and going through menopause, all these things that maybe somebody listening is going like, yeah, it sounds great, but this is my real life. This is the struggle. Or all my friends are having plastic surgery, they're doing this. There's this pressure. Like, I don't want to fall behind or, I'm older than everybody else. There's definitely ads everywhere and I mean, it's out there and this reality, it's so hard for anyone listening. It's like, get it. It's hard to combat. This is not easy. [NINA] It is. No, it is not easy. There's nothing easy about it. The reality is our culture is hammering us on what we're supposed to look like. This idea that, and I hear it from so many women, well, I'm supposed to look like Jennifer Lopez. I'm supposed to look like these stars where literally their body is their product. That is their product. They're working on their product all day, with the team to help them with that product. So then we have women that age comparing themselves going, well, I'm supposed to look like a movie star. [DR. CRISTINA] I'm so glad you said that because it's true. How many these women that are older, 40, 50 older and they are in the limelight and they are very much praised and it's like, oh, this is the standard now. You should look like this. So it's almost like, well, gosh, if you don't, it's the same thing as like all the celebrity bodies after pregnancy. Oh look, she looks better than before her baby two weeks later. It's like the pressure on women is astounding and ridiculous. [NINA] Yes and that's the place to start, which is, wow, this is so much pressure and it's unrealistic, ridiculous and misogynistic. What it does is sucks the power out of women. So if we're interested in being powerful women, part of that is claiming your body and not feeling like you have to be in the game of changing all the time. Because all that is, and this is a Brene Brown quote as a hustle for worthiness. Oh, let me hustle. Let me be on the next item. Let me do the Botox, let me do the surgery. Let me do the this because then I'll be worthy. Because if I look young, then I have worthiness. It's exhausting. It is absolutely exhausting. For me and for many of my clients, they're like, I'm done. I am done. I'm not sure how to be done, but I'm done. There's no like snap and ta-da, now you're in body peace. Now you've healed all your disordered eating. Now you've healed all your body image issues. It is a practice. It is a practice. It is a process. It is healing old wounds, but it is so worth it because on the other end is, it is that sigh of relief. It is that letting yourself free. [DR. CRISTINA] I'm so glad to have you on here to discuss it because I think we, like you said, we need to have more dialogue. We need to it's, there's loud voices out there, there's so much out there that's way louder than this podcast or you or me. But the more voices we can get to have these conversations, I think the better off we are, maybe people will start thinking differently and you're out there doing the work, changing lives. It's fantastic. Given that, like if people do want to work with you or get to know your work more, like how can they find you? [NINA] The easiest way is to come visit me on my website. It's bodypeacewithnina.com. On there is a free practicing body piece journal. Why I say it's practicing body piece, because it is, the whole thing, how we heal this as a practice. In that practicing body piece journal are five of my body piece poems and 20 questions, 20 questions to start having a conversation about the relationship you have with your body. It's an inquiry. What's going on in there? How is this relationship? How do you feel about it? Is it the way you want it to be? We really want to start looking at what's going on in the relationship with your body and do you want it to be different? So you can visit me there. I'm also on Instagram, I'm on Facebook under Nina Manolson. [DR. CRISTINA] That's fantastic. Thank you for all that information. All be in the show notes, so if you didn't get that down, do not worry. Great resource. Thank you. Nina, thank you for being here. [NINA] Cristina, thank you so much. It's a really, it's fun for me to talk about this. I'm super passionate. I'm actually having a retreat in Italy in April called Body Peace and Aging because I feel like it's so important to dive into this at a deeper level and to gather women, change our culture and to be like, yeah, this is me at this age, in this body with all the wisdom that she holds and all the complexity that she holds. [DR. CRISTINA] Oh, beautiful place. Awesome. Well, I guess that information will be on your website too, if people are interested. [NINA] Yes, absolutely. [DR. CRISTINA] All right. Well, Nina, thank you so much again. This has been a great conversation. Hopefully we'll continue it in different forums and different places so people can continue that themselves. Thank you so much. [NINA] Thank you. [DR. CRISTINA] This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or any other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.