8. Gaining Food and Body Freedom with Norma Frahn

In today’s episode, we dive into Norma’s experiences with emotional eating, how this can start so early in childhood, and how it shapes our self-esteem, body image, and social interactions.

Norma offers the most beautiful insight into the importance of patience and self-compassion with ourselves, and the small steps we can take to navigate these times.

If you desire to dive deeper into building a healthier relationship with food, so that you can finally gain body freedom - this episode is for you!

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About Norma
Norma is a life & health coach who specializes in helping women uncomplicate emotional eating through a holistic life-based approach that encompasses mind and body so they can end the diet cycle/binge cycle and find food and body freedom. Norma draws from her own experience of losing over 100 pounds in 2018, which vastly improved her health and life. By practicing and refining her processes, Norma has gained self-confidence that had eluded her most of her life and strongly believes that every woman deserves to proudly show up in their life, no matter what their size. 

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About Andi

Hello! I'm Andi and I'm a Voice & Expression Coach, Medium, and Actress, and I love all things spirituality, expansion and being brave. I have been on a really long journey with my body. If my journey has taught me anything it’s that as humans we are incredibly powerful self-healers. When we allow ourselves to be brave and share our stories, we embody our most transformative ally – our beautiful, empowered strength. I am here to help you reclaim your whole creative, connected and confident self so that you can become EVERYTHING that you are here in this life to be. xx

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Transcript

Welcome to Body Diaries, the podcast that shares our real, raw and unfiltered body stories so that we can finally shake off shame, reconnect with our whole selves and ignite everything that our bodies are capable of.

 I'm your host, Andi Matthies and each week we connect with some of the world's most inspiring body-led humans and explore the energetics that changed their lives. If you've ever felt disconnected from your body, or you are craving to finally unlock your whole experience, this podcast is for you.

Andi M:

Hello, gorgeous human. I am so excited to introduce this week's episode to you with the incredible Norma Fran. Norma is a certified life coach and health coach, and she helps women heal their relationship with food and with their body. In today's episode, we dive into Norman's journey with her body and how she built a loving relationship with herself.

It really has so many incredible nuggets in it that we can start to implement now. And so I really, really hope that you enjoy this episode as much as I did. And please don't forget to leave a review if you love it so that we can make sure that it reaches everyone who needs this story.

 Let's dive in.

Norma, welcome to Body Diaries. I am so, so happy that you're here today. Welcome.

Norma: Well, thank you for having me. I'm so excited for any opportunity to talk about emotional eating.

Andi M: Yes. Emotional eating. This one is close to my heart. Emotional eating has been a big part of my journey and I know it has for a lot of women. It started for me when I was really, really young and was the center of everything that I did, everything that I felt for such a long time.

So to speak to you as someone who specializes in overcoming and uncomplicating emotional eating, I'm really looking forward to this conversation.

Norma: Thank you. I am too, because you're right. It is a huge part of our lives and I think it starts for all of us at a very young age. It's built into our society in so many ways.

Andi M: That is so true. I was thinking on this before we connected this morning and it's hard to escape food. You know, it's part of our survival. It's part of our social infrastructure and our social connection. It's part of how we're conditioned to soothe and to get control in so many ways. And so I know for me I went down a pathway of binge eating for perhaps 18 years of my life and trying to unlink from food from a general concept is very, very difficult.

And so I'd love to start there in terms of, you know, what is emotional eating? How does it show up? How did it show up for you? And what are you sort of seeing in terms of the work that needs to be done in this space?

Norma: Yes. I have a very different perspective on emotional eating now than when I was living in it. And. I'll explain what I mean by that. But first, I'd love to start out with just saying that emotional eating is normal. It is completely normal, but it is complicated. And for that reason, I think that's why we struggle so much with it.

We're trying to, to end something. That is very normal and will be a part of our lives for all the reasons you just described. You know, food is a very important part of our culture. We celebrate with food. We grieve with food. We engage socially with food. It's not going to change. But where I think it's become incredibly complicated is when food and emotional eating is our coping mechanism, our primary coping mechanism for your life.

And it does start very early. Mine did. I think I can pinpoint exactly when I first became aware of my body and made that very strong connection that it was all because of the food. And I was 13 years old sitting on the side of a pool. And I looked down and I, all I saw were these enormous thighs, or at least that's what my 13 year old brain saw.

And. For context, I think I weighed like 108 pounds when I, when I really thought that I had these gigantic thighs and that's when I started to go down the path of food and dieting and that whole cycle that happens that just kind of feeds emotional eating even more. So I think we all can kind of pinpoint a place or a time in our life when it came up first and it just builds because that's what emotional eating is.

It's. The experience we have, the connection we made to food, and then how it just kind of evolves and grows with us.

Andi M: That story of sitting by the pool. I felt that emotional hit then in my, in my chest, because I remember memories like that. And there was something about summertime and bathers, particularly as a young girl going through those puberty years, 

 I remember those moments of looking down in shorts or bathers and being like is this the giant size that I have become and so I felt that felt that in my chest. It was relieving at the top when you actually said and you opened with emotional eating is normal.

That is quite a profound thing to hear because we are conditioned for such a long time to abolish emotional eating, control emotional eating, emotional eating is negative. So I'd love to dive into that a little bit more around this norming of emotional eating and then how to actually get it into a healthier state.

Norma: Yeah, that's so true. And it is so very normal. And I think in some of the language that I try to avoid using is ending it, um, conquering it, controlling it. Those are all things that are just not necessary. I don't think it's necessary or frankly, even possible to end emotional eating where I think instead we need to focus is the root cause of our emotional eating.

And that is the emotion part of it. and deal with the emotion and find different strategies and mechanisms to give ourselves what we need that don't always involve food. And sometimes it will involve food and that's okay. It's kind of like I use some very simple language for a very complicated problem when I talk to clients about this.

Most of the time and some of the time. That's kind of our goal. That's where we want to get. Where most of the time we're coping with our emotions in a way that isn't always food. But sometimes food's going to be the thing we need, and that's okay. And it will all even itself out from that perspective.

Andi: That's really interesting. I think for a lot of us who've done that deep work, in emotional eating over the years, 

that emotionally eating still comes up. Like even just this week there was some significant things that happened and before I knew it, that emotional eating craving and that behavior was back.

And I thought to myself, I've been through this, like I've done this work. Why is this emotional eating back? So it's really interesting to hear your take on it in terms of those ebbs and flows of life and allowing it to be without it being out of control.

Norma: Yeah, and if I could I'd love to share a story where this became so real and so true for me This was kind of my turning point with how I looked at my emotional eating. I used to view it as something bad. It was a character flaw. I had to stop doing it and I was always pushing against it. So it was about six years ago My son, who was 21 at the time, was seriously injured in an accident and he became a paraplegic overnight.

And when he came home. He was requiring so much care that I physically couldn't give him because at that time I was carrying a lot of extra weight. But to back up just a little bit, those three months of recovery in the hospitals, in the rehab centers, I truly believe food and eating saved my life. I could not have gotten through those three months of watching my son's life just fall apart and him having to rebuild.

If I didn't have the food. I ate my way through fast food places. I ate Chinese food. I was eating all the time and I just let go of all of the guilt and the shame because suddenly there was something so much bigger than my guilt and shame to think about and food got me through that period of time. I didn't have to think about anything but him and just eating.

And at one point when he came home and was starting to recover. I just kind of looked back, stepped out of my food coma for the past three months and said, okay, now I can, I'm ready. I can move on and I don't need the food to, to just live. And that's the only distraction that I had from an incredibly difficult time.

And it truly saved me mentally and physically. There came a point when I knew it was time and I could start working on the actual emotions that I was bearing and pushing down because I could not face them in the moment. So I think it's something that's why I say I don't think we ever have to try to end it.

It serves a purpose and gosh, I hope for any listener that they never have to experience a big purpose like that. But that was my purpose at the time. It served the purpose. It kept me focused on my son and what he needed and out of my own pain. And I needed to be out of my pain during that time. And when I, when I was ready, then I could experience it and not have to have the food to, to cover it up or bury it.

Andi: Ah, Norma, that is such a powerful experience. And I'm so glad that you shared that. I have two questions, not carrying the shame and the guilt. So acknowledging the purpose that the food held for you at that time around going through that with your son. My, my brain is like, how on earth did you do that without the guilt and the shame?

Like, how did you release that? And then my second question is getting to that point where it's like, okay, now I'm ready to release and change this. 

 I'm really interested in how you move through both sides of that.

Norma: Yeah, so to answer your first question, I think what happened to me was the emotion that I was feeling over my son was so incredibly intense that I mentally could not deal with it. And food was the only thing pushed it down. And I think I knew it had to be pushed down because I couldn't deal with it and my son at the same time.

So I think on some psychological level, my brain just knew that's what I needed. And I think that's why I didn't obsess with the guilt and the shame that I normally would. Suddenly my issues, my body, my weight, none of it was important. Everything I had was focused on my son. So I think that's what kept away or at least kept those feelings at bay during that period of time. Now, afterwards, when I said I kind of started to move out of it, I think I got to that point where I realized, and I knew in my body, that okay, it's safe to come out of hiding. It's safe, it's safe to set the food aside now. He's okay. And now I can refocus. It wasn't like, like you described, like a flip, a switch flipping.

It was kind of gradual. It was like, okay, I don't need to do this. I still did to some degree, but not like I was. It, it's just started to a very slow process of getting back to some healthier habits, cooking meals at home, doing really normal things that didn't involve a lot of emotion. And it was the gradual stepping out of kind of like coming out of the dark, you know, just like a dimmer switch.

That's what I think of as on a light switch. It just gets brighter and brighter and brighter until it's like, okay, we're back to normal. Now we can really dig in and deal with my stuff.

Andi: Yeah, that's incredible. 

Andi M: I'm wondering, hopefully this isn't a hard question, but for those that might have. Severe eating disorders or struggles with emotional eating. Is that still a safe option to take in terms of using food as a mechanism for that short amount of time? 

Norma: I think there is, and I'm not a therapist, so I'm not coming at it from that perspective. I think what happened to me naturally happened. It wasn't an intentional decision, it just happened. My body wasn't safe, my mind wasn't safe, and it turned to food naturally. Because I have a long history of emotional eating, like so many of us do.

I think the difference was, I just allowed it to happen. That was the biggest difference. I didn't resist it. I didn't consciously think that it was good or bad. It actually didn't even occur to me. I just head down, focused on my son and ate. Looking back, I ate constantly, but I think I just needed that. I needed that safety and that protection because that's what emotional eating is.

There's, it's parts of us that's trying to keep us safe and it believes that food is the way to keep us safe and protect us. So, to answer your question, you know, I, I think everybody is different and somebody that is, has a diagnosed eating disorder certainly needs to work on their own strategy that works for them with a professional, for sure.

But I think there's a sense of awareness that we can all tap into and, and just recognize that again, it's normal and it's protecting us from something. And that something is the thing that we can dig into and understand and start to build new strategies.

Andi: I love that. the body's natural mechanism to keep us safe and the things that it pulls on from a food, but also a behavioral and even an internal dialogue perspective takes us into so many different directions. I'm just wondering, have you had other moments in your life where food has become the mechanism to keep you safe or you've noticed that patterning come through?

Norma: Oh, for sure. I think, um, prior to doing a lot of this deep inner work myself, and I worked with a coach and really learned a lot about this. I was somebody who was incredibly self conscious. I feared judgment. That was my worst fear. Somebody judging me for the simplest things. And I think people that Like me that have those similar fears, typically high achievers, because achieving meant reducing the risk of being judged.

And the whole thing around food was a huge fear for me. So if I were to go out to a dinner with my, um, my peers at work, I, I kind of joke about it now, but it was very serious at the time. My. Order my food of choice at the dinner was always what I call now a shame salad because I was living in a larger body and I truly believe that to avoid the judgment I needed every person at that table to know that I knew I needed to lose weight and what better way to do that than ordering the most boring salad on the menu. And so that was kind of how my stuff came out when the emotional part of it came in was when I was back in my hotel room and ordered a full meal and dessert off the menu because I was so I was so emotionally drained from that event that dinner with peers that was the only way to get calm and comforted.

But that always, always created the new problem of more guilt, more shame and right back in the cycle again.

Andi: Oh my goodness, Norma. I. I have had so many nights where I've done that. And it's really interesting. The complexity that I always felt that was added on top of the salad was you're sitting in a body that perhaps you're not comfortable with. And you order the salad also because you're like, well, if I order anything else, what are they going to say about me?

What are they going to think? Think about my choices and how I'm fueling my, my body and my, the size that I am. So the salad was often also, this is going to avoid people thinking negatively about me.

Norma: And boy, don't ever order a dessert.

Andi: Oh my goodness. Dessert dessert. When you're in a body that you're perhaps not comfortable with, or you think people are judging you is like the worst thing that you could do.

Norma: terrible. I used to really want it, but sat there thinking to myself, they're just going to think that I don't care. That I just don't care that I look like this if I order that dessert. So I never, I wouldn't even order a coffee, just give me my water with a little piece of lemon in it. And that was it.

Andi: And I'm going to get really vulnerable and share this and that I know there have been times in my life where I have had those thoughts about other people where I might be at dinner with someone who does order dessert and I'm like, Oh, what are they doing that for? That's unhealthy. And in that moment, I'm like, Oh my goodness, Andi like, this is the thing that you fear people judging you of. Why is this even popping into my brain? Because I know from a personality perspective, they are not thoughts that I would ever want to entertain or pass on to someone yet my brain goes there. And I don't think it's actually about the other person and me assessing the other person.

But it's that conditioning of what I think has happened to me years and years and years, and I'm just falling in to that thinking.

Norma: Absolutely. And I truly believe this. The things we fear the most for ourselves, the things we judge the most of ourselves, we judge equally on other people, sometimes more. And it's, and I, I believe for me, it's was because I was so in my head about that judgment and fearing that judgment. I couldn't think of anything else.

I mean, I can't tell you how many times. I would walk into a room at work or at a party or an event and the first thing I would do is scan the room just to see if there was a woman that was bigger than me in that room. And it's, it's, I'm not proud of it, but I did it. And if I found somebody that was visibly larger than me, I could relax because all of a sudden there was, there was somebody that could be judged more harshly than I could because of my size.

Andi: Oh, absolutely. I used to do that so much. And even in friendship groups, there's this constant comparison, and there was this constant like, am I going to be viewed as the largest? And am I going to be viewed as the one that eats the most? Like constantly scanning the environment to deflect it off myself onto someone else, but deep down, we don't want anyone to suffer the things that we're suffering.

But in those survival moments, it's like, please, please, please don't make it me. Don't put me in the center of this. Surely there's a way I can deflect. And I have to say, like, there's been many times where my ability to socialize or connect deeply with others has been severely impacted by these issues and my emotional eating.

Norma: That I think is the biggest crime of emotional eating, if crime's even the right word. But I did it. I see lots of my clients doing it where they're, they're isolating themselves from their lives. Because of the way they're thinking about their body, their feeling of being totally out of control with food, all the fear and all this.

I did it for years. I missed events with my kids when they were little because I didn't want to go take my large body to the baseball field at, you know, or go to the beach or. Or God forbid be at an amusement park and not fit in the ride. So I just wouldn't go. I would just stay home and let my husband take the kids.

And I deeply regret that now. But at the time, that was how I felt safe. That's how I kept myself safe, was isolating from all that. And it was all about how I viewed my body and how my fear of being noticed really just kind of took over my life. So I just hid, hid at home and it was just so much safer there.

And of course I ate while I was hiding because I felt so terrible that I was missing those events.

Andi: Oh, my goodness. I can resonate with this so much. There's so much complexity that wraps itself around this issue. I developed similar to you, this extreme social anxiety. So there would be similar, you know, parties, there would be dinner invites, it'd be things where there'd be lots of people, but there'd also be like a one to one dinner with a girlfriend and the social anxiety judgment would grip me so much, particularly if they were leaner than me, in my mind prettier, more successful, you know, which leads into the complexity of the way we view ourselves, not just from a body size, but the whole package. There'd be times where I'd, I'd go to get dressed and then I'd be crippled in an anxiety attack on my bedroom floor, but not just for an hour. For like three days, you know, that, that social anxiety, would then permeate into so many other areas of my life where I'd stop getting invited or, you know, the friends would drop off.

I had many girlfriends get angry because of course they weren't seeing what was happening and I was too embarrassed to really talk about it where they'd just be like, she's unreliable. She never shows up. She cancels last minute, terrible friend. And I would just shed friends all over the place. And this social anxiety would just continue to grip and go deeper and eventually lead to depression and some other disorders.

Norma: And I experienced the same. I didn't even, I can, I think I can say, honestly, there was a period where I can say I didn't have any friends. The only friend that I had was my food, and it was also the worst enemy. That's all at the same time. But it also permeates in where it really showed up for me was my professional life.

Prior to, and while I still am, but, um. Prior to really jumping into coaching and working with, uh, with women on this issue, I have a professional career in human resources and I wanted, and here's my high achiever part that was trying to distract everyone else from my body size. So I, I don't know how I did it, but I climbed professionally almost to the top of my company.

In that role, I got everything I wanted sitting at the table as they say, but when I got to the table, All I could think about was, oh my gosh, how can I hide? How can I make myself smaller? And it was the most painful experience I think I've ever had. It's finally getting what you want, but you can't enjoy it.

Andi: Yeah, and that's where what you were talking about earlier on in our conversation, that relationship with self and that deep belief of self and doing that internal work is so important so that when we do get to these points where we have the things, these shadows are not overbearing them that we can't actually enjoy it.

And there's been so many occasions in my life where I I'd hold a dream and I'd work really, really hard and I'd get there and I'm like, well, I'm not a size X and I'm not X beauty and I'm not this and that. So what's the point? I'd either diminish the achievement or I'd then have to try and find something else to chase after, which really in hindsight was a distraction to how I was really feeling.

Norma: Yeah, exactly. I think the worst experience I ever had when I was very deep in that fear of being judged, like I said, I'd risen in this job and I was asked to speak at a meeting on a stage in front of 200 leaders of the company, all people that in my mind had some hold on my career. And I had a beautiful speech.

I practiced it. I knew exactly what I was going to say. The moment I stepped on the stage, all I could think about was what they were seeing or what I thought they were seeing was this enormous woman. What is she doing up there? She can't possibly know what she's talking about. And I froze. Literally no words came out of my mouth.

And it took one glance at a gentleman in the back of the room that I had gotten very close with at work, and he just nodded his head at me up and down. And that snapped me out of it. But I, and I got through the speech, but that thought never left my mind. All they're seeing is this very big woman on the stage.

And what could she possibly be telling me that's worth anything? So I had zero self worth. I had no confidence at all. And it was all because of the size of my body. Yes.

Andi: Yeah, that's incredible. 

One of the things that really stands out to me in, in your story and my story and the other stories that we hear is this constant feeling of what we think others are thinking about us and what they're judging us. But really, if I think about my own experience and we hear the leaders in this space, talk about it all the time, most people are only thinking and worrying about themselves. They're not actually thinking about us. Yet that is all we can think about.

Norma: Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's hard. I remember people telling me that my coach telling me that when I first started, I remember thinking, Oh, what does she know? Of course they're seeing this because we are so deep in it. It's that expression. You can't read the label inside the jar. I couldn't see all of the amazing things about myself that other people saw because I was so tightly wrapped up in the size of my body and the food and eating and all the things that I thought were so wrong about me.

Andi M: Yeah. I know you mentioned that you've been on a weight loss journey yourself. Moving through this emotional eating to heal some of these parts of yourself that were leading to this, this low self worth 

 I went through the process of being quite large and having those poor self worth issues to dropping a significant amount of weight, but I'm still now stuck in the dysmorphic view and the feeling of who I was and how I felt about myself.

So I'm really interested in, in your journey and moving through that weight loss and how you feel about yourself and the things that you've done to shift that.

Norma: Yeah, so. Where do I start? Boy, um, I think one thing I want to say before I even get into my story is what you just described is exactly what's wrong with diet culture. We are given all of these diets and rules and, and just follow the plan and you'll lose the weight. And that might be true. You might lose the weight.

But what are you left with? You are the same exact person that you were when you started, with the same problems, the same miserable boss, the same terrible job, the same body image issues. Your body's just smaller. And now you've got a new problem. And that problem is constant worry about gaining it all back.

And, and I think that is the biggest reason diets just don't work. They only focus on the food and sometimes the exercise. And that's what was so different about the journey I went on to lose my weight. And I didn't even know it when I started. I had hired a coach and... kind of this is like the tail end of my son's story.

When he came home from the hospital, he's 21. He's a full grown man. He's was he's six foot two. I'm five, four. He's got a lot of height on me. His legs were as long as my whole body. And I had to lift those legs three times a day to stretch him. I had to carry a 40 pound wheelchair up the stairs with A lot of weight on me and it was really hard.

It was kind of like I had my crying on the bathroom floor moment and I did what every good dieter does. I went right to Google and started looking for the newest diet and I stumbled across a weight loss coach and I said, Oh, I don't know what this coaching is, but haven't tried that yet. So let's go. And I signed up and little did I know she didn't give me a meal plan.

She didn't tell me what to eat, but we jumped right into, What I was thinking and feeling and we did months and months of work on just me becoming aware of how I thought about myself was impacting how I showed up in my life and really untangling all of that and I frankly, I didn't even quite realize it while that was happening.

I was losing weight because all of a sudden I started to care more about me. And I slowly started to learn that doing things for me that were good for me was creating the result of weight loss without ever once thinking that I was on a diet. And after 18 months, I was 117 pounds down. And I actually was a different person.

Nobody believes me when I say this. The weight loss truly was a byproduct, just a bonus or a consolation prize for how my life changed by doing all of that work and really digging into those emotions and why there's so much fear. And working through all of that, I walked out with more confidence than I could have ever had on my own. I went on to get my coaching certification and I'm writing a book. I run a podcast, all things that I was terrified of doing because running a business as a solopreneur, you are right in the spotlight every minute. And six years ago, I would have rather stepped out in traffic than even thought about doing that.

So my life changed completely, and it had nothing to do with the weight I lost. It had everything to do with changing how I think about myself and learning how to show up for myself.

Andi: Gosh, I love that. Do you mind if I ask what was some of those emotions, particularly in the early days, some of those thoughts, some of those beliefs that started to come up in those early kind of coaching sessions with your, with your diet coach and your weight loss coach. And did they surprise you?

Norma: Oh gosh, there were so many, yeah. I think I... I would have argued anybody to the mat who tried to tell me that I was a perfectionist before I went through this process, and I couldn't even see how strongly my perfectionistic behaviors were showing up on my plate, meaning like. I thought I had to do it perfectly and anything less was just not even worth the effort.

Right down to exercising, I would, you know, even in my 300 pound body at the time, I would schlep myself to the pool every day and swim for an hour and I wasn't losing weight. And I believed there was something wrong with me and it had nothing to do with being wrong and it had everything to do with how I thought about myself.

I mean, it was an all or nothing kind of thing. And there was on the diet or off the diet working out or not working out and there was no one between. So I had to learn to live in the gray and be okay with messing up and making mistakes and eating too much one day, maybe not eating enough the next day.

That's what really surprised me of how, how tightly wound I was, and frankly, a little obsessive about food. I had every app that tracked all the things, you know, and that was one of the first things I was asked to do, delete them all. And I panicked, I literally panicked, like, how am I gonna, how do I know what to put in my mouth if I, this app isn't telling me? But it was the most liberating thing I ever did. I had to learn to trust myself. I think that was the biggest key, is trusting that I can figure this out. And I am smarter than I think, and I can show up for myself. And I think, so I think the biggest emotion was self doubt and just learning how to set that aside, little tiny baby steps at a time.

It didn't happen overnight, but it over time and with a lot of practice, it completely changed.

Andi: That notion of trust, of self trust, that's a tricky one. How, how did you tackle that? Like, what did that look like?

Norma: Yeah, so I'll stick with the food because this was really, really important for me when she told me to ditch your apps and don't, I don't want you to track your food, like what you eat and don't count calories or macros or nothing. She said, I want you to write a food plan for the day, just today. And write down what you will eat today, not a diet plan, but what you will eat.

And her, her favorite line she always uses was, if it's Oreos, put Oreos on your plan. And it wasn't, the purpose of that exercise wasn't, had nothing to do with the food. It taught me how to plan what I wanted in my day, in my life. and do what I said I was going to do.

That was the, the thing that changed it all for me. And I could follow the plan that I made based on what I wanted. I showed up. I showed up for me, and over time then the plan became more strategic. I could level up my nutrition, I could experiment with different foods, but in the beginning it was purely taking responsibility, making that plan, and then showing up regardless of what I put on it.

So it was a huge, huge step for me.

Andi: That feels like such a flip, particularly for anyone who has gone through those periods of punishment for the things that you've eaten or deprivation 

 that flip of actually, no, I'm going to commit to what I am going to eat and what I am going to do feels so foreign, but also so incredibly powerful at the same time.

Norma: It's the same when I first heard it. I remember thinking, this woman's crazy. I can't believe I'm giving her my money because I can't possibly figure out what to eat. I need someone to tell me. because I lived so long on diets, but when I didn't have that I don't want to call it a crutch, but when I didn't have that meal plan to follow and it was all on me, I just had to make the best of it.

And that's where a little bit of my perfectionism would kick in. And I'd always get called out like, Norma, that's the diet plan. That's not a, what Norma is going to eat today plan. So it was a lot of work and there was tears. There were days that I totally blew it up. And there were days that in my mind, I was perfect, but I had to like work through all of that and know that it was okay. I'm human. I'm going to make a mistake. I wrote down three Oreos and I ate five. No big deal. I can move on. And that was the work I had to do to start trusting myself and taking responsibility.

Andi M: It's really interesting how you're framing perfectionism in the context of eating. It makes sense, but I hadn't actually connected the dots in the way that you have. What does healing that side of ourselves, which is craving perfection look like in the context of changing our relationship with food?

Norma: Yeah, I think the biggest thing and probably the most common and it was for me was ripping off those labels that we place on ourselves. I don't know how many times have you said this? I know I've said it a ton I had a good day today. It had nothing to do with how I showed up in my life had everything to do what I With what I put in my mouth or, and if it was a bad day, suddenly I was worthless.

I failed again. And that's where my perfectionism came in. I could only have good days when I followed the rules and there was no room for, for deviation. And that's the piece I had to work on. That's where my perfectionism really showed up is allowing the gray space because that's where change happens when you can let yourself experiment and try different things and be forgiving.

Because we're human, we're not machines. And I was trying to approach it from a very logical, mechanical place of, of losing weight, and it just doesn't exist.

Andi: I hope you don't mind me asking you this, but going back to understand the roots of that perfection and then healing it at the core, what did that look like? Did this process help you to illuminate where perfectionism started and how the tentacles of that had moved into the way that you worked with food?

Norma: Yes, for sure. Now, I, I will say one tool that I learned in this process, and I still use today, is journaling. And that scared the bejesus out of me too, because I had in my mind what journaling should look like. Very perfectionist, but once I started Understanding that this was a great way to explore, a very safe way to explore.

I did get to some of the roots. I could take it all the way back to my childhood. I think I had, although I had a mom who loved me and still does unconditionally, I had a very chaotic childhood. There was alcoholism in my childhood, there was a divorce, there was what some people, I suppose, would call violent behavior, you know, plates being thrown across the room.

And I remember being a very young child, like five years old, always feeling very responsible for keeping the peace and making sure everybody was happy. And... I connected that if I behaved perfectly, if I brought home good grades, perfect grades, straight A's, um, did all the things right, there would be peace.

And I think that was the root of where my perfectionism came from, and my emotional eating. You know, I can think of, in that chaos. I can remember my mom always hustling us off to the side and here, let's have a snack and let's have some chocolate milk and, and all good intentions. I'm not at all blaming my mom for any of this, but she just wanted to take us out of that chaos and distract us from it.

And food became the mechanism. And I very quickly made that connection. And that's what I meant when I said in the beginning that we learn these things, make these connections very early in life, and they continue to evolve with us as we grow until we get to this point where that's our only coping mechanism.

But yeah, I can trace that perfectionism all the way back to probably about five years old, I think.

Andi: Oh my goodness. I'm wondering then, given all of the work that you've done to go back and to heal and I know as humans we are onions with layers and so we're constantly peeling back these layers and perfectionism and all these other components that contribute to the behaviors that we have now.

I'm wondering where are you at now with your relationship with your body and with eating and some of these things that you've changed now to this point.

Norma: Yeah, I'm in such a different place, I've even had a little bit of a gain with, from that 117 pounds that I lost, and I'm totally and completely okay with it. I just don't worry about it like I used to. It doesn't define me anymore. It very much defined me before. But I think, you know, I'm human.

I still have some of the same thoughts will come up. I'll still every once in a while, be a little conscious of the size of me compared to other people. But the difference is now I can turn them off or quiet them down so much quicker. Because I think. What I accepted through this process is that those thoughts will probably always be with me.

They're part of my wiring. And to expect that they will go away and never come back, it's probably asking too much. It's kind of like that expression, you know, they can come along for the ride, but they are not driving the car anymore. So they're back there, they might be trying to backseat drive sometimes, but I can hush them up pretty quickly and move on and not get kind of stuck in them like I used to.

Andi: I love that. I love that you're a work in progress as well, like so many of us, but you're feeling like you have a much better relationship with your eating, with yourself and with your food.

I'm just wondering if there's anyone listening that's kind of resonating to some of these pieces, whether it's being controlled by emotional eating or that perfectionism or that diet cycle, where is the place? A to start, and then what are some of those tools that you recommend or that you're still using now to get to a point where we are in love with ourselves and we are in love with our lives and we're just at peace.

Norma: Yeah, it's a journey. First of all, I, I tell my clients all this all the time that this is, it's, it's, it's a marathon. It's not a sprint and you'll always be a work in progress, but you can get to a better place. And it's, it's just patience and practice. And it takes time. And I think that's the hardest thing, especially with someone who's been caught up in, in dieting and binge eating and that whole cycle.

Because we have been conditioned to believe that there is a quick and easy answer. And there just isn't. I think that's the very first step is just allowing yourself to accept that this is going to be some work. It's going to be a little uncomfortable sometimes, but the rewards on the other side are so, so much better.

And I think the another piece of it is we've all who've experienced dieting have probably done this to like the big life overhauls like we put a stake in the ground and we are gonna do it this time and we strip our house of all the food that we think we can't have and do all those things and it just it's too much .Our nervous systems cannot handle that kind of change so it's slow tiny gradual steps and it feels painfully slow sometimes but it's it compounds over time.

I always use the analogy of compounding interest, but in a good way, you know, all of a sudden, all of those really tiny baby steps you've taken have turned into an entirely different life and sometimes it catches you by surprise. So I always encourage people, tiny baby steps, be compassionate with yourself.

Give yourself that space that has to kind of be part of your process. But I think your question was like, how do you get started? So I think it's just that it's accepting that it's slow and it's going to be uncomfortable and just to be okay with that. And trying to set aside. The diet stuff when people come to me for emotional eating, there's usually always an element of wanting to lose weight, and I think it's fine to want to lose weight, but the active dieting completely interferes with changing your relationship with food.

So I think that's a really hard pill to swallow for some people like me who spent their entire adult life on a diet to say, Okay, I'm not going to do that anymore. And I'm going to focus on what's going on inside of me. It's incredibly scary. And they turn and run sometimes. But when you can come back to that.

That's the best place to start to really truly make change. You've got to take that interference of dieting out of the equation and focus on the real problem the root problem And that's managing your emotions in a different way.

Andi: I really love your advice around finding the acceptance of the length of the journey,

Norma: Mm hmm

Andi: If there's anyone that's struggling in that accepting, that it is a long journey and lengthening it out, what advice do you have?

Norma: That's tough because I truly believe that's the only way to make this work. And I think it goes back to those tiny, tiny steps. So, okay, if you can't quite let go of the dieting, let's look at Where eating feels out of control for you. So we kind of step out of it. Just a little bit. So, for example, I just had someone recently who was incredibly frustrated because she said every day at three o'clock and I'm using her words now, she says she found herself rummaging through her. her kitchen like a homeless person, like she was starving to death and there was no food there. But then she said, but Norma, I know I wasn't hungry. I just had lunch like an hour and a half ago. So I said, okay, well then let's, let's not worry about the food and what you were looking for.

Let's take a step back. What was happening or what is happening at three o'clock that makes you reach for the food? This is always a trigger. And when we can focus on the trigger. and deal with that, suddenly the eating component of this isn't as important. So I just asked her to stop, when she found herself in the kitchen, and just ask herself, what am I really hungry for?

And what we got to was, she was just tired, she spent the day staring at the computer. and so I said, okay, what would make you feel not so tired? I think I just need to go sit outside for a few minutes. So she kind of broke that connection there and now food wasn't an issue Certainly it took a lot of practice, but she knew that it could be something else. It was very different.

Andi: Oh, Norma, this information has been so helpful today. How do we work with you? Like that is my burning question right now, because your, your knowledge, the way that you approach this from an energetic perspective and your energy I love. So how do we connect with you? How do we work with you? What programs have you got running at the moment?

Norma: Yeah, so I've decided that one of the things that's really important to me and was really helpful to me in my own journey was a community. The coach that I worked with offered this community element because, gosh, we've all traveled this solo path of figuring this out. For far too long, and there's something about having a community behind you, just people that get it that can just kind of have their hands on your back when you need it.

I just think it's so important, so I have a community membership. I call mind, body and plate and we have a core program on complicating emotional eating, which really just kind of introduces how I like to think about emotional eating and really just understanding it. And then we dive in in the community and really start working through these different elements as a group.

So we have group coaching. There's opportunities for Q and A just all different ways that we can communicate with each other, support each other and it's off of Facebook. I host it in a private platform. So there's no ads. There's no chance of anybody sneaking in that shouldn't be there, and it's completely safe and private.

That was really important to me that if I was to do this, it needed to be a very safe environment. And I think I've created that

Andi: This has been an incredible conversation. Thank you for sharing some of those stories. I know they were quite vulnerable I really appreciate it.

Norma: Oh, you're very welcome. I enjoyed being here. And this is my life's mission. Every woman. Deserves to feel good about themselves and their body and show up in life the way they want to. And if there's anything I can do to change, that for someone, I'm, I'm all in. So I appreciate the opportunity.

Andi: Oh, you're so welcome. Well, if there's anyone listening today that is feeling drawn to work with Norma, please, please, please check out her stuff. Just from this conversation, I can tell you her energy is beautiful. It is supportive. I would highly recommend that if you're feeling drawn to start tackling some of this uncomplicating of your emotional eating, please reach out to Norma and I hope everybody has a beautiful day.

Andi M: This was such a great conversation with Norma. I really felt so many parallels between her story and mine and I even got so much out of this conversation. 

If you feel drawn to work with Norma, please do connect with her on Instagram at NormaFrahnCoaching. And as always, if you're feeling the pull to explore what working with me could look like, do drop me a message on Instagram at @andi.matthies, especially if you're starting to crave really deepening that connection with your body and opening your own higher abilities. 

​Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. If you loved listening, please subscribe to the podcast and leave a review because I'd love to give you a shout out. You can find us on Instagram at @bodydiariespodcast.

You can also find me, your host, at @andi.matthies. And if you're feeling ready to share your story on Body Diaries or you have some powerful insights from your own work that you know would help others on their own journeys, fill in the guest application that's in the show notes.

This podcast was recorded in Naam, the traditional lands of the Kulin Nation, to whom I pay my respects to Elders past and present, as well as any other Aboriginal Elders of other communities who may be listening.