The Root Cause Of Excess Weight Gain

You're going to be pushed by pain until you get pulled by a vision. People I know, life, we get pushed by pain until something, one day we reach in and we uncover, we allow ourselves to uncover what our pain is bringing us to, what is our passion and our purpose. And when we start following that, it's a whole different ballgame. Welcome to the Thrive Her podcast.

I'm your host, Amy Sanders. I'm a fitness and wellness pro, mom, step-mom, second wife, and master certified life coach. I'm here to help you manage your mind so you can uncover the most potent version of yourself and create a thriving life you love. Hello, everyone.

Welcome back to the Thrive Her podcast. I'm your host, Amy Sanders. And today I have an amazing guest speaker for you. Her name is Stacey Page.

And Stacey and I met months ago, actually, we were put into, we're part of the Women Thrive Summit, which is coming up, by the way, it's going to be fantastic. So if you're ready to really dive into all the different parts of yourself, there's speakers for everything because there's 50 of us. There's like a lot of speakers throughout the entire week that are going to be presenting on all kinds of things. But anyway, so within those 50 speakers, I met Stacey and I have had a beautiful relationship and the moment we met, we share a lot of common interests and even our platforms are similar.

So she was a New York City event planner, like the big event planner doing all the things. And she's from there turned her life into a total journey of spiritual healing. She coaches people on all of the hardships of life, different things that are hard to navigate. She helps bring people through those.

And I'm really going to let her talk about that, but we're also going to dive in today about unprocessed. Pain and how it keeps you stuck when it comes to weight. This is what we want to talk about because you guys know I'm into fitness, health, all the things. And we've really never talked about how it's connected to our traumas and stuff.

So Stacey, welcome. I'm so excited to have you here. Can you tell our listeners just a little bit more about you and your story and then we'll dive in? Yes.

Thank you so much, Amy. It's so fabulous to be here. Yeah. Healing pain and trauma.

I had a couple of big. Moments in my life, those moments that like brought me to my knees that were too big to ignore that I had to heal. And it was actually the first one where I started addressing my weight and I had been heavy. Probably around middle school was when the weight started to come on me.

And part of it was definitely my body was a little bit different than all of my other friends. They could eat whatever they wanted to, and they didn't gain weight. My body wasn't that. And I was always that like 20, 30, 40, I think maybe 50 pounds overweight was where I topped out.

But most of my teenage and young adult life, it was that 30, 40 pounds overweight and I tried everything. So initially when I was younger, I would do the crazy diets, just starving myself, overeating, lose 10 pounds, gain back 15. And then when I was in, I'd say my very young twenties. And then I'd say my very young twenties, maybe even a little bit younger than that.

Then I started to understand, I started to educate myself. I started to understand portion control, healthy eating, clean eating, exercise diet. I understood what I needed to do to lose weight. I had my why I wanted to, to lose the weight.

And it was when I was doing that, that I couldn't stick to it. That's when I realized something else is going on. Yeah. I know what to do.

I have the ability to do it, but yet I'm not doing it. So for me, it really came down to two big things. One was that my weight was my protection. So my keeping my body physically 20, 30, 40 pounds overweight was keeping away unwanted attention.

Because when I was younger, I did get a lot of unwanted sexual attention. I wasn't ready for it. I didn't want it. I didn't know how to handle it.

Many lines were. Crossed, which of course put in the pain and the trauma. So one of it was just bigger body. I'm not going to be that, that sexy, that sexy woman for people.

And then the other thing that I came to realize was that I didn't have tools. So when I would start to lose the weight, the protection comes off. When I would start to eat clean and healthy, I didn't have the tools. I was using food as a supplement, right?

As a. I was using tools to shove down my emotions. I was eating my emotions when the pain would come up. I didn't know how to lean into the pain and heal from it.

So I was just shove it down. So it was like willpower. Even though I was looking to make a lifestyle change and I knew how to do it, I was still depending on willpower and that's just never going to work. The pain wanted to come up.

So that, so it was really when I started to heal that the weight came off when I took the attention off of. Losing weight, but I put the attention onto healing that then the weight came off and it's been 20 plus years. This is just what it is now. It's just what it is.

I have my, my weight doesn't come back on because it doesn't need to. I think you've spoke about a lot of things in just a little bit of time where I know I personally know multiple women who are doing just that. I know their traumas. I know what they have been through and it is a protection to them.

Some of them I think are unaware of it. And I think some of them are very aware of it, but they are just really scared. When you talk about tools, what would you say to the woman? What tools can she use?

How can she actually face this? Because essentially we need to face that pain, right? We need to look at it, let it come up, let it get out of our body. But how did you do that?

And what would you say to her to be able to help her? So I think for the women who know and are just scared, I think the first thing to know is that. We're adults now, right? Oftentimes, most of the time, the things that happened early on to use our weight as protection, we truly were victims.

We were younger. We needed someone to protect us. We were put in situations we shouldn't have been in for the most part. So now we know, we know we can take care of ourselves.

We know we're not going to allow those situations to come in. We're not going to put ourselves into it. Or if something comes towards us that we don't want, we use our voice. We use our, we use whatever we need.

And we don't go into that situation. So I think that's first and foremost to know for women who are afraid you can take care of yourself now. And then the next part, I'm really big on a daily, I call it a daily spiritual practice. You can call it a daily mindfulness practice, a daily self-care practice, whatever word works, but I think a daily practice is so important.

You need to create a space. Everything is in there, right? The pain, the trauma. And that pain and trauma has lessons for us.

It has wisdom for us. There's stuff for us to learn. We can take the lessons. We take the wisdom and then we step on the shoulders of that pain and we grow, but we have to have a vehicle, a vessel for the communication from within to come out.

So I'm a big person about, I call it my spiritual practice. I'm a spiritual life coach, whether it be 10 minutes a day, 20 minutes a day, 30 minutes a day, it's creating that space where you can safely move within. And get in to your heart, get into your pain, get into whatever it is. Journaling is one of the first tools that I always recommend for people.

And that can be journaling. It can be using prompts. It can also be just taking out a notebook and saying that for 10 minutes or 15 minutes or three pages, you're just going to write. You're going to write front back front, or you're going to write for 10 minutes.

Even if nothing's coming, you're going to write, nothing's coming. This is stupid. This is dumb, but you just keep going. And then all of a sudden, one day it starts coming out.

Like now you, you've given an avenue for what's inside of you to come out. And once the light is shined, once the stuff starts to come out, it can be healed. It can't be healed shoving it down, but when we allow it out and sometimes it's not even as big as we think, right? I'm not saying that the pain wasn't as big, but sometimes we think that it's going to be so much when it comes up and out, but it's actually worse by keeping it shoving down when we let it up and out and shine light.

It's. Yeah, it's, it can be raw again and it can be painful, but it's also freeing and empowering. You're letting it out of your body because it lives within your nervous system. Wreaking havoc, creating.

So not only is it physically hurting our body, it's also now we're resonating at that. We're vibrating with that. So now we're aligning with lower vibrational experiences. We're welcoming them into our life instead of releasing that because all that stuff has an energy.

Right? Like even science is saying that we are energetic beings and we, we vibrate at certain levels, our pain and our trauma that's shoved within also has a vibration to it. And that is a big part. So we keep repeating, bringing to us more situations to cause us more pain until we can let it up and out.

I was literally just going to ask that question. So do you believe that's connected? And you just answered it. But I do too.

Yeah. I was like, that's why a lot of people keep experiencing the same, right? Because they haven't truly processed that trauma and it's familiar. It's even though you might not like it because your trauma is still in there and it's something familiar that we will always go to the path of least resistance back to familiarity and attract that same thing.

Yeah. Our brain likes it and energetically we create it. And I'll always say that I've talked about this before. Sometimes pain and challenges and different things are part of our forward moving path.

But if we are continually repeating, the same things, it's showing us that something inside needs to be healed because we will keep repeating it until we heal that which is within and we heal it just by giving it a voice, by shining light on it, by extracting the information, the wisdom, the lessons it has for us. And then we can start stepping forward. Yeah. Now, what would you say?

You know that I'm a woman of faith too. I'm a very spiritual being. And I know that the more that I listen, to my spirit and trust it, that it has my back, the better my life is, right? But I know that not everyone is.

What would you say to the person who isn't quite sure? Okay. I don't know that I'm a very spiritual person. What would you say to them?

I still go back to that daily practice. And again, if spiritual doesn't work, if daily spiritual practice doesn't work, call it a self-care practice. Call it a mind. Call it a mindfulness practice.

And I will also say, don't listen to me. Don't listen to you. You have to experience it yourself, right? That's the only way you truly know.

We can know about a lot. But true empowerment comes from truly knowing, which means we're not just taking somebody else's word for it. We've tried it on. We've lived in it and we've worked with it.

So I still go back to that daily practice. I still go back to spending time with yourself, just yourself. And if it's not journaling, if it's not a daily practice, then I'm not going to do it. If it's not journaling, if it's not meditating, it could be taking a walk in nature without headphones, without anybody else, just finding that time to connect to yourself within.

And if, and I also say to people, ask, like your answers are within and you will get your answer. So if you're not sure, ask, and then in your daily practice, whatever that is in your daily practice, the answer will come out. It'll come out in that journaling, in that writing, but wherever there's a doubt, ask. And then if you're.

Truly not sure about an intuition, I think sometimes we can look back, we can look back and say, I knew that, or I felt that, or I saw that red flag and I didn't listen. Even just looking backwards and saying, was there ever a time where I felt something that I either listened to and I was right, or I didn't listen to, and I should have. Just being more self-aware would be a great place to start. Just self-aware.

It's all about the fact that our path always shows us like our spirit. And so I think that the things that you love to do when you were little, when you really go back to what did I love then? What lit my soul on fire? That is your spirit that was talking to you and it still will today, but we get really good at being busy.

We get really good at fitting in, fitting in our community, our culture, our religion, all of the things that could take us further away from ourself. And then when we have trauma that also tops gets buried on top as well. And so what do you think about that? There's a book.

This was the book that I went to when my life was first changing, when I had been the event planner in my high powered career and life fell apart. And I didn't even know what would bring me joy. I didn't know where my passion wanted to go. There was a book called The Artist's Way.

It's still out. And I use a lot of her tools today with my clients. She had morning pages, which was just the free writing. But the other thing that she would do, there were some questions in there that she would say, and this is when I also began my daily practice because I would use some of her questions in my daily practice.

And she would ask questions like, if you were guaranteed success, what would you love to do? If you could have five other lives, what would they be? If you knew that nobody could make fun of you or this or that, what would you do? It was asking questions in a.

Harmless way where your mind couldn't get involved because our mind can say, I can't possibly do that. I don't have the tools. I don't have the money, this and that. But when you take all of that away and you just start asking yourself those questions, then I believe that we can tap it back into what I think is our authentic self.

We could inner child, we can call it whatever we want, but it is our authentic self because I do believe that we were born with purpose and all our passions. Tie into that purpose and it's there. But like you said, so much gets on top of it, but I feel like it's there. And I actually feel like that's our guiding light.

I feel like when we get into that, then we can start honing the vision for our life. Michael Beckwith, who founded Agape Spiritual Center in Los Angeles, he always said, you're going to be pushed by pain until you get pulled by a vision. And I was so much of my life. And people I know, life, we get pushed by pain until something, one day we reach in and we uncover, we allow ourselves to uncover what our pain is bringing us to, what is our passion and our purpose.

And when we start following that, it's a whole different ballgame. Yeah. That's when you enter into flow, where things flow, you're vibrating at a higher level because you are tapping into your authentic self. And I like to call it a paradigm shift.

You shift into a completely... It's a completely different paradigm, but it's actually the one that was always there for you. Yeah. It's like you're sloughing off.

It's a whole different version of yourself that was always there. I just referred to some healing work I was personally back in doing. I just referred to it as sloughing off. A couple of weeks ago, I got sick and I was like, it's the sloughing off.

It's the sloughing off. And I do feel that way. I feel like, and I think you and I are aligned on this. We have everything within that we need.

We have everything within our goals, our dreams, our desires. Plus what? It takes to fulfill it. And I feel that our job here is just that, to slough off what's in the way.

It could be limited beliefs that we need to let go of. It could be physical, energetic emotions that are locked in there from pain, from trauma, whatever it is. But I do feel that at our center, who we are is powerful, does know all of that. We just got to get the stuff that's in the way out of the way.

Nothing to add. Just get out of the way. Get it out of the way. Yeah.

I do feel so the word, there's a lot of like hot words now. Trauma is one of them, which I think is good. I think it's good that people are looking at it and they're wanting to heal and we're wanting to do better. I think all of that's really good.

But at the same time, I also think sometimes we can get stuck in it, right? This happened to me playing the victim versus the hero. And even when it comes to weight, which is what we started this, we're just diving way in, but it's what we do. So it's fine.

We can get stuck in that, which also like when it comes to the weight stays on. However, I like to focus like, yeah, so all of this stuff has happened and we can get it out. And when we get it out, we become even like more authentic. We become even more powerful, amazing person, right?

We have become upgraded essentially. Yes. But then I love to focus on like, when you are focusing on already being her, good things can happen. This happened to me, but this does not define.

And it can define you. Maybe it defined you for better, but just always looking. Okay. Yes.

So I am getting it out. I'm doing the work. And as I'm doing the work, I am becoming the most amazing human. Yeah.

And I think that's so important to say, like you, you just said it so perfectly. I think that there is a time to take our trauma, heal it, and then let it go. Let it go. Don't set up camp there.

Stay there to get the lessons, to get to extract what you need, and then let it go. And I talk about this a lot because there is a benefit to staying stuck in our story. There is a benefit to identify with our trauma. The benefit being people, oh my God, I'm so sorry.

Like we get love, we get compassion, we get all these lovely feels, but we stay stuck and we keep ourselves disempowered. It really is. It can sound harsh, especially. From what some of the trauma can be, but if we're going to stay, it keeps us as a victim.

I feel we just, we heal it, we let it go. And then it's just, it's something that we experienced, but it's not in our body anymore. We don't identify with it. Yeah.

Now alongside that, do you believe that regardless of how extreme the trauma has been, especially when it comes to like even the body weight? They're, they're protecting, it's like the shield and this is like their safety. And now they have to slough off the safety, which, and they might feel bare, right? Do you believe that no matter how bad the trauma was, all of it can be healed?

Oh, a hundred percent. Now I believe it's a different journey, right? So I believe there's a reason that we don't lose a hundred pounds in a night because it's gone from having protection to now being bare. So going back to weight, I believe just in the process of losing.

Weight, we are healing what we can handle. So it's as we lose the weight bit by bit, we're, we're healing the trauma where it's like, we're healing a little bit, stepping into our power, healing, stepping into our power. So I a hundred percent believe that we can heal absolutely everything. I believe that there is a reason that it takes time.

I don't think, I think most of us, I'm not saying there's not anybody, but I think most of us, it's a process it's layer by layer. And there's a reason for it. And you have to call in your support. So we all need different things for support.

Maybe it's, I have a lot of friends. I also teach yoga. There's a lot of people in my yoga community that they have formed a community and they are such a strong support for each other because, and we've talked about this before and other things, not everybody who's in your close circle is going to be able to be there to support you through certain things. It's just, it's just what it is.

So when you're healing from it, it's finding the supportive people, it's not telling every buddy, everything, right? You keep things, certain things you keep to yourself, to your coach, to your therapist, to your sacred community, I think that's really important. So yes, I do think it's all to be healed. I think it's a journey and we need to make sure that we're supported on that journey as we need.

I love that. So with the different things you've experienced, which we haven't gone into really any of them like in depth, which is fine. But I know, and you know that. You have experienced some really significant things throughout your life and you have done a lot of work to heal those and to create a life that you love, which is why I want you here, right?

We always like to talk about like how I'd love this podcast to be one of inspiration. So women that are tuning in are like, Hey, I can too. If she can, I can. So as you have healed, how has your life evolved and changed and how are you today?

So I would say I did a lot of. Healing when I was losing my weight, I'll say this, take it loosely, but I thought I was more healed than I was. I think we all do though. We all go through that.

We're like, I healed so much. I did so good. I'm good. I literally went, I was married and I will never forget this.

I was sitting with one of my still best friends in my backyard and she's looking around and she's like, that's it. Like you're done. I, I had, we were in a beautiful house. It was about three and a half years into being my new house.

I had just finished. All the renovations inside and out beautiful family with my stepkids, my marriage, the whole thing. And I was like, yeah, that that's it. I'm done.

Like we're dreaming of the future. And I said, there's just this one little piece. I said this to her. I said, there's just this one piece.

Like I had put my career onto the back burner. I was like, and that, at that point, my career had been my passion and my purpose. I said, so it's just, it's my voice in the world. It's my purpose in life.

That's what I need to step into. This was August. Of 2014, six weeks later, I found out my then husband had been betraying me in the most horrific of ways. Infidelity is putting it very mildly.

And I don't, the only reason I don't tell details is because other people were involved, but it was bad and there were legal consequences and my whole world fell apart. Yeah. And after I just thought I was done, I made it. I'm here.

It's done. And I sat there and I'll never forget sitting there. On the floor in my house, my stepkids were with their mom and stepdad. I had all my animals with me, five cats, two dogs.

And I'm thinking, how did this happen? That was my big question. I was like, shell shock. How did this happen?

So it was in the journey of uncovering how it happened, which is similar to what we were just talking about. Beliefs I held, ideas I held, things I allowed, boundaries I didn't put in place, not listening to my intuition, seeing what I wanted to see. Instead of what was there, that became the next big journey. And in doing that is where I can say, now, the big thing I think is being willing to see what was the truth versus seeing what I wanted to see.

I will say, I think that is a big piece of what I still to this day will take with me. But that has allowed me to, I wasn't intending to be married. So right away, not that it was right away. It was.

A few years apart, but my husband now, we absolutely have our challenges. I think that relationships are a place where you heal and you grow and you trigger each other and it's all part of it. But we have a wonderful marriage. It's as we support each other and everything that I've built in my life, I feel a true joy, not always, but I access joy a lot more.

And I think the biggest thing is feeling empowered. When I look back, I never realized. Really had that true empowered feeling. I was dependent on my now ex-husband story for another day, but I had put a lot of my own work and my earning potential on the back burner.

So I became dependent on him. And, and there was just other things where I was always dependent on something needing to go a certain way or something being a certain way and where I'm at now. And it's still an unfolding, of course, but it's a true empowerment. It's like, what's around me is what I've wanted to bring in.

If there's something that's not bringing me joy. Or that's not part of my highest and best, I slough it away. So I think it's the feeling, I would say it's the feeling of empowerment and being a choice that is, and it sounds might sound a little crazy because it's such an, but it's, it's that internal it's internal instead of external, right? Yeah.

It's peace and power and joy that I would say is the biggest benefit that I feel from going through all that work, which I. And thinking back, it was always one foot on the cliff, one foot off or a little bit shaky ground. And now it doesn't matter what happens. Like I've learned that, right?

Like it doesn't matter what happens, even if something happens in this marriage, be it. Whatever, if anything, something happens, I know I'm going to be okay. It's not going to feel, it's going to be painful, but it's not going to feel the way it felt 10 years ago. So no matter what happens, no matter what falls apart, I've learned that I will rise.

Like I have what it takes to rise from whatever ashes I find myself in. And I think that's the biggest piece. That is the biggest piece. And that's the thing you can always take with you.

Yeah. There's a lot of things that we can't really take with us that we depend on. And once you realize you've lost, when you realize that foundation is no longer there, you realize what you do take with you, which is you and the relationship with you. Yeah.

And I love that you talked about like the peacefulness that you now have and the empowerment that you now have. And that comes from within because so often naturally we like to reach for like external validation, which who doesn't want to be told they're pretty, who doesn't want to be told that they're awesome. Who doesn't want, we all want that. And it's good.

There's nothing wrong with that, but to depend on it is where it becomes a problem. Yeah. It, it, it, it ends up weakening you. Yeah.

And so being able to be independent on your own. And have that love for yourself is huge. I love that you shared that. Okay.

One last little nugget of wisdom before we hop off. I have loved our conversation so far, but if you were to leave the audience with one thing on like how to rise above, what would it be? I know I just threw this at you. I still go back.

It's connecting with you. It's self-care. It's self-love. It's doing something every day for you.

And I think it's important to know. Especially when we have children or we have spouses, we have people that depend on us for work. When we practice self-care and self-love first, we now can give from overflow. So we're not taking away from anybody else.

We're actually, we have more to give our people when we take care of ourselves first. And then that's how I believe we have that true empowerment. So I would say it's self-care and self-love and only each person, like we all know our answers are within, right? So what is self-love for me is not going to be self-love for you is not for somebody else.

What's self-care for me, grab my dogs, go hiking. That rejuvenates me. It fills me. It grounds me.

So it's just finding how, finding what self-care is and self-love and then doing it every day. Yeah. Doing it every day. And it's self-full, right?

It's pouring into yourself. It's not self, but yeah, it's self-full. I love that. So, okay, Stacey, I know I'm going to have show notes of information on how to get a hold of you below, but how can you, what's the best way for people to reach you here?

The best way is StaceyPage. com. And I do have a weekly email that goes out that there's always a little bit of nuggets, information, affirmations, short meditation to start with. There's something, if people are interested in a daily practice, there's some tools in that weekly newsletter that you can take with you into.

But I would say StaceyPage. com is the best. And then all my socials and everything is on the website. Perfect.

Okay, great. Thank you so much for your time. It's been so great. It's always great talking to you.

So I've loved having you so much. I really appreciate you having me. It was wonderful. Thank you.

You bet. And everyone else, we'll be here again next week. Thank you so much for tuning in. And as we mentioned, Stacey's information will be in the show notes.

So make sure you check that out as well. And we'll talk to you later. Hey, if you enjoyed listening to this podcast, you've got to come check out my signature program, Thrive Her Academy. This is where we do real coaching and inner work transformation.

I teach you how to apply the strategies and mindset tools we talk about here on the podcast so you can create that life and business that you love. For more information, go to www. amysanders. co forward slash services.

Again, that is Amy Sanders. Co forward slash services.