The Mind-Body Connection and Food (feat. Lisa Schlosberg)

Curious about how your mindset shapes your eating habits and affects your body’s response to food? Could healing past trauma be the missing piece in your wellness journey? 

Today, Jenn Trepeck and Lisa Schlosberg, founder of Out of the Cave, LLC, explore the mind-body connection and its impact on emotional eating. Together, they explore how healing trauma can reshape our relationships with food, how our animal brain interprets social context as either safety or danger, and offer tools such as breathwork and the feelings wheel to build emotional awareness and combat chronic stress for sustainable, holistic health.

The Salad With a Side of Fries podcast, hosted by Jenn Trepeck, explores real-life wellness and weight loss, debunking myths, misinformation, and flawed science surrounding our understanding of nutrition and the food industry. Let’s dive into wellness and weight loss for real life, including drinking, eating out, and skipping the grocery store.

IN THIS EPISODE: 

• (00:00) Lisa Schlosberg introduces the concept of humans as spiritual beings, emphasizing the mind-body connection 
• (05:59) Lisa’s weight loss journey, emotional eating and revealing the importance of holistic health
• (10:50) The Adverse Childhood Experiences study connects childhood trauma to physical health issues like obesity and addiction
• (13:11) Discussion of the mind-body connection and how the feelings wheel can be tied to weight loss
• (18:35) Eating releases dopamine and serotonin, reinforcing emotional eating in times of stress
• (22:16) Reiterating humans as spiritual beings with an animal brain in a social context
• (29:02) The animal brain perceives discomfort as danger, triggering physiological reactions like chronic stress 
• (31:40) Lisa suggests using breath work to manage emotional awareness and reduce stress eating
• (35:54) Discussion of energy, the mind-body connection and advocating for self-love and mindfulness
• (39:05) Addressing social media influence and doom scrolling, idealized images create chronic stress, driving emotional eating
• (42:34) Lisa concludes with a call for self-compassion, offering hope for trauma healing

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• The mind-body connection is central to understanding emotional eating, as Lisa Schlosberg explains how unprocessed trauma and stress can manifest as disordered eating patterns, impacting weight loss and holistic health.
• Self-compassion and emotional awareness are vital for healing, with tools like the feelings wheel helping individuals identify emotions associated with food and body image, thereby fostering healthier coping mechanisms.
• Chronic stress from social media and societal pressures can trigger stress eating. Still, mindfulness practices, such as breathwork, can help shift the nervous system toward a state of safety, supporting mental health and balanced eating habits.

QUOTES:        

(05:59) “It wasn't until I spoke to my mom's friend, who is a nutritionist, she explained to me that I was undereating and over-exercising.” Lisa Schlosberg 

(08:45) “Food was my drug of choice growing up. And what was happening without using food and eating to stuff down all the feelings or dieting and over exercising to distract from all of the feelings, I was an emotional disaster. And that was very confusing and really tricky to navigate.” Lisa Schlosberg

(13:12) “I started applying everything that I was learning in my own research about how diets don't work. You can't just restrict food and think that that's gonna be a sustainable way of living. I started focusing on my health holistically instead of just my weight. I started seeing myself as a complex, multidimensional, emotional human being rather than just a body, and I started learning how to really feel and express my emotions rather than eat them or starve myself because of them.” Lisa Schlosberg

(14:25) “What we've learned from your story is that not feeling the emotions or trying to cope without tools starts to show up in the body.” Jenn Trepeck

(20:20) “Every single time you eat food, two of the four happy chemicals are released in your brain.” Lisa Schlosberg

(38:29) “When I was growing up, social context and those cues were very much magazines and TV commercials. Today it's social media.” Jenn Trepeck

(42:16) “Everybody has a bit of homework, to start to observe where we are and what we're noticing and paying more attention.” Jenn Trepeck 

RESOURCES:

Become a Happy Healthy Hub Member

Jenn’s Free Menu Plan

A Salad With a Side of Fries

A Salad With A Side Of Fries Merch

A Salad With a Side of Fries Instagram

Permission to Feel: Book

GUEST RESOURCES:

Out of the Cave - Website

Lisa.Schlosberg - Instagram

The Out of the Cave - Podcast

Lisa Schlosberg - Facebook

Lisa Schlosberg - YouTube

Intentional Eating and Mindful Nutrition with Jenn Trepeck

Feelings Wheel

BIOGRAPHY: 

Lisa Schlosberg is the founder of Out of the Cave, LLC, where she combines her comprehensive expertise as a licensed social worker, integrative nutrition health coach, certified personal trainer, and registered yoga teacher to guide emotional eaters toward physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health and healing.

Maintaining a 150-pound weight loss for more than a decade by healing her relationship with food (through emotional healing, somatic experiencing, mindset shifts, and more), Lisa discovered that her lifelong struggle with "morbid obesity" and “disordered eating” were symptoms of unprocessed trauma and emotional stress. This realization fueled her passion for helping others navigate similar challenges with a heart-centered, trauma-informed approach.

Her strengths-based philosophy is rooted in the belief that using food as a coping mechanism is a valid method of managing stress, and it is possible to heal from the inside out. Driven to make her work accessible to all, Lisa hosts the Out of the Cave podcast, where she shares powerful client stories and expert insights to inspire global transformation.

KEYWORDS: Mind-Body Connection, Emotional Eating, Weight Loss, Trauma Healing, Somatic Experiencing, Adverse Childhood Experiences, Holistic Health, Self-Compassion, Emotional Vocabulary, Feelings Wheel, Neurotransmitters, Dopamine, Serotonin, Oxytocin, Endorphins, Stress Eating, Chronic Stress, Cortisol, Social Context, Animal Brain, Safety And Danger, Body Image, Self-Love, Mindfulness, Breath Work, Emotional Regulation, Healthy Eating, Food As Coping, Diet Culture, Intuitive Eating, Self-Care, Nutritional Balance, Mental Health, Physical Health, Spiritual Being, Energy System, Emotional Awareness, Social Media Influence, Doom Scrolling, Self-Talk, Trauma-Informed Approach, Adverse Childhood Experiences Study