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

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[00:00:23] Pulses going through your brain. The synapse is firing in your brain. That's electricity. So no matter how we get there from a really scientific or a really spiritual perspective, you are a system of energy.

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[00:00:42] We're here to clear up the myths, misinformation, bad science and marketing to teach you how to eat and how to cheat. Are you ready? I'm having salad with a side of fries. Hey, friend. Welcome back to Salad with a side of Fries. I'm Jenn Trepeck, your host and health coach here with you every week for wellness [00:01:00] without the weirdness.

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[00:01:40] This week's guest though, recommends that we also explore what's happening between our ears, our thoughts, the conversations we have with ourselves. Is really what we're gonna focus on and talk about today. And more than that, how that translates into what we're experiencing in our body [00:02:00] physically. Let me introduce you to our guest she's 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.

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[00:02:39] 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 to cope is valid. A valid method of managing stress, and it is possible to heal from the inside out.

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[00:03:18] Go blue. Go blue. And I'm thrilled you're here. This is not our first conversation. Yeah. We also had an awesome conversation for out of the cave. Yes. So whenever you're done listening here, go to Out of the Cave podcast. Listen there too. You'll see these, we're gonna release very close to each other, so it'll be there when you go to listen.

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[00:06:20] Mm-hmm. Now you help other people kind of figure all this out. So will you help us for the moment, understand the connection that you learned between the body and mind? Mm-hmm. And then obviously we'll dig deeper.

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[00:06:41] So I was really overweight as a child and when I went to Michigan, it was my sophomore year. I decided to finally take things into my own hands and do the weight loss thing. So I started with Jenny Craig and the long story short is that I lost [00:07:00] 150 pounds when I was in college, and then when I found myself after my weight loss, it was a very bittersweet and very confusing time because I had lost all this weight, which was great.

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[00:07:38] I just felt like my body wasn't working and I didn't know why, because everyone always told me, including, and especially all of my doctors, that I just had to eat less and exercise more. And so I thought at this time, well, that's what I did. I did exactly what everyone told me to do. Why do I feel so bad?

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[00:08:25] And so when I started doing that, then I noticed that I was like completely out of control. I was completely outta control emotionally. I was crying all the time. What I experienced was very similar to what a lot of recovering addicts experience when they check themselves into rehab. Like food was my drug of choice growing up, and then I had to kind of thaw out, and that's what was happening without.

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[00:09:16] And it just felt like everything was uncontrollable and completely unmanageable. And I was so confused because I remember thinking I did everything right. I did everything everyone told me to do. How did I end up here?

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[00:09:39] Yeah.

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[00:10:06] Like there were a lot of really beautiful things that came from not being over 300 pounds at 18 years old. Like that felt really good and it also felt really bad. And it was really tricky to figure out what was going on there. And so. Through that experience of starting to eat a little bit more and exercise a little bit less.

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[00:10:45] And I dove really deep into ultimately research and I started watching all these documentaries and I started looking up everything I could about weight and weight loss. That is where I found the ACE study. So when I [00:11:00] stumbled upon the ACE study, which is the Adverse Childhood Experience Study, this was probably like 12 or 13 years ago, and the ACE study for anyone who's unfamiliar with it.

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[00:11:33] And what they found across the board is that adverse childhood experiences. Are connected to nine out of the 10 leading causes of death, and ultimately what this showed us was that a lot of the things that we consider as physical issues, everything from heart attacks to stroke, to cancer, to addiction and suicidality.

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[00:12:19] Why can't you just stop drinking alcohol? Why can't you just stop smoking cigarettes? Why can't you just. The question really is what happened to you? What happened to you that this became your way of coping? What happened to you? That this is how you find a source of safety and comfort. And it led me to discovering that all of this started with food and eating and weight and obesity.

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[00:13:09] It started with all of that. And so then I started kind of applying everything that I was learning in my own research about how diets don't work and you can't just restrict food and think that that's gonna be a sustainable way of living. And I started focusing on my health holistically instead of just my weight.

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[00:13:52] Jenn Trepeck - Host: Yeah. Yeah. And so, and because of that experience in all of your research, right? Like you, I'll just repeat for everybody, [00:14:00] like you became a social worker, a personal trainer, you know, really digging into a lot of this. From a lot of different angles. Right. So what I'm hearing from you, right, and as we talk about the MINDBODY connection and its relationship to food, is that, well, maybe we start with the MINDBODY connection, right?

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[00:14:45] Maybe they've never even connected these dots or experienced it for themselves. Yeah,

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[00:15:10] How do you feel emotionally when you gain 10 pounds? And these are some prompts that can support people in seeing, oh, how do I feel emotionally when I gain 10 pounds? Well, I feel this, this, this, this, and this. These are all emotions. Well,

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[00:15:30] Because I do think we've talked about this before, right? And there's a book I recommend to everybody permission to feel that gives us a lexicon. Mm-hmm. For emotions. Yeah. But I think we're so trained to function out of logic versus emotion. Yeah. That I don't know. You know, I've had it with people they say, I don't know how I feel.

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[00:15:56] Lisa Schlosberg: Right? Right. Like a failure is not an emotion. So I [00:16:00] always, my number one tool for people in this area is the feelings wheel. So if you are struggling with this and you wanna expand your emotional vocabulary, which will really support you in this kind of work, feelings wheel.com and you can check it out.

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[00:16:34] It could be all sorts of things. But that's why I love using the feelings wheel with people because it's like you tell me what resonates. And on top of that, especially if language or vocabulary can feel kind of inaccessible, I do like to get a sense of like if someone said to me, I feel like a failure.

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[00:17:12] Or sometimes people, like, I'm a very visual person, especially when it comes to emotions or how I experience things. So sometimes, you know, people will be like, ah, I just, I feel so like crushed. And it's like, okay, we have a, a sense of the energy of how you're experiencing that. And that also is a really good start.

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[00:17:57] Like, what does that even mean? The point is when I [00:18:00] ask you these questions, most people, if you're writing it down, you'll see that you are on like a rollercoaster of emotions. All related to things that go on in your body, but most of us, we like get on the scale. We do the scale thing or we eat and we just, we're not connected to how many emotions are actually coming up around it.

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[00:18:46] So there's dopamine, there's serotonin, there's oxytocin, and there's endorphins, and all four of them have a little bit of a different job and they feel a little bit different, but they all make you feel some sort of good. The important [00:19:00] thing about this is that two of the four of the Happiness cocktail chemicals is what they would be referred to, are released in your brain every single time you eat food.

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[00:19:34] Now we're talking about we have the substance, which is food, and we also have the behavior, which is eating. So some addictions are just the substance, right, which is more like drugs and alcohol. There are some addictions that are more behavioral, like gambling and sex, but we're talking about our relationship with food that is both the substance and the behavior.

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[00:20:18] But the point is, every single time you eat food. Two of the four happy chemicals are released in your brain. And what that means is it can either bring your stress down or bring your mood up, or both. And this is how other addictions work. So we have to know because there's been the cultural message that if you're an emotional eater or you eat food to cope with your emotions, that something's wrong with you or you are bad, or you're broken, or you need more willpower.

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[00:21:10] So we are emotional eaters like, congratulations, you're human. You find yourself an emotional eater. And I think that's particularly relevant to a conversation about food

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[00:21:30] And you've even started to go into the physiology piece of it, which I'm, we geek out on the science, so I love that you went there. Yeah. I'd love to have you also explain, or, you know, walk us through the brain science of it too, in terms of animal brain, social context, fuel.

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[00:21:51] Jenn Trepeck - Host: Because. That leads us into this whole concept of the conversations we have with ourselves and what that's doing.

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[00:21:59] Lisa Schlosberg: So I [00:22:00] love that because, so, okay, something that I say all the time, which you know this, this is why you're asking me this question, is you're a spiritual being, having a physical experience with an animal brain. In a social context, surviving on food. Say that one more time for everybody. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

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[00:22:37] Whether you are a really intuitive spiritual person and you are all the way on the side of like all the woo woo, you're a spiritual being, or you can just understand that the way your nervous system works is there are, right? The reason that your brain can conceptualize the words that I'm saying right now is because there are electromagnetic.

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[00:23:19] There are parts of you that are not visible to us or tangible, so we need to just take that into the conversation. You are in physical form. So you are a spiritual being, having a physical experience. You are in physical form. That's how you are here in your meat suit, in this form, you know, on earth that's what you are as a human being.

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[00:23:58] It doesn't know if you're happy. It doesn't know if [00:24:00] you're healthy. It doesn't know if you're wealthy and successful. It doesn't know or care about those things. The only thing that it cares about is are you safe or are you in danger? And the reason that this matters is because everything that you do is filtered through this system.

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[00:24:39] You're not challenging them, you're not questioning them, nor should you. You're five years old. You need to be taught how the world works. But part of that is that we also get taught how to be. How am I supposed to look? Who am I supposed to be? How am I supposed to sound? What am I supposed to say? What am I supposed to wear?

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[00:25:22] You might be thinking that all the way on the surface. But what it filters into ultimately is feeling like if I'm thin, I am safe, and if I'm fat, I'm in danger. And that's why for a lot of people, body image can feel like life or death. It doesn't just feel like a minor inconvenience. It feels like it can take over your entire life, and that's why.

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[00:26:08] You know what comes of that? Does that make sense

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[00:26:29] Mm-hmm. There is also an experience of big T trauma. Mm-hmm. Where then thin becomes unsafe. Mm-hmm. A bigger body is safe. Mm-hmm. So just adding layers of complexity to it all. Yeah. We're gonna let that sink in while we pause to highlight our partner for this episode. Big thanks to Layer Jewelry for supporting salad with a side of fries.

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[00:28:49] Mm-hmm. Many people would say, I feel like crap. I don't like what I see. Mm-hmm. Maybe they start to say things to themselves. Right. I'm curious, [00:29:00] what do you hear people say to themselves and how do we wanna shift that?

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[00:29:14] Brain, whether you're conscious of it or not, when you start to feel uncomfortable, when you start to feel uncomfortable, either physically or emotionally, we wanna remember that your brain wired for survival is also designed to keep you away from discomfort. And so when you start feeling uncomfortable, and it could be the trigger of looking in the mirror that makes you uncomfortable, your brain is automatically going to start reacting as though you are unsafe.

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[00:30:00] I'm gonna notice some of the physiological reaction to that because my brain now perceives that as a threat, perceives that as a danger signal. I'm gonna start noticing that like there's a shortness of breath. The energy in my body is speeding up. Maybe I'm jumping into my mind and I'm having a lot of thoughts.

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[00:30:36] Right? So what you can do is, like I said, just start by noticing. You can start by noticing like. Whoa. I am having a really big reaction to my experience and my reflection right now. It doesn't make me bad. It doesn't make me wrong. You definitely do not wanna make it worse by shaming and blaming and judging yourself.

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[00:31:19] It's actually taking you out of the present moment. So what we need to really do fundamentally on the root level to address it, is to shift you out of the energy of fear and danger and back into the embodiment of safety and presence. And so that's what we wanna do, and we can do that in a few ways, which is one.

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[00:31:57] I hold my breath. I just stop breathing, right? And so [00:32:00] then if you also are able to notice that and catch that in real time and start breathing regularly and slow your breath down, what you are doing by doing that is communicating to your brain that you are safe. You cannot be exhaling out your nose for eight seconds while you're simultaneously running from a tiger.

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[00:32:43] That's one way to very directly shift your. Embodied experience of what that's like for you. And you might notice in doing so that you start feeling really emotional. And that's really normal because instead of kind of [00:33:00] fueling the fire with more fear and panic and stress and tension, you're actually slowing down to feel what you're feeling, which is.

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[00:33:43] I'm not unsafe. It's my reflection in the mirror. It's not a saber teeth tiger. If I can just slow down and be here. It's not going to immediately make you emotionally comfortable, but it is going to change the nervous [00:34:00] system reaction that you're having so that you can actually be present in your body.

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[00:34:22] I do this sometimes with people. Just notice what's in the room around you. What colors do you see? What textures do you notice? Can you just be in the room where you are right now? And that will also again. Support you in feeling safe. Not always comfortable, but safe is the goal. So from the mind body perspective, that's kind of the root of what we want to address.

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[00:34:50] Jenn Trepeck - Host: Yes. And it's also making me think of, I can't remember the details of this study, but there the things we [00:35:00] say to ourselves about the food we're eating. Yes. Like when we say, oh, this is going right to my hips. It made me think of, and I can't remember the details of the study, but there was a study where people ate the same things.

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[00:35:33] Yes. You know which one I'm talking about? Yeah.

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[00:35:54] And that again, like this is the power of. The mind and the mind body [00:36:00] connection is if you are eating a food, and this is what I think is really interesting when I work with people who struggle with food emotionally, is that then when we start to pay attention to what we're eating, a lot of people will think like, if I'm eating a salad, let's use that as an example.

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[00:36:38] Energy with which you're doing it. And similarly, it's not about what you're eating, it's about the energy with which you're eating it. And so if you're showing up to a bowl of vegetables and you're eating it because you hate yourself and you feel like you're bad if you don't, or you have to, or you should, or someone's gonna, you know, judge you for not eating it.

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[00:37:19] This is the only way that you're gonna get these micronutrients in today that you wanna hit, you know, the servings of fruits and vegetables that you need to eat just for the purpose of nourishing your body. And this is really a form of self-love and self-care. The bowl of vegetables has not changed.

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[00:37:56] And that has, again, borne so much of from [00:38:00] my own experience. Because at a certain point I had to just really focus on, not what am I eating, but what am I telling myself about what I'm eating? And tremendous transformation comes from doing that kind of inner work. Yeah.

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[00:38:22] Lisa Schlosberg: Hmm.

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[00:38:42] The doom scroll. Mm-hmm. The scrolling that's sort of passive and yet not passive at all. Yeah. That is happening all throughout our day at different times when we need a break, when we're looking to de-stress and when we're looking for distraction. All [00:39:00] those things. So talk to us a little bit about that moment, or those moments I should say.

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[00:39:52] Like you might just see someone in their own natural body. And they're not shaming you, but if your perception [00:40:00] of that is, I don't look as good as this person and therefore I am not as lovable and worthy and valuable. And that's what the mind is always doing. We're making meaning of stuff, whether we know it or not, or whether we mean to or not.

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[00:40:36] Stress is not bad. We are designed to be stressed out. We're hunter-gatherers by nature. We would go out and we would get stressed. It's fine. We are designed for that. The problem is not stressed. The problem is chronic stress, and that's what things like this create for a lot of us, is we're not living through acute stressors anymore.

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[00:41:13] It's a chronic stress. It's like an all day everyday stress. And that is really harmful because A, now we have a toxic level of cortisol, which we're not designed for, but B, because then we need to cope with it somehow. And this is where for a lot of people, emotional eating or stress eating comes in and a lot of people are like, I don't even know what I'm so stressed about.

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[00:42:01] We've gotta cope with it somehow. And for some people that's food. For some people it's alcohol. For some people it's drugs and sex and cigarettes and whatever else. We've all got our thing and that's kind of how it shows up and what we wanna pay attention to. I love it. I think everybody has a bit of

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[00:42:22] Just starting to observe where we are and what we're noticing and paying more attention. Yep. Final thought to wrap this up before we do our rapid fire off topic questions.

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[00:42:48] It's a lot, and we don't give ourselves enough credit for how much we are juggling and navigating mentally, emotionally, spiritually, socially, environmentally, physically, physiologically, every moment of [00:43:00] every day. And so I like to just share it with people. If you feel sometimes like being a human is really a lot and really hard and overwhelming, and also you notice that it affects the way that you show up around food.

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[00:43:40] It is not your fault a

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[00:43:59] Lisa Schlosberg: [00:44:00] Yeah. Oh, I love that. Okay, so yesterday I was so excited to get up and go to the gym for the first time in a couple days. And I was all prepared. I made my cup of coffee and then I checked in with my body and I was like, oh my God, I am so tired. And I abandoned my whole plan to go back to the gym and I crawled right back into bed.

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[00:44:38] Jenn Trepeck - Host: I mean, we're living life. If you weren't the founder of Out of the Cave, what would you do?

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[00:44:54] Lisa Schlosberg: I have to say Harry Potter, probably like forever Through and through a Harry Potter girl. Okay. [00:45:00]

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[00:45:05] That was a fast answer.

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[00:45:08] Jenn Trepeck - Host: If you were a superhero, what would be your superpower?

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[00:45:22] Thank you. Yeah. What's your biggest pet peeve? When people are walking down the street with an open umbrella, even though it already stopped raining. That's such a New York answer. I was just gonna say like it is a, I live in New York and it's like the city streets are not big enough for all of us to have open umbrellas when it's not even raining.

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[00:45:48] Jenn Trepeck - Host: Alright, last one. In your opinion, what's the next frontier in wellness?

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[00:45:56] Um, I really think that mind body approach [00:46:00] is, is it? But I'm biased,

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[00:46:10] Lisa Schlosberg: So the best place to find me is probably Instagram. Lisa, do Schlossberg. You can visit my website out of the cave Health.

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[00:46:41] Jenn Trepeck - Host: Awesome. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Appreciate your time and expertise and the way you explain things to make it approachable for everybody. So thank you. Thank you, thank you. Thank you. Absolutely. Alright, friends. On Friday in this week's nutrition nugget bite-sized bonus episode we're talking about Jeff, [00:47:00] have you seen this on the internet?

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[00:47:02] Jenn Trepeck - Host: Okay. I'll give you a hint. It's related to exercise and activity. You've potentially been done this before without realizing it. So what is it? Is it recommended for all of us? We'll discuss it on Friday and this week's bite-size bonus episode. Be sure wherever you're listening, click the plus sign or the follow button, and then your app will alert you when it goes live on Friday.

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[00:47:40] It's also the easiest way to learn more about working with me as your health coach, Lisa Schlossberg. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you so much for having me. What a blast. Absolutely. And friends, if you are not already join the Happy Healthy Hub, you'll go to a salad with the side of fries.com/membership.

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[00:48:17] Full than the traffic that made you late or your endless to-do list might be the conversation you're having with yourself. Well, friends, that's it for today's episode of Salad with a Side of Fries. Congratulations for making yourself and your health a priority. Thanks so much for joining us. Be sure to click subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast platform.

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