The Psychology of Eating Podcast Episode #49: Overcoming The Fear of Fat

Micaire is wanting to have a baby, but she’s afraid that she will forever lose the fit, toned, and well exercised body she’s worked so hard to achieve. Micaire is a Chiropractor, has lots of nutrition knowledge, and she knows how to take care of herself, yet her concerns around gaining weight and having stretch marks on her body are getting in the way of starting a family.

She wants to figure out this conundrum but simply doesn’t know how. Tune in to this intriguing and challenging podcast episode as Marc David, Founder of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating provides some direct, potent, and memorable insights and suggestions to help Micaire move forward and embrace a bigger destiny.

Below is a transcript of this podcast episode:

Marc: So welcome everybody! Here we are in the Psychology of Eating podcast. And I’m here today with Micaire. Welcome!

Micaire: Hi!

Marc: Hi!

Micaire: I should say aloha.

Marc: You should say aloha because you’re in Hawaii. And what a great place to be. I was saying I lived there for a number of years and in Colorado now. But, wow, do I miss the ocean and just having amazing weather every day. So you’ve been there how long?

Micaire: I’ve been here eleven years.

Marc: And you have an interesting profession.

Micaire: I do. I’m a chiropractor. So I’ve been practicing since I’ve been in Hawaii.

Marc: Wow! Good for you. My dad was a chiropractor. He graduated chiropractic school back in 1952. And talk about the old days, right. Yeah, he was at the beginning of the wave when it first hit. So, yeah, I’ve been getting adjusted since I was a little kid.

Micaire: Birth.

Marc: Pretty much. So here’s what we’re going to do. We are going to have a session today. And the idea of this session is to take six months to a year’s worth of what would be coaching and condense it into a short amount of time so we can turbocharge the situation and help you get where you want to go really quick.

Micaire: Okay.

Marc: So I’m going to take a whole different approach that I normally would with a typical client session because I’m going to just, at some point, I’m going to ask you questions and then after about twenty or thirty minutes, I’m going to start to give you ideas and feedback and suggestions for how to move forward and really get where you want to go. So it’s like pushing the fast forward button on transformation.

Micaire: Awesome!

Marc: Yeah, sounds good? Great!

Micaire: Yeah, yep.

Marc: So, Micaire, tell me what’s the main concern or challenge that you would like to work with?

Micaire: Let’s see. On my application, I was talking about a variety of different things. I’ve never been overweight. I’ve never weighed more than 134 pounds. But some of the things that have come up through being a chiropractor was my incessant need to test out any nutrition programs before I would recommend them to my patients.

And, therefore, I’ve done HCG. I’ve done the Master Cleanse. I’ve done UltraClear. I’ve done three medical-grade cleanses over the last, let’s say decade and just finding out my why, why that so important to me. People need to cleanse more than…Let’s say overweight people need to cleanse, perhaps, more than somebody who has six pounds to lose, you know.

So it’s translated to some body image issues for me. So I’m thirty-seven right now and contemplating having a family. It’s almost embarrassing to say. But we’re speaking candidly. So I’m concerned about the changes that my body is going to go through through pregnancy. Will I ever be content with how it looks afterwards? Like consciously having a family is important to me. However, superficially, I’m a little bit intimidated almost about, “Can I ever achieve contentment with my body after that major change?”

Marc: So the fear is you would gain weight or the fear is you would have stretch marks or age or what would the fear be?

Micaire: Yes!

Marc: All of it!

Micaire: All of the above.

Marc: Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s the challenge. How long has this been circulating in your mind?

Micaire: I would say all of my childbearing years.

Marc: Wow! So…

Micaire: Yeah, this is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time.

Marc: Mmm hmm. Are you married?

Micaire: No. But I’m in a serious relationship.

Marc: And does he want to have kids?

Micaire: Mmm hmm.

Marc: Mmm hmm. And have you discussed this with him at all? Like what your concerns are?

Micaire: I have.

Marc: And how does he respond? I’m interested.

Micaire: He’s very supportive. He says, “I love your body no matter how it is,” and essentially like it will be worth it to step into the unknown so that we can create the family that we want.

Marc: So how does that land for you when he says that?

Micaire: It feels great. I just don’t know that I believe it full heartedly.

Marc: Mmm hmm. How many kids do you want to have?

Micaire: I just, chronologically, probably only have time for one.

Marc: Ideally?

Micaire: Two.

Marc: And how about your mom, was she ever concerned about her body or her weight, her body image that you’re aware of?

Micaire: For sure, I remember her never being satisfied with her weight. One time, specifically, I remember her…We were out somewhere. And maybe I was eleven or twelve. And there was a group of overweight women walking by. And she asked, “Am I as big as they are?” And I knew what the right answer was to please my mom. But I said, “Yes.” And she got so mad at me. But I definitely think I’ve inherited some of this concern from my mother, for sure.

Marc: Yeah. Is she still alive?

Micaire: She’s not. She actually passed away from colon cancer when she was fifty-five. So I was twenty-one at that time.

Marc: Wow. And in your recollection, before she died was there ever a point where she had made more peace with her body, her body image, her weight?

Micaire: I can only assume, yes. But, I mean, when she was going through her treatments, she probably dropped forty pounds. So that was the smallest she had ever been.

Marc: But I mean before the cancer.

Micaire: I don’t think so.

Marc: And to your mind, when you think about your mom and you think back to those times…I’m just really interested in the mother-daughter relationship. Do you think to yourself, “Wow, my mom really messed me up when it comes to my body or whatever,” or, “Eh, whatever. Who cares?” What’s your thought about that?

Micaire: My thought is acknowledgement of where the source may have come from, but not blame, and acceptance of the suggestions that were put in front of me at an impressionable age. But like I said, not in a blamey fashion.

Marc: Sure. Good for you. So let me ask you this question. If you could go back in time and have the maturity that you have now and speak to your mother as if you were her advisor—so you weren’t her daughter, you were just her advisor—and tell her some tips for dealing with her daughter when it comes to raising a daughter with just a healthy relationship with her body, what would you have said to her?

Micaire: What I really want to impart onto my daughter or young girls now is to be happy with the body that you’re given. All your parts work. You’re beautiful. Let your beauty come from the inside out. So not such a superficial, topical beauty, but the beauty from your heart.

Marc: And here you are as a practitioner. Do you see a certain kind of patient population?

Micaire: I see a lot of Cross Fitters and a lot of pregnant moms.

Marc: Wow! Fascinating! Almost like two sides of your brain in a weird way.

Micaire: Exactly! Yeah. Exactly!

Marc: And have you noticed the pregnant moms that you see…What have you noticed in terms of their relationships with their bodies, any themes or anything that leaves you with any kind of impression?

Micaire: I’d say for first time moms, I’m more concerned about, “Oh I feel fat. And my clothes don’t fit anymore.” And when people are having their second or third baby, they’re more at peace or they know what to expect more. They just seem like, “Ah, I got this. It’s not a big deal that my skinny jeans don’t fit anymore.” They’re happier, I think.

Marc: So the ones who are the second timers, they sound like they’ve been around the corner. And they’re more relaxed. And they’re more chilled.

Micaire: Yeah.

Marc: Yeah. Interesting. Now, how about the Cross Fitters? Are they mostly men, women, both?

Micaire: Both.

Marc: Would you say for the women, what percentage of your women Cross Fitter patients have children or a child?

Micaire: Probably like eighty percent. Most of them.

Marc: Wow! Yeah. And what do you imagine or do you notice anything about the Cross Fitters? Their relationships with their bodies, especially for the women?

Micaire: Not so at peace.

Marc: Really?!

Micaire: Yeah. So I feel like in their Cross Fit community, you get accolades for still lifting heavy when you’re in your last trimester or still being able to do pull-ups when you have a full-term baby. And to me, it doesn’t make sense. I want to support people where they’re at. But knowing that I’m so ingrained in that population because I do Cross Fit myself, when I’m pregnant I don’t want to be a gym rat. I want to be more zen and at peace and be okay, like “All right” with twenty-thirty extra pounds or whatever comes. That it’s no longer my desire to be able to workout at that level.

Marc: Have you decided…And by the way, just, Micaire, for you to know and people listening, part of my style is I like to jump around. So there’s actually a method to the madness here, even though the questions may seem unrelated. Do you have brothers or sisters?

Micaire: I have two brothers.

Marc: Two brothers and are they older, younger?

Micaire: One each.

Marc: One each. How are they with their relationship with their bodies?

Micaire: My older brother is not content with his body at all. He’s gained a lot of weight. In his mind, he’s still the soccer playing high schooler with a six pack. But in reality, he looks more like our dad. My younger brother is in the Army. So he’s more toned. And he’s eight years younger than my older brother.

Marc: I’m going to bounce back to kids and pregnancy for a second. Have you decided already that you’re going to have a kid?

Micaire: I’m at like ninety percent.

Marc: Ninety percent. What would put you to a hundred?

Micaire: Oh, I guess more…Because I own my own business, knowing that I had the financial support. I’m in Hawaii so my family is not on this island. So, I guess, making sure my tribe of women friends is prepared for stepping in where family members couldn’t.

Marc: So ninety percent there. And to what percentage does the piece about, “Oh, my goodness. I get pregnant. I give birth. I might not lose all the weight. My body might not be super fit or toned anymore,” what percentage does that kind of interfere with, “Okay, I’m ready to have a baby.”

Micaire: Mmm, I’d say probably a third. I said ninety percent. So sixty percent financial and thirty percent body stuff.

Marc: Got it. Got it. Got it. Okay. So it definitely impacts you. And by the way, I really appreciate you being so honest and open about this because, to me, this is a personal issue that you’re talking about. But the truth is I’ve heard this so many times.

And you are speaking the voice of so many women. You’re giving voice to a lot of women who might not say this. But it eats away at them. And to me, you are very wisely looking in the mirror and saying, “Wow! This is impacting me. And I know there’s a better way. But I haven’t kicked its butt yet. It’s still affecting me.”

Micaire: Exactly!

Marc: So I just want to say that that is so honorable. And it’s so important because, to me, that’s how we transform. That’s how we grow. We’re willing to look at the places where you want to scratch your head and go, “Gosh! This doesn’t seem like the right way to think. But, wow.”

Micaire: Yeah.

Marc: “Why am I thinking this way?”

Micaire: Like almost like I’m too smart for this. But I don’t know how to move past it.

Marc: Yeah, Micaire, I love that you said that. “I’m too smart for this. But I don’t know how to move past it” because I really think that’s accurate. I really mean that. And I say that also because I meet so many women and men when it comes to body image and their relationship with food where they are smart. And there’s especially certain places in their life, they’re professional. They’re accomplished. They’re educated. Or they know about life. And yet there’s this little piece that circulates in the mind that stops us.

So I’m pointing that out because one of the reasons why you’re smarter than this and it still has you is because it’s sort of bigger than you and it’s bigger than us. This whole thing about, “My body has to be perfect!” is a big free-floating…It’s like a parasite that circulates in the environment. And we catch it. And you probably caught it very young.

And, in fact, you said it. You said at some point, “Wow! Certainly in my child-bearing years, here I am having this fear.” I’ve traveled around the world going to a place like Africa. Most African women, this concept that you’re talking about, it would never come into their mind. They wouldn’t even dream about it. But you and I, we’re the products of a very different culture.

And so what I’m saying is that in a strange way what you’re battling right now isn’t your fault. It’s not like you, Micaire, have this deficiency or you have this weakness. Young girls have this viral belief, “My body has to be perfect.” Young boys are getting that same viral belief, “My body has to be perfect.” And once you catch that virus, it is hard to get rid of.

And that’s why we’re having this conversation where we’re exploring. That’s why I do the work that I do, really looking at how do we get to the heart of the matter and adjust this? You’re a chiropractor. You look at the body and you go, “Okay, what do I need to adjust here so that the system finds its natural place?” So we’re looking at what needs to be adjusted here so the system finds its natural place.

So what I want to say is you have this virus that’s landed in your system called, “I have to have this perfect body. And oh, my God, if I get pregnant, that’s going to interfere with it somehow, potentially, which then means I’m screwed, which then means I’m unlovable. I’m going to be miserable. And essentially, life is going to suck!”

Micaire: People won’t like me anymore. [Laughs]

Marc: Absolutely! “We used to like you when you had six-pack abs. But now that you don’t, eh. I’m going to go to a different chiropractor. I want a chiropractor who has less body fat.” Right? That’s the kind of nonsense that can grip the mind.

So I want to say a couple of things. I was asking you about your mother’s relationship with her body because, in part—and it’s never about blaming our parents, never ever about blaming your parents. I’m glad you don’t—but we inherit what we inherit from our parents. You have half of your mother’s and half of your father’s DNA. So we inherit from them. So that’s just the way it is.

We inherit a lot of their patterns. We inherit a lot of their beliefs. There are certain beliefs and patterns that your parents had that you didn’t inherit—you rejected. And you evolved in a different direction. So I think part of what we are here to do is be better than the generation before us. Not because there’s something wrong with them, but because life has us getting better. Life has us evolving. Life is calling us to improve. And that’s what you’re doing.

So I asked you if you could go back in time and talk to your mother as a consultant with the wisdom you have now, what would you tell her about raising a healthy child or a healthy daughter. And you said—and I’m going to paraphrase—you would tell her, “Hey, just love your body. And it’s okay as it is. And it doesn’t have to be perfect.” And you want to impart that to your child.

And if you don’t tackle this and handle this for yourself, somebody’s going to be interviewing your daughter on a podcast thirty years from now. And she’s going to be having the same body image issues. And somebody’s going to ask her, “What would you have liked to tell your mom?” meaning you.

Micaire: Right.

Marc: So this is all about you upping your game so you’re not raising a kid with a handicap that you weren’t able to kick its butt with. So this is you doing something for your future children. And you’re doing it for you, for sure, so you can be liberated. But you’re also doing it for your kids—boy or girl or boys or girls—so they can have the advantage of growing up with a healthy relationship with their body so that they could be more free.

So, essentially, one of the pieces, to me, that you’re being asked to do is to take your own wise advice because you gave some very wise advice when I asked what would you tell your mother if you could go back in time. And there it is right there. So it becomes a practice.

If you had a patient that came in and they weren’t taking care of themselves, they weren’t taking care of themselves with exercise, they were eating a lousy diet, and if they said to you, “Ah, you know, I just can’t seem to exercise. And I just can’t seem to follow the right food.” You’d probably say, “Hey, come on, you got to do this.”

Micaire: For sure!

Marc: You’d give them a little pep talk because there’s this weird zone between what we need to do and doing it. Right now, you’re at that cliff’s edge of what you know you need to do—jumping over that cliff onto the other side—and doing it. So that’s where you’re poised right now.

And what I want to say is one way to kind of fast forward this process is for you to simply choose, “I’m going to have a baby a hundred percent.” And have that conversation with your partner. “Let’s have a baby.”

There’s a book. And I’m embarrassed to say I never read it. But it’s been one of the most influential books in my life. And I’ve never read it because the title is so good. And the title of the book is called Feel the Fear—

Micaire: and Do It Anyway.

Marc: and Do It Anyway, right?

Micaire: I’ve heard of that.

Marc: Have you ever read the book?

Micaire: No.

Marc: See. [Both laughing] I hope the person who wrote that book is a millionaire. I apologize to that author because I never read it. But it’s a brilliant title. And it’s a brilliant concept. And that’s what I think you need to do is to feel the fear and do it anyway.

That’s what you’re doing a lot of times when you’re exercising and you’re going beyond your limits. “I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t know if I have the endurance or the strength or the ability to do this workout.” You feel the fear. You acknowledge the fear. And you do it anyway.

So you are afraid of what’s going to happen to your body. And legitimately, because there’s a darned good chance that after you give birth, your body’s going to change. Some part of your brain has looked around the environment and sees that we change. And, in fact, it is predictable that between this moment right now and the time you die, your body’s going to change, whether you have zero babies or fifteen babies, your body’s going to change. It’s going to get old. It’s going to get wrinkly. And it’s going to die at some point. As far as I can tell that’s what seems to happen to everyone.

So there’s a place where for you and for all of us who are facing this kind of thing—for people listening in here, whether it’s a woman contemplating having a child and having the same concerns or just anybody worried about, “Oh, my God, what’s going to happen when I get older?”—don’t worry about what’s going to happen when you get older because you know what’s going to happen. We actually know. We’re going to get a little slower. We’re going to get a little more wrinkly. And at some point, we’re going to just keel over. And we’ll be done with it.

So there’s a place where life is asking us to mature. So you’re being asked to grow up from being a girl to a woman. And there’s a part of you that is wanting to make that shift from girl consciousness in this department. So there’s places in your life I’m going to bet where you’re very much in woman consciousness, meaning adult consciousness as a woman. There’s certain places where you handle life really well. And there’s certain places where you’re going to be more in girl consciousness. This is one of them.

And it’s not personal because so many women…I meet women in their fifties and sixties and seventies. I meet women in their seventies. I work with them who still want to lose five pounds and ten pounds—for what?!—what is the point? Are you going to go to the grave and your last dying thought is that you want to lose five pounds. There’s something more to life than that. And part of it is getting with the program.

So one of your homework assignments is to begin to take your own advice. And this is almost like I’m asking you to take on a project. It’s like an exercise. It’s like a workout. And the workout is called stepping into my womanhood. And even though there’s going to be the fear, even though you have the legitimate fear, choose to have a child. You’re ninety percent there, anyway. Make the choice. Feel the fear. And do it anyway.

Micaire: Okay.

Marc: What do you think would happen if you just made that choice today? Theoretically, if you made the choice today, “I am going to do this, even though I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen with my body, even though, I’m still afraid.” What would happen if you told your partner that, “I’m making this choice? I’m a hundred percent.”

Micaire: I think a certain amount of peace because I have been back and forth for…I don’t know. Even with—I’m divorced—but even with my ex-husband, even in my three years of being single, I would still…When I was single, I was trying to, I guess, convince myself that if I don’t have a family and kids, I’ll be fine. I’m independent enough. I’ve got my career going. I have tons of friends and love doing…I don’t know. I have a lot of hobbies.

But when I found the right partner, I wanted to more fully accept that “Hey, this is really what I want.” And now that I have it, it’s like, “Why would I hold myself back from getting what I’ve always wanted?”

Marc: Mmm hmm. So well put. So this is what you want. The only thing stopping you is, in part, this little nagging fear. And make the choice, feel the fear, do it anyway. When you moved to Hawaii, was there any fear there about what’s going to happen? Is this going to work? Did you have any concern?

Micaire: Well, I actually didn’t. When I first came, I didn’t really have any intentions of staying. So I was…

Marc: Yeah. How about when you…

Micaire: Go ahead. Go ahead.

Marc: How about when you started your practice, did you have any fear?

Micaire: Oh for sure. Yeah.

Marc: Okay. But you did it anyway?

Micaire: Mmm hmm.

Marc: Same thing. So now your practice is working for you. It’s supporting you. It sounds like you’re doing some good work and you’re helping people. You felt the fear and you did it anyway.

Micaire: Mmm hmm.

Marc: This is one of those moments. And I really want you to think in terms of, “This is me, Micaire, growing up and stepping into my womanhood.” Because there’s a place where when we’re in young woman or young girl consciousness, we want approval from the outside. “Oh, you look so beautiful!” “Oh, you look so pretty.” “Wow! Look at how fit you are. Wow!”

And when we’re young—for boys and girls—we seek approval. We want to know from the outside world, “Am I good enough? Am I loveable?” So a human being needs those messages. When you’re given those messages from youth, from the time you’re a child—“You’re loveable. You’re good enough.”—we grow up feeling loveable and good enough.

When we don’t get those messages, we’re in a lot turmoil. And there’s a lot of humans walking around in misery and suffering because they think they have to have a different body. And here you are. I’ll guarantee you that there’s a lot of people out there, there’s a lot of women out there that wish they had the body you do.

Micaire: I acknowledge that.

Marc: Yeah. And they’re probably thinking right now, “Wow! What’s she complaining about. I wish I had that body.” And the truth is it doesn’t matter what kind of body you have. Have you seen people with such a great “perfect body,” particularly women, and they’re still not confident?

Micaire: Yeah.

Marc: And they’re still not happy. And they’re still being like, “Oh, I’ve got to just change this.”

Micaire: For sure.

Marc: It’s crazy! It’s a form of insanity. Really, it’s a form of insanity that we accept as normal. To me, it’s a form of insanity that somebody is getting kudos because you’re in your ninth month of pregnancy and, yeah, you can still do pull-ups.

Micaire: Yeah.

Marc: Wait a second. Let’s relax a little bit. I don’t think nature wants us in that kind of stress response when we’re ready to have a baby.

Micaire: For sure. So this is some evolution I’ve done on my own. For my past seven birthdays, I’ve made a goal that I would have a six pack by…My birthday’s in the fall. So every year I’m hitting the gym, getting strict with my nutrition, and just this year—so I have a little bit of woman consciousness about this—I sat down with myself. And I tried to identify why is that so important to me?

And it came to me that, “Oh, no. The desire for a six pack is purely ego based.” And it no longer felt right to make that my goal. So I have abandoned the seven-year goal of having a six pack. Now the goal is to love whatever stomach I have, ripples or not.

Marc: What a beautiful thing!

Micaire: Yeah.

Marc: What a beautiful thing because the body is the body. And what happens when your baby pops out and your baby has this thing called baby fat? Are you going to look at your baby and say, “Ugh, you know, I’m sending this back. I want a baby with a six-pack abs and three percent body fat.”

Micaire: Some guns.

Marc: Right. You’re not going to do that. It would sound absurd. The body does what the body does. There’s a wisdom to life. There’s a wisdom to the universe. And I love how you said, “I realize that having a six-pack ab is about ego.” And, yeah, it’s fine to have that goal. There’s a lot of goals that we can have that re totally fine that’s very personal and that might be based on ego.

And then the question is we have to ask ourselves, at some point, “Does this goal truly serve me? Is it truly serving me?” Because sometimes, yeah, there’s people out there who need to spend a lot of time exercising their brains out and sculpting their body the way they want to do. That’s okay.

And it’s useful to examine, “What the hell am I doing? What the hell am I thinking? Does this work for me? Does this work for those around me? And is it a good use of my life energy?” Because let me tell you, creating six-pack abs for a huge amount of people takes a lot of life force and a lot of life energy. And is that where you want to be spending it?

Micaire: No.

Marc: Yeah. So loving your body…And most people don’t realize this because they haven’t had the experience. But when you make the shift from conditional love of your body…Conditional love of the body means, “I will only love my body when it looks like this, this, this, this and it weighs that. And my hip shrink and my butt this and my legs that.” When we go from conditional love of the body to unconditional love, magic happens.

Your partner…And I actually believe him. By the way, here’s my bias. Women don’t understand men fully. Men don’t understand women fully. We tend to think really different. It’s mostly the women of the world who are going, “Oh, my God, I’ve got to lose two pounds or three pounds or five pounds.” The men of the world—when your man tells you—“Honey, I love you just the way you are,” he’s telling you the truth! He’s not spending five hours a day or ten hours a day obsessing about your belly like you are.

He’s not wasting his time. He just wants to get in bed with you and play. And he wants to have fun. And he wants you to love your body because he knows that if you love your body, it’s going to be fun to be with you. It’s going to be fun to be with you in a physical, intimate, sexual way because you’re loving your body.

And if you’re with a man who is going like, “Honey, I don’t want to be with you unless you have six-pack abs,” if you’re with that guy, I highly suggest you consider getting rid of him.

Micaire: [Laughs]. I’m definitely not!

Marc: And I’ve met a few of those guys. And honestly I wouldn’t have my best woman friend date them. There’s no way. You’ll be living in misery. And the reason you’re with a guy like that is you’re here to learn from that.

So in a lot of ways, here’s another homework assignment that you might want to consider. And I’m going to send this to you in an email. Another homework assignment to consider is to tell your partner, “Listen, I had this great session. And this weird guy Marc says that every night before we go to bed, you have to say some compliments to me about my looks and my body. And my job is to take a deep breath and relax and take it in and believe it and absorb it.”

Micaire: Mmm hmm. Well, I feel like he does that. He’s really good at compliments. And I never tell him he’s wrong. I’ll never say, “Oh, no. This is too this,” or whatever. I say thank you maybe because I think that’s the right thing to do.

Marc: Yeah. So what I’m saying is take the next step, which is don’t be polite about it. Really take it in. Think of the times…Can you remember times when you’ve sincerely complimented someone and you know they didn’t take it in? You know they deflected it. You know they didn’t really let it go into their system.

Micaire: Mmm hmm. I call people out on that, particularly, my patients.

Marc: How would you do that? What might you say to them?

Micaire: Mmm hmm. If I compliment them and they reject it, I’ll say something like, “Okay, now say something nice about yourself.”

Marc: Mmm hmm. So there you go. So this is a great case of you taking in your own medicine. And you can’t fake it. There’s no faking it. It’s kind of like a relaxation. It’s relaxing and letting go and absorbing the compliment, which is really relaxing and letting go and loving your own body. A lot of exercise like Cross Fit is a lot of doing. It’s doing. It’s doing. I’m doing stuff. I’m doing stuff! And that’s fine.

But we have to live in a world of polarities and opposite and balance. So we have wake and we have sleep. We have night and we have day. We have work and we have play. We have doing and we have being. So, okay, you’re doing stuff to make your body this, that, the other thing. Now you have to have time to be with your body and love it up no matter where it is and where it’s at. You are doing that for yourself. But you’re doing that for your child.

Because otherwise, if you don’t start to handle this head-on and tell yourself, “Okay, I’m now ready to graduate.” It’s not going to happen overnight. “But I’m choosing to graduate. I’m going to have a baby. And I’m going to get there. I’m going to get to the place where eighty, ninety, ninety-five percent of me loves my body.”

Are we going to ever be perfect? “Oh, I love my body a thousand percent every moment, every day.” Maybe. But I’m going to say we’re not shooting for perfection. We’re shooting for like eighty, ninety, ninety-five percent. And this is the legacy that you can pay forward to the world so that we’re creating a world where we have empowered people. And we’re not running around doing crazy nonsense to perfect the body. And we never get to perfection.

Wow! What’s that?

Micaire: Did you hear birds?

Marc: Yeah. Are they outside the house or inside?

Micaire: [Laughs]. They are right outside that window.

Marc: Okay. So that feels like the wisdom of nature confirming everything I just said. That’s how I’m taking that. It’s kind of like a sign from the universe that, “Yeah, we’ve got to do this.”

I’d also like you to do something else. I would really love for you to start to observe old women in a different way. I really want you to start to notice women of all ages, in particularly, fifty, sixty, seventies and really take them in and really start to see, “Am I going to be that old someday?” How old do you want to live till?

Micaire: Mmm, let’s say eighty-eight.

Marc: Nice. Okay. So you’re going to be eighty-eight. And an eighty-eight year old woman is probably going to have some gray hair. She’s probably going to be a little wrinkly and probably going to have a little less muscle tissue than one who’s thirty-four.

So wouldn’t it be interesting to start to notice the future you and say, “Yeah, that’s going to be me.” And just start to kind of bless the older women. It’s not easy being a human being alive on planet Earth. There’s a lot of difficulties whether you’re a woman, whether you’re a man. There’s parts of aging that sucks. It’s not fun.

And at the same time, there are parts to aging that are absolutely priceless and that are amazing because we can grow in wisdom. We can grow in spiritual wisdom. And we can grow as spiritual beings. We can be powerhouses of love. And we can be powerhouses of magic. And if we’re worried about our bodies and how they look and all that nonsense, we’ll never step into our true power.

So I just want you to start to love just inside your mind. Look at the old women. And see if you can look at them through the eyes of love and through the eyes of honor and respect because if you want to be eighty-eight, then that’s very similar to the journey you’re going to be on.

Micaire: Okay.

Marc: How does that land for you when I say that?

Micaire: My first thought was, “Wow, I really don’t spend a whole lot of time with that population.” And I don’t know if that’s by choice or just coincidently. But, yeah, that’s not my patient population at all. And when I do, let’s say, volunteer projects, I would be more drawn to working with kids than with seniors. So, hmm, there’s something there.

Marc: There is something there. It’s something to think about. And even if you’re not working with that population, at the very least, I want you to notice them at the supermarket. I want you to notice them on the street. I want you to notice them wherever you go as if they are part of your world and part of your community because they are.

And if you’re going to be eighty-eight, you’re going to be that person. And the more we embrace all the age groups, I think in a strange way, the more we set ourselves up to be seen and loved and considered when we’re that age because old people get invisible in our culture. We kind of want to push them to the side. We worship youth and we worship beauty. And that’s fine. It’s fine to do that. But can we worship the golden years, as well?

Micaire: Yeah.

Marc: Can we worship aging? And let’s worship all of it because it’s worthy of it. So that would be a very powerful way for you to start to evolve yourself out of these crazy little fears that don’t belong to you. They’ve infected your system. That we are now saying, “Okay, we’re going to mount an immune response against these thoughts that disempower us, that disempower me, that can disempower my kids, that disempower my patients, my loved ones. And we’re going to change the world and start to support each other as human beings who are doing something really different, meaning reaching our potential without this nonsense being in the way.”

Micaire: Yeah. When you asked if I could go back and talk to my mom, I’ve always wondered…At the time—that’s the reason I said I was twenty-one—and it didn’t really make sense to me how…I have zero history of colon cancer. And my mom was into organic and carob and soy milk before it was cool. So I think she ate better than the Standard American Diet.

And then the more I learned about psychosomatic causes of disease and chakras and energy healing and things like that, I always wished I could go back and talk to her about, “What were you unable to forgive in your own life that perhaps manifested in the disease that ended your life so early?”

So I think about that for myself. I try to feel into my root chakra stuff and what am I not acknowledging about my own forgiveness for? What’s that familial stuff and financial stuff that could, potentially, take me down that road that I don’t want to go? I saw some gnarly stuff that my mom went through her last few months. And like that feels unacceptable for my future.

Marc: Yeah. It behooves us to do our personal work. Personal growth and evolution and bettering ourselves, we can’t sweep it under the rug. It doesn’t work. Life has a way of course-correcting us, I think, one way or another. And it’s interesting when you said the word “forgiveness.” What do I need to forgive in myself?

You know, ultimately, maybe we’re not guilty of anything. And there’s nothing to forgive. But, oftentimes, we do feel guilty about things or we do feel angry about certain things. And there are certain people who have affronted us. And they have hurt us. Or certain situations have put us in the role of victim. Or sometimes we’ve been in the role of making somebody else a victim.

But I think one of the places to practice this thing called forgiveness is to forgive yourself for not being perfect and having the perfect body and having perfection. And it’s okay. It’s okay. Nobody’s holding you up to that standard, but you. And when you let it go and forgive yourself for not having that, you become free. And you can become powerful.

And even you mentioned having a child. One of the concerns is, “I just want to feel financial security.” In my belief system, everything in our life is connected in some way to everything else. And when you say the words financial security…And by the way, that makes total sense to me. And it’s completely practical and completely a real life concern.

And there’s also the hidden metaphysics, as well. And I think one of the things that helps financial security is being secure in other places in life because the more insecurity that’s in my system, the less security is in my system. And it’ll ooze into other places.

So what I want to say is the more secure you are in yourself, the more secure you are in your looks and your body…And security doesn’t mean, “Now I have the body I want so I can be secure.” Security means, “I feel safe and I feel trusting, no matter what body I have.”

Because the body’s going to shift and change. And our finances are going to have their own flow. And there’s times when you’re going to have a little more or a little less, a lot more or maybe a lot less. And security means there’s a deeper trust. And that deeper trust just comes from a different place other than the outer circumstances.

Micaire: I’ve definitely noticed that to be true. Just authentically speaking, when I was married, my ex played into that fear of—pardon my vulgarity but—“Your boobs are going to sag. And my things are going to be wrinkly. And your body’s not going to be the same.” That was definitely reinforced by him.

And I struggled for probably the first three years in my practice. And when we separated was the first time that I actually profited in my business. And every year, based on my own evolution, I’m making more now than I ever did. So it feels good to recognize, “Oh, wow! This is coming from me.” Because the procedures and practices that I do in the office haven’t really changed that much.

Obviously, I’m getting better in business. The longer you do it, you become more of an expert. But I really think it’s based on the growth that I’ve done towards—we’ll just say—towards womanhood. So it’s been very like, “Wow! This universal principle really does work!”

Marc: It really does work. And you know something? Even if it wasn’t connected, at the very least, you feel more secure. You’re making more money. And you’ve bettered yourself as a person. So you win either way. But I think you’ve discovered for yourself indeed that the universal principle really does work. That when we improve in one area of life, when we involve in one dimension, the other dimensions get boosted. They feel that.

And we all have a different journey. And it works maybe a little different for each one of us. But I’m clearly hearing that and seeing that for you. And I was tuning into it. It felt like that there’s a place where, as you get more powerful as a person—and powerful as a person means unconditional love for yourself—how could people not want to be around that?

If I go to a practitioner of any kind, I don’t want to go to a practitioner who I think is judging my body and judging me. And “Why are you sick? And why is your spine out of alignment? And how come you don’t have more muscle tone?” I don’t want that.

I want to go to a practitioner who’s going to give me unconditional positive regard. Yeah, they might ask me to improve. They might inspire me in certain directions. But there’s an undertone of unconditional acceptance with the added bonus of, “And here is where I’m going to help you.” So people sense that.

And I think this is relevant for any practitioners who are listening in right now. Micaire is, to me, living proof that, “Yes! I’ve done some work in my personal life. And it’s impacting my professional life.” Because it’s all one in the same. You can’t box those and separate them out just like you can’t separate out the cardiovascular system from the immune system. It’s all connected.

So great work, Micaire!

Micaire: Thanks!

Marc: Yeah. How you feeling right now?

Micaire: I feel good.

Marc: Is there one particular thing from this conversation that’s really landed for you that feels like you’re going to really take away?

Micaire: I think can most easily start doing the observing the older generation of women and embracing and perhaps befriending and having more compassion towards myself through the aging process by seeing some powerful women that are older than me. And, yeah, just to take action and not get in my own way from fear.

Marc: Yeah. And how about the piece around choosing to have a baby and feeling the fear and doing it anyway?

Micaire: That seems safer.

Marc: Uh-huh.

Micaire: I think it will physically and emotionally force me to step into womanhood because you don’t get to raise a girl and be a girl. I don’t want to. That might be the transformation that is the final key in reaching the next level of evolution for me.

Marc: Beautiful! Well put! This might be unfair for me to ask, but I’m going to ask it anyway. So when do you think you might go to your partner and say, “Okay, I’m in. We’re having a baby.”

Micaire: Oh, hmm, perhaps later today. [Both laugh].

Marc: I love it. I hope you do.

Micaire: Thank you.

Marc: And thank you so much. Thanks for being so real and so honest and sharing your inner world because as much as we are totally unique individuals and we’re all different, there are places where we are so all the same.

And to me, that’s why we’re in this conversation. We’re in it for our own personal benefit. But by each of us sharing what’s really going on for us, we can all grow from that. And I just feel like you’ve made a really big contribution to viewers and listeners. So thank you.

Micaire: Thanks, Marc!

Marc: Yeah. And thanks for tuning in, everybody. Lots more to come in the Psychology of Eating podcast. I appreciate your energy and your attention.