A Man Embraces His Power

• Augustine, 49, shares his journey about health goals and life aspirations with Marc David. As the owner of a CrossFit gym, he is eager to learn the strategies and approaches to increasing his longevity. 
• A key concept in the longevity universe is that of our “health span,” which is the length of our lives spent in good health and free from chronic disease. While it’s good to focus on longevity, it’s equally important to consider how we can maintain our health as long into the future as possible.
• As this episode explores, physical fitness is not the only type of fitness that is important. Mental and emotional health, relationships, and spirituality are also vital aspects of one’s wellbeing, and necessary for a long and healthy life.
• When it comes to longevity, it’s easy to stray into perfectionism, which ultimately can hamper our progress with health and well-being. 
• Ironically, the more we learn about longevity (often referred to as “bio-hacking” or “DIY biology”), the easier it is to become hyperfocused on all the strategies we can use to increase it. Getting clear on what your personal goals are, learning how to weed out what’s not useful to your unique longevity quest, and staying out of overwhelm is key.

What Illness is Asking of Us When It Comes to Self-Care

• Being diagnosed with a condition such as diabetes inevitably brings up new and unexpected realities. Among them is the need to prioritize oneself and engage in regular self-care like never before.
• A new health diagnosis represents a certain crossroads. We’re no longer who we were, but we’re not exactly sure yet what our new life will look and feel like. Being mindful of how you talk to yourself about your condition is vital. 
• Diabetes is a condition that is greatly influenced by good nutrition. In some cases, Type II diabetes can be reversed through early diagnosis and key lifestyle changes. 
• When managing diabetes, look for all the help you can get. Find apps to help you organize your day-to-day food plans, get support from family members to help you plan your food shopping, or consider joining a support group.
• For all of us, whether or not we’re dealing with a health condition: let go of the lifetime of conditioning you’ve received that self-care is bad or shameful. Just as you want your loved ones to feel good and enjoy life, learn to embrace your worthiness around self-care. You not only deserve it, you need it … truly.

Allowing Discomfort: A Key to Transforming Emotional Eating

• There’s a massive stigma against emotional eating. We believe it’s bad and that we’re bad for engaging it. But humans are emotional creatures. Eating, by its very nature, is an emotional act. We’re biologically wired to love food, it’s built into our DNA. Part of the solution to emotional eating is to stop believing that loving food is wrong. 
• Another key reframe is emotional eating vs. being an emotional eater. The former is simply a behavior, it doesn’t define who we are as a person. Identifying as an emotional eater puts us into a box, and once we’re in that box, we have a big problem that needs solving. 
• What’s true about emotional eating is that it’s a symptom of a deeper issue, typically unrelated to issues with food. When we find ourselves reaching for food to distract or self-soothe, it’s a good time to stop and ask, “What am I feeling right now? Am I really hungry? Is there something else that I’m needing?”
• Staying present and self-connected is vital. Find positive ways to do this such as walking the dog, talking to your partner, calling a friend, or listening to music. What’s key is finding something that helps you stay connected with yourself.
• Learning to savor and truly relish the food we eat is important. Often when we have eating challenges, we’ll rush and miss the pleasure that makes the experience of eating so wonderful.

A 25-Year Old Releases the Need to Control Food … and Life

• Food and body challenges are deeply intertwined with every area of life, including our spirituality. When one area of our life is challenged, food is an easy substitute to find comfort and balance our nervous system.
• When we perceive ourselves as having lost our spiritual connection, we can feel unmoored and look for things to control so we feel safe. Food is one of the easiest things to control.
• When it comes to healing eating challenges, trusting oneself is a key ingredient. Learning to trust yourself is also multi-layered. It might mean trusting your body’s cravings, for example. At a higher level, it means knowing that no matter what you do, what foods you eat or don’t eat, and how you feel afterward, you know you’ll stand by you and not punish yourself.
• For sensitive souls like Lilja, eating challenges can be a reflection of not knowing how to deal with life’s hardships. For those of you who identify with Lilja’s story, pay particular attention to the part of Marc’s coaching session where he talks about agreeing to be here on planet Earth and learning to allow pain and difficulty.
• Always, always: Self-love and self-forgiveness are essential keys to establishing a healthy relationship with food. Instead of thinking you have to force your body into a certain weight or state, Marc offers us an important reminder that our most important work with our bodies is to simply love them.

A 39-Year Old’s Journey with Food, Loneliness, and Self-Soothing

• Like other unwanted eating challenges, binge eating often develops in childhood as we try to cope with circumstances outside our control.
• Emotionally sensitive children can have a challenging time figuring out how to navigate family challenges - which can sometimes be perceived as a threat to our safety. Some children, like Linda, will try to be the peacemaker in the family. When this doesn’t work, the child can go to despair and hopelessness.
• As adults, we may not see the connection between our childhood experiences and what we’re struggling with currently. Difficulty establishing intimate relationships or caring friendships, a lack of motivation in one’s career, and other similar life challenges are often reflections of unmetabolized childhood feelings.
• Therefore, part of the deeper work in healing our eating challenges is recognizing that these challenges are often a coping mechanism for unresolved feelings that we simply don’t know how to deal with. 
• Progress with our eating challenges accelerates as we stop focusing so much on stopping the unwanted behavior, and begin to instead harness the courage to feel our feelings — including and especially the ones that have been with us a long time.