How To Build a Healthy Relationship with Food with Amy Bondar on The Healers Café with Manon Bolliger

being 25 years.

 

Manon Bolliger 02:19

Wow.

 

Aeryon Ashlie 02:20

In my later teens, or my early 20s, I started doing fitness competitions. And I competed for 13 years. And that became a glorified eating disorder for me. I was praised for looking as shredded as possible. And everybody was, you know, amazement. However, the day the show would end I’d fall back into that bulimic tendency. And that continued on for 13 years. And the only time I didn’t struggle with it when was when I was competing. So, I would compete four to five times a year. So, I was constantly always in this prep mode, right and always battling my body and always really struggling with food. In that time as well, I was on hormonal birth control. So, all of this kind of sums up to my health crisis that happened about 10 years ago. And so about 10-12, 10-11 years ago now, I still was kind of in the throes of it trying to really work through it. And I kind of had another episode I went upstairs and the difference this time was my three-year-old knocked at the door. And I kind of as I rose up and looked at my reflection, I was like if I don’t get a hold of this, she’ll follow the same footsteps, she’ll have issues with food, she’ll have issues with her body and exercise. And so, at that point, I really made a commitment to start working on what true Holistic Health meant to me. And it no longer became the size of my pants and how much I was working out or how much macros I was having every day. It really started to look at…I started to look at more closely into cognitive behavioral therapy. I started working with counselors, I started really looking at the thoughts that were really inhabiting my brain every day that surrounded food and my body and who I wanted to be in the world. And so, it took me a couple years and I worked through all that and then at the same time I had been working in the vitamin industry for almost 13 years I had and award-winning career as a vitamin salesperson. And every day I sold vitamins that were, you know, created by men and in the male dominated retail space and packaged up and marketed to women. And less than 5% of supplement companies are owned by women. And I was packaged out by this company, and I had all of these other pillars. So, I’ll talk about the pillars, but all the pillars that I had come to, with my holistic journey of healing, and then the one thing that was kind of missing was the supplement into things, having supplements are really designed for women by women. And it when I got packaged out, I rolled the dice and took the money that I was given for my package. And I opened my brand, Aeryon Wellness. So, I started my own supplement company, and we’re a female focus supplement company, we are the only female focused…female 100% female owned company in Canada, there is nobody else but us, which is for me, which is really neat. And we continue to look at ways in which we can support women creating innovative new products, but also to support them with the five pillars that I have used for my own healing journey. Because it’s not just supplements, right? It really is. Yeah, the five pillars of the brand, I’ll kind of tell you them quickly, but the five pillars are the thoughts you think…

 

relationship with food, body and self.

 

Manon Bolliger 02:57

And so, like, how long have you been doing this now?

 

Amy Bondar 03:02

This year marks 20 years Manon.

 

Manon Bolliger 03:04

Wow.

 

Amy Bondar 03:05

Yeah, yes, yes.

 

Manon Bolliger 03:08

And if you look at that, like the 20 years, what have you seen to be, or maybe there’s not one thing, right, but what, what could you say is the main kind of misunderstanding that people have about food or about diet or about their body? Like what’s the main obstacle to getting to what people really want?

 

Amy Bondar 03:35

Oh, great question as a deep dive in. Yeah, I think the main obstacle that people have is that for so many years, we’ve approached nutrition for weight loss. And we really just thought about using food as a way to use lose weight. And I believe that food is so much more than that, right? It’s about wellness, vitality, longevity. And it could do so much for the body. But I think because of there’s such a pursuit for weight, and such a pursuit to look a certain way, women especially have conflicted their relationship with food, you know, have looked at food from fad diets or counting calories or restriction, and really just looked at food on a very surface level in that way. And so, I think that that’s where the block is. And along that journey, what I’ve seen over and over again, is that what we don’t do is focus on the emotional reasons for why we struggle with food. For why we might have, you know, unwanted weight or unwanted eating behaviors, like binge eating or cravings or, you know, emotional eating in general. And so, I think that’s the missing piece. You know, there’s always going to be a fad out there. There’s always going to be the latest and greatest thing to follow them latest and greatest nutritional information that’s out there. But really what we’re missing what we’re missing is exploring our relationship with food.

 

Manon Bolliger 05:11

And how would you say that most people’s relationship to food is like, what’s the crux of it? If you were to say what the problem with today is…

 

Amy Bondar 05:23

I think it’s twofold. I think it’s conflicted. Number one, because we have so much conflicting information and over abundance, we have just overconsumption and overabundance of information now around food. You know, anybody under the sun can call themselves a nutritionist, right? We’re seeing so much information all over social media. Every book on the shelf has a different approach to eating. So, there’s so much confliction that we’ve forgotten really, the wisdom of eating. And again, I think the second piece on that is, is that we, when we do go off our nutritional path, what we do is we quickly go into shame and guilt, right, we have good intentions, we know what we should be eating, quote, unquote. But then something happens that makes us want to eat poorly, or choose a food to comfort us, or whatever reason we’re using our food for. And what we’re missing is that exploration, we go into shaming, guilt about eating it, and veering off our nutritional path, but we’re not doing the work. We’re not doing the work to resolve the stresses and conflicts so that we’re not constantly repeating that pattern of going back to food.

 

Manon Bolliger 06:36

So, it’s sort of like the way I’m hearing it, and obviously, how I see it is that the guilt and shame is sort of the victim approach to dealing with it. Because it’s like, if you can feel guilt and shame, it sounds like you’re dealing with it because you feel bad, right? Because you’re doing something wrong. And then it’s like you’re still a child who can do it all over again, right?

 

Amy Bondar 07:06

Yes, yeah, I mean, that’s such a beautiful way to put it. And what I try to teach women is how to, and men to is how to empower their relationship with food. So instead of going into that victim of guilt, and shame and blame and beating ourselves up for eating something that we shouldn’t have, it’s more about using it as an opportunity, using the eating moment, the unwanted eating behavior as an opportunity for growth as an opportunity to look at the deeper dimensions in your life that aren’t feeling right. That aren’t, you know, where you’re maybe not living on path, maybe where you’re not living in authenticity, because every unwanted eating moment has a lesson in there for us. And that’s the part we’re missing out on. But if we actually get in relationship with our food, and ourselves around that, then we can use it to empower ourselves and to grow and to transform.

 

Manon Bolliger 08:03

So are you in your…how you work with people, would you be telling them like, Okay, here’s that moment, you know, you’re in this moment, where you could make the choice of guilt and blah, blah, blah. And you choose not to. So, then what’s the process of sitting with oneself? Like, what is it…are you able to simplify? I mean, I’m making all therapy seem like it’s super simple, but on some level, I believe all healing is simple when you get to really understanding fundamentally what’s at stake. So, what is that process?

 

Amy Bondar 08:44

What’s the process? Well, the first thing is, is the consciousness, right? It’s the awareness, we have to have the awareness that we’re actually going into an unwanted eating moment. But sometimes when we’re in the stress response. And we’re really emotional about something and triggered by something, we often aren’t even connected we’re disembodied, right. And so that’s when we typically stand in front of the pantry and binge eat or, you know, just take the pint of ice cream and just eat bad or whatever the food of choice is, and we’re not even home, so to speak, we’re not connected with ourselves. So, the process that I teach my clients and the key is to remember it’s practice, we’re not always going to get it sometimes we are going to go into the unwanted eating moment. I do that sometimes for sure. But if we can catch ourselves, then the process is what I called ritualizing the binge. It’s not a binge for everybody, but it’s ritualizing that eating experience. And so how we do that is to acknowledge that okay, I am going to go and eat the bag of chips, for example. So, it’s about bringing yourself to the chips so if they are in the pantry, it’s about opening up that bag and putting it into a nice bowl pouring in as much as you think that you’re going to want to eat but actually physically putting it in the bowl instead of just standing there eating out of the bag, and then it’s sitting. And it’s actually taking some breaths, and then sitting and eating that food consciously with the awareness. Now why that’s so important is because when we do all of that practice, we’re slowing our body down, we’re slowing the stress response down, and we’re getting present. And so, we end up not overeating to the degree that we would if we were still in that triggered stress response. And then if you happen to eat those chips, then you want to taste them, you want to experience them, and then sitting with the self, after you’re eating them, and even taking the piece of paper out and exploring what was the trigger here? What was the thing that irritated me, frustrated me, maddened me, saddened me to go and eat this food. And write that down, just get super clear on what the charge was. Because often we’ll eat something and we’re not even clear on what the charge is. Right? Again, we go right into the shame and guilt, but we haven’t actually sat down to reflect and what was the charge? And then here’s the significant part of the process. This is where you transform it is where you say, Okay, well, how is this challenge benefiting me? What is it here to teach me? How is it helping me to grow? If you can ask some simple quality questions like that, that is the game changer. That’s where the work is.

 

Manon Bolliger 11:29

Hmm. So, turning it in, how is it…I mean, it’s, it’s really brilliant, because you’re not at all fighting it. You’re saying, Okay, this is in my path. Therefore, I’m going to sit with my path. And I’m going to ask the key question. So, what were the three key questions again?

 

Amy Bondar 11:51

Some of them maybe, what is this …what are the benefits of this challenge?

 

Manon Bolliger 11:56

Benefits of it? Okay. Yes. So, you would say like, why? How is this benefiting me that I’m sitting here eating…

 

Amy Bondar 12:05

Not benefiting you eating the food. What is the challenge that triggered you to eat the food? So, let’s say my husband really irritated me today, you know, he didn’t acknowledge or appreciate what I was doing. And so, what are the benefits in that? What is that helping you to…how is that helping you to learn? How is it helping you to grow? Because it’s very easy for us to go to the negative? Well, he’s this, he’s that it’s never like this, I wish I had something different. And that perpetuates further eating, poor eating. Right? But we’re trying to resolve by balancing your mind around the situation. So yes, there’s negatives to whatever triggered you. But how did it serve you? How is it helping you to grow? What are you meant to learn?

 

Manon Bolliger 12:50

Right, right. So, in other words, it’s like, you know, like, a lot of cigarette smokers. They, they, they feel like they’re finally taking a deep breath. Right? You know, and they can do that without, without, you know, doing anything negative to their lungs, right? But it’s like, by becoming conscious of the eating of your chips, you’re going, I had a need to breathe, or I had…so I’m not able to deal with confrontation, or, you know, I have issues with that I need to hide, or I need time for myself. So, you get to the truth of what it is you actually need.

 

Amy Bondar 13:34

That’s true, too, right? Are you it’s more again to within the learning of like, oh, well, perhaps this is teaching me to communicate more effectively. Perhaps this challenge is teaching me that I’m doing something that I don’t really want to be doing. And I need to really go back to doing what I love. Or perhaps the challenge, you know, so it’s about what is this…what is the real trigger? And what is it trying to teach you? Because the truth is, most unwanted eating moments usually have to do with not doing what you love to do. Right? So, you’re doing everything for everybody else, like a lot of women do. Putting yourself last. But it’s also about not living on path, not living with purpose, not feeling fulfilled in your day. So, we get resentful, we get angry, we get fatigued, and those emotions often trigger the desire for the food. So that the gift in in the eating moment is to learn from it, to evaluate it, to explore it to be in relationship with it because it’s here to teach you versus I’m going to beat myself up. I’m going to punish myself at the gym tomorrow. I got to restrict calories, and all the negative mean things you’re going to say to yourself, Where do you want to play in the game of life? Do you want to grow, or do you want to in your word, do you want to be victim? Right? It’s like no, let’s grow and transform. Let’s be masters of our lives by asking those quality questions.

 

Manon Bolliger 15:00

And so, and then in your experience, so you begin by sitting and asking the questions, like slowing down time so that you’re actually embodied in your experience, mentioning how often it’s like, you’re not even there.

 

Amy Bondar 15:16

Well, yes.

 

Manon Bolliger 15:21

So, how has it played out with you know, no names. No client names, obviously. But can you give examples of, you know, like, how many times it took to sit? What was the type of transformation? Like, just, you know, so to make it very real for people.

 

Amy Bondar 15:39

Yes. I mean, every, every client is different, and everyone has a different journey. What I have found in the success of this is, is that when we work to resolve the trigger, then the unwanted eating behaviors become fewer and farther between. So, for example, I’ve had women that see me that have binged probably…I had one younger girl, actually, who was binging six times a day when she first started to see me. Six times a day, and probably three or four times a week. And now I mean, I barely see her she barely binges anymore, because we resolved the issue.

 

Commercial Break 16:16

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Amy Bondar 16:59

It took her time to get into the practice of sitting with self and do it. And so probably about six sessions of working together. She went a whole month without binging within that time. Right. So that’s just one example. Yeah, so it’s really the key is resolving the trigger. It’s resolving the charge, so that you don’t continuously turn to food.

 

Manon Bolliger 17:24

Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.

 

Amy Bondar 17:28

And I think the thing to remember in our relationship with food, because we have to be with it, you know, forever, it’s our longest lasting relationship, right? So, to think that you’ll never have a craving, that you’ll never have an emotional eating moment, that you’ll never eat out of stress, that you’ll never eat out of, you know, sadness, or whatever it might be. I think that’s the part we have to release. And I think when we do that, it lets go of the perfection that we have around food. Just remember that there will be moments when there’s the unconscious unwanted eating behaviors. But again, if we can catch ourselves and do the work, they’ll become fewer and farther between. And that’s the goal. But it may not be that you’ll ever be without them. Right? In your entirety of life.

 

Manon Bolliger 18:14

Right. And have you found that people can…because it’s one of the strategies out there. But have you found it effective to once you become conscious to switch the thing that you’re craving, as in to replace you know, they say, with coffee, use tea, or, you know, that type of thing? Have you found that effective or not in your experience?

 

Amy Bondar 18:42

Well, let me answer it this way. Because it’s really interesting. There’s a purpose for every food we crave. This is really interesting. So, on a physical level, when we crave specific foods, it’s because that food releases specific neurotransmitters in the brain. They release the feel-good hormones in the brain, and so will crave for example, carbee foods like breads and pastas and pastries because they release serotonin. So, if somebody is depressed or sad, they’ll often crave those foods. Whereas when we’re craving more salty, crunchy foods, that’s going to release more dopamine to help us handle stress because we crave more salt under stress. So, it’s not so much that maybe you’ll replace the food to a healthier food choice. It’s again about understanding why you’re craving those specific foods. So if I have a client, for example, who has significant emotional eating challenges, I’m also because I do nutrition, I’m also looking at the nutritional biochemistry, so I might use supplementation to help boost serotonin or I might use specific strategies within the diet very naturally to help boost tryptophan which makes serotonin, like increasing protein, for example, and making sure we’re using amino acid supports and really high quality protein powder, just as an example. So, when we do that, then again, the craving becomes less, the desire for that food comes less. Do we necessarily say, oh, instead of the bag of chips, I’m gonna eat an apple. Sometimes that works. But again, it’s more so about getting to the root of why it’s that food in particular.

 

Manon Bolliger 20:30

Yeah, it makes sense. Makes a lot more sense, you know. And then replacing within the food group might make sense.

 

Amy Bondar 20:39

Yeah. So, if you know that chips is going to be your thing, right? It’s like, well, how do we increase the quality of those chips? How do we make sure we’re purchasing them with avocado oil? Or how do we buy maybe veggie chips like a beet chip or sweet potato chips? We can shift the quality of it we can up level it so to speak. Yes, exactly. Right. And again…

 

Manon Bolliger 20:59

And olives. Yeah.

 

Amy Bondar 21:02

Well, and you just said it. Because sometimes when we crave the salty, crunchy food, it’s because our adrenal glands there are sodium dependent gland. Our adrenals, they we need sodium. And when we’re dealing with a lot of stress in our day, we’ll often crave those crunchy salty foods. So, it’s like how do we support the adrenals? Right at the get go of the day. How do we put in adaptogens, like things like Tulsi tea and medicinal mushrooms and ashwagandha, for example, just examples, right? For how to support the adrenals. So that by three, four o’clock, we’re not going into binge fest with chips. Right. So again, it’s exploring the emotional triggers, but it’s also looking at our nutrition and our biochemistry to see well, what’s out of balance that’s making me want these foods. uncontrollably sometimes, right?

 

Manon Bolliger 21:50

Yeah, so I mean that very interesting what you’re saying. So, we were talking about salt. Can you kind of go through, you know, there’s people who crave salt, that’s for sure. There’s obviously the people who crave sugar. Right? So, can you give it a little bit the biochemistry of the craving?

 

Amy Bondar 22:13

Yeah, sure. Well, let’s start with chocolate especially because we got women listening. Chocolate is a food group on its own. So, we crave chocolate physically, because often our magnesium may be low. But also, when we eat chocolate, it releases the same neurotransmitters as when we feel love in a relationship, or we get physical connection. And so, if that’s lacking in your life, right, or if you’re disappointed with your relationship, or stress within your relationship, you may crave chocolate. So that’s an example. Interestingly, coffee is another one people often crave. We often crave coffee when we’re needing a boost, because we’re doing mundane tasks. Right? We’re unfulfilled by the job that we’re doing. So, we need external sources like sugar or coffee, specifically, to give us the boost that we need to get our work done. That’s another very common one that I see.

 

Manon Bolliger 23:14

But that’s more a psychological connection. But does it have a biochemical connection?

 

Amy Bondar 23:21

It does…well what when we’re doing what we love, it releases our catalogs and our cytokines in the brain in the body. And so, when we have that kind of activation in the brain and body then we’re satiated, right? We’re satiated by a work but if that’s missing, then it’s like, okay, where’s the pot? Where’s the coffee? Right? So that’s a very interesting one. Wine is a very common one to wine similar to the carbohydrate-based foods is a serotonin uplifter so a lot of people who are really lacking in their serotonin and feeling more sadness, seeing life with the glass, you know, half empty sort of approach will typically crave serotonin for that boosts or crave the wine for that boost.

 

Manon Bolliger 24:09

Yeah, so I guess there’s white and red.

 

Amy Bondar 24:14

Same, same, same. Serotonin going up. Rosae doesn’t matter.

 

Manon Bolliger 24:18

Cheese.

 

Amy Bondar 24:21

Yes. Interesting. You said cheese, sorry to interrupt you, but cheese releases his tyrosine and tyrosine is a very important amino acid that helps to make oh my gosh, dopamine, I believe as well. So sometimes when our dopamine is quite low, then it’s the tyrosine that will crave from the cheese. Yes.

 

Manon Bolliger 24:45

And then people who crave meat, that also could be like there’s people who really have to have their like everyone needs protein, but there’s people who need…who seemed to need more what about that or fat?

 

Amy Bondar 25:00

Yeah, soy protein in particular, I find people who crave protein, especially animal-based protein, it’s either because they just fast metabolizers. So that protein really helps to Earth and ground them. Often when we are feeling kind of scattered and just, yeah, ungrounded is the word, animal protein energetically Earth’s us. So that’s maybe why we crave that. And of course, just basic nutrients like iron and B, 12. And zinc, right? That may be low. And fat, well, I think especially for women, we are we are a fat deficient nation, right? Especially women who grew up with the low-fat diet craze for decades, right. So, we often will crave fat because we’re actually deficient in fat, good fats, and our fats produce our hormones. So, if we’re not eating fat, we’re going to crave sugar and sugars going to keep boosting our insulin and our cortisol and it’s going to impact our estrogen. So, by eating more good fat, like our olive oil and nuts and seeds, and avocado and supersedes, like hemp, and ground flaxseed, just as examples, butter, grass fed butter, all of that will be really helpful to increase during the day, so that we’re not craving the bad fats, you know?

 

Manon Bolliger 26:21

Exactly. I think it’s very interesting to have both angles, right? Because like, you know, this part comes from an expertise. But the other…the other part is really the participation of the client, who does also an internal journey of taking charge and control of their life, you know, so by kind of merging the two, it’s easy to see results, right?

 

Amy Bondar 26:46

Absolutely, yeah, I think we’re often on autopilot with food. I think that, you know, we’re not we’re not putting our seatbelt on and going for the ride, we’re not getting in relationship with it right. And, and there’s just so many messages that our body is just so wise, whether it be through symptoms, or whether it be through unwanted eating behaviors, our body is always giving us feedback to let us know what’s not balanced, to let us know maybe that one last meal we ate wasn’t quite balanced enough or satiating enough, or again, more emotionally, maybe that physical or unwanted eating behavior, the physical symptom or unwanted eating behavior was because something’s not feeling right in our life. So, there’s always these teachings that are just available to us. But we just keep going on in our day. And we don’t think about it. And again, the next day, we’ll like, Oh, I’ll start again on Monday, or I’ll eat better tomorrow. And it’s like, you missed the opportunity to learn what you were meant to learn yesterday. So, it’ll keep coming back. The challenges with the food will continue to come back.

 

Manon Bolliger 27:53

That is really the, you know, previous generation, right, the, you know, the expectation of woman to be a certain way, and that Monday is the start of the diet day.

 

Amy Bondar 28:04

So true. Yeah.

 

Manon Bolliger 28:06

think I was brought up with that kind of parent as well. Yes, it’s interesting, and we’re…

 

Amy Bondar 28:12

And that whole all or nothing mentality with food, right? That it has to be all perfect. And if it’s not perfect, if you slip up once in the day, well, then you’ve messed it all up. But it’s like, No, we got to stop that thinking. And think about it in a different way that that one mess up was your opportunity for growth, it was your opportunity to teach you something, it was an opportunity to like reflect and come home to yourself and really listen to what needs to be taken care of in your life. Right?

 

Manon Bolliger 28:40

Absolutely. Yeah. And like you said, the body, the body gives messages. And eventually, when it’s in balance, it actually starts to crave the foods it really needs. Oh, yes, you might want half an avocado rather than a bag of chips. Right?

 

Amy Bondar 29:00

Exactly, and I believe that’s where the intuition comes from. Right? Like, because when we’re finally like, really nourishing well and nourishing with a greater purpose and intention than our body intuitively guides us to what it really needs and desires. And the key for us is that we have to just listen to that message too.

 

Manon Bolliger 29:19

Right, right. Okay, well, our time is like, almost up.

 

Amy Bondar 29:25

It’s a hot topic. I know. We can talk for hours on.

 

Manon Bolliger 29:30

Yeah, well, I was gonna say last things, but I feel like this, this last part has sort of summarized you know, I mean, maybe do you have one more thing to really tell people about?

 

Amy Bondar 29:43

I just think food is meant to be enjoyed. And it’s really here to give us the energy and vitality to do what we love every single day of our lives. And when we can get to the place where we’re nourishing from there, then will forever change our relationship with food. You know, and that that’s to me is the goal. And that’s what I personally try to support and guide my clients to get to with their relationship with food. But along the way, there’s going to be those moments. And again, we just got to take them and use them for opportunity for growth versus self-sabotage, right. And if you can start making that shift right there, you’re gonna start to see a difference in how you relate with food.

 

Manon Bolliger 30:27

Well, thank you very much me for sharing your wisdom and experience and a lot of insights for people to really, you know, follow what you’re saying. And then when this is published, there’ll be a website where people can reach you, if they have any further questions, and I’m sure you still take people or guide them.

 

Amy Bondar 30:49

Yes, absolutely. It’s what I love to do.

 

Manon Bolliger 30:51

Well thank you very much.

 

Amy Bondar 30:54

Well, thank you so much for the opportunity. I’m truly grateful.

 

ENDING: 41:33

Thank you for joining us at the Healers Café with Manon Bolliger. Continue your healing journey by visiting TheHealersCafe.com and her website and discover how to listen to your body and reboot optimal health or DrManonBolliger.com/tips.