Delicious Vitality with Alex Jamieson

Welcome to Mama Goddess. I'm your host, Alexandra J. Johnson. This podcast is all about rocking your goddess life, creating vibrant health and celebrating motherhood and family life. It's about living an authentically awesome life. Let's have some fun.

And we have a delicious guest today, Alexandra Jamison. Alexandra is a health counselor and also a professional chef, and she is the author of the Great American Detox, the Vegan Cooking for Dummies, and also the Living Vegan for Dummies. Welcome, Alexandra.

My pleasure to be here.

Yeah. I so appreciate you. And I have to personally thank you because probably eight years ago when I watched Supersize Me, I saw you in it and I searched you and I found out that you went to Integrative. And I ended up going to Integrative because of your website. And I was like, what did she do? And so I went to Integrative because you were inspiring me to go to Integrative.

So cool. So cool. Yeah. The Institute for Integrative Nutrition. It's an amazing program, and I feel like some of the real thought leaders in the world of real 360 degree health have come through that program.

Definitely. Yeah. You went a long time ago, right? I mean, I did.

It was like 10 years ago.

That's so great. You're like a pioneer for Integrative. So I would love to hear that on just a little bit more about your personal story, just how you have come to nutrition and how pleasure and joy has impacted your nutrition and where you are right now with your relationship to food. So just kind of give us like your snapshot of your process.

Okay, cool. Well, I grew up on a small organic farm. My parents weren't farmers. My dad was a teacher. My mom's an artist. But my mom had an organic gardening radio show for about 10 years when I was a kid. So we spent a lot of time working outside, weeding and planting things and growing food. So I had this really natural life. I knew where my food came from. I knew all the work it took to produce it, and we had this really super healthy diet when I was a kid, but I had this insane sweet tooth. And, you know, we would rarely have any treats in the house, but, like, at Christmas, my grandparents would send this huge tin of cookies, and we were supposed to have one a day. But when I was about like 4, I got caught up on top of the refrigerator, like, sneaking, like, I climbed up on top of the fridge and I was sitting up there eating extra cookies. And I actually went to Sunday school every week because they. I Found out that they had cookies and Kool Aid. My parents didn't even go to church. I would walk down the street to go to Sunday school all by myself because they had treats. Wow. Yeah. So I really would do anything to get sugar. And as soon as I got my first job babysitting, started working at 14, all my money went to hanging out at the mall eating junk food with my friends. So by the time I got to the age of about 25, I moved to New York City. And within a few months of moving here, my health totally took a nosedive. I had some knee surgery. And I think the antibiotics paired with the stress, plus the 10 years of the terrible diet, destroyed what was left of my immune system. And I had full blown, full body yeast, candida overgrowth. And I put on about 25, 30 pounds very quickly. I was depressed. I had no energy. I had aches and pains. I had migraine headaches three or four days a week. I was just miserable. So within a few months, I decided I have to go to a doctor because I was taking handfuls of Advil every day. And the doctor within a few minutes said, well, here's a prescription for painkillers and you should go on Prozac. And I just thought, you know, that is not what I want. I don't. I'm 26, I don't want to be on prescription medication. This came out of nowhere. There's something else going on. So I went to another more holistic doctor who actually sat down with me and he asked me, so tell me about your diet. And I told him, and he said, oh, no wonder you're sick. So it was fast food, junk food, coffee, white, refined flour all day long. And he put me on a special diet, which was no processed foods, no sugar, no wheat. Let's take you off the caffeine. And I almost started crying when he told me this because it sounded awful. I was like, what are you talking about? That's everything I eat. What am I supposed to eat? So he gave me this huge list of things I could eat. And I said, you know what I'm saying? I feel terrible. I've hit bottom. I'll do whatever you tell me. I think this might work. And it was really hard for the first week because I didn't know what I was doing. There was no Whole Foods yet. I didn't know any vegans or vegetarians. I was just kind of winging it. And within about 12 days, I started to feel amazing. I had. The headaches were gone. I would Wake up in the morning and I felt good and awake and all the body aches, everything disappeared. The extra weight just fell off within a couple of months. And I wasn't trying to lose weight. I was just trying to stop the pain. So I started reading everything I could get my hands on about food and nutrition. And I didn't really know how to cook. So I found this culinary school here in the city that had special cooking classes just for people like me. And after I took one, I thought, this is what I want to do. And I went back to school to get certified as a chef at the Natural Gourmet Institute. And then within a couple of years, I realized I was cooking for a lot of people who were already sick. I was working as a private chef, people who had cancer and really hardcore issues. And I wanted to help people before they got sick. So that's when I found the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and went through their program and started health counseling. And right in the middle of all of this re education was when I met Morgan. And we came up with the idea for Super Size Me together on his mom's couch on Thanksgiving Day 2002. And the rest is history. We made the movie and it came out and it was the right timing for a movie like that. And it really took off and I think it was the beginning of a real food movement.

The food is so important, don't you think? Which is why I'm so thrilled to be talking with you. The food is so important to our pleasure and our joy. And that's. Usually people don't associate nutrition with pleasure, but like you said, you are feeling crappy. It's so hard to feel pleasure when we're feeling crappy, right?

Absolutely. And there's so many different pieces to this, but the gist is when you feel terrible all the time, when you have a low grade dis ease. And that's kind of a description of how I was for several years. You know, you're never really awake and alive in your body. You're always kind of tired and exhausted. You use food and alcohol regular basis to help you feel good or relax. You know, that's a sign that you're not really, you know, living in your pleasure on a daily basis. There's another aspect of this as well, which is that your gut health is so important to feeling good. I mean, not only do you just. Nothing in your life is going to feel good if you have a stomach ache or you're bloated. And so many people can relate to that, you know, they always have digestive issues, they're constipated, or they have diarrhea, they have stomach bloat, or they just have stomach pains. And that describes probably 60% of the people out there. And when that's going on on a regular basis, you just, you just don't ever really enjoy your life. But there's another aspect to that as well, a deeper level. When you're having, when you're digestive system is compromised, you're not absorbing nutrients from your food as well as you could. That's how we get nutrients out of our food is through the lining of our gut, through the intestines. So if something isn't going right, we're not nourished. Even if we're eating better than we were before, if we're not really getting nourished by our food, we're still going to be tired. And our gut is like our second brain. There's almost as many neurotransmitters in our gut. It's constantly giving us information. And if your stomach is always impaired and your digestion is always messed up, you're always going to feel cranky because your second gut, your second brain is telling you things are bad. And your gut also is in charge of producing a lot of those happy hormones that we love. So the gut is super important when it comes to really feeling good and enjoying yourself. And I think that's one of the reasons why the gluten free movement has been taking off like wildfire. Because people realize when they go off of gluten and they were gluten sensitive, like, oh my God, I like my life again. This is amazing. It changes everything. For some people, totally.

Yeah. For me there was the feeling of depression, like with the gut. And in college, like I just wasn't happy. It was totally nutrition gut related. I mean, it's like depressing.

It's really, it's really challenging. And I work with so many clients, one on one, and people in my detox programs who after a few weeks of getting off of the foods that are toxic to their bodies and giving themselves time to heal that it's like they didn't even realize they didn't feel good because they had been living with it for so long. Just kind of a low grade unhappiness. A low grade discomfort.

Yeah. So I'm curious on the pleasure because a lot of people will think of pleasure and they maybe not everyone, but I think a lot of people think about it as like the caffeine and the alcohol and the desserts and the cheese and the wine and the decadence. And then you tell them maybe go on a detox and they're like, that is not pleasurable. So how do we kind of reorient our minds around pleasure and healthy eating?

Oh, that's such a great question. I mean, my ultimate inquiry for people who are trying to feel good is what does feeling good mean to you? Is it a short blast, is it a short high? Or do you want long term general joy and ease? Usually people are going to choose the long term joy and ease. And to get to that point, you do need to be really healthy. You just need to be healthy. And it doesn't have to be hard. It doesn't have to be hard. It's not overwhelming. It's just a little bit of change. So when we talk about, you know, alcohol and caffeine and chocolate and all these things, that's a short hit of pleasure. It really doesn't last very long at all. It's finite. And there's almost always a flip side to that pleasure, which is the hangover. Whether it's a chocolate hangover or a glass of wine hangover, that's not setting you up for that long term, easy joy and ease in your body.

So then the short hits, what do we do about the short hits? What do we do about those cravings? And you're just like, I have to have wine or I have to have chocolate or ice cream or whatever it is for each person.

Well, there's nothing wrong with having a craving for chocolate or wine or cheese or whatever it is. There's nothing wrong with that. It's delicious, it tastes great. Or you love the smell or you love the atmosphere and the people that you're with when you enjoy it. There's nothing wrong with any of that. What you need to look at is how is this going to affect me now and in the next few hours and tomorrow if I have this now? How have I been eating all day? What's going on for me emotionally and physically? Like, you really gotta just check in with yourself and be a little aware. I was actually away for the last few days on a retreat with about 16 women and it was so totally fabulous. We were out in the desert, we were at this hot springs and I had chocolate and wine every day. And that's not normal for me. I don't usually have a glass of wine with dinner every single night, but for four nights I did and it was great. And now I'm done with that. I don't see myself, I wouldn't continue that every single night of the week. That's not how I normally operate. But being away with friends and enjoying an experience, it was absolutely appropriate. Now I'm home and I'm going back to more. More like 40% fruit and veg of my diet. I swing back and forth and we can all do that. It's really about learning to listen to your body and learning how you are going to react to your diet and set yourself up for success long term.

What's thoughts on practices to have more pleasure? Because I think a lot of times you had the wine and I think a lot of times if we're actually doing it, we're not actually enjoying it. We're thinking I shouldn't be drinking this wine. And then we feel guilty and we didn't actually enjoy it. So how do we settle into our food and enjoy it?

Well, I guess that really all comes down for me. It comes down to trusting myself. I trust myself to make good decisions about my body and how I have developed that trust for anyone who doesn't have that is I've listened to my body for years and I have followed her wisdom and I do what she tells me to do. Most of the time that includes adding animal products back into my diet. After being vegan for over a decade, I listened and I heard the call for a long time and I ignored it. I thought it was bad. Just as people think, oh, I shouldn't drink the alcohol, oh I shouldn't have the chocolate. And yes, there are certain times when you need to avoid sugar and alcohol to help your body heal from certain things. That's absolutely appropriate. But when you are telling yourself that your body is bad and wrong every day, every meal, when you are beating yourself up, you're never going to trust yourself. And in that way, you're never going to develop that intuitive conversation back and forth. That's what you need to do. You need to start trusting yourself and listening to yourself. Give yourself what you want, not just at dinner, but in your life. Do you want to be dating more? Do you want more sex? Do you want to change your job or change how you do your job? You got to really start trusting yourself.

Yeah, I love that you brought that up. So can you talk a little bit more about that? I think it's so important with the food life, like living your life and how if you're not fully living the life that you feel like you're destined to live or you want to live, how that impacts our food and what we do with our food and all of that.

Yeah, absolutely. I've seen it time and time again with my clients. But from my own personal experience, around the time when I got very sick, I was working in a corporate law firm, and I was working at a desk 12 plus hours a day. It was not a pleasurable experience, but I thought, this is a great opportunity. This is what I should be doing. You know, it was a little bit glamorous because it was an entertainment law firm. And I just stopped. I stopped listening to myself for a while. I said, no, no, no, this is going to be great. I'm going to go to law school. I'm going to become this lawyer. It's going to be amazing. And I was miserable. I was miserable, but I was listening to what the world was reflecting back to me. Not what I really wanted. When that was the job during which I changed my diet. I did my first detox and healed my body there. And I realized within about a month, it's like, I can't stay here. I've changed my food to give my body what it really needs. I don't want this job. I have no passion here whatsoever. I'm certain that if I hadn't gone back to school, changed the direction, gone to culinary school, done all these things, I wouldn't have been able to stick with the healthy lifestyle that I needed. And I see this time and again with my own clients. They change their food and they're successful for a while to really support what they want in their health and their bodies, but they don't think they have to make changes in their life. And that's why I do these 360 life detox programs. I'm like, all right, we're starting with the food, but we're going to talk about organization. We're going to talk about relationships, your finances. We're going to talk about fear. These are all the things in your life that you get stressed out over and then you need chocolate to help you get through the day.

Yes. It's really funny that you're saying that, because as a new mom, I noticed I was tired and I had moments of being bored. It was just a whole other emotional train. And I started noticing I was wanting chocolate every day. I'm like, I want chocolate all the time. I'm like, okay, let me re evaluate. It's not the chocolate that I'm wanting, but what is it that I'm wanting? I love that you talked about that. What is it that we're wanting and being comfortable with our wants and our desires.

Yeah. And that's a revolutionary question for most of us to ask ourselves because we are trained from an early age to give to others, especially those of us in the kind of healing professions. We're so focused on what we can do for others that. And we get a little bit of a hit, you know, we get a little bit of a pleasure hit when we really help somebody. So that keeps us going for a while. But after years of denying our own wants and desires, it starts to backfire and we start to need more and more stimulants to get through the day or to make us feel comfortable at the end of the evening. So as a woman, I think, especially as a mom, I think it's our responsibility to take amazingly good care of ourselves so that we show up as the best possible version to give to the people that we love. Yeah.

And I love that you brought that up and that you had the blog post that we were talking about earlier, the mothering yourself to be a great mother or something along those lines, like how important that is. Can you talk about that? And self care and women and also mothers. I think there's self care for women and mothers is a big topic for so many of us. Like to really take that time to feel nourished. Yeah.

And we need time. We need a lot of time. I know we try to give ourselves an hour a week. And I'm like, sorry, that is not going to cut it up at 6 every day. Making breakfast, making lunch, doing the school, running the business, doing the after everything. It's a lot. It's really a lot. And we work harder and with more interruptions now than ever. And for a lot of us, the constant texting, the emailing, the chat, the noise, the interruptions, all of that, it degrades our ability to make good choices. You know, we really have a finite amount of willpower in a day, and by the end of the day, a mom especially. But I think women in general are totally depleted by our modern lives. We're frazzled, we're pushed. And I think our desire to multitask actually works against us. My goal in life is to be a single tasker, Focus on one thing at a time. Not even have music on anymore. When I work, really just one thing at a time. Focus, get it done. I find I'm so much calmer. And let's be honest, am I really that effective at multitasking? Like, is social media really helping me in any way? I don't think so. But again, you know, I got a little bit off track here, but for mothers, we have to take amazingly good care of ourselves. And it's your like divine duty as a mom to take care of yourself so that you're relaxed and fun and smart and patient and make good decisions for your kids. Otherwise, you know, I know myself when I get exhausted and hangry, you know, when I haven't fed myself and when I haven't had a massage in like eight years. I'm no fun to play Legos with.

Totally. I love that too. The divine duty as mothers. That's very, you know, because I think a lot of, a lot of mothers feel, and it's been a process for me that feel like taking time for yourself is self indulgent and there's laundry to do and there's this to do and whatever and to take that time where you could be doing something more productive than getting a massage or taking a nap. And it's like, like you said, it's, that's been my biggest challenge. I'm like, I'm exhausted, you know, like, I need to honor that and really, really take time for that. And it's so. I love that you said that. It's just a divine duty for us to be on it.

Well, this is a really key component to anyone living in their pleasure every day. Do you live near family?

Oh, do I?

No, most of us don't. Most of us are independent and happily independent from our families of birth. Yet we are isolated. And especially when it comes to having kids or trying to make a major life change, like changing your diet by yourself is a huge mountain to climb and having support from close family and friends, having a really strong community, not just people you can call up on the phone who love you, but people who are physically actually there to help with the duties, the tasks, the burden, the work that it takes to raise kids, that it takes to buy fresh food because you gotta go shopping like three times a week, you know, you can't just go to the grocery store once a week with your minivan. I live in New York City, but I don't have anywhere to put it. You know, I got like, I have this much space. So it really does take a community, it takes a village to raise a mom.

Yeah, that's so great. So do you have recommendations on that? I love that. The community. And if we're really going to live pleasure filled lives to really surround ourselves around people that support that. Do you have tips on how to create your community and find your community and get that support yes.

So there are other moms who need you. They need you just as much as you need them. We have little friends of my son who we will swap play dates. You know, kids go to their house or kids come here so that everyone gets a break at some point. I am a big believer in babysitters. I love babysitters. My son loves his babysitters so much. And if you have the ability to pay for extra help, get the extra help. Get babysitters. Get somebody to clean your house every couple of weeks or maybe even once a week. In some parts of the country, it's actually really inexpensive to have someone come and do the work of motherhood for you. People can even shop for you. They can buy your groceries and bring it to your house. When you look at how much money you make an hour, you know, think about how much you'd be saving if you spent to hire out some of your work. Just take a look at what would really give you a little space and a little less. A little less to do on your plate. Who can help you besides your mom, who may live 2,000 miles away at this point?

And then I think it's also being courageous almost to say, I need help. And I find women that I talk to and mothers. Like, there's this feeling of I shouldn't need help or I should do it all by myself. And rather, for me, my whole process has been opening up to, I need as much help as possible. Who wants to help? Because I want to take a nap.

Yes, we all want to take a nap. That's really all we want. Let's be honest. Yeah, we do. You have to be vulnerable. You have to allow yourself to be vulnerable and ask for help and keep asking. If you don't get a yes on the first one, like, who else can you ask? Or is there another way to do this that makes it work for you? People ask me about play dates after school all the time. How do you manage play dates? So I have to be honest. We don't do a lot of play dates after school because that is outrageously inconvenient for me. So my son has a lot of fun. He has a lot of friends in his life, and I am not running around every single day taking him to all the practices, taking him to all the lessons. Like, it has to work for everyone, not just him. We are a family unit, and if it's exhausting to one person, it's not gonna work for everyone.

So I love your clarity. I just love your clarity on this. Like, motherhood and parenting and just your clarity around really crafting your life to what you want. Has that always been easy for you? What has been your process of really stepping into that power of, like, I want to create. I deserve creating the life that I want.

Yeah. No, it has not been easy. It has been a process. For sure. For sure. I think I was very lucky in that I was raised by teachers. On the one hand, because my dad was a high school principal, he was like, no, these are the rules, and that's it. So I kind of grew up in a house where these are the rules set by the parents. The house is not run by the children. You know, I think it's very easy to get guilted into doing things a certain way. Maybe you haven't experienced that yet. Your little one cannot yet talk.

No.

Yep, you're safe. But. But it really is a process. I've learned a lot of skills from. From books, from other moms, even from TV shows. I mean, the Dog Whisperer has great advice on raising children. Who's in charge here? Yeah, you know, everybody. It needs to be fair. The family needs to work as a unit. I just keep coming back to that idea. We all need to feel good. One person cannot be the mule doing everything. You know, my son is 6. He has a checklist of chores to do every day before he gets any screen time. And if he doesn't do them, he doesn't get it. You know, just like, if I don't show up to work, we don't have money to buy food. So I guess I'm grateful that I was raised by a couple of hardcore Southern educators. There was no guff. You just did it, and everybody was happier for it.

That's awesome. So what about the pleasure and the joy with your family eating? Like, how do you support your child eating healthy? Because I know when I talk to a lot of families and mothers and parents, there's some strife and some stress around healthy living and healthy lifestyle.

Mm. Okay. This is great. Again, this has become a very simple thing in our house, Eating. Even though my son does not eat everything, he is still, in my opinion, a picky eater. But I never say that to him. I know that there are a good, you know, dozen vegetables that he will eat. So we cycle through those, and then I serve something he's not used to as well, so he's not forced to try everything. And we sit down to eat. We sit down at the table. We use napkins and placemats, and we have candles at breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

We.

I mean, we take like a half an hour for breakfast.

That's great.

And dinner is usually a little bit longer. There's no tv, there's no phones allowed at the table. You know, just the act of sitting together. You could eat leftover rice and beans, and that is a healing, fortifying event. You know, eating together at a table, it's like, where we come together, and it feels good to be there. And that means as much to me as the quality of the nutrition on the plate. And I love it that he has grown up. He now, you know, he sits down at the table, he gets his napkin, he's ready. He knows how to accept the places. You know, there's a. These are life skills, you know, learning how to eat with other people and how to serve them and, you know, what's appropriate. You know, I never force him to keep eating. He knows his body. When he says he's full, I'm like, okay, you're full. And if he, you know, says five minutes later, I'm so hungry, I'm like, well, there's your plate still in the sink. So if you're hungry, there's that. There's not cereal. Now, there are these rules, but for me, eating healthfully is eating pleasurably, and that means taking our time and having fun at the table and not sitting in front of the TV all the time.

That's beautiful. I could totally feel like, as you were just painting the picture of how you guys sit down, no phones and candles, like, the ritualistic experience of it and how different that is than most modern American families. It's just relaxing and peaceful. What a gift for you and your child, right? I mean, wow.

It's great. I love it. He knows where all the napkins are. He's learning how to light the candles. You know, I love that it is. It's a ritual. We light the candles for every meal. And we're not a religious practice home. But sitting down together and sharing that, it feels very spiritual to me.

I love that. And it's awesome, too, of, like, slowing down and taking time that you, you know, it's really inspiring to take that time, because a lot of people, you know, you think that you might not be. It might not be beneficial to take the time to make a meal, but, like, you just talking about. I can feel the connection. Like, the connection you have, the quality time that you have with your child is, like, so worth it.

It's great. It's great. And there is a nutritional metabolic benefit to how we eat, which is when you eat slowly in a relaxed state, breathing and talking between your bites, you are actually in the perfect state to digest and metabolize your food the most efficient way possible. So when you're in a state of stress, when you're driving and eating, you know, dashboard dining, or, you know, when you're at your desk trying to work and eat, your body does not work. You can either be stressed or you can digest. You can't do both at the same time. Your digestion just shuts off. So by eating in a relaxed atmosphere for most of our meals together, we're actually getting more benefit out of our meals. So again, it can be even really, really simple food, but it's doing our bodies a lot of good to eat that way.

Pleasure helps us digest and stimulate and potentially even lose weight.

It's so true. It's so true. I've been on trips with groups of people to exotic locations where I swear we're eating twice as much food as we normally do at home. But because we have like an hour and a half for lunch and people are taking their time and they're breathing and people lose weight, they don't go home. Not fitting into their clothes anymore. They're like, wow, I feel good. Yeah, slow down, go home and slow down.

Okay, so I am really curious on this because this is again, a different paradigm of going about nutrition and food and living. And it seems like in our culture there's a big, especially in the western, there's kind of a war against food and war against your body. And it's like this constant fight against your body. Can you just talk a little bit about that? Of having more body love? And what do we do about, what do we do about all of the fear and the resistance that so many of us have around our bodies?

Okay, the first thing that we can do about this is stop watching reality tv.

Awesome.

Serious. I wrote another post about why I hate America's Biggest Loser. I have nothing against the people on the show, the contestants or the experts. However, I've only seen it a couple of times because I really literally could not stomach to watch. Sets people up to be made fun of, to tempt and to ridicule people for being weak. And just the way they do, I mean, even just the way they do the weigh ins where they make them take their shirts off. It makes people who are overweight or who of size or whatever feel like they are morally bad and wrong, that they are someone to be pointed at and made an example out of. And even though I do Believe the people who go on the show are really looking for something to inspire them and make changes and get healthy. Putting them in a room full of sugary treats. What is it called? The room of temptation or something like that. That's basically how we live our lives now. Every corner store, every 711 is pharmacy. You can't go buy a bottle of aspirin at the pharmacy without like 10,000 kinds of candy in front of you. Sugar is everywhere. It's super cheap. We're already tempted. And the stress that we physically experience watching those shows because we're watching and connecting with their experience that stre I swear, makes people eat more and hate their bodies more. Even if they feel like, well, I look good, but I'm watching these people. But you're judging them and you feel bad for judging them. And then you judge yourself and then you head for the Doritos anyway, so reality TV is not good for anyone. I swear, if we all just stopped watching reality tv, everybody would lose five pounds. That is awesome. Yes. That's my first suggestion. And the other thing is just to really start having fun in your body. What can you do that's fun for you? What did you really love doing when you were like seven? Can you go and do that? It was so great. I was walking with some friends of mine and we realized, remember when you were like eight and you just ran everywhere? You're like, oh, a book. And my kid is totally like that. He's like, legos, boom. Just off and running. They're just always moving in their little bodies. And I don't know if it's because we get taller and gravity starts to have more of an impact on us or if we just get lame when we grow up and we start to try to be cool. Oh, that's it. We hit middle school and we try to be cool. That's when we stop running with joy everywhere. And I'm not a graceful runner. I mean, I'm like. But I really enjoy moving, so I love riding my bike. It feels so free. I ride my son to school two or three days a week, and it's like, you know, five and a half miles. He's £50 on the back. That is an awesome workout. And it's fun. I feel like I'm out there, like, really using my body. I love going to. There's one particular style of pole dancing called s back, which is so fun. It's not like, it's not cheesy. It's really about enjoying yourself and dancing. So whatever it Is that you, like, it could be bowling, it could be fishing, it could be climbing a tree. When was the last time you climbed a tree? I know, it's fun.

So we're lame because we don't have fun. I totally agree. I have that. I'm like, yeah, we do. We become lame and like restricted and we're just like, we don't have time for fun or to like be goofy or climb the tree. Like, we have something more important to do.

What? I mean, what are we here to do except to enjoy ourselves? If. And again, I'm not. I'm not a religious person, but I do love to talk about the deeper questions, like, why are we really here? If someone did create us in his or her image, why did they give us all these incredible, like, skin feels awesome. Let's talk about the woman's body. I mean, the one organ ever designed purely for pleasure, the clitoris, is an amazing piece of equipment. We should be using them often. So we were really designed for pleasure. Our bodies are pleasure seeking machines. I've been reading a lot about the neuroscience of cravings and how rats, humans, monkeys, we all respond to the same stimulation basically in the same way. And if we find something that gives us a little hit of dopamine or any of those other happy hormones or neurotransmitters, man, we will just keep pushing that button because we just want to feel good all the time. And we think because in our culture, all of those happy inducing things have been labeled as sins. Sex is a sin, Gluttony is a sin. Being lazy is a sin. You know, sugar is a sin. Everything you do that feels good is a sin for some reason. I mean, there's a lot of reasons for it, but I don't think they're a sin. I think that you enjoying your body is actually again, your divine duty. We were built for pleasure. So have a little fun.

And I'm curious on because I think a lot of people in their body there's a self consciousness. And like you were saying with the reality TV shows and all of that and the magazines and all of this, that there's a waiting to be £5, £50, £100 lighter. And then I'll feel good in my body and then I can start having fun. Talk to us about that.

Yeah, I'll start dating when I lose the weight. I will. I'll go after that promotion once I fit into those. You know, that hot suit, putting your life off until you look like something. You might as well. I mean, you're never going to get there. You're never going to be good enough. If you put that judgment on yourself, you're never going to win. My idea is to have fun now. Do all the stuff you want to do now. Date now. Go get the promotion now. Do it now. And then the good stuff will come. The good stuff just comes when you start having fun and really living in your pleasure and enjoying yourself. You are magnetic. And all this great stuff starts happening for you. And then you're having so much fun that you forget to have the second piece of cake. And then the weight just starts to fall off naturally. And you're having a great time and you look fabulous because you are having a great time. And all those happy hormones that are not produced just from chocolate and dopamine and cocaine and all the crazy drugs that are out there, you're getting a hit from everything, from your life.

I love that.

Your life is a drug.

And that's great. Like, what if we created lives that were like a drug? You know, like that we were just high all the time because our life was so awesome.

It's true. It's so true, you know? Do you know who Louis CK Is? The comedian?

Oh, yeah. Everything's amazing.

Everything's amazing and nobody's happy. That's one of his latest little rants he went on, which was so beautiful and brilliant. And I just fell in love with him. I would totally date him if I weren't already involved. Is that he was saying, look, we're all so addicted to our little phones. And our kids are so addicted. They're just always looking down and they're doing this. They're not interacting with anyone. They're not forced to just sit there and just be. Remember what that was like. And that's basically being human, just learning to sit and just be. But then he did. As he described it, you know how we all have that little empty space of nothing in us, like that fear that, like, oh, my gosh, I'm alone. And what is life about? And this distracts us from ever having to think about it or engage with it. But when you let those feelings, even of inadequacy of fear, if you allow yourself to really experience the heartbreak, the beautiful heartbreak of being alive, if you can just experience it and feel it, it becomes a thing of beauty. You know, we've all had tragedy and trauma in our lives, some of us more than others. And if you can see it and feel it and not judge yourself as wrong for having endured it or even caused it, if you can just feel it and either apologize for it or feel it and let it go through you. When you start to come out the other side, you are filled with this overwhelming joy and appreciation for what you do have. And that is like, man, that is getting high off of life right there. Did I just go way out somewhere? I don't know where I went.

That was awesome. Wherever you went, it was awesome. That is amazing. Yeah, totally. And I love that, like you just said, like, letting life move through you, like all of it, you know, the trauma, whatever. Because we have things that we regret or whatever happened and it's stopping us from living now. Like, just open up and say, ah, yes to it all.

Feel it. And that can even mean cravings. If you know you need to stop eating ice cream every night, if you know that for your health and your well being that those ice cream cravings are really, really hurting you, what would it feel like to just sit and feel that overwhelming craving come up in your body? What's underneath it? What's the fear? What's the anger? What's the regret? What is underneath it? What if you just sat there and felt it? What would happen? We don't always give ourselves the space to look and to ask.

And a lot of times in those moments, we distract ourselves. Like you were saying, right? We'll go to the phone or we'll go to Facebook or we'll go to.

Go to the ice cream. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We distract ourselves with my old boyfriends, Ben and Jerry. You know, they're good guys, but don't get involved. Ladies duo.

So I'm curious on. You said it earlier, the willpower. So we can sit with our cravings. And then a lot of people, you know, especially with nutrition, it comes up a lot like, I just don't have the willpower. So can you talk about willpower a little bit more and why that's. Yeah, just share your thoughts on that.

Okay. There's some really fascinating studies that have been coming out which are all basically showing the same thing. We have a limited amount of willpower in the day. And if we get up and we are faced with a constant barrage of decisions from the moment you wake up and you're trying to be good and you're trying to keep it together all day long, by 4 o', clock, you're done. You have the well of willpower is dry. So willpower is really a myth. You know, the idea that you just didn't try hard enough or you just didn't, you know, you got to work on your willpower. That's a lie. It's like you become physically depleted of it. It's gone. So the way to keep your willpower strong and steady throughout the day is really to make your life a lot easier. I know that sounds really simplistic and insane for some people, but I'll give you a couple of examples. So how can you set your mornings up so that they flow easier and you're not trying to make a bunch of decisions between 6 and 9? Is there a way you can make your commute easier? How can your children participate and become responsible for their things so that you are not the person getting everyone together in the morning? Now, there's a great book, totally blanking on what it's called, but I'll give you the gist of it. This man went into a family to see why they were successful. And what he discovered was that all the kids have checklists. And this is where I got my checklist thing from. All the kids, even the teenagers, they know what they're supposed to do in the morning, but they have a checklist, and they go back to it consistently throughout the morning to see what it is they need to do next. He said, it was amazing to me, this woman with three teenagers in the house. She sat there all morning drinking coffee. And those kids fed themselves, dressed themselves, got their lunches together, got out the door. She barely lifted a finger. She set herself up by teaching her children the skilled resilience of how to be a responsible human being. She kept her willpower intact for the rest of the day. That's pretty awesome stuff. So what can you do in your life to set it up to support you so that you're not bedraggled and drained by the time nighttime comes around?

That is brilliant and amazing. Thank you for telling that story, too, because it really brings it home. Like how we really can set up structures that support us to thrive and to flourish.

Maybe. You know what? You don't have to have something super fancy for breakfast every day. If, you know, a green smoothie every other day for breakfast works for you. And then, like eggs and toast or oatmeal every alternating day, eat the same thing for breakfast. I don't care. That's okay, you know, learn what works for you. It may change throughout the season. You can eat totally the same foods all the time if that works for you. And it helps you not have to make decisions sometimes that's appropriate.

So where does it come into play? So you have your structures that work for you and Then where does, how do you allow for the spontaneity and like really like sitting down and saying, what does my body want? Versus okay, every day I have a green smoothie, you know, like, how do you dance with those two, those two paths?

Oh, I am not a robot by any means. I definitely have some spontaneity in my life. What's great is when you have your structures. I call it freedom within the framework you give yourself structures. Like I eat breakfast every day. That's a structure for me. That's a rule. I eat breakfast every day and I know it has to have a good amount of protein in it. So within that I have a lot of different options. I can have ground up nuts or hemp seeds in my oatmeal, or I can have a green smoothie with protein powder or hemp seeds in it. There's a variety of options once you know your rules of life. I know that it's way more fun for me and my kid and way more effective in terms of my time. If I take him to school in the morning and we have a babysitter, pick him up and bring him home for us, that allows me a really nice morning with him. I get a whole like two hours with him where we have a nice long breakfast, we ride the bike to school, we get time to talk, it's chill, it's not super rushed because I drop him off and I get home, I start work about 9:30 and I can work all the way up right until 5 o' clock when she brings him back for me. So that's a structure that I set into place. I use a little bit of my extra money to have someone else take that burden off of me. That allows me a lot more freedom in my afternoons and it gives me some space where I'm like, wow, I have this nice long stretch of time in the day now and again. It's different for people who don't work for themselves. Maybe they work in an office. I see a lot of my clients who do have a job. They go to use their lunch to do errands instead of actually taking a break. And they'll often eat at their desk working and then they'll go do errands. And I do everything I can to help them learn to take that 30 to 60 minutes off, relax, eat, maybe go outside and take a little walk before or after you eat. We are not meant to sit all day. Sitting is the new smoking. I don't know if you've heard that, but it's true. Sitting is worse for you to smoke. Have a cigarette, but walk around. No, I'm.

Walk while you're smoking.

Walk while you're smoking. It'll be fine. I'm just kidding. Just kidding.

Sorry.

Did I answer your question or did I go somewhere?

No, you totally did. I love that. I love what you said. I think you said freedom within the framework.

Yeah.

So that you have that. Everybody needs to find their own. Their own kind of framework what works for them. It's super, super helpful. So you can still dance and play, but it's not super restrictive.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And once you start to listen to your body and feel what works for you so that you're moving as much as you need to in ways that feel good throughout the week, so that you're eating as much as you need, the kinds of foods that give you the nutrients that your body really needs, you know, when you start to feel what it is that you need, the whole realm of possibility opens up for you. When you know what you need, you can get it. If you don't know what you need, you're lost.

I love that too. And it's like the experience, like, being willing to experiment. And I love that you're talking about trusting your body, too, and like, really taking the time to trust your body. I mean, I've been, I don't know, on this path for 17 years or something. Right. And it's like always changing and always being willing to kind of experiment with what is actually working and then it changes. You know, I'm a similar thing to you with the. Was vegan for, like seven years. And then two weeks before my son was born, I'm like, I gonna start eating meat. Like, what the hell?

Yeah. Yeah. And it's so hard to change your diet because we become emotionally invested, we make it a moral calling, it becomes a religion. And when your body starts saying no, and it goes the other way, too. I know plenty of people. I mean, my. Both sides of my family are from the South. Giving up beef for the people who need to give it up, that's like throwing your Bible in the shredder. That's like intense. So going either way, you really have to start looking at your core identity when you change your diet. Or you can just say, it's just food. I need to eat this right now. Wouldn't that be awesome if we could all just say that?

I know. Not a big deal. And that's what I love. I think I was reading on your blog too, Experimenting. And that's what my Whole thing is like letting go of the dogma and just really being open to experiment in every area. Like, how much exercise do I need without all my thoughts about this book said this, this expert said this. And it's like overwhelming for so many people. There's so many people telling everyone what to do and to say, okay, great, what do I need now?

Yes. And that's another great insight I've learned from the burgeoning world of neuroscience, is that but when presented with too many options, people will choose nothing. And when they're presented with so many diet programs, so many gurus, so many products, they should be trying, they just get overwhelmed and they give up. Instead of listening to the one person who can really tell you what you need and that is yourself. So turn off the tv. Watch this series. Obviously watch these series, these experts who are going to help you get more aligned and feel, you know, you gotta take away the layers of shame and then start experimenting. Be like a tech startup. Like the world of tech startup is so cool. They iterate, they change, they fail, they start over. Like, man, be it you, be a tech startup, just keep going.

Amen. Fabulous. So can you share with us where people can learn more about you and your work and your books and all of that work with you, etc.

Yeah, yeah. So two places would be great. If you want to come to my website, you can get if you leave your name and your email address@alexandra jamison.com I want to give you like a little top seven things you didn't know about food and mood guide that you can download, which is awesome. And I have a ton of great videos up on YouTube and you can find me at delicious Alex on YouTube.

Oh, that sounds pleasure filled. Delicious Alex, wonderful. Well, thank you so much for sharing your awesome wisdom and super, super inspiring thank you.

This is so fun.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Mama Goddess. Sending you lots of love and blessings. If you'd like to connect more, go to mamagoddess.com until next time, keep rocking it and have an awesome day.