Stop Fighting with Your Body and Start living in it! Keeping It Real, EP14 – The Jungle Series

Just dance. How would you do it if you felt it? Just a little wiggle before we talk. Let your body move for just a second. Ah, great remix. Yeah, I got great music. So I promise you, when this is, when this is all done, I'll put the link to this song in the captions. Yeah, great remix of edge of 17. So welcome to Keeping It Real, the jungle podcast. Just shooting the shit and keeping stuff real. I'm Misty Tripoli. I think this is like episode 14. So all of the past episodes can be found on my broadcast on the highlight reel. Says Keeping It Real. The first all episodes had to do with, you know, buying my land in Mexico, how I made my money, you know, the relationships I had to deal with. Kind of what brought me to this point. I think I've covered most of it. And now I want to talk about something that is just really true and dear to my heart because it's been a massive part of my life. And for that, welcome, everybody. Mary Optress Williams. You guys, thanks for being here. So this topic, this topic about this struggle, and this is really for women, because I'm not a man. I don't know what men go through. I know they have to deal with their own shit, but what we have to deal with as women and how we feel about our bodies and the time, attention, energy that it steals from our lives. This, you know, most of us, if you're free of it, you are a lucky, lucky soul. But for most of us, even. I spent over half my life obsessed about my body. I always liked my face. Never had a problem with my face, but I could not stand my body. I was in a constant battle. It's this, and you might feel the same. It's just like being at war with your body, just never being okay with the way that it looks. Never being, you know, like you look in the mirror and you love what you see or even, like what you see or even be okay with what you see, right? And, you know, I just. This is the joy of getting older. Like, I wouldn't trade my wisdom for. I wouldn't trade my wisdom for my youth. Uh, I love being older and wiser and having more understanding and also not giving a shit is powerful. But when I was younger, you know, you don't have the wisdom, you don't have the knowledge. And I, you know, I don't know about you, but growing up, I did not have one example of a woman that loved her body or was okay with her body or, you know, there was not one positive role model not on television, not in my family circle. My mom was always on a diet. Her sisters. My mom was one of 10 children. All of her, you know, sisters were always on a diet. And when everyone got together, that's kind of like a big part of the conversation. What diet were you on? You know, I lost this much weight. You know, just. It was this constant. It's never okay. And, you know, for me, starting at the age of, you know, 14, I developed very large breasts at a very young age. I was very uncomfortable. And then when I was around 13, 14 is when MTV started. Like, I'm old. And I remember watching the music videos and, you know, these, you know, singers, and I started getting, you know, I started to pay attention to things like, you know, US Magazine and Vogue. And it was like, that was. When you're young, you just don't know. You look out and you think that that stuff matters because these people are on a cover of a magazine or they're on television. So obviously they're important. And I. I want to look like them and be like them. Not knowing. Like, just not knowing. Just, you know, and I really thought. Because back then, it was about being thin. Now it's a whole other thing. Like, the augmentation of what's happening. Now it's a whole other thing. But back then, those of you guys are around my age, you know exactly what I'm talking about. It was about being thin. It's about being skinny. And I thought thin people had it all figured out, like, craziness. And so at 14 years old, when I started to compare myself and realized that I didn't look like these, you know, famous people or the people, you know, creating the, you know, the. What is acceptable and what is, you know, the definition of beauty at that time. And I remember, like, looking down at my thighs, and I just felt like they were so big, and I just. I was obsessed by the size of my ass. I just thought it was so fat. And, you know, I love to dance. You guys know this part of me. I just love to dance. And so I tried out for the. There was a dance team, not the dance company, but a professional, like a dance team that would go and compete, you know, at State. Oh, God. Oh, my God. I remember the name. The Lonnie Shays. Oh, my God. That's what they were called. Can you believe the stuff you can remember? I can't remember what happened yesterday, but I can remember that. And that's because it's these traumatic things that impact us, that just are embedded into our brain. So I auditioned for them and I kicked ass. Like, girl can move, I can move. But I remember the woman that ran it said that I needed to lose eight pounds because they all had to weigh in and that I needed to lose eight pounds by a certain time. And, you know, so I just went into starvation mode, you know. And then I also watched a movie about a girl that was bulimic and she ended up dying. I don't remember the name of the movie, but I just remember her being able to stay thin by throwing up. That's the part I got out of it was that she could control her weight by vomiting. So I started making myself throw up when I was 14 years old, either starving myself, trying to find, follow some crazy weird diet. Like you can only eat, you know, at 3:00' clock in the afternoon, you can only eat fat, or you can only eat carbs. You can't eat fat, you can't eat sugar. Like that started a cascade of diets. And I started teaching aerobics when I was 16 years old. And I started teaching aerobics not because I liked aerobics, it was because I could get paid to exercise. And then I became this obsessive compulsive about exercise. And so everything I ate, what it was, how I was going to get rid of it, work it off, you know, it was just starting at 14 years old. And so bulimia was just a part of my life. Like, I felt like I had no discipline. The things I would say to myself when I looked in the mirror. My whole day revolved around if I looked at myself and I saw fat hanging over my thing and I could grab it, I just might. I was a the rest of the day because I hated who I was and I was so disappointed in myself. And, and this is way back when, when I had no idea who I was, right? Like now I'm on the side, mama feel good. But back then you don't know. And it breaks my heart to see women, like, losing so much precious life over these things that really, they don't matter and nobody cares. So this is a big part of what I do and part of my work in the world. So I'm bulimic. I'm. I get married at 18 years old. So right out of high school. I graduated in June and I got married in December. Hello, fly. Got married in December. So I got married right out of high school. Now, my husband had no idea that I had this problem. I kept it very well hidden because it's shameful and embarrassing, and I didn't want anyone to know about it. So I. Halfway through our relationship, about four years in, we moved to California. I had. We were living in Colorado. I was the. I was already a director of a chain of health clubs. Like, fitness was just so easy for me, and dance and exercise, and I just instantly was good at it. And so that was my career at the time. And also waitressing. I did a lot of waitressing. And we. He decided he wanted to be an author. So we quit our jobs and we moved back to California and moved in with his parents. And his mom had just had liposuction. And I couldn't believe the before and after. Now, keep in mind, I'm like 21, 22 years old, and I saw what she had done and how good it looked, even though she was in pain. Like, she was in this tight thing and she could barely walk. But I just. I was obsessed with the fact that she, like, lost half her size. And so I convinced my husband to let me have liposuction. So at like, 21, 22 years old, I had liposuction. Just. Fuck. I look back, I'm just like, oh, my God, like, the stupidity. And. Because I just was not okay with what I saw in the mirror. And I had it from the waist down. My stomach's always been, but it was always my ass and my thighs and stuff. And that's where I carried my weight. So that's where I had sucked crazy enough. I still have nerve damage down the side of my leg, you know, 30 years later. Yeah, wasn't worth. Wasn't worth it. It was so stupid. I spent so much time apologizing to myself for being so mean to myself and creating so much pain for myself. But I'm waving at you guys because you're waving at me. So had the liposuction. He and I lasted a couple more years. Divorced. It was an easy divorce. It wasn't like a bad. Like, anything. And then I'm on my own. And I am in another relationship. He has no idea that I'm bulimic. And another relationship. They have no idea that I'm bulimic. And I'm keeping this secret and also this just obsession with my body. I'm in Los Angeles now, working in the fitness industry. I was at the top of my game in the fitness industry, living a complete lie. Like, I. I was one of the number one instructors in la. I was teaching at Equin, like, the top clubs, Equinox Sports Club, la. I was the Director at Bodies in Motion. I was like. I had 500 instructors. I was training them. I was really good at my job, and I actually really liked my job. I mean, I was working overworking for someone else, but I was good at it. But it also allowed me to exercise. I was exercising probably three to five hours a day and throwing up two to three times a day every day. My whole life revolved around my body, what I look like, how fat my ass was. Even after liposuction, I still had a hard time keeping the weight off just because I had no control. And I was so, you know, mean to myself because I didn't have the discipline to diet and to, you know, But I just tried everything and, and living in LA and being around these perfect people, beautiful, perfect people. And a lot of my clients, you know, I had, you know, I was training NFL players and movie stars and I was. I'm. You know, I was in it. Mama was in it. And I was really good at my job, but I was. It was a total lie because I was the most unhealthy person that I knew. Unconscious and unhealthy. Like, I was toxic. I literally couldn't shit for a week. My system was so messed up, I would have to take laxatives, I. And all these diet teas to try to get my body to flush out the. The crap. I. My skin was terrible because I was so toxic. And the part that was so hard for me is I didn't realize. I never thought I would ever be on the other side of it. I never thought that I. I never. I was just like, is this gonna be the rest of my life? Am I always gonna hate my body? I'm always gonna, like, you know, you know, looking at the photos and, you know, I didn't want to have my picture taken because I felt fat. And I look back now and it's just like, take the photo. You look amazing. You looked amazing then. Because we always look back and go, oh, my God, if I could only recognize how amazing I actually looked back then, right? And it's. It's the time that we lose just obsessing about this shit. And I really just never thought I'd be on the other side. I never thought I would be okay with me and that this was what my life looked like. A big fat lie. An unhealthy big fat lie. And I shared with you in these last couple episodes when I smoked marijuana for the first time, and it literally blew my mind wide open and changed my whole life and everything. And Like I said, marijuana is not for everyone. But what it did for me, the medicine that it was for me, because after I smoked and I started to dance, and I'd always danced and I'd always exercised, I'd always moved my body, but I was not in my body. I was in my head. I wasn't in my body. I was up here was. Everything was about what I thought about it and all of this, but I never, like, felt the movement. I never felt it and. Or, you know, I lived from here up. I didn't live from here down. Even though I could move from here down, I didn't. I was disconnected completely. And that's what marijuana did for me, is it allowed me to connect deeply to my whole self, what it felt like to be in this body, this meat suit, and the miracle of my own existence. And for me, I was so fortunate that, like, when I started. Like, when this happened, bulimia just disappeared. Like, I. And I stopped. Like, I wasn't. I didn't want to. Like, the foods that were. I was just gorging on. I couldn't imagine even eating them. Like, it was like everything just changed. It was like, boom. And I'm fortunate in that. Like, I know that that was an absolute gift that was given to me, that I was able to almost instantaneously shift my consciousness, shift the way that I thought about it, shift my relationship with myself, you know, to wake up and to tell myself the truth. That set me free. The truth will set you free. The truth will set you free. You have to tell yourself the truth. And this is a part of my awakening, was telling myself the truth. That I knew that I was not born to hate myself, that I started to realize that that was a program, that I was conditioned, that I had been manipulated, manipulated through advertisements and all of this, because they can't sell you something if you're not broken. They gotta break you to fix you. And that, right? So it's all out there, and then also underneath it, deeper, deeper in the DNA, in the coding that's been kind of hardwired into us for millennia, is that. When you think about it, when it comes right down to it, go back to caveman, cave woman days. Like, let's just go back. If we live like that. I don't. Who even knows? I wasn't here. But that's what they say, right? I still can't believe anything they say. But let's just say for. But you can just look at tribes and cultures, even still today, that the hard wiring is that for women, it was always the most beautiful woman by definition of what that culture defined as beauty. The woman that emulated that the most always got the best man, the strongest, the valiant warriors, the king. And that meant protection, which is for women, our number one need is safety. Our number one need, hardwired is safety. And so when you looked beautiful according to society's standards, your babies were protected, you were protected. That meant that there was money, there was going to be food, there was going to like it. It meant safety and security. And so it's also not our fault because it's, it's deeper than just advertisements and things like that. It goes deeper than that because we need to feel safe because genetically we all know this. Men's even muscles are different than ours. Like, like I, I know my last relationship, the guy that I was dating, the guy that was a little. He was super skinny. I was twice his size, but that was so freakishly strong. Like, scary strong in ways that I'm like, I don't even know how you're doing, what you're doing. I'm. I'm double your size and I can't, I'm not that strong. So that's what I mean by like, even a. This thin man could pin me down. Right. And so we need safety and security. And so we do things to make ourselves so beautiful so that we're worthy of. Unfortunately, now it's tied to love. Even though we don't. We're not thinking safety, security. What we're thinking is love. The, the beautiful people deserve love and the people that have the perfect bodies, then now I'm worthy of love. You know, I'll find whatever when I've lost the weight and I've. I'm okay in my body. And all of this, this deep unconscious, ah, craziness that a lot of us, we're not even conscious of it. It's so deep. But I became really aware of it and I was like, this is not gonna. This, I'm over this. And then I started to. Let's not say love, because loving yourself, I know, is really hard. Even though it's the most important thing to do. It's a hard pill to swallow, like, to love yourself. All of a sudden when you're just like, I don't like my body. I think I'm a bitch sometimes. Like, I don't like, like it's hard. But to start to be kind to yourself, to start to appreciate yourself. One thing I always tell everyone that I work with is, you know what it Looks like if you were to be nice to yourself, if you were to wake up every morning, be like, what would today look like? If I were to be kind to myself, what would that look like? How would I treat myself? What things would I say to myself? What things would I do? Who would I allow in my life? What kind of foods would I eat if I was just being nice to myself? And I always say that just start by being nice to yourself. Be kind to yourself. And. And it's one day at a time. Sometimes it's one minute at a time, right? And I just. I'm so passionate about not empowering, but assisting women, especially to connect to the wholeness of who they are. Embodiment. Because when you start to get out of your head and into your body, everything changes. And that's one of the keys. It's one of the secrets to my success. It's one of the secrets to getting to the other side of not hitting myself and being okay in my body. Now being older is a different story. We'll go into that about the wrinkles. And now it's a whole other thing. It's not about the body anymore. It's about the wrinkles on the vase and losing your beauty. So crazy. But that we. That the wisdom is inside of you. Whatever created you is not separate from you. And this is the thing I have about. I have a really hard time about religions that make you look outside of yourself. Like it's something outside of you that needs to help you or whatever. When whatever created you, honey, is in you, it is you. How were you created? If it. Like if you have a child, you know that your DNA, you are like that you are part of that child. Like, you cannot separate the two. The coding, all of it, it's there. And. And so I feel the same about whatever created me. Whatever that is, whatever you define it as, because you exist, is inside of you. And to create the practices so that you can get to the other side. So that even if you don't ever love your body and you're like, I'm never going to love my body, that's okay. It starts by just trying to be. Not trying, but being okay with being in your body. And this is what's amazing about the work that I do is this also my app Body. My Body Groove app. Because it's so great for women that in the privacy of your own home, you don't have to go out there and do it. It's about being with yourself and learning how to go inside your Body to be embodied. And I am blown away. I have received thousands of letters from women around the world, thousands of that. They thought they were doing Body Groove to lose weight. Because everyone, like most women, want to lose weight. They're like, I thought I came into this to lose weight, but you know what? It ended up not being about weight, losing the weight. Even though I lost 50, 60, 70, 100 pounds, it's that I actually didn't care anymore. And I started to learn to enjoy being in my body. Now, that is the best compliment I could get because I didn't create Body Groove, this dance product, this app. I didn't create it as a weight loss product at all or a fitness product. That's the byproduct of what's going to happen when you move your body. Absolutely. When you start getting your groove on and giving yourself permission to be in your body and to dance it and get out of your head, breathe into it and get. Have fun and be playful in your body with no fear. I tell you what, it changes the game. It changed it for like. And what I've seen it happen for women all around the world and it makes me so happy. When I received those letters, I'm just like, amen. That's. I'm glad I got you by thinking it was a weight loss product. But you want. You finally like, you get it. Once you start doing it, you get it and everything changes. And when you reconnect, when you actually create a healthy relationship, relationship with you, with you, with your body, with how it moves, even if you have limitations, even if you have pain, all of these things, this is what my app does. I mean, I'm not here to try to sell you something. I just want you to know what I do and how powerful it is. And I want you, I want you to be on the other side and to feel what it feels like to actually be embodied and to enjoy, have fun in your body. You are meant. You are a pleasurized meat suit. You are meant to enjoy being in your body. So anyways, yeah, I'm. You tell. I'm so passionate about this because I have. It breaks my heart when I travel the world and I see so many women that are just disconnected, lovely, amazing women that are completely disconnected from their body. And so. Well, God, this is a great segue. And so this is part of what I've also done. So I've got my app, Body Groove. You can dance with me at home. There's a link in my bio. It's one month free if you don't one month free. You've got go and try it. I'm giving you a month free. Go to my link tree. Go there. There's a link to the body groove app. You will get one month free to try it. And really try it. Turn it on, go in your living room, dance. Now. It's what. Eventually you'll have your kids and you'll be dancing with your animals and. But you gotta start somewhere. And so that's my gift to you. I want to give that to you a month free on the body group app. Go try it. Second thing is I'm leading a four hour Groove in My Life workshop on October 19th. And we are going to groove and we are going to deeply connect. And I'm going to share with you all the tools and the tips and the tricks and the things to do to create the blueprint of what it looks like for you to groove your life. That's also on my link tree if you're interested. There's also a free download for you there, a little Love Shift workbook that's free that you can download. And the last thing I want to let you know is, yes, I am doing a retreat right near my home, right down the road the first week of April of 2026. We are going to be partying at my house. You'll come here, meet my dogs. We're going to dance in my studio, swim in the cenote, go on the tower for sunset. And I want to share this with you. So space is limited. You better get your ass there because I think we're. I posted it a few days ago. We're almost halfway sold out. So that is also on my link tree, the retreat. I just hope I. Let's. Let's support each other. Let's love each other and let's learn to love ourselves as we support each other. Because we're all in this together. And I will tell you this. I truly believe what will change this world is when women rise. We are so fucking powerful. When you tap into your power, when you stop worrying about that stupid bullshit about the size of your ass and all of those things and you connect with your power. There is nothing you can't do. Nothing. Nothing you can't do. But you got to connect deeply with who you really are. Your true authentic self, with your intuition. And if you don't know how to do that, let's do it together. So thank you for joining me today. This is Keeping It Real. I love you guys. Thanks for being here. Granny. Granny. What up Granny Mary and Jennifer. You guys are awesome. And you guys, you know what? I'm not worried about here. You guys just made a comment about I'm not afraid to live in Mexico. I will never live in fear. When you have fear, you attract what you fear. I will not let that happen to me. I live in knowing that life loves me, I am supported, I am protected, and I am safe. So think about what you think about. It's super important and what you believe. So I love you guys. Have an absolutely beautiful day, and I'll see you next week for another episode of Keeping It Real. If there's any topic you want me to cover, please put it in the notes or in the in the comments and we'll have a conversation about it. Have a beautiful day. Love you all. It.