I’m also sharing some survey results about what you want more of.

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Summer:
This episode of eat the rules is brought to you by you on fire you on fire is the online group coaching program that I run that gives you a step by step way of building up your self worth beyond your appearance. With personalized coaching from me incredible community support and lifetime access to the program so that you can get free from body shame and live life on your own terms. Get details on what’s included and sign up for the next cycle at summer innanen.com forward slash you on fire. I’d love to have you in that group. This is eat the rules, a podcast about body image self worth, anti dieting, and intersectional feminism. I am your host summer Innanen, a professionally trained coach specializing in body image self worth and confidence and the best selling author of body image remix. If you’re ready to break free of societal standards and stop living behind the number on your scale, then you have come to the right place. Welcome to the show.

Have you ever made a big change in your life and you feel super scared, but a part of you is also very excited and you have butterflies in your chest? That’s happening to me right now because of a big change happening, and I’m going to be talking about it in this episode. This is episode 278. It’s the season nine premiere of eat the rules, I’m giving you an update on some changes that are happening, as well as what to expect from this season of the podcast based on some of the survey results that you gave me. You can find the links mentioned at summer innanen.com forward slash 278.

I want to give a shout out to 73 Digi who left this review. Second review I love this podcast even more now. I’ve been listening for almost a year and I love it even more now as part of my strategy to rethink my worth based on my size or weight. The body image series are my favorite episodes, I listened again and again. It took a while for me to learn diet culture and giving myself time to unlearn damaging concepts. Thank you Summer for being part of my rethinking of my health and self worth.

Thank you so much for leaving that review and a second time too wow bonus points for you. You can leave a review by going to Apple podcasts search for eat the rolls and click ratings and reviews and click to leave a review. You can also subscribe to the show via whatever platform you use. And get your hands on the 10 day body confidence makeover by going to summer innanen.com forward slash freebies with 10 steps to take right now to feel better in your body. And if you are a provider, or a professional who works with people who may also have body image struggles, get the free body image coaching roadmap at summer innanen.com forward slash roadmap. Of course, you can just go to the body image coach.com. And you’ll find all of my stuff.

Let’s get started with this episode with a big announcement on my personal front, I’m not having another baby, because I don’t have a uterus anymore. The big news is, I am going back to school this fall to get my masters of counseling. And it is a three year part time program. And at the end, I will be a registered clinical counselor or AKA a therapist. And I am feeling very nervous as well as excited about this change as one usually does when they do something that’s stepping outside of their comfort zone. And I’ve kept this information really private, I don’t know why there’s a thing about sharing stuff in my life that always feels really vulnerable. And I hate the feeling of vulnerability. So I just don’t even talk about it with people. I’ve held off on telling so many people. And whenever I do, they’re like super excited for me. And it’s actually not that big of a deal. But for some reason in my head, it feels like such a big deal. But I wanted to share that with you here because there’s going to be some changes happening. I’ll get to that in a second. But I wanted to first talk about why I’m doing this. I went to university 25 years ago, and I took business because that’s just I don’t even remember the law. I’ve actually just wanted to be like a radio DJ, but my parents were like, please don’t do that. And they really pushed me into like business school because it would just give me opportunities. And I was always just like super self conscious and like, never really knew what I wanted until much later in life. And so I just went down that path. And like, let me tell you, I loved university because I partied a lot. And I really didn’t go to class, except for my psychology classes. I remember I took Psych 101 In the first year, and it was actually my favorite subject. And then from that point forward, I always took psych electives. They were like my favorite, and ended up minoring in psychology with my major in marketing. And I loved it. And I actually like loved how that blended into marketing because I really focused on like market research and marketing psychology and things like that. But part of me always was like, Why didn’t I just go down the psych route? Like what was really calling to me, then why didn’t I do that, but it was because A, I was like, way too busy party. B, I really just like, I just didn’t have a strong head on my shoulders, like I kind of just like what my parents wanted me to do. And it was always in the back of my mind. And obviously, like, back when I was 3132, when I became a nutritionist, like I knew that I wanted to get into some sort of helping profession. And I had looked into programs, Master’s counseling programs. And I think every time I looked, it was like too much of a time commitment, too much of a financial commitment. And I just didn’t think it was going to work for me, but it was always in the back of my mind. And I love what I do. Like I love coaching, I love helping people I love like helping people with their mental health. And I’ve been doing this work since 2014, exclusively around body image. And I love talking about what I do, I do, and I love the work I do. I love meeting with clients. It’s extremely gratifying, and I’m ready to learn more, I’m ready to take things deeper, I’m ready to explore different pieces of the puzzle with clients, I’m really keen to learn new modalities, and be able to work with people around some of the trauma that leads to the struggles I see with self worth and body image and just really be able to expand my scope of practice. I’m particularly interested and how things like anxiety intersect with body image struggles and eating disorders. love helping people who are more like 40 Plus with these things, because I think that aging adds a whole other element to it. And I’m also just open to seeing where things take me, I found out about this program through Dawn Sarah, who’s a coach, she’s been on the podcast before she’s a counselor and BC now she had she went through the program herself. And it’s mostly online. So it’s not like I have to show up for a particular class time at a certain time on a certain day, which really works for my schedule. Because if my son is home sick from school, I can’t I have to be home here with him. And so that’s why going to like a program where I have to show up from like eight to 12, every Wednesday and Friday. Like that’s just not going to work for my life. So finding this was like, it just was like, Oh, this is meant to be like I can actually do this. And then there’s also an in person component to but it’s kind of like these four day intensives which I can make work. It was a big decision for me though, because I love everything I do, like everything’s great. So it’s kind of like why rock the boat? Like why change if everything’s really good as well, my age certainly came up when I thought about this. It’s like, Am I too old? I’m going to be 45 this year, is this really worth the expense at this point in my life? I’m going to be like 48 When I’ve done this program, am I going to be able to manage all of this? What’s going to happen when I get hot flashes? So a question that I always come back to when I’m making big decisions is this what will I regret five years from now? If I don’t do this? Will I regret it? And that is the question that my husband and I used to decide if we were going to have tried to have a child because after over a decade of being together, like we were dead set on never having a kid and then all of a sudden one day I just woke up and was like, there was something in my body that was like, I want to have a family. And it was really shocking for both of us. But that’s a story for another day. But anyways, whenever it comes to like making a big decision, and I always ask myself, you know, in five years from now, what am I going to regret? Am I ever gonna gonna regret if I don’t try this and my strong gut reaction was like, yes, and just do this. And I’m just super excited to learn and I don’t feel old at all. So that’s not really an excuse. That would that excuse was easy to kind of like bat away like a little annoying fly. Because in my brain, I still feel like I’m like 30 years old, like my energy is really good, especially after having my uterus taken out not being in pain anymore. Like my health is in really, really good place. My mental health is in a really, really good place. And so I can manage it. But something does have to give because I’m also losing some childcare because my son is starting school, school days are shorter than daycare days. And after school programs here have like a two year waitlist. So I have to get something has to give. And so right now, absolutely nothing is changing as it relates to how I work with clients. So my you on fire group program, it’s going to remain exactly the same. My body image coach certification program is going to remain exactly the same. The only thing that’s going to change I think is actually they’re just Gonna get better because I’m going to have no more stuff. I’m gonna have more new modalities I’m gonna have like different perspective. So I actually just think things are gonna get better. But nothing’s changing in terms of operating those things and how I work with clients. What I’m going to do with this in the future, I’m not really sure, but I do part of me really wants to have something that’s like a little bit more local, and while maintaining parts of this business that I love, but something has to give. And what I’m doing is less podcast episodes. I know don’t run yourself over with a car. I know it’s upsetting, but we’ll get through it. Last year I did 37 episodes. It’s the most I’ve ever done in a year. And let me tell you, it was so much work, I wanted to pull my hair out. It’s so much pressure having a podcast is like, it just feels like fun and easy until you actually have one and you’re like,

oh shit, this is really this is like so much work. So Shonda Rhimes talks about making Grey’s Anatomy in her book, the year of Yes, which I read, like I don’t even know when it first came out. Many years ago, she talks about how making Grey’s Anatomy was like laying down the track for a high speed train, like you knew this train was coming, and you just had to lay down the track every week, otherwise, it was just gonna crash and fly off the track. And that’s what it feels like to have a podcast. It’s like once you get it going, then it’s like, well, now I gotta make another episode in another episode, and you got to keep laying the track. And it’s a lot of work. And I have a ton of support. So I have a great podcast editor, shout out, as well as my virtual assistant also shout out to Julia. And so rather than release, half assed episodes, like to try to just keep quantity up, I’m going to focus more on quality. And this year, I’ll be dropping the episodes to bi weekly episodes instead of three per month. So probably going to produce about 2122 new episodes this year, instead of 37. And they’ll still be a good mix of body image series episodes. As well as some guest interviews, obviously, there’s going to be less guest interviews. But the guests that I do want on the show, I want the topic to be really targeted towards specific issues that you’ve expressed that you have. And that’s what leads me to the second part of this, which is the survey results. Last summer I sent out and also right now, last summer with God this summer, like literally a month ago, I sent out a survey where I asked questions about you and what content you want more of. And I just want to highlight a couple of the things that came out of that. So number 170 5% of you that filled out the survey are 40 Plus, and that was split pretty evenly between like 40 to 50 years old and 50 plus, and I suspected this was the case, because the demographic of my you unfair coaching program is I would say 75% Who are 40 Plus, and I still do get some millennials and I guess Millennials would be like in their 30s. But I was I wasn’t like totally surprised at the sheer amount, but it just validated I was like, Oh, wow, like I really am speaking to people who are mostly 40 plus. And that helped to reassure me that more content related to aging, and how that intersects with body image is definitely needed. When I asked about what your biggest struggles were, you said healing my relationship with my body, healing my relationship with food and feeling like I have low self esteem or self worth. So great to know that I’m talking to the right subjects. And then when I asked what topics you want more of you said body image series mythbusting on nutrition and health and topics that speak to aging, this is really helpful for me because I’m going to try to tailor the topics to those things for this season of the podcast. And when I asked what topics do you want to see me cover? This one was a little harder to summarize. But I would say some of the key themes were aging, and dealing with body changes as well as what to do when other people in your life still diet. So that’s what we’re going to try to focus on this year. And thank you for being here with me for this very special announcement. As I said, it really doesn’t change much, except for just some less podcast episodes, but I’m hoping that I can really make them super quality episodes that will keep you subscribing. If you’re newer around here and you’re like What the hell are you talking about? Check out my body image series. That’s a really great place to start. You can find those episodes at summer innanen.com forward slash body image series, as well. You can hear my story Episode 174 parts one and two. You can also check out some of the most listened to episodes from the past season of the podcast. Those were episode 255 with IV Felicia, which is all about navigating body image when you’re a highly sensitive person, Episode 257 With Gillian McCollum and Tamsin broster which is all about what to do when you steal We’ll have the diet mentality. And finally, Episode 271 with Aubrey Gordon all about changing beliefs around fatness. Those were just the ones with the highest downloads at this point in time. But that’s always a changing number, I wanted to call them out because they’re great episodes to go back and listen to if you’re looking for some good content, or if you’re newer here, if you are looking for some support with your own body image, definitely check out my group program you on fire, it gives you a step by step way of building up your sense of self worth beyond your gene size. With personalized coaching for me, as well as an incredible group dynamic, you can get all the details by going to summer innanen.com forward slash you on fire. And if you are a professional, or a provider or listening to this episode, and you work with people who may also have body image struggles, definitely check out our body image coach certification program that I run with Danny, I’m a pancake Adams, you can listen to episode 269, where some of the past students share their experiences. You can find out more about that program by going to body image Coach certification.com. We have some really cool updates coming for that program this year. So check that out. And again, if you are a provider, make sure you’re on my email list for providers. You can do that by going to summer innanen.com forward slash roadmap. And that will take you there. All right, that’s a wrap on this episode. I mentioned a lot of different links. So to get all the links mentioned in this episode, go to summer innanen.com forward slash 278. Thank you so much for being here. I am so grateful to have you back here for another season of this podcast. I hope you enjoy it. I’m super excited about the upcoming body image series episodes that I’ve put together for you. And let’s do this. Thank you for being here. I’ll talk to you next time rock on.

I’m Summer Innanen. And I want to thank you for listening today.

You can follow me on Instagram and Facebook at summer Innanen. And if you haven’t yet, go to Apple podcasts search eat the rules and subscribe rate and review this show. I would be so grateful. Until next time, rock on.