In this educational episode, host Jill welcomes Amparo Penny, an intuitive eating and mindset coach. She talks about her journey from being a licensed therapist for over 16 years to venturing into coaching. Amparo shares the concept of mindful eating and how it helps people find balance and enjoy food without guilt or shame.
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Transcript
Hi and welcome to.
The You World Order Showcase Podcast today we have with us and Amparo Penny
She is.
An intuitive eating and mindset coach.
Also known as Vana Black, talking about before the show goes in there because she's really good at props and I realize this in the podcast, but she has like wands and Pom Poms and the rainbow flag that she was waving around and.
I am.
You were just having a great old time, but I wanted to bring her on the show and have her tell you all about.
How she helps people get on track with their.
Health in a.
In a kind of unique and interesting manner.
So welcome to the show Amparo and tell us all about what you got going on.
Thank you.
Thanks, Jill.
Well, I love that you find it unique.
So I'm actually in addition to being an intuitive eating coach, I'm also a licensed therapist.
I've been a therapist now for.
I have to check my degrees.
I've been a therapist for for at least I think I renewed my license.
So maybe 16 or 17 years I've been licensed as a therapist. And so I have been a licensed therapist now for 16/17 years. And then I started.
Going into the world of coaching just this past this last year because I realized that so I do a lot of work in eating disorders and trauma, and I also wanted to do a little more of like a deep dive.
Into like intuitive eating kind of work and realized that I couldn't quite do that.
In my therapy practice, because we never, we could never really get to it in terms of like the formal structure of like intuitive eating, because people would always have other things come up which you know obviously happens in therapy so.
You know, whenever I start therapy sessions, I always say, you know what's on your mind today and people would always have other things that would come up like, you know, job stress or marital stress or whatever.
And so I found that with the therapy world, we would always get kind of like sidetracked with other things happening in their lives, which again is totally normal because that's life.
And I realized that if I wanted to do more of like.
Like intuitive eating, you know, eating disorder kind of stuff than I wanted to go more into coaching.
And then I also realized that because I'm a licensed therapist, I'm bound by my state.
So I live in North Carolina, and so I can only as a therapist, see people in the state of North Carolina.
Unless I get licensed someplace else and I wanted to see people outside of North Carolina.
And so the way to do that was to do coaching as well.
So I realized that if I got into the coaching world, then I can see people internationally as opposed to just seeing people in North Carolina.
So this way I can do a little bit of both.
And so I found that kind of merging my clinical world with my coaching world.
It kind of allows me.
It gives me kind.
Of like the ability to see people anywhere and then it gives that client kind of like the best of both worlds because coaches are amazing.
And, you know, coaches don't always have the clinical training that therapists have.
And so I think sometimes cause I've hired coaches before and, you know, they're kind of limited in the knowledge that they have.
And so being a therapist, I can also, I don't do therapy.
In my coaching, let me make sure I say that very carefully.
I always make sure I separate those two words.
Both and.
Yet I bring in, you know, clinical training into my coaching world that I think other coaches who are not clinicians obviously can't bring because they don't have that clinical training.
So even though I don't do therapy and coaching, I still kind of.
You know, slip it in, cause I am always a therapist, so I kind of do both together.
Yeah, you can't unlearn.
Stuff that you already like trained on it just becomes part of who you are and so.
Right.
It does bend over.
Into what you're doing as a coach, as far as your therapy training goes, but it's not.
You're not actually doing training or therapy as a as a coach.
Right.
Yes, yes.
So yeah, let's just focus on the coaching side of this.
Because you talk to people about intuitive eating.
This is not.
To be confused with dieting so.
That's the part that I think is like, so interesting.
So tell me what, what your idea of intuitive eating is how that looks.
OK, I will try and summarize it cause I can talk about this forever.
So the best way I like to describe intuitive eating is so if we think about like dieting so.
Everywhere you hear that people say diets don't work and that is very true.
Diets don't work.
However, that very short sentence tends to leave out a whole lot of information.
And So what they're not saying is that short term restrictive.
Diets do not work, and that obviously makes a lot of sense because if you think about a diet, a diet has a start date and a stop.
Date and so if a person is doing a plan where they're doing something like I'm going to eat, you know, 1500 calories or whatever for three months.
Well, anybody can do that, and if it has a start date and a stop date and I know that there's an end date.
Well, of course I can.
I can hunker down.
And you know, white knuckle it and do what the plan says.
But then when the plan is over, well, what happens?
People tend to revert back to the behavior that they started with, and so they tend to kind of gain the weight back, yada yada, and then they blame the diet.
And then they say, well, diets don't work well again.
That short, restrictive plan does not work because again, it was short term and it was restrictive.
And so that is why we tend to say that diets don't work, and there's a whole lot of like, external tools that go into it, you know, calorie counting, restriction points, all those things kind of like disconnect us from our body.
And we tend to, like, lose the ability to know when we're actually hungry.
And when we're actually full, because we have all of these external tools telling us when we should stop and when we should start eating.
And so again that those are all external tools.
And So what intuitive eating actually does is helps us kind of learn to like reconnect with our own intuition.
And so learning to listen to our internal tools of your internal hunger.
Cues and your internal fullness cues to kind of determine when you're actually hungry and when you're actually full.
And so the.
Easiest example that I have of this is I have a 7 year old and when I first was like trying to understand what intuitive eating was I would watch my kid.
He was like 3 at the time and he took a cupcake like this.
Big Cupcake took three bites out of it.
Put it down and said.
I'm good.
And my husband and I were like.
What is wrong with you?
Finished that cupcake, but he didn't want anymore because he was done with it.
And as a child, his own intuition said I had what I wanted.
I took a few bites.
I'm good.
Well, as a grown up, we were like, no, you have to finish what you've started because that's kind of the way we were told.
And so I realized.
That kids are the natural, intuitive eaters they know when to start and stop, and so like they would say in the intuitive eating book, like a baby when they're either breastfeeding or drinking a bottle.
When a baby is full, it'll turn its head because it like, naturally, innately.
Those I'm done.
And then somewhere along the lines I eat, adults will come in and say, no, you can't be full.
You have to finish your plate.
You have to finish this meal that your grandmother.
And so somewhere along the lines, those children grow up learning.
Well, I have to finish my plate even if I'm not still hungry, we Start learning.
Leave it if I don't want the.
Food that's on the plate.
Right.
Yeah, exactly.
And so we start overwriting those innate messages and we just start eating past fullness or like, you just said, eating even if we don't want it because somebody externally is telling us.
This is what you need to do and so like again the child then develops into the grown up who then is somehow disconnected from their body and so intuitive eating tries to like reconnect us back to the way like my child would eat.
Cupcake, with three bites and go.
That's it, mommy.
And my husband is looking at him like you're crazy.
Finished the cupcake and my kids like.
But I don't want anymore.
And so that's kind.
Of intuitive eating, in a nutshell is like reconnecting back to our innate hunger and fullness cues as opposed to listening to external.
Ohh I think I summarized.
That quickly.
How does that for a summary?
Really great.
And it's really different approach to yeah, to fitness.
I wouldn't even call it weight loss because it's really about finding balance.
In your body I think.
And being.
Being in tune with what your body.
Needs and wants versus what we're.
Programmed to reach for.
Programming can come in a lot of different forms.
Like, you know, potato chips are a great.
Example can't just eat one.
Which is the marketing slogan for lays?
It's true, but they're designed that way.
They're designed to override that intuition.
The intuitive eating mechanism that we all have to say.
No, you can still eat more.
No, you can eat the whole bag and you'll still want more, even though you're.
It adds nothing to the nutritional.
Profile of your intake of.
All right.
Yeah, your body is just tricked into eating a whole.
Bunch of it.
Yeah, they call them highly palatable foods, and that's why people think like sugar and things like that are addictive and to an extent they are.
And they also trigger, we call it like the efit, you know or the Last Supper where you're just kind of like, well, I've already opened the bag and I've already.
Eaten half the bag.
We'll EFF it let.
Me just finish.
It and again that kind of like it, it does that black and white kind of thing.
Seeing whereas like if we were to think about like the way my child would eat, he would just probably have a handful and be like that's it.
I'm good somehow, as grown-ups again, that message gets overridden and we're like, well, no, I have to just finish the whole bag because again.
You can't just eat one.
Well, why can't I just eat a handful?
You know, why can't I?
Well, because they're designed to keep you from eating just a handful.
Exactly, yes.
Part of it.
And then the marketing and then the guilt and the shame.
And then there's a whole lot of, like, internalized.
Guilt that goes on to of the shooting and I should be able to have discipline and willpower.
And we go off on these tangents of like, I could just have a couple, but somehow it's become more than just these potato chips.
It's like become this whole.
I have no self-control and then we can spiral into this whole shame spiral and then.
That's how people go on benches like I did for 20 years as I would go back and forth with this binge and restrict cycle.
Of just like.
And the all or nothing philosophy.
Yeah, like that perfection.
And then I opened the bag of chips and.
Well, I've already eaten them.
So let me just finish this and then tomorrow or Monday, I will start fresh and I will be perfect again.
But again, it doesn't have to be perfect.
Let's just go for balance and that's kind of more of what I've been.
Living in the land of his valence, as opposed to all or nothing.
And mindfulness, I think, plays into that a little bit like.
Can mindfully eat a potato chip.
You know where you're like, enjoying the salt of it and the crunch of it.
Maybe let you know part of it melt on.
Your tongue cause.
Actually, that's the perfect segue.
I mean, there's just like.
Into one of the yeah, one of the principles and intuitive eating is the satisfaction factor and they talk about how like again because we've been so disconnected from food, we forgot that we're actually supposed to enjoy it.
And so yeah, they do encourage, like, mindfully eating, because again, you know, we've heard of those like that it takes 20 minutes from your brain to get the message that your stomach is full.
And again, if we were to slow down and mindfully eat, we would probably not.
Be storm eating because we would be actually like enjoying and savoring the food.
And so you mentioned for me to bring up one of my one of my props and I had created a habit tracker and in the habit tracker, they're actually is.
A place in the habit tracker to talk about the hunger and fullness section, as well as there's a notes section to kind of talk about how.
The foods make you feel when you eat them, and so instead of thinking about like calories and.
All of that kind of intake instead thinking about in terms of like how the food makes you feel like, does it make you feel gassy or does it make you feel sluggish?
And kind of making your choices about food based off how it makes your body feel.
So again, it's not that you can't have food like I love like I took my kid to get ice cream yesterday because we wanted to get ice cream and yet I didn't want to have ice cream at 8:00 o'clock.
In the morning, because I knew that that simple sugar would make my sugar crash and I still had other things to do, and so we waited until the afternoon to get ice cream because I didn't really care if my sugar crashed in the afternoon.
And so he and I went and got ice cream, and then we were laughing that both of us were sitting on the couch at like, 430. And we were kind of like dozing off. And we were like, ohh, my Sugar's crashing.
And yet I've taught him that sugar is not bad.
It's just knowing when to eat certain sugar.
So like we have a lot of fruit in our.
Else and if he's wanting something sweet, we're like, great.
Let's have something sweet.
It's 8:00 o'clock in the morning and you have to go to school, for example.
How about having?
Fruit that's more of a complex sugar that'll give you sustainable energy, so you can still have something sweet.
And then maybe in the afternoon you can have a simple sugar like ice cream or whatever and we don't care if your sugar crushes because the day is over and we don't really care if our energy dips.
And so again, I'm trying to teach them that sugar is not bad because.
All food is has a function and can be enjoyed.
It's just knowing when is an effective time of the day to eat it, and so we had ice cream and the closer to the ends of the day.
And yeah, I was falling.
Fleet and we were laughing about it and then we had protein for dinner to make sure we kind of had our get our protein back up and that was our day.
And so again, kind of knowing like we can enjoy food because that's what food is meant to be.
That's the purpose.
And yet.
Just knowing that like there are times of the day where I probably don't want to have ice cream or.
A simple carb I'll probably.
Right.
I'll probably wait till a little later in the day or I probably won't have doughnuts every day.
30 minutes before bed.
Yeah, yeah, all kind of choose.
When is a more effective and I'm not saying better.
I'm using my words on purpose effective time of the day because again, we're not trying to moralize.
We're not saying it's.
Better or worse?
We're just saying when is a more effective time to eat something?
And so like in my little habit tracker, I kind of have a place for people to write like.
Well, I ate this and this made me feel gassy or it made me feel sleepy, and then they can kind of remember, like, oh, maybe I'll.
Have pizza a little later, or if I want more energy, I'll have vegetables instead and then have some a simple carb later.
So again, it's kind of just knowing like.
The effective times to eat certain foods as opposed to, well, I just can't have sugar ever because it's bad.
Well, it's not bad.
It's just knowing.
The effects of times to eat it.
It's using food to.
Feel your body and really that's what you're talking about.
It's using it effectively for the result that you're looking for and.
That's such a unique approach to.
You know.
To fitness because it's a sustainable way to live, it's helping you get in tune with your body and helping your body know what it wants, and listening to your body and then making conscious decisions about the foods that you're choosing to put into your body and what times you're choosing to do it at.
Yeah, exactly.
Because we don't.
I don't want people to cut out things because again, if we're thinking in terms of like, this is the rest of your life because you said it's sustainable and I got all excited when you said sustainable because that's what we're trying to help people.
Instead of like a diet, again that has a start date and a stop date.
We're trying to live the rest of our lives.
Eating whatever and so like having a sustainable plan as opposed to I can only do this for three months.
Well, I'm 46 and I want to eat ice cream and carrot cake and vegetables and all of the other stuff too. I want to do it.
All for the rest of my life as opposed to I can't have this because I call it my inner toddler.
And so like, if I were to tell myself, like, I can't have sugar, well, then of course, that's the one thing I'm gonna want.
Cause again I use my child as an example.
If I'm cleaning his room and I find a toy that he has not played with in three years and I'm about to throw it away.
Mommy, that is the most important toy.
And I'm like, no, it's not.
You haven't even played with it, but all of a sudden that toy is the most important toy.
And grown-ups are just grown up toddlers and so like if you were to tell me in Paro, you can't have sugar.
Well, that's all I want now, because you told me I can't have it.
And so that inner toddler is going to come out and all I'm going to want is sugar.
And so we use the add in approach as opposed to the take away. So instead of taking sugar away, well, let's add in lots of other habits like drinking water and eating vegetables and balancing blood sugar and, you know, movement and all of these things.
In addition to.
And we can balance these things out for the rest of our lives.
So I don't feel deprived.
Therefore, I don't only want sugar because I've balanced it with other habits.
And so again, I had ice cream yesterday.
I didn't obsess about it.
I didn't go on a binge.
I had ice cream and I went on with my life because I can allow that with a lot of other habits for the rest of my life as opposed to, you know, I have to cut it out or do this for a certain period of time, which is not sustainable.
You can.
And you can enjoy it.
You can go and you can.
Have you give all?
We had function yesterday.
Permission to have.
Enjoy the process.
You go to a party and there's.
Pizza or whatever the bad foods are.
Unicorn poop ice cream cause that's what my kid loves is Unicorn poop.
Yeah, yeah.
That's the name 7.
I have to tell my granddaughter about this.
She's a Unicorn, affectionado.
Oh yeah, it's all about unicorns in our house.
So he sees Unicorn poop and he gets all excited.
That's his favorite flavor.
Oh, I love that.
I love that so much.
So what's the one thing that you really want our audience to take away from this conversation today?
Ooh, the word and.
Ah, I know it's so it's so ridiculous the word.
And because this is one of the things like, this is the first thing that I teach my clients to help us get out of black or white thinking so.
Instead of all or nothing or black or white, we use the word and, and so this comes from my therapy practice.
So again, bringing both worlds together so my dialectical behavior training dialectics means holding multiple truths.
At the same time, and so we use the word and as opposed to the word, but because the word but will sever a statement.
So if I were to say, you know.
I really don't feel good in my body, but I still like myself.
You know, I've kind of severed those two statements.
I don't feel good in my body, but I still like myself.
Well, that's not very convincing because of the word, but it kind of severed those two statements.
And instead we use the word and to try to bring together.
Two or more seemingly opposing truths, so I don't really feel good in my body, and this is still my body.
Like that is a what we call a body neutral statement and I use the word and to kind of bring together seemingly opposing truths.
As opposed to like severing that.
And so I help people.
Like, that's one of the first things that I help people with is just go and practice replacing the word.
But with the word and just see what happens.
And I do it myself to practice it and then also to model it.
So like, you know, it's a sunny day, but you know I I have to go to work.
Well, it's a sunny day and.
I have to go to work.
Or my child.
You know you can.
You can be mad at Mommy, but.
You can't hit me.
Well, those are separate.
You can be mad at Mommy and you still can't hit me.
You know, those are combining 2 truths together.
And so just having people like just try to find everyday examples of replacing the word but with the word and.
And just see what happens and they usually will come back and they'll say that it's been pretty amazing just to kind of do that one little change as a way to kind of get them to practice getting out of black or white thinking and kind of finding more of that middle path.
And so like using it with, you know food or with emotions or any of that.
Instead of looking at food as good or bad, we look at food just as a neutral thing because we kind of use that and as like a middle, a middle ground.
So just that's like one practice that I have people do.
It's like a quick and dirty example.
Like after their first session, I'm like OK, go practice.
Just saying the word.
And just see how it feels.
And it's actually pretty amazing.
Yeah, that's kind of fun.
Just you have kind of like just blown my mind, to be honest.
I'm ohh.
In practice today, starting today and see how things go, and I'll let you know because we're friends on the network.
Yes, and the fun.
Thing is that when people do it, they usually get.
A POM when they.
When they when they'll say the word, you know they'll be talking in the in session and they'll say.
Something they'll go but and they'll go and.
And then we'll start clapping and I'll get on my palm pom, cause I'll be all excited cause they're trying it and it is just something unique and neat, just to see how you can kind of merge, you know, two truths as opposed to severing them.
And again, you can use it.
In multiple examples and so my clients will just catch me just saying and all the time because I'm also trying to practice it with myself.
And how can people get in touch with you and get?
Your you have.
Some free offers on your website and that daily tracker that you were holding up with your Vanna Black hands.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So thank you. So I have my website which is just amparo penny.com and I guess you'll have it listed so people can spell my name correctly.
And then on my website I have I have an eBook that I wrote which is kind of just helping people learn how to start.
Sustainable, healthy habits and I kind of got some of that information from the book Atomic Habits which, like, was really inspiring to me.
So I borrowed some of his information and kind of folded it into.
My intuitive eating stuff and created.
A an eBook on just how to develop some sustainable health habits.
So that's on my website for free.
And I have a couple of other little things like some self-care cards that people can get and then I have for people that wanna really do like a deep dive into it and eating.
And I've got two things.
I've got a the self study course that I wrote, which is a 12 lesson.
Self study course that people can kind of go through on their own time.
That is so there are 10 principles of intuitive eating, and so I took those 10 principles and then kind of added some extra things.
And they're like using the word and also like just kind of helping people understand, like, what do you do afterwards after you kind of do intuitive.
Meeting there's even a section in there of like, what are you going to do with all your free time once your brain isn't so occupied with diet talk?
Because that was one of the questions that my health coaches asked me was.
What are you gonna do when your brain is free of all this diet talk?
And that question scared me because I didn't know what I was going to do with all this free time.
And the answer to that question was I became a health coach because once I emptied out my brain of all of my obsessive thinking.
I was like, well, now I can go help other people.
So that was actually what I did with my free time.
And so I have a 12 lesson self study course and then I have a membership that I created for people.
I wanna learn this this type of information more in a community kind of setting.
So that's something new that I've started that's still kind of getting off the ground with people that want to learn intuitive, eating more in like a group kind of setting.
So there's like a VIP Facebook group and.
You get some of the same information that's in the self study for.
Course just kind of more in a community setting and there'll be opportunities to do like Q&A's with me and monthly challenges and things like that in there.
And then they're little free goodies that come with that.
Like everybody who is in the membership gets a free hard.
Cover copy of the UM Habit Tracker and then people who sign up for the self study course get the.
Habit Tracker in a downloadable options.
So got you know a couple of little things out there and then you know I'm on Instagram where I usually post about, you know, intuitive eating or Michael Jackson stuff.
So you'll find rent or drag Queens like I find I post about those 3.
Topics Michael Jackson, drag Queens meetings those are my three favorite topics, so yeah.
Those are. That's kind.
Of how you can find me.
That's awesome.
You so much for sharing today.
Amparo
It has been our
Pleasure chatting with you.