"Food Issues Aren't Just About Food" — Britta's Body Knowing Story

"Food issues aren't just about food. They are about much deeper things."

I knew I had issues around food coming off of my divorce. I had lost a lot of weight from the stress, and even working with a personal trainer for two years, I couldn't get myself to eat enough to gain the muscle I was building toward. If you don't give me bricks, I can't build, my trainer kept telling me. But I couldn't figure out the food piece. There was hidden shame I hadn't admitted to myself, and I didn't want to work on it with anyone.

I came to Chandra because I trusted her. We'd been in coaching school together. I remember saying: I kind of need your help. I don't really know what I'm needing. But here's my symptoms — I can't seem to get myself to eat, and I'm embarrassed about it.

What I'd assumed would happen — that I'd be handed a list of foods I must eat — didn't happen. Pretty much in our first or second session we identified that I wasn't bought into the idea of nourishing my body, and she helped dig down into why. It came from patterns I'd inherited from childhood and a self-rejection. Of course I'm going to starve and not feed my body when I don't love myself. That's something you have to have a very special coach to walk you down that road and make you feel safe enough to see.

"One of the biggest pieces you started teaching me was about body knowing — this deep, intimate relationship with knowing how food feels when you're tasting it, ingesting it, how it's affecting your body afterwards."

The next few months were that work: slowly, gradually introducing me to a new recipe here, what are you noticing here, building up awareness, healing the relationship with my body. I drank bone broth for a month — I took it with me to Burning Man (no easy feat: powders and miso and ghee in containers, finding hot water every morning to combine them). *It was the first time I understood craving from a body-knowing place: this is good for me, I want it.***

By the end of our four-month program I had a completely different relationship with food. I'd gone from I don't even know if I want a body, much less if I want to nourish it to food is a gift that I give my body. It's how I nourish it. And I have the education to know what it wants.

Today I have kitchen confidence. I have my key recipes — Chandra's salad with olive oil, tahini, and balsamic on everything; her bone broth; her homemade chocolate; her cashew butter muffins; buckwheat bread; homemade mayo — and I cook from body knowing rather than from a checklist. My romantic partner and I are now in the kitchen together. We've stopped eating out as much because we feel so much better with what we make ourselves. I used to live bloated. I didn't even know how that felt because it was my norm. Now feeling unbloated is the everyday.

The biggest reason I'd recommend Chandra: she gets to the root. She didn't rush me into checklists. She held space for the emotional work that food issues actually are — and then gave me the recipes and the tools so I could keep doing it for myself.

"There are a lot of coaches who'll give you tips and actions. Chandra finds the deeper things, asks the deeper whys, and does the deeper work. I use the things she taught me every single day."

— Britta

Earlier reflection · 2020

Before our 2024 program together, Britta shared this earlier reflection on coaching with Chandra:

Chandra is a one-of-a-kind coach. You don't find coaches like her everywhere. Coaching can be amazing, but for me, so much of it comes down to the coach being able to see my stuff and help me get to those life-changing aha moments without just handing it to me. I always make a deeper connection when I come to the realizations through questions and inquiry. Not every coach can do that.

You have to find someone who has done the personal work on themselves and is now able to hold space for others. That's the caliber of a coach that Chandra is. From the moment you start working with her, you start to see your life and your interactions differently. She asks insightful questions that take you deeper into what's really going on, and she helps you make the connections for yourself. She sees the entire picture, not just what you're dealing with at the moment, and coaches you for a whole body/mind/soul perspective.

I have had key moments in my life where Chandra has coached me and it ended up changing everything for me going forward. She is my go-to coach when I want the best.