861 Amber Romaniuk:

They start you as a child and they want you as a lifetime customer. And the marketing caters to kids. At the grocery stores, they’re placing all of the things that a kid would want on the lower aisle, so it’s easy for them to reach. And yeah, they’re literally making food in a lab and testing it for the perfect dopamine high, the perfect pleasure, euphoric moment so that you keep going back for more. And so, if you are an emotional eater,

The more we repeat a pattern, whether it’s a good one or not, we’re wiring a habit in the brain that’s then lighting up around the same time every day or in certain environments where you have associated that environment or that time with eating, even if you’re not hungry.

Most people have a complex emotional relationship with food. Maybe food was used to comfort us when we were toddlers; maybe we got caught in the denial dance of dieting.  Amber Romaniuk is a passionate advocate for understanding the complexities of our relationship with food and body image. She says healthy eating habits are not about willpower or the latest diet, and often about healing emotional triggers shaped early in childhood.

MELINDA

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. This podcast is all about catalyzing an ecosystem where women entrepreneurs mentor, promote, buy from, and invest in each other …Because together we’re stronger, and we all soar higher when we fly together.

Today we meet an inspiring entrepreneur who shares her personal journey of overcoming emotional eating and body image issues. Amber Romaniuk is on a mission to help women overcome the often-vicious circle of overeating, diet, denial, and self-recrimination, and today she shares how these challenges most often stem from early childhood and family dynamics. We dig deep into

the detrimental cycles perpetuated by what she calls “the industrial food complex” and social media and explore the patterns of behavior contributing to this ongoing cycle of burnout, binge-eating, and the pursuit of perfection for so many, particularly high-achieving professional women.

Amber will be here in a moment, and first,

What if you had an app that magically surfaced your ideal podcast listens around what interests and inspires you – without having to lift a finger?  Podopolo is your perfect podcast matchmaker – AI powered recommendations and clip sharing make Podopolo different from all the other podcast apps out there. Podopolo is free in both app stores – and if you have a podcast, take advantage of time-saving ways to easily find new listeners and grow revenue. That’s Podopolo.

If you’ve ever felt trapped in a cycle of binge eating, burnout, and guilt, today’s episode is going to resonate with you.

We talk about breaking free from the perfection mentality, the societal pressures that fuel food addiction, and the importance of self-worth over unrealistic media standards of beauty and body image.

Amber Romaniuk is an Emotional Eating, Digestive and Hormone Expert, with 10 years’ experience helping high achieving women create a level of body confidence, intuition and optimal health through powerful mindset healing, self-care and overcoming self-sabotage with food. Amber overcame her own emotional eating after gaining and losing more than 1000 lbs, spending over $50,000 on binge foods and spending 5 years balancing her hormones, digestion. Now she helps others achieve the biggest healing miracles of Body Freedom™ so they have the confidence and health to create amazing lives.

Today Amber shares her personal journey and expertise so get ready to discover how to heal your relationship with food, build your self-worth, forget quick-fix solutions, and embrace body freedom and self-love.

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Amber Romaniuk

and be sure to download the podcast app Podopolo so we can keep the conversation going after the episode.

Melinda Wittstock:

Amber, welcome to Wings.

Amber Romaniuk:

Thank you so much for having me, Melinda. How are you?

Melinda Wittstock:

I am doing well. Thank you for asking. And we’re in the new year, and everybody’s turned over a new leaf at least for a couple of days on their eating habits and such. But I’m just going to hazard a guess that if you have an emotional eating thing, that’s like an underlying issue and it can’t really be solved by New Year’s resolutions. So tell me, let’s just get into the cause to begin with of what causes so many women in particular to emotionally overeat.

Amber Romaniuk:

Yeah, this is huge. And there’s actually so many causes and there’s so many layers, and I think that’s one of the things that we haven’t been properly educated on is it’s not as cut and dry as willpower and trying a diet and trying to try harder. There are many emotional experiences that we may have gone through from a young age that shape our relationship with food, our confidence, our relationship with our bodies, the way we associate with food. And then as we grow up, we of course continue to build some kind of relationship with food, whether it’s healthy or not.

So I find that most women and 90% of the female population is struggling with some form of emotional relationship with food or body image issues. This is a significant amount of women. So I find there is a void, this lack of self-love, this unworthiness that a woman is feeling, and that void is being created through experiences she’s been through. So for example, for me, when I was five, my first day taking the school bus, I was called fat and ugly and bullied by all of the older boys, and then the whole bus was making fun of me. So that really-

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh my goodness.

Amber Romaniuk:

Made me feel so-

Melinda Wittstock:

At what age?

Amber Romaniuk:

Age five.

Melinda Wittstock:

Age five.

Amber Romaniuk:

Yeah. So that made me very insecure, obviously. And I took on the identity of fat and ugly for the next 20 years of my life, and it was very deeply imprinted in my nervous system. And then I had a very unconscious emotional relationship with food. At the time I was able to eat whatever I wanted whenever I wanted because my mom, who didn’t know any better also had a food addiction and we would eat what we wanted whenever we wanted. And she also used food to compensate because she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis before I was born. And so I think there was a lot of guilt and shame because a lot of activities we couldn’t do because her symptoms would flare up and so I think she tried to compensate with food. So I grew up in a household where whatever I wanted was always available anytime. There was no kind of, it’s about balance and also when you’re insecure in your body and it’s like the deepest desire you have is to lose weight and look good, to be desirable, to have love, et cetera, it’s like this double-edged sword.

And so, I feel like so many women either grew up in a family where there parents were poking at their stomach and calling them fat or telling them they gained weight and putting them on a diet which is so absolutely triggering, or they had a bullying experience or they were pushed into a perfection mentality of having to prove to get attention and love because, yeah, they got B’S or A’s, but the parent’s like, “Oh, you can do better. You can get an A plus.”

And it seems innocent at the time, but these kinds of imprints and being in these kinds of environments do create these unworthy, “I don’t feel good enough.” Perfection, all or nothing mentalities, that then do come into the way we perceive food in our body. And it often just creates this really unhealthy dynamic with food in our bodies. Not to mention a lot of the foods that people are reaching for are really addictive and give us a massive dopamine high. So it makes it even easier to want to go and eat these foods to have a short pleasure response and get a quote-unquote quick break from all the stuff going on in your life. So there’s many layers.

Melinda Wittstock:

Speaking of that, the industrial food complex or whatever we want to call it, I mean, literally there’s a thing called food science where there was actually a lot of research put into making processed food actually addictive, and just even the serving sizes calibrated so you reach for that second bag of something. And so, if you become addicted to sodas as a kid, or I don’t know, potato chips, McDonald’s, I don’t know, whatever it is, it’s really hard to break that habit.

Amber Romaniuk:

And you’re so right. They start you as a child and they want you as a lifetime customer. And the marketing caters to kids. At the grocery stores, they’re placing all of the things that a kid would want on the lower aisle, so it’s easy for them to reach. And yeah, they’re literally making food in a lab and testing it for the perfect dopamine high, the perfect pleasure, euphoric moment so that you keep going back for more. And so, when we have brain chemistry, dopamine highs, and every time we repeat a pattern, this is another big thing. So if you are an emotional eater, a binge eater in the evening like I was, it’s like I wouldn’t even want to binge. But then about 15 minutes before my vulnerable window of food, it’s like this pathway in my brain would light up and be like, “Oh, it’s time for you to binge. It’s time for you to do this.”

And so, the more we repeat a pattern, whether it’s a good one or not, we’re wiring a habit in the brain that’s then lighting up around the same time every day or in certain environments where you have associated that environment or that time with eating, even if you’re not hungry. And so, we have all these things that are going on in the body, in the brain, in the mind that are literally making it so easy to give in and making it feel so difficult to not.

Melinda Wittstock:

Something just clicked for me, because this cycle with emotional eating. So you get into this cycle of shame and unworthiness, and I’m not good enough, and then you’re proving it to yourself all the time because you can’t bust that cycle. And at the same time you have social media and all the Instagram Reels of, “You should look this way and you should be this way.” And so there’s another cycle of shame or all the dopamine hits from the social media algorithms. This is just a perfect, sorry, this is a vicious circle that starts so early with young girls. It’s horrible. So this is a big thing. And then it gets passed down from mothers to daughters too, as you were saying as well. Gosh, it’s a big problem. It is a really big problem. So how do you start breaking that vicious circle? I mean, this is what you do.

Amber Romaniuk:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s a journey. I think the first thing that I always start helping my clients with them that I did when I started healing as well is honestly just admitting that it’s going on. Because I think we can sit in this denial space of, “It’s not a big deal, it’s not that bad, it’s my crutch.” When what’s really happening is there’s a lot of suffering going on, emotionally, mentally, energetically, physically. So just going, “You know what? I think this is something that’s actually an issue and causing me struggle.” And then from there, the first powerful step is building awareness. It’s starting to understand, “Okay, well where did this start and what are my triggers? What’s actually triggering me to go and self-sabotage?” So I started a big list of binge triggers after what I call my low point garbage cannon moment where I always would throw the food in the garbage.

And then one night finished a binge, got some room in my stomach and dug through my garbage and ate the food and just felt absolute shame and embarrassment. And that’s what catapulted me into being like, “I have to figure this out.” And so, I started my list of triggers. And so, after I would binge, I would try to forgive myself as soon as possible, because the longer you hold a grudge, the easier it is to be triggered again. And so I’d be like, “Okay, well what happened the last few days that triggered this massive binge?” Well, I’ve been tired. I had stressful interactions at work. I got on the scale. I didn’t like the number that I saw. I didn’t sleep well. I’m bloated and I didn’t even eat anything bad. And so, what’s the point? I might as well just eat whatever I want.

And so, starting to accumulate this list of triggers and knowing that it’s not just, of course there’s emotional eating and binge triggers, but there’s also other things that will fuel it, like I talked about earlier, the vulnerable time of day that you’re wiring this pathway in the brain, the food and the addictive ingredients in the food, physical symptoms. So if you have adrenal fatigue or adrenal burnout, which is a cortisol stress hormone imbalance where your cortisol is too high or too low, that will trigger increased appetite levels, more irregular blood sugar, more cravings for refined salt, sugar, and carbs. And that becomes an emotional eating trigger. So all of a sudden your hormone issues are fueling binge and emotional eating. When you have gut issues and unhealthy candida gut bacteria, which craves sugar, that can become a trigger because your cravings are through the roof.

So we start to see how there’s physical symptoms fueling binge and emotional eating, emotional mindset. And then of course, the energetic, which is like if you’re a sensitive empath like I was and you go hang out with your friend and they dump all their stuff on you, and then you take it all on because you don’t know how to manage your energy, and now you feel their heaviness and their anger and their sadness, well, that’s not fun when you don’t want to feel your emotions. And so, that can trigger binge and emotional eating. So being aware of your triggers is your first step to taking your power back, because if you don’t know what’s triggering you, how are you going to catch it or shift it?

Melinda Wittstock:

So because this is embedded so early and because there’s so many underlying things, and then with food, unlike alcohol or drugs where you go to rehab and you can figure out a way to just not use it at all. Right?

Amber Romaniuk:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

You can’t not eat.

Amber Romaniuk:

Exactly.

Melinda Wittstock:

So in the order of magnitude of addictions, in a way, food addiction in that sense, it’s much harder. Yeah?

Amber Romaniuk:

It is. And I had a food addiction, and then that was one of the most frustrating things is I can’t just quit eating. I have to eat. And it’s so fascinating because I’ve worked with a lot of women who quit alcohol who start binging on sugar. Alcohol and sugar are only one molecule different. It’s like they quit alcohol, but they didn’t fully address the underlying causes. And so, I think part of it is really understanding that there is a lot that this relationship with food gets to teach us because another thing we haven’t touched on yet is the whole diet industry. And how many of us have dieted and tried all the quick fixes and stuff that doesn’t work? And then you inherit all these diet and food rules and food fears, and that fuels more emotional and binge eating because you’re confused about what to eat because each diet tells you to do something different. So now you have confusion.

You go on Dr. Google and try and figure it out, and there’s a million articles and it’s just information overload. And then maybe you’ve tried something for weight loss and you’ve had short-term success. However, say for example, a diet like keto, which I don’t suggest at all because it’s so restrictive, what happens is you cut out your carbs and you cut out fruit, and you cut out starchy vegetables and all these things, maybe you lose some weight temporarily. But as soon as you think about starting to go back to a more balanced way of eating, you are terrified to eat a carrot, you’re terrified to eat an apple because it’s a carbohydrate, and now you have a fear of weight gain and you have a fear of whole foods.

So the diets and the calorie counting and the points, apps all leave us more disempowered and more out of our power because we’re giving our power away to these external tools that don’t work. And that fuels more of a lack of trust in our ability to have a healthy relationship with food. Healing your relationship with diets is also really important because they will skew our mind sets so much.

Melinda Wittstock:

And so, at what point, just in your kind of entrepreneurial journey, if you will, where you’ve suffered all of this yourself and you’ve figured out, you’ve lost weight, gained weight, lost weight, gained weight, you’ve been in essence your own lab for your own company. At what point in your journey did you say, “Oh my goodness, okay, I know enough now that actually this experience happened for me so I can help other people. What was the spark that turned you entrepreneurial around it?

Amber Romaniuk:

Yeah, so I actually dealt with all of this before I started my business, but essentially when I had my garbage can moment and I was binging out of my garbage because I would eat until I was so full I was sick. I went through a period of binging and purging, and I had a full blown food addiction where I was just obsessing and thinking about food nonstop, whether it was the next diet, trying to control my food, or losing control.

And so, when I started to heal my relationship with food, and I started to build my triggers list, and I started to learn that it refined sugar is 10 times more addictive than cocaine, and start working on my digestion and build a self-care practice with powerful tools to help me feel through my emotions. And I started to, in essence, take my power back with food in my body, other women around me at the retail job I had at the time, and friends and family started to notice that I was more calm. I was more confident, I looked healthier, I was glowing, I was eating differently, and everyone wanted to try my food and try my recipes.

And I was like, “Wow.” I started to open up around how I was just kind of healing binge eating, and every woman I talked to was like, “Oh, I struggled with that.” Or, “I’m struggling with that.” And, “I’m struggling with body image.” And blah, blah, blah. And I was like, “Wow, if I struggled with this to the level that I did, how many other women are out there who are struggling as much as me, more or less, doesn’t matter, but that it is having a significant impact on their life?” And I had gone to one therapy session when I had first started to realize that I had a serious binge eating issue, and unfortunately it was not a good experience, and I poured my heart out for the very first time, got told to just stop going to the store and buying the food and to learn how to love myself.

And I thought I would never want anyone to feel the way that I felt after that experience. And so, knowing that I had the brain of the addict and that I had the mindset of someone who had been through binge eating and that I really wanted to hold a safe nurturing space for women, because this is a very vulnerable thing to go through, that all inspired me to then start my business.

So I had overcome binge eating before I started my business, and I was kind of healing and balancing my digestive system and hormones through the first couple of years of my business, but I just had such a spark and fire and desire inside of me to start working with women one-on-one. And then that expanded from locally to globally supporting women online to having one-on-one coaching programs and then workshops and hosting events and collaborations and starting a podcast. The business started 10 and a half years ago. So it was a blessing what I went through, but obviously at the time it was you’re like, “What is going on? Why am I dealing with this?” But that’s how it all started.

Melinda Wittstock:

So understanding the underlying things. We’ve seen all kinds of products come into the market now. I’m thinking of something, I think it’s called Noom that helps people kind of understand what’s really going on, and I suppose become a lot more conscious. How do you feel about products like that one specifically and others that are addressing this in comparison to say what you’re doing with one-on-ones and trainings and groups and such?

Amber Romaniuk:

Yeah, it’s still a diet and it still, in my opinion, doesn’t work. All these things are quick fixes. It’s still about following a certain food thing. I think that most diet products out there, even if they add in for you to write your food down or to have some kind of conscious awareness, it’s still about making money. It’s still about being part of the multi-trillion dollar industry. And I think there’s so much more deeper work to really do. Obviously, people are going to choose to do what they’re going to do, but I’ve had women do that. I’ve had women try all kinds of where they order the food and it’s sent to them, or they have someone who they see once a week for nutrition counseling, but they’re still stuck in the same place because, in a way, these plans and these products are still a quick fix and people feel more comfortable investing in a quick fix over and over again because there’s a lot of fear and discomfort around doing our deeper work and truly addressing the roots.

I mean, I’ve worked with thousands of women and 9 times out of 10 when I talked to them for the first time and asked them, “Have you ever tried addressing the roots?” And they’re like, “No, I’m afraid.” Or, “No, I don’t know how.” Or, “No, this hasn’t been taught to me.” So they’re like, “I’ve just done diets. I’ve just done plans and quick fixes.” To me, these things keep getting created. And to me, they’re all just a big distraction that is really blocking us from going, “Okay, there is so much more here than what this $10 a month app can give to me.” And I know for some people that’s all they have the means for. And if that’s what you feel called to, go for it.

However, I always say, “What is it costing you financially to keep in the quick fix world? It’s probably costing you hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of dollars or more to stay in this.” I’ve had women who have gone and gotten stomach surgeries to shrink their stomach thinking that would fix it and it didn’t, and spend a ton of money on all kinds of different things, and they’re still stuck in the same place. And it’s because none of these things are addressing the root issues.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. Some of the root issues, there’s what we’re conscious of. You explained, okay, so you remember being bullied as a five-year-old. That’s just outrageous or just the experience with your mom or things like that that we’re conscious of their lived experiences, but we have so many deeper subconscious beliefs. We don’t even know necessarily what our subconscious mind has decided about ourselves. And there’s so much study now that shows basically 95% of our actions are guided by our subconscious mind.

Amber Romaniuk:

Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

So we don’t even know, and this is all formed when we were infants, and so it’s like the world’s being run by toddlers, including ourselves. We don’t even really know without doing that deeper work.

Amber Romaniuk:

For sure. And I think that’s where you may not necessarily know off the bat, like I didn’t. I had zero awareness of my body, my feelings, my emotions, how food was impacting my body or any of this behavior when I first started on the journey. I was learning a hundred percent from scratch. And so I think what happens is people may not pick up right away where these behaviors came from or where they inherited them from or where their people pleasing or perfection tendencies came from. And what happens is we get on the journey is they start to build awareness of, “Oh my gosh, no wonder I’m burnt out and I’m last on my priority list, because I am feeling the need to try and control and fix everything for everyone else, for fear of being abandoned, and I’m exhausted and no wonder I’m feeling triggered to binge all the time.”

So they’re starting to put two and two together as they’re getting on the journey, because I had no idea. I didn’t realize my mom had a food addiction until I healed my relationship with food and would go home and lovingly observe all the hidden empty chocolate bar wrappers in her bathroom cupboards and all the melted chocolate on the doorknobs and her constant need to just be eating all of these things. So a lot of awareness was built after healing the relationship with food for myself. And then obviously with the women that I work with, some of them know right away some particular things that happened, but sometimes it is a newer experience. Maybe something didn’t happen in childhood, but maybe they had a really unexpected traumatic move across the country or a breakup or maybe the last three years really did a number on their mental health and it just food seemed like the thing to go to. So it really depends on the person,

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. Well, there’s this kind of self-medicating aspect of food, which we’ve talked about. Do you think that high-achieving women are a little bit more prone to this in a way? Say, for instance, we’re so in activity and in our heads. For entrepreneurs, professional women, executives, that by the end of the day it’s kind of like, I don’t know, the food is somehow grounding or I don’t know. There’s a whole bunch of different things going on there.

Amber Romaniuk:

I feel like when we’re really busy, we’re really high-achieving, we’re overbooked, all these things. There’s usually, from an emotional standpoint, there is some form of need to prove. Or, “This happened to me. I got hurt. I got broken up with. People didn’t think I would make it. I have to prove myself, so I’m going to do everything I can and get to the place I want to go, but I’m not going to keep my health or my body or any aspect of my inner being and mind while I’m doing this.” So they’re innocently throwing themselves under the bus and then it accumulates and they end up in adrenal burnout. They’re gaining weight like crazy, and they don’t know why. They’re now emotionally eating or binge eating. I think there’s that. I think our energy is very up and out of our body when we’re overwhelmed and overbooked and frazzled and in a chaotic state, and so we think eating is going to ground us.

But when we’re binging and self-sabotaging and hurting our bodies, it does not ground us. It does, in fact, the opposite, and it just lowers our frequency and exhausts us, and then we’re in a more low vibration. And that can trigger other unhealthy behaviors like going and mindlessly spending more money, or trying to get in touch with an ex that’s not good for you, or binge watching TV or mindlessly scrolling social media or other things. Right? So I think energetically, our energy gets so up out of our body that we think food is going to ground us because we’re so busy. And then I think there is this perfection mentality that so many have, and I used to have it as well. And when we get in that perfection mentality, it’s either like I’m all in doing everything to grow, build, and create success, or I’m completely burnt out, drained, and binge-eating, and then feeling the guilt, and then trying to get back on the train of the perfection and success.

And so, I think that there is a lot of unworthiness that is fueling these ways of showing up. And I also think that we haven’t been taught how to establish some kind of balance and keep our bodies and our well-being in mind while building success and growth, but it is inevitable at some point, if you keep ignoring your body and treating your body like a garbage can, you can’t put sand in a Ferrari. At some point, your body is going to yell at you, and we don’t want it to get to that point where you are unwell or to the point where I’ve had some clients that they’re in the hospital and the doctor’s saying, “If you don’t do something to change this, you’re not going to be here next year.” We don’t want it to get to that point.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. Well, it’s true just from a nutrition standpoint as well. First of all, just eating healthy food. But the other thing too is if you look at all the studies about Blue Zones, places in the world, I think like in Italy, and there’s one in Costa Rica, there’s some places where, and in Japan where people easily live to 100. And the one thing that they all have in common is that they’re eating really good food and eating is a social experience. It’s a creative experience where people are joining together and they’re cooking the food together, all with fresh, farm-to-table ingredients.

Amber Romaniuk:

Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

And eating together is a social experience, and then also walk, exercise, and getting out in the fresh air and that kind of thing. That is longevity. And in our American society, which is so geared to this kind of productivity, get it done, hustle, grind. So atomized people, a lot of people eating alone, eating quickly. You see people walking down the street and eating at the same time. It’s just crazy.

Amber Romaniuk:

Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s not good. So all these things just kind of fit together in so many ways. Yeah?

Amber Romaniuk:

And you’re right, most people in North America do not take the time to slow down and eat mindfully and engage in that healthy social interaction. And that plays a huge factor. In a lot of these other blue zones, they don’t have GMOs, they’re not spraying everything with horrible pesticides and things that are also causing us to have immune issues and gut issues and sensitivities. There’s so many ingredients that are banned in many other countries that are not here in North America. So there’s many aspects of it. And the stress. Right? A lot of these places where people are living to 100, even 115, their stress levels are a lot lower. They’re not getting manipulated and brainwashed with the television and all the false marketing. They don’t have access to all this unhealthy food. So of course, naturally they’re going to live a lot longer because mind, body, spirit, there’s a lot more alignments. Right? We’ve been so infiltrated here. I live in Canada. I know you’re in the States, but Canada’s no different. It’s just as bad. Right?

Melinda Wittstock:

What you’re saying about the ingredients and the food and the factory farming and all the pesticides and all the things, it’s truly shocking when you actually get into the research on that. And of course, the impact on overeating becomes kind of obvious because the food lacks nutrition. So your body is actually craving more food because what you’re actually craving are vitamins that you need and the food doesn’t have any. And you can take that argument even further because you think, “Well, is our soil as good as it used to be?” If you eat a tomato that’s grown in your backyard, 100 years ago, it probably had more nutrients in it than it does now.

Amber Romaniuk:

Yes, a hundred percent.

Melinda Wittstock:

So many problems all the way down. So then you got to take all these vitamins and then all that kind of stuff. But I don’t know, I remember being struck as a young woman of why if I went to a fancy restaurant where the portion sizes were really super small, I would feel full with a small amount of food. Whereas if you went to a fast food, you were still hungry even though you ate, or a chain restaurant, or something like that. Is that to do with the nutrition or the experience or both?

Amber Romaniuk:

I think both. But also with any fast food chain, they’re literally putting sugar in the vegetables, even if it’s like a, I don’t know. Here in Canada we’ve had Moxie’s and all these other … I literally asked somebody, I’m like, “What’s in the vegetables?” Because I could feel myself having a dopamine high. And they’re like, “Oh, we put sugar in them because most people’s taste buds are really numb.” They’re loading everything with MSG, which increases your appetite level versus a nice restaurant or a farm to table, locally owned restaurant. They’re actually sourcing all high quality ingredients. They’re making all the sauces and spices and things themselves. They’re not here to make people addicted to their food. They’re here to give people an experience. And so, I think that plays a huge role. Any big fast food chain wants you addicted. It’s all about money. I think being aware of the quality of the food is so important.

There is a nutrition deficiency, a hundred percent. I’ve never, ever, and same with my colleague seeing so many women with thyroid issues because there’s not enough iodine in the soil anymore, and there’s so much inflammation in the body. Vitamin B12, vitamin D, and iron deficiencies, because you’re right, the food is so depleted compared to what it was 20 years ago, 50 years ago. So we’re all walking around with so many deficiencies. And then if you have high stress and adrenal fatigue and you’re fighting with your body and food all the time, your digestive system is also not functioning properly. And even though you take all the vitamins, you’re not going to absorb them properly and you’re just going to end up with expensive pee. So it’s like there’s so many layers to work on shifting here, but it’s a very liberating thing because then you get to connect with your body and start learning about her and becoming attuned. And as you do that, you take your power back and you get to have the best of all the worlds, your health, success, and beyond.

Melinda Wittstock:

And the other aspect of this too is all the programming about body image. I have yet to meet a woman that is satisfied with who she is and the beauty she was born with. Like I say, if you’re brunette, you want to be blonde. If you’re blonde, you want to be brunette. I don’t know. If you’re curvy, you want to be thin. If you’re thin, you want to be curvy. What is that about women? Are we just so brainwashed into that? There’s just no self-acceptance of the diversity and the fact that there’s so many different expressions of beauty?

Amber Romaniuk:

Yeah, I totally agree. We’ve a hundred percent been brainwashed in programmed to pick ourselves apart. And that’s thanks to media, Hollywood, magazines, print, TV, and of course now we have social media and filters, but I was completely brainwashed from a young age finding Hollywood and all the celebrities and singers and music videos, and the magazines don’t tell you that everything is photoshopped. Most of the images and video we see on television are edited frame for frame. I have a colleague who used to work in Hollywood, and she said, “We’re literally editing every frame so every body looks perfect.” And when you have that kind of programming going into your subconscious mind and you’ve seen millions, billions, or trillions of images, not to mention playing with Barbies at a young age, which have the most horrible skewed figure, all of this is getting programmed into our minds.

And then, what happens is we start comparing ourselves and going, “What’s wrong with me? Because I don’t look like that.” And there must be something wrong with me because I’m not that famous, I’m not that wealthy, I’m not getting all the attention. And then of course, we’re sold the quick fix of the diet and the weight loss plan. So also, of course, depending on how our parents treated us, what our environment was like, and the other people around us. But, to me, the biggest contributor to our lack of acceptance and love with our bodies is due to the brainwashing and the programming from the big media complexes. And then, of course, we don’t feel worthy and then we’re distracted and told to tie our worth to the number on the scale, on our clothing size. And all this does is keeps distracting us from taking our power back and filling that void and learning how to love ourselves.

And also it distracts us and takes us away from connecting with the very powerful gift we all have inside of us, which is awareness, discernment, intuition. So the longer we’re fighting with our bodies, the more out of power we stay. So learning to build your self-worth and take your power back with your body and your image is extremely important and valuable because once you do, it doesn’t matter what you see online or what you see on TV, it holds no power over you. And you now can actually build unconditional love and self-acceptance with your body.

I learned to love and accept myself at my heaviest weight. I wasn’t binge-eating anymore, but my hormones were a mess and I was so inflamed, but life was so good and I was so grateful that my body had given me a second chance after all the hell that I had put her through. And it clicked at that time. And once my body felt safe enough, because weight is a protective mechanism, she let go, and I didn’t have to diet, I didn’t have to exercise. I literally rested it off and focused on regulating my hormones. So to me, weight loss is a journey of understanding and looking at the layers rather than continuing to think we have to diet and quick fix and try and alter our body to finally be happy.

Melinda Wittstock:

So in other words, Ozempic isn’t the answer.

Amber Romaniuk:

Oh gosh, it is a danger. I really do not suggest it. It will completely suppress your thyroid and metabolism and set you up for a lot of weight gain once you come off of it and it completely shuts off your hunger hormones. And as soon as you come off of it, you’ll have increased appetite levels. It shuts off your digestion. Women aren’t having proper bowel movements. Their motility is essentially getting paralyzed. So yeah, I do not recommend anything like that.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, it’s a huge industry. I guess, suppose once you’re on something like that, are you just permanently on it? Women end up malnourished, because they’re basically not eating.

Amber Romaniuk:

Oh yeah, totally. And it’s very expensive, I think it’s like 900 USD a week or something. Right? But yeah, you’re so malnourished and then your hair starts falling out and then your deficient in all your vitamins and minerals and so on and so forth. The domino effect just really hits fast and hard with that one.

Melinda Wittstock:

So before we go, just tell me a little bit about how you work with people in your program and how people can get in touch with you. And of course, you’ve got a great podcast as well so tell us about that too.

Amber Romaniuk:

So the way that I work with women is a few different levels. The first is one-on-one support, and I offer a series of different programs longer 12 and six month and shorter to just kind of dive in. But they’re very, very high level and very detailed in the sense of we’re connecting every week or bi-weekly. I do hormone testing with all of my clients because a hundred percent of women have hormone issues that are usually undetected or underlying. We do a lot of mindset and emotional work. I provide a lot of different tools to help heal the relationship with food and body, investigate your weight loss blocks, any symptoms you have that you don’t like, and also work on overcoming the perfection all or nothing, and people pleasing mentalities, which are leaving you last on your priority list while you build your worth.

I do also do some group work and have different things that launch throughout year in a group setting, as well as have a membership and lots of different master class replays and things like that, depending on what people want to get a feel for. So all of that is available on the website at amberapproved.ca. And if you’re not sure what to start with, I do offer a 30 minute body freedom consultation so you can connect and we can talk more about what you want to heal and clear out and what isn’t working for you.

The podcast is the No Sugarcoating Podcast, and it’s available on all podcast apps as well as the website. We have over 450 episodes and we are a top 1% globally rated podcast. And it is so fun to just continue to help women wake up and build awareness and take their power back and start on this healing journey. And then as well, I do have a free emotional eating quiz, so if anyone wants to see if that’s going on for them, they can take that and we’ll give them some podcasts around emotional eating to help them get started on their journey.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, we’ll make sure that all of that is in the show notes. And of course, you’re on my podcast platform Podopolo as well, so check it out there. And Amber, if you want to invite folks to socially interactive so people can comment and also create really short little clips and snippets of this episode to share all around. So invite you to claim your show there as well and engage. And also if we have people listening, they can come on Podopolo and ask you questions and engage with you there. Thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us today.

Amber Romaniuk:

Thank you so much for having me.

Melinda Wittstock:

All right. That was great.