Podcasts about in susan

On today's show, Jack is attacked by a demon! Susan is time traveling - and meets someone she knows now. What does this all mean? I am writing this after the show aired and find it interesting that we featured dreams about being attacked on September 11th. Hmmm. Interesting. Yes these attacks are a little different. They are attacks on the dreamer's  sovereignty.   Register for our upcoming 3-Day Free Dream Summit here. https://www.dream-analysis.com/free   If you want your dream analyzed on our show, you can submit it at https://www.dream-analysis.com/podcast   And when you do submit a dream that I use on my show, you get a bonus private call with me to talk about it.   Dream: Facing the demon Jack discovers a creature in his house. This is a classic dream that tells him he has been infiltrated. I share the background of how this happened him on the show.   Dream: Tapping out Jack's nightmares continue due to being infiltrated. In this one, the infiltrator tries to choke him.   Dream: Time Travelling Susan time travels but meets someone she knows today. The dream is trying to reconnect her with two of her gifts.   Dream: Searching for something in a fancy school In Susan's second dream she is still searching for her gifts.   Show Archives: https://www.dream-analysis.com/podcasts/   Courses: https://www.dream-analysis.com/courses   Join our Free Dream Clinic: https://aislingdreamclinic.com 

Phantom Electric Ghost Interviews: Susan Coelius Keplinger The Art and Science of Storytelling in Marketing: How will AI change everything? Biography Susan is the founder of Force of Nature, a performance marketing and PE shop. Beyond starting stuff, Susan loves to chase wind and waves in Maui, or play with gravity in Olympic Valley, CA where she lives with her hubby Mark, and two Kiddos, Iver and Aysa. About Susan Coelius Keplinger Susan Coelius Keplinger is a tour de force in the realm of performance marketing. She is the founder of Force of Nature, a premier performance marketing and PE firm, laser-focused on transforming businesses through the potent amalgamation of data-driven strategies and compelling storytelling. A performance marketing rockstar at heart, Susan champions the power of data as the critical compass guiding businesses through today's complex marketing landscape. She brings a bold curiosity to her work, delighting in revealing the hidden truths that lie beneath a company's marketing stack. Her adept 'under the covers' diagnostics and strategic insights have empowered numerous organizations to optimize their operations and significantly elevate their performance. Susan's faith in the power of storytelling is the linchpin of her approach, believing that compelling narratives can illuminate data, inspire action, and deeply connect with audiences. Her success stories span globally recognized brands such as Ring, Molekule, and Gibson, where her data-driven methodologies have consistently delivered transformative results. But Susan is much more than her professional achievements. She is a mother of two, Iver and Aysa, and an unapologetic adrenaline enthusiast. When she isn't revolutionizing marketing stacks, you'll find her harnessing the forces of nature in her extreme sports pursuits. Downhill mountain biking, skiing, and kitesurfing are her sports of choice, with her dual residences in Lake Tahoe and Maui providing the perfect playgrounds. Susan's tenacity was evident early on. As a D1 soccer player at Northwestern University, she set a precedent for her unyielding pursuit of excellence. Her dedication culminated in USA Today naming her one of the nation's top college students in 2004. Today, she continues to be recognized as a trailblazer in her field, with the Fortune Most Powerful Women Community honoring her as a top emerging entrepreneur. Prior to Force of Nature, Susan founded Triggit, an ad technology company instrumental in helping industry giants like Booking.com, Home Depot, and Walmart leverage customer data for personalized ad campaigns. Following the successful acquisition of Triggit by Gravity4 in 2015, Susan co-founded Votes For Students, a non-profit organization dedicated to utilizing internet and email marketing for effective Get-out-the-Vote campaigns. In Susan, you find a rare blend of analytical prowess, creative flair, fearless athleticism, and entrepreneurial spirit. She stands as a living testament to the notion that life, like marketing, is a beautiful game of balancing data-driven strategy with a compelling story. Link: http://susanck.com/ Donate to support PEG free artist interviews: PayPalMe link Any contribution is appreciated: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/PhantomElectric?locale.x=en_US Support PEG by checking out our Sponsors: Download and use Newsly for free now from www.newsly.me or from the link in the description, and use promo code “GHOST” and receive a 1-month free premium subscription. The best tool for getting podcast guests:  Podmatch.com https://podmatch.com/signup/phantomelectricghost Subscribe to our Instagram for exclusive content: https://www.instagram.com/expansive_sound_experiments/ Donate to support PEG free artist interviews: Subscribe to our YouTube  https://youtube.com/@phantomelectricghost PEG uses StreamYard.com for our live podcasts https://streamyard.com/pal/c/6290085463457792 --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/phantom-electric/message

Susan Hamilton Meier is a branding expert and career coach who helps women find the through-line of their work history, write a focused, memorable elevator pitch, and design a vision and action plan for the next phase of their journey. An alum of Harvard Business School, the Boston Consulting Group, and 20 years as a Fortune 500 brand strategist, Susan is now on a mission to empower other women to own their stories and unlock their promise. Here's what we covered on the episode: Susan's Background + The Zig-Zag Path  In college, Susan was an art major but shared the story of how she took a leap of faith to join a management consulting firm  Susan left management consulting to run a nonprofit theater for a couple of years, then went back to business school and worked for Boston Consulting Group when she discovered branding, which she found fascinating  12 years ago, Susan started her own company, and about 3 years ago, she started coaching to help people share their brand's story  When Susan was working for different agencies, she typically worked in strategy roles, which she liked but missed the visual communication component  Strategy is really about vision - being able to close your eyes and envision where you are today, look at yourself honestly, and think about where you would like to be  We talk about how important it is to integrate strategy and design, which is one of the reasons Susan wanted to start her own company  In Susan's coaching work, she has a wide variety of clients because her coaching is focused on personal brands On the corporate side of Susan's business, she went from working with consumer goods to healthcare technology The zig-zag path Susan describes is the ever-winding road life leads you down and how more people in the working world are discovering that you can have multiple interests instead of sticking to one specialization and moving in a straight line The benefit of the zig-zag path is that you meet more people, you have more ideas, and you encounter more things, which will make you more innovative  When it comes to making better decisions for what you want to do in the future, Susan's process starts with self-reflection about who you are and what your values are, then they dive into who your audience is, next you write your story, and then you can decide what's next  Susan likes to ask her clients what they got out of working with her, and a lot of them say confidence, which you need to make decisions and get rid of your fears   What to Include in Your Story  Deciding what goes into your story when you've done a lot of different things is based on a little science and a little art - Susan shares that she has a template people start with and how they then ask different questions to dive deeper and get their story  You don't want to tell your whole story in your elevator pitch, but you want to share just enough and hint at what makes you interesting and unique so people ask you questions - Susan says it's also important to be super clear with what you're doing and asking for  There is scientific research that shows that humans take in information first through their eyes  Susan built the tools of her course to be very visual to help people use that side of their brain and says that it has been fun to watch people discover things about themselves through visuals  If people are ready to dive deeper into designing their website or other deliverables, Susan helps them with a style guide  You can work with Susan one on one or in a group, but the 5-week course is where everyone starts  Susan says that she became a Fortune 500 brand strategist by working at big consulting companies and building her network  Check out Susan's website to learn more and get some free resources and connect with her on Instagram    Links mentioned: Susan Meier Studio Website Susan's Free Resources  Connect with Susan on Instagram Connect with Susan on LinkedIn    Like what you heard?  Click here to subscribe + leave a review on iTunes. Click here to download my Sales Page Trello Board Let's connect on Instagram!

In this Soul Health Mentor episode, I had the pleasure of interviewing Susan Batson who co-created a book through her channel with the Divine. In Susan and Eliora's presence, we learn about some tools to shift from fear into the experience of drinking from the well. Eliora is a pen name and pseudonym chosen for the book “Drink from the Well” because it means “God is my Light”. The Divine inspired the book, this interview, and all the work of Susan Batson and Eliora. For the complete show notes visit soulhealthmentor.com

This week, we were honored to bring on a guest we've hoped to have on for years — Susan Cain. In 2013, she released her book Quiet: the Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking.  But today, we brought Susan on to talk about her new book, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole, another masterwork that reached #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and has been praised by Brene Brown, Glennon Doyle, and Adam Grant. This book touched us deeply with its key truth: that somehow, feelings of deep pain and deep joy are often intimately linked. In Susan's words, “Bittersweetness is a tendency to states of long­ing, poignancy, and sorrow; an acute aware­ness of passing time; and a curiously piercing joy at the beauty of the world. It recognizes that light and dark, birth and death—bitter and sweet—are forever paired.”In this conversation with Susan, we talked about how sadness may be the strongest agent available to us for connection to others, how embracing bittersweetness may be the antidote to toxic perfectionism, and how longing is the very essence of faith.Susan's books have been translated into 40 languages, and spent over eight years on The New York Times best seller list. Fast Company magazine has named Susan one of its Most Creative People in Business.Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. Her TED talks on the power of introverts and the hidden power of sad songs and rainy days have been viewed over 40 million times. She is an honors graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law School. She lives in the Hudson River Valley with her husband, two sons and golden doodle, Sophie. You can find out more about Susan and her work at susancain.net.Check out Susan's 30-day “Bittersweet: Practices and Reflections course” at courses.susancain.net.

Do you ever worry that the target audience for your book might be too small? Susan Haibeck, a highly experienced oncology nurse and legal nurse consultant, makes it clear that the question isn't the size of the audience but how much they need the information in the book. Susan is a registered nurse with a master's degree in nursing and a great deal of experience in the area of oncology. Susan is my guest today to talk about the process that she went through writing her book, and it's a medical book geared to a very specific population. In Susan's nursing career, she was involved with cancer nursing since the very beginning of cancer treatment in the 1970s. She felt she had a good background in cancer care with all the subspecialties. And she wanted to share that information with attorneys who are not familiar with cancer cases, because cancer cases were coming her way, and she had to do a lot of explaining of some of the basics of cancer care. As a legal nurse consultant, Susan helps attorneys both as an expert witness and as a consultant. Legal nurse consultants assist attorneys with cases with medical issues. Plaintiff and defense lawyers desperately need the specialized knowledge Susan provides, and her book not only helps them in cases but dramatizes her expertise and wins her clients. Don't miss this informative show of Writing to Get Business Podcast: • How can you most effectively focus on a subject for a book? • Why is the question, “What does my reader need to know” invaluable? • What is the value of speaking with members of your target population before outlining your book? • How can visualizing the ways your target audience can benefit from your book help you write it? • What are the benefits of taking a course on mastering the writing of a book? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome  to Difficult Conversations with Dr. Anthony Orsini.  It  is my deep belief that every critical moment in our lives starts with a difficult conversation.  Good communication is the key to success and the key to any relationship in both business and in our personal lives. Today, I am very excited to have as my guest, Susan Scott, who is one of the leading experts in the field of effective communication, a best-selling author, and the Founder of Fierce, Inc. Her clients include mega companies such as Starbucks, Yahoo, Nestle, and Coca-Cola.  Susan is the author of two hugely successful best-selling books, Fierce Conversations and Fierce Leadership. She is a popular and sought-after Fortune 100 public speaker and renowned leadership development architect.  Known for her bold, practical approach to executive coaching and leadership development, Susan has been challenging people to say the things that are hard to say for over two decades.   Susan tells us all about herself, how she became so passionate about communication.  She shares her story on how she decided to start Fierce, Inc., and write her first book, Fierce Conversations. , She tells us how she wanted these conversations to have something more meaningful and something that connected at a deeper level with people. She explains that the key idea is that the conversation is the relationship, and it's a skill that you can be learned.    She talks about why the most common mistake of communication is misunderstanding.  In Susan's first book, she explains  “beach ball reality”.  She shares an inspiring story of how  Robert Redford starts every meeting.  Susan goes in depth about leadership, and  tells us why a great leader needs both, “smart, plus heart.”  Susan explains when it comes to communication, she believes most people get it, want to learn it,, and often see results right away. Also, find out about Susan's new book coming out next year called, Fierce Love.   If you enjoyed this podcast, please hit follow, and download all the previous episodes to find out more about what we do and how we teach communication. Host: Dr. Anthony OrsiniGuest:Susan ScottFor More Information:The Orsini WayThe Orsini Way-FacebookThe Orsini Way-LinkedinThe Orsini Way-InstagramThe Orsini Way-TwitterIt's All In The Delivery: Improving Healthcare Starting With A Single Conversation by Dr. Anthony OrsiniResources Mentioned:Fierce, Inc.Fierce, Inc Newsletter sign-upFierce, Inc LinkedinFierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time by Susan ScottFierce Leadership: A Bold Alternative to the Worst “Best” Practices of Business Today by Susan Scott

In Susan and Paul Furiga's penultimate episode in this series, Paul reminds us that for many organizations, the overwhelming volume and variety of social media seems to create one of the biggest storytelling roadblocks imaginable. And, it also creates some of the best opportunities even though social media is a double-edged sword. In this episode, guest Paul Furiga answers the question of what comes first, a story or social media. About Susan's Guest: Paul Furiga is the president and chief storyteller at WordWrite, having founded the Pittsburgh-based PR and digital marketing agency nearly 20 years ago in a candy-striped bedroom before growing it into a perennially top-ranked firm. Paul, who was formerly a vice president at Ketchum Public Relations, was honored in 2013 with the Public Relations Society of America Pittsburgh chapter's Hall of Fame Award for his impact in the region. Before that, Paul spent two decades as a journalist, covering it all, from Cincinnati City Hall to Congress and the White House, as well as serving as editor of the Pittsburgh Business Times. As you can imagine, he has some stories to tell.

What happens when the city that barely ever sleeps finds out one morning that it can’t wake up? All the joe has lost its jolt. This is a job for the woman detective who sees all, Harriet Eyeball, Private Eye in “The Coffee Caper,” an all-improvised Noir Radio Drama based on listener suggestions. Tune in as The EDGE troupe members Todd Erler, Cynthia Lair, Susan MacPherson, Chris Soldevilla, Ken Ballenger, John Ellis, and Andrew Shields tackle the case. TODD ERLER Todd is very lucky. He had the good fortune of being trained in the art of improv in the early nineties by some of the Chicagoans who were pioneers in that field. Since then Todd has led two and a half improv groups, taught improv classes, worked with Unexpected Productions in Seattle and now gets to perform with The EDGE. Todd teaches in the amazing Odyssey program for the Bainbridge Island School District. He is also a musician who writes and performs his own music and plays Irish pub tunes locally as one half of the duo Rye and Barley. Sometimes Todd is cast in shows at BPA or with Island Theater's library plays. He even gets to direct a show every now and then. At one time Todd was the artistic director of the Jewel Box Theater in Poulsbo and wrote an improv blog called “Improvmantra.”   CYNTHIA LAIR Cynthia has authored three cookbooks, Feeding the Whole Family (currently in its fourth edition), Feeding the Young Athlete, and the latest – Sourdough on the Rise (admit it, you love bread too), which hit the ground baking in 2019. She’s been a professor at Bastyr University since the movie Pulp Fiction gave us a start (look it up). Find out “How to Cut an Onion” via her Tedx Rainier talk on YouTube. Improv has become her new occupation as she is also a company member and teacher for Unexpected Productions at the Market Theater. She claims, “Doing improv balances real and imaginary life for me. With the real part being what happens on stage.”   SUSAN MACPHERSON Susan started taking Improv classes in the early 1980's as a way to bypass the “Seattle Freeze” (the phenomenon where it is very hard to make friends when new to the city). She improvized her way right past that and went on the be one of the first founding women in Seattle TheatreSports as well as performing with None of The Above, Seattle Improv, and Unexpected Productions for many years before joining The EDGE. For money, she has managed retail stores, had her own line of jewelry for 10 years at Pike Market, been a breakfast chef at an all-treehouse resort owned by the Treehouse Master (Pete Nelson), and finally settled on work she absolutely loves for the last 22 years helping new families as a Postpartum Doula and Certified Baby Sleep Consultant. (Yes, she can get babies to sleep.) Susan is the proud mother of Geo- scientist, Carson, who is going for her Ph.D. in Geo-Hazard Mitigation. In Susan’s non-existent spare time, she can be seen camping in “Primrose”, her 1970-vintage, British caravan.   CHRIS SOLDEVILLA Chris has done Improv in Boston, L.A. as well as here on Bainbridge and teaches improvisors young and old at his acting/improv workshop The Studio Bainbridge. He has appeared on screens big and small and locally in BPA’s productions of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Twelve Angry Men, True West, and The Tempest. He got acclaim for his roles in Swinging Hammer’s American Buffalo and Glengarry Glen Ross. Chris approaches life like he does improv: he makes it up on the spot…and asks complete strangers for suggestions. Online at www.thestudiobainbridge.com.   KEN BALLENGER Ken has been performing in the Seattle area for over 30 years. You may have seen him on stage, in commercials, and if you were alert at a few low budget movies, you may have spotted him. He is one of the founding members of The EDGE. In addition to performing he has taught workshops, practices karate, and, now retired, is enjoying life and carving things with a chain saw.   JOHN KENYON ELLIS John is happy to be back for season 24 of The EDGE. “Thanks Bainbridge for supporting The EDGE for all these years!!” Besides Improv, John has appeared on this stage in Noises Off, Annie, Born Yesterday, Guys and Dolls, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, ‘Art’ and Sylvia. He appeared as Falstaff in Merry Wives at Bloedel, and he most recently played a dream role as Andrey Botvinnick in InD’s production of Walk in the Woods. John was awarded the Island Treasure in 2018 for his years in The EDGE and on stage. “Miss you Frank! ONWARD!”   ANDREW SHIELDS Andrew has been called “a musical genius,” “phenomenal,” “immensely talented,” and “an unending source of irritation.” During his Wonder Bread years Andrew was fortunate to study piano under someone who studied under someone who studied under Liszt who studied under Beethoven who studied under Mozart. Andrew has a BA in Music from Stanford, where he won the Undergraduate Prize in Composition. More recently, he wrote the music, lyrics, and script for the original Reefer Madness: The Musical, as well as music, lyrics, and (with fellow EDGE member John Ellis) script for the musical Harry Tracy: A Bainbridge Bandit. He has music-directed shows at BPA, ACT, Village Theater, Tacoma Actors’ Guild, the Bathhouse Theater, and Second Story Repertory, among others, and played Harold Hill in The Music Man and Tito Merelli in Lend Me a Tenor at BPA. In his spare time Andrew practices medicine and spends time with his phenomenal wife and two immensely talented daughters.

In this episode, we have another intuitive reading with our guest Susan! Susan reached out for guidance in navigating a new relationship after the passing of her husband 3 years ago. We touched on a number of topics including soul life planning and how we use challenges in life for our own growth and development. Our souls plan the major touchstone moments in our lifetime, including the death of a loved one, before we are born. In Susan’s case, both Paul and her souls knew that would probably not be together for an entire lifespan.Souls can support one another even after one has left their physical body. Paul’s spirit shared that he feels he can support Susan better from the other side. Even though no one really leaves before their time, we still experience grief, hurt, and anger and it’s important to honor our feelings. Our deceased loved ones are often nearby to support us in processing the grief surrounding the loss. It is OK to move forward after a loss and to recognize that new adventures, experiences, and relationships will not change or diminish the love that came before. Instead, we can use the love that we experienced with our previous relationships as the springboard for moving forward.Our relationships usually present opportunities for us to grow and evolve. They often serve as a catalyst for uncovering and healing our childhood wounds. Sometimes it’s a chance to accept and meet people where they are. For some people, it may present as an opportunity to put healthy boundaries in place. When listening to intuitive guidance for someone else, see what insights and wisdom resonate for you.

Closing the opportunity gap is a tall order, especially during a pandemic when new challenges have compounded previous difficulties. In this episode, Dr. Wendy Oliver interviews Susan Bearden, Director of Digital Programs for Innovate EDU, to investigate how innovative thinking can move the education system toward some solutions. Wendy and Susan discuss how socioeconomic status contributes to the opportunity gap and the digital divide, and reflect on the ways the pandemic has exacerbated the difference between the haves and have-nots in education. They also discuss what it means to be innovative in the classroom. (Hint: It might not mean what you think.) Susan has been at the forefront of K-12 innovation throughout her career, and you won't want to miss her thoughts. About the host: Dr. Wendy Oliver is a highly qualified Tennessee teacher and administrator who has pioneered digital learning across multiple states and school districts. She has authored digital teaching standards and developed software that allows teachers to self-assess their knowledge of digital instruction. No matter which hat she's wearing, her goal is simple -- to empower learners. Dr. Oliver is currently the Chief Learning Officer for EdisonLearning. Follow Dr. Oliver on Twitter @oliver_dr and learn more about EdisonLearning by visiting https://edisonlearning.com/ About today's guest: Susan Bearden is the Director of Digital Programs for Innovate EDU, a non-profit whose mission is to eliminate the achievement gap by accelerating innovation in standards aligned, next generation learning models and tools that serve, inform, and enhance teaching and learning. In Susan's career as an educator and technologist, she has served as the Chief Innovation Officer for the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), as a Senior Education Fellow in the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Education Technology, and as a Director of Information Technology in a school setting, among other roles. Follow Susan on Twitter @s_bearden

In this gripping 2 part episode of All Fired Up, I explore the shadowy world of "Bright Line Eating", a super extreme diet cult which cherry picks neuroscience to convince people that they are 'food addicts', and then sells one of the world's most restrictive (and expensive) diet regimes to keep people hooked on the dream of achieving 'goal weight'. Bright Line Eating is the lucrative brainchild of neuroscientist Susan Peirce Thompson, a charismatic saleswoman who holds nothing back when it comes to the hard sell. Join me as I ask the question, who IS Susan Peirce Thompson - a food addict who has finally found the answer to her addictions, or someone who is still desperately stuck in her eating disorder? We also speak with neuroscientist Dr Sandra Aamodt, who literally attended the SAME UNIVERSITY as Susan Peirce Thompson, and has also experienced eating and body issues, but found peace through mindful and intuitive eating and body acceptance rather than continuing to white knuckle the revolving door of weight cycling. Dr Aamodt has very different ideas regarding this whole idea of food 'addiction'. Spoiler alert: Food addiction models = Binge Eating Disorder rebranded!  DO NOT MISS this story, it's a ripper! But CW - these 2 episodes have a lot of talk about weight, details of diet rules, and eating disorders, so take care if you think you might be triggered.     Shownotes     Hello listeners! Remember me? I’m back! What a year we’ve had. I am back from a break where I was taking care of life for a while. Now I’m back and angrier than ever. Today’s episode is a two-parter, and we’ll be keeping the energy and the rants going on a regular basis again. Remember the Crappy Awards earlier this year? One of the nominations has been gnawing away at me. This is from Dr Martina Zangger, who sent us a rant about Bright Line Eating, a program by Susan Peirce Thompson. Bright Line Eating is a severely restrictive diet, and a very expensive program. Martina shares with us that she experienced Orthorexia and was at risk of Anorexia while engaging with the program - she was obsessed with every bite of food that passed her lips, and says she became a ‘not very nice person’ while so hangry and feeling superior to other people. That feeling of being superior and special was encouraged within the program. After two years, Martina was able to move away from the program and regain the weight she lost, and that process was so disheartening. However, two years after leaving that program, Martina is so much more at peace with her body. She’s able to find enjoyment in food, and in sharing food with friends and family. Bright Line Eating  is making Susan Peirce Thompson rich and is such an unethical program from a practitioner who should know better.  I’m still simmering with rage over this Crappy nomination. The impact of programs like this is devastating on people’s lives. Martina lost two years of her life and experienced an eating disorder, and her story of recovery needs to be heard. How are programs like this still happening, and being sold at such enormous profit? After I heard Martina’s story, I’ve been neck-deep in Susan Peirce Thompson and Bright Line Eating. It’s more than a diet, it’s more like a cult. There’s a variety of techniques being used in it to sell problematic ideas and encourage eating disordered behaviour in an apparent attempt to free yourself from ‘disordered behaviour’ - a mindfuck of the next level.  So, I’ve been reading and researching and I’m ready to dive into a two part series - this episode is about Bright Line Eating and Susan Peirce Thompson. We’re going to talk about her story, her book, and more broadly talk about the topic of neuroscience as it applies to body weight, and also dive into food addiction models. In the next episode, we’ll talk more with Martina and her experience with the program, and we’ll round out the deep dive with a closer look at the incredible amount of money Bright Line Eating has made. I really need to preface this episode with a trigger warning, a content warning, about numbers and weight. If that’s particularly triggering for you, maybe these two episodes are ones to avoid. Usually we avoid numbers, and in this instance we’re using them as examples of the harm that diet culture can cause, and as examples of inaccuracies.  We’ll be talking with neuroscientist Dr Sandra Aamodt about addiction and regulating body weight. So, the book. I’ve read the whole thing. ‘Bright Line Eating: the Science of Living Happy, Thin and Free” by Susan Peirce Thompson, 2017. To begin with, Susan is a really good storyteller and has a compelling personal story of how she came to this way of living. And that’s the thing with so many of these diet gurus, isn’t it? They’re quite compelling, charismatic, often good writers. Susan is from California and her parents were reformed hippies. She grew up in a house which sounded super ‘healthy’. Her mother was thin and always dieting, and Susan recounts how she was doing diets with her mum when she was 10 years old - “neither of us had weight to lose, it was just about being maximally healthy”. Susan paints herself as a kid who was always interested in food, even addicted, compelled to compulsively eat food. What I get from reading this was that this child grew up in a house with little food choice around, no processed food, quite restrictive. We know from lots of research in this area that kids who grow up in households with little food variety and where ‘bad’ food is banned, those kids are quite likely to grow up as binge-eating adults. And kids who diet early have a higher risk of developing eating disorders. There’s also a genetic component with eating disorders, which makes me wonder about Susan’s mother and her own eating issues.  One thing that stuck out was the vivid descriptions of what restricting her food felt like as a child - powerful, a feeling of being in control. For most of us on a diet, we feel pretty crappy. For some of us, perhaps those with quite a restrictive relationship with food, that experience of restriction is quite elating. They describe that feeling of being in power, being in control, and get hooked on that feeling of not eating. There’s a disturbing description of Susan ‘going off sugar’ at age 12, of feeling empowered. She also related how, even with these feelings of being empowered, she would sneak food and hide food - which she reads as evidence of her ‘addiction’, but I read as being evidence of the severity of her restriction.  By the time Susan was 15, she described herself as ‘overweight’, and feeling ‘enormous’ compared to her thin mum. Again, she unquestioningly accepts that there was something wrong with her body at 15. My non-diet lens tells me that our bodies are changing when we’re 15. It’s perfectly normal to gain weight as you grow, maybe it was just growth? She continued dieting and stumbled into drugs, from ages 14-20, including acid, ecstasy, meth, crack. Quite serious. She talks about the impact on her weight - when you’re on drugs like that, you do reduce your weight. It’s a harrowing story, to be hooked on such terrible drugs for your adolescence. Susan found herself at rock bottom and in a 12 Step program at age 20, and found recovery from drug and alcohol addiction through the 12 Step model. That’s an amazing story! It is not easy to turn your life around like that, and she did it. But in the book, that victory didn’t bring her peace, because her weight increased and she felt terrible about it. She was also still thinking of herself as a food addict, and began attending 12 Step programs for overeating. Episode 30 of All Fired Up is about Overeaters Anonymous - check it out. It looks like Susan did stuff like that for years and years and years without reducing her weight.  It’s clear in the book that Susan is not perceiving herself as someone who has issues with her relationship with food, but as someone with weight to lose who is addicted to food. At times she received diagnoses of Binge Eating Disorder and Bulimia, but she did not receive any eating disorder treatment. In 2003, she joined a more extreme unnamed 12 Step, which I believe may be ‘FA’ or ‘Food Addicts Anonymous’. Like all the other 12 Step programs, they are free support groups to help people who perceive themselves as food addicts - and FA has very strict rules. No sugar, no flour. Three meals a day, absolutely no other food. You have to ‘commit’ your meal plan each night to a buddy, mentor, sponsor in the program for the next day. You weigh out each meal according to a strict meal plan. It’s intense, it’s extreme. There’s a lot of mentorship and buddyship to ‘support’ each other - but I would say it’s more like policing each other, to make sure they don’t eat. Susan was happy about finally losing weight in this strict program.  But she grew to be distressed with the amount of time the program was taking up - about 20 hours a week of planning, talking to mentors and more. She mentions that her husband considered leaving her, and she was annoyed with the lack of science around the food rules in the program. By this point, Susan had gone to university and studied cognitive science and was now a neuroscientist. She decided she was going to write a book and start an online program, combining her knowledge of the brain with the strict program. What she calls ‘bright lines’, I call ‘very strict rules’ or ‘diet prison’.  The ‘online boot camps’ she began offering took off very quickly, and eventually she hired a team and  published her book. The diet in the book is basically the same as the FA diet - but FA is free, and Bright Line Eating is for-profit. Her husband is now the CFO. The bootcamps are very expensive, as are all the add-ons in the program. Every level of support requires payment, and Susan justified charging this much money for the program by saying that it’s not just the FA program, it’s a community and it’s combined with neuroscience, and that her team is going ‘cutting edge research in the field’. So, not only has she monetised a popular 12 Step program, but she’s using ‘neuroscience’ and the cache of her PhD to help her ideas gain cred.  Susan talks a lot about the brain, and seems to understand that body weight is tightly controlled by our brain (particularly the hypothalamus) and understands that only a small percentage of dieters keep weight off long term. She understands that the hypothalamus is like a thermostat that controls body weight, and it’s out of our conscious control. So, she pays lip service to that, and then spends the rest of the book talking about how her neuroscience tips will fix that - as if it’s broken.  What’s being missed here? The science that shows us changes in body weight are countered by these established processes in our brain. She never mentions this - the ‘defended weight range’ - which is pretty fundamental science about how our brains defend body weight. In her whole book, she never mentions it. In a minute we’ll talk more with Dr Aamodt about that. Susan does talk a lot about leptin regulating our body weight. Leptin is a  hormone stored in fat cells, and as fat cells get larger they secrete leptin which tells our brain that we’re comfortable, we’re at the right weight, we don’t need to seek out more food. Susan claims that people in larger bodies have too much leptin that isn’t getting to our brains to tell us to stop eating - she says that larger bodied people are ‘leptin resistant’ and our brains think we’re starving and tell us to eat more. She claims that the cause of leptin resistance is insulin resistance, which is caused directly by processed food. Very sweeping generalisations - in essence she is saying that larger people are insatiably eating because leptin is being blocked by our brainstem, which causes us to mindlessly eat processed food all day. So basically, we are all ‘leptin resistant’ humans, mindless processed food eating machines. I’ve got some issues! Not all large people are insulin resistant. Insulin resistance is impacted by an enormous range of factors - genetic, environmental and social. It’s incredibly simplistic to say it’s just due to processed food. For Susan, anyone who is larger is by definition sick or deficient. She continually refers to the ‘right size body’, which is your ‘thin’ body. A complete disregard for body diversity, and lack of data to back up her claims about leptin. She’s also left out the impact of weight loss dieting on leptin. When we try and diet and lose weight, our leptin levels drop. This drop stimulates a huge increase in our appetite and interest in food. So, although she’s concentrating on this idea that larger people are leptin resistant, people may instead have lower leptin levels due to dieting and that’s what is telling our brains that we’re starving. So, leptin drops and interest in food is very well documented in neuroscience - because it’s a very primitive and important danger signal to the brain.  Let’s not forget Susan’s target audience of middle-aged women, who likely have dieted many times before and may have lower leptin levels due to this. She knows this. She even mentions the Biggest Loser study which notes how damaged people’s metabolisms were from strict dieting. She says that during the ‘weight loss’ phase of her bootcamp, your metabolism will slow down something like 80-90%, but in the next breath says that there’s no evidence that this will continue to happen - “we’ve never seen evidence of this in Bright Line Eating, there is no reason for alarm”. This really annoyed me. She has no evidence of it because she’s done no research on it. Simply because you don’t look for harm doesn’t mean there’s no harm.  Another claim from the book is that you can choose your goal weight based on the lowest weight you’ve ever been, and she pretty much guarantees you can reach it. This flies in the face of weight science and our understanding of all the factors outside of our control. There’s no evidence to say that Bright Line Eating is any different from any other weight loss program. Talking about cravings - Susan describes them as a “brain-based bingeing mechanism”, located in the nucleus accumbens which has become ‘overstimulated’ by the plentiful food in our current environment. She uses her own experience as a drug addict to paint this vivid picture, describing her need for higher doses of drugs to get the same high. That is tolerance - it’s well documented in addiction literature, especially for opiate receptors. Sarah says food behaves in the same way - flour and sugar in particular are acting in the same way as heroin in our brain. She doesn't have very much data to support this idea that flour and sugar behave like a drug. She mentions rat studies to back up some of her sugar claims, but even she admits there’s nothing in the research to show flour is addictive. Food addiction was excluded from the category “substance related and addictive disorders” in the DSM-V, due to lack of evidence. We’ll hear more from neuroscientist Dr Aamodt on this. One of the ways Susan is trying to convince us that sugar and flour are toxic poisons is pretty weird. She asks us to google images of flour, sugar and heroin and look at how similar they are. For the record - things that look like drugs are not necessarily drugs. In her view, processing things is what makes them drugs. In Susan’s view, the way sugar is processed makes it a more toxic drug. What about the way we process mint tea? Dried chillies? I think that this Bright Line plan will keep people in a state of deprivation and restriction, which increases those feelings of addiction. The longer we’re deprived, the stronger our desire will become for the forbidden thing. We know that if people are full when they’re doing an experiment where they’re exposed to food stimuli, their reward centres are less activated. When you think about it, you’re never going to be full on Bright Line Eating and you’re going to feel like an addict. And if you then go to a bootcamp or on one of the forums, it’s going to feel more real. Another bugbear - she repeatedly scares people by referring to food in this book as ‘drugs’, ‘toxins’, ‘poisons’. But then later she says it’s fine for children to eat them, because they’re ‘young enough to burn off the calories’. What? This is a woman who is desperately attached to thinness as a measure of self-worth.  If she really believes sugar and flour were toxic poisons, why is she recommending them to children? The rules she’s lifted from FA are full on, and she’s using neuroscience-talk to give them a sense of validation.  “It takes some willpower to set up and then little to none when it becomes automatic”. Susan has science-washed extreme deprivation and disguised it as normal.  Susan likens the automatic level of food behaviours to brushing your teeth - but our bodies and brains aren’t hard-wired to desire tooth-brushing as a survival mechanism, and feel under threat when we haven’t brushed out teeth in a while. Susan knows this. She wouldn’t have to set up such extensive support systems if permanent restriction truly was automatic. Introducing Dr Aamodt, who wrote the book “Why Diets Make Us Fat: The Unintended Consequences of Our Obsession with Weight Loss”. She also has a much-watched Ted Talk about why she stopped dieting and switched to mindful eating, which has been watched by 4.5 million people. Before she was an author, Dr Aamodt was Editor-In--Chief of Nature Neuroscience, a leading scientific journal in the field of brain research. Dr Aamodt was pulled into neuroscience due to personal experience -  as a teenager she remembers her mother commenting that she was “eating like a fat person”. She was not at a higher weight at the time, and looks back at photos of that time and thinks “what was mum doing?”. Dr Aamodt began making complicated food rules for herself, like not being allowed to open the refrigerator herself. It was almost like that comment unlocked disordered eating for her. Sandra then spent about 30 years cycling through diets, and while she never met the definition for an eating disorder she veered very close. Sandra vividly remembers how difficult it was to force herself to move away from dieting. In her early 30’s, Sandra was exposed to some feminist writings about dieting which seemed to unlock some things she’d kind of known for years but hadn’t been paying attention to, such as weight being neurologically controlled. She hadn’t connected the dots that her own body would behave that way. We’re biological animals with physiological regulation, but we’re also social animals living in culture where we’re expected to look and eat a certain way. It’s as if one day someone said to Sandra, “you don’t have to do that”. A blog Sandra credits with some of these early moments of unlearning is ‘Shapely Prose’. The biggest advantage of not dieting for Sandra turned out to be psychological, not physical - the amount of mental space that weight and eating were taking up in her brain turned out to be unbelievable when it stopped. She describes it as like having ringing in your ears for your entire life, then one day someone turns the ringing off. In Susan’s experience, you can’t just tell people ‘don’t diet’ - you have to tell them what to do instead. The message of ‘don’t control your weight’ is too uncomfortable.  Sandra came across mindful eating, which gave some structure to make that transition away from dieting. Sandra initially didn’t know when she was hungry - how could she, after all those years of strictly regulating herself?  There’s a lot of psychological research showing that people who diet frequently are not good at picking up interoception signals from their bodies - such as feeling your heart beating. But even after many years of ignoring your body, you can reconnect and hear those signals again. Sandra is much better at it than she used to be. Unlearning takes time! All those neuroplastic changes can be reversed, if you take the time and energy to do it. For Sandra, moving from dieting to not dieting was a huge upgrade. What is the ‘set point’? Scientists call it the ‘defended range’ which Sandra says is a better term. It’s a small range of weight where your body is comfortable. When you’re within your defended range, weight works the way that random people on the internet think that it works all the time. You can make your lifestyle changes and nudge it a little up or down. It’s the range where your body and your brain are not fighting you. The body is comfortable. Once you get outside that range, in either direction, this is where the brain says ‘this is not right, we’re not regulating properly, we need to fix this’. And this is where calories in, calories out becomes unreliable and the way you process food starts to change in dramatic ways. Metabolism changes to try and get you back into that defended range.  It’s normal to be more hungry when you’re not getting enough food! It does seem as though the responses are asymmetrical - that the body’s compensatory mechanisms become more intense over time if you’re under your defended range, but will become less intense over time if you’re above your defended range. So, your brain is much more relaxed with being at a higher weight than being under your defended range. From an evolutionary perspective, starving is really serious and you should never take it lightly.  How do we know our defended range? It’s genetic to begin with - there are strong genetic influences on it. A number of life experiences can affect it, for instance people who didn’t get enough sleep as children generally have a higher defended range as adults. Also, children who had a lot of stress and/or trauma in their lives have a higher defended range as adults.  If your childhood environment is scary, unpredictable, like something bad will happen at any time - there’s a strong evolutionary argument that it would be okay for your body to store extra energy for future dangerous times. The body makes sense! Your body does its best to survive. There’s a genetic link as well in who is susceptible to constantly being invited to ignore their bodies, and whose bodies have such strong hunger and fullness signals that they seem to be completely immune to those kinds of external messaging.  And then dieting itself - attempting to get under your ‘defended range’. The brain desires that we stay within that defended range and functions 24/7 without a break - and we try to combat this with willpower, which we cannot do 24/7. We can do a lot of these things for a while, but at some point it gets to be like holding your breath.  The food addiction model - the idea that if we remove certain foods from our diet we can permanently change our set point, our weight, and our brains will relax and finally do what diet culture says they should do. What does Sandra think about that? Sandra thinks the food addiction model is basically a rebranding of Binge Eating Disorder. The restriction itself is what produces the sense of being ‘out of control’. The easiest way to see that is in experiments on rodents, who aren’t bombarded with media messages telling them their bodies are unacceptable.  Inducing Binge Eating Disorder in rats is actually done quite reliably - rats are starved to about 70-80% of their starting weight, then given high sugar foods. The rats will eat past fullness - they will ‘stuff’ themselves. If you make this a cycle and repeat several times, you can get rats to the point where they will binge on regular boring rat chow. They don’t even require the food to taste good to overeat it. That sounds familiar, right? We are those rats. We often miss the deprivation with Binge Eating Disorder and focus only on the eating. There are also changes in the brain’s reward system that are associated with that behaviour, but that doesn’t immediately jump out at Sandra as being that the solution is to restrict what we eat. If the restriction causes the disorder, it probably isn’t also the cure. If the rats weren’t starved, would they have this response to high sugar food? No. Rats who aren’t starved and are presented with novel foods will eat until full and then stop. These rats are not trying to diet, they’re not struggling with mixed cultural messages - they’re just having a straightforward biological response to a stimulus that suggests that maybe you should put away some reserves for the future because every so often, somebody comes and takes your food away. It’s quite a simple, elegant, neurobiological response to famine. So, the food addiction model is rebranded deprivation models, or Binge Eating Disorder models. Nobody has come up with evidence that is convincing Sandra that it’s any more than that. The scales that measure food addiction have a lot of overlap with the scales that measure Binge Eating Disorder. A definition of addiction that Sandra likes is ‘when we continue to want things that we do not like” being drawn to repeat behaviours that you don’t actually enjoy. And some people would describe Binge Eating Disorder in that way, but Sandra doesn’t think that implies that the treatment is doing more of what created it in the first place (restriction). Huge thanks to Dr Sandra Aamodt for sharing her experience and  bringing us some logic and more of a whole picture, not just a narrow view. In some ways, Dr Aamodt and Susan Peirce Thompson are quite similar. They both grew up in diet culture, both developed eating issues as a result of trying to control their body weight, and they’re both neuroscientists. However, one has chosen to monetize this in the Bright Line Eating program, and one has chosen to help people find real freedom. The idea of ‘freedom’ in Bright Line Eating is very, very different from the idea of freedom that Dr Aamodt and I (Louise) have. Ours is about laying down our weapons and learning to reconnect.  Next episode we’ll talk with Dr Martina Zangger about her experience with Bright Line Eating, and look at the economic reality of how enormous this machine is. And more dodgy research claims! It’ll be a zinger.  Resources Here's Dr Aamodt's wonderful Ted Talk And her awesome book You can get in touch with Dr Sandra Aamodt at sandra.aamodt@gmail.com and on twitter at @sandra_aamodt

In this gripping 2 part episode of All Fired Up, I explore the shadowy world of "Bright Line Eating", a super extreme diet cult which cherry picks neuroscience to convince people that they are 'food addicts', and then sells one of the world's most restrictive (and expensive) diet regimes to keep people hooked on the dream of achieving 'goal weight'. Bright Line Eating is the lucrative brainchild of neuroscientist Susan Peirce Thompson, a charismatic saleswoman who holds nothing back when it comes to the hard sell. Join me as I ask the question, who IS Susan Peirce Thompson - a food addict who has finally found the answer to her addictions, or someone who is still desperately stuck in her eating disorder? We also speak with neuroscientist Dr Sandra Aamodt, who literally attended the SAME UNIVERSITY as Susan Peirce Thompson, and has also experienced eating and body issues, but found peace through mindful and intuitive eating and body acceptance rather than continuing to white knuckle the revolving door of weight cycling. Dr Aamodt has very different ideas regarding this whole idea of food 'addiction'. Spoiler alert: Food addiction models = Binge Eating Disorder rebranded!  DO NOT MISS this story, it's a ripper! But CW - these 2 episodes have a lot of talk about weight, details of diet rules, and eating disorders, so take care if you think you might be triggered.     Shownotes     Hello listeners! Remember me? I’m back! What a year we’ve had. I am back from a break where I was taking care of life for a while. Now I’m back and angrier than ever. Today’s episode is a two-parter, and we’ll be keeping the energy and the rants going on a regular basis again. Remember the Crappy Awards earlier this year? One of the nominations has been gnawing away at me. This is from Dr Martina Zangger, who sent us a rant about Bright Line Eating, a program by Susan Peirce Thompson. Bright Line Eating is a severely restrictive diet, and a very expensive program. Martina shares with us that she experienced Orthorexia and was at risk of Anorexia while engaging with the program - she was obsessed with every bite of food that passed her lips, and says she became a ‘not very nice person’ while so hangry and feeling superior to other people. That feeling of being superior and special was encouraged within the program. After two years, Martina was able to move away from the program and regain the weight she lost, and that process was so disheartening. However, two years after leaving that program, Martina is so much more at peace with her body. She’s able to find enjoyment in food, and in sharing food with friends and family. Bright Line Eating  is making Susan Peirce Thompson rich and is such an unethical program from a practitioner who should know better.  I’m still simmering with rage over this Crappy nomination. The impact of programs like this is devastating on people’s lives. Martina lost two years of her life and experienced an eating disorder, and her story of recovery needs to be heard. How are programs like this still happening, and being sold at such enormous profit? After I heard Martina’s story, I’ve been neck-deep in Susan Peirce Thompson and Bright Line Eating. It’s more than a diet, it’s more like a cult. There’s a variety of techniques being used in it to sell problematic ideas and encourage eating disordered behaviour in an apparent attempt to free yourself from ‘disordered behaviour’ - a mindfuck of the next level.  So, I’ve been reading and researching and I’m ready to dive into a two part series - this episode is about Bright Line Eating and Susan Peirce Thompson. We’re going to talk about her story, her book, and more broadly talk about the topic of neuroscience as it applies to body weight, and also dive into food addiction models. In the next episode, we’ll talk more with Martina and her experience with the program, and we’ll round out the deep dive with a closer look at the incredible amount of money Bright Line Eating has made. I really need to preface this episode with a trigger warning, a content warning, about numbers and weight. If that’s particularly triggering for you, maybe these two episodes are ones to avoid. Usually we avoid numbers, and in this instance we’re using them as examples of the harm that diet culture can cause, and as examples of inaccuracies.  We’ll be talking with neuroscientist Dr Sandra Aamodt about addiction and regulating body weight. So, the book. I’ve read the whole thing. ‘Bright Line Eating: the Science of Living Happy, Thin and Free” by Susan Peirce Thompson, 2017. To begin with, Susan is a really good storyteller and has a compelling personal story of how she came to this way of living. And that’s the thing with so many of these diet gurus, isn’t it? They’re quite compelling, charismatic, often good writers. Susan is from California and her parents were reformed hippies. She grew up in a house which sounded super ‘healthy’. Her mother was thin and always dieting, and Susan recounts how she was doing diets with her mum when she was 10 years old - “neither of us had weight to lose, it was just about being maximally healthy”. Susan paints herself as a kid who was always interested in food, even addicted, compelled to compulsively eat food. What I get from reading this was that this child grew up in a house with little food choice around, no processed food, quite restrictive. We know from lots of research in this area that kids who grow up in households with little food variety and where ‘bad’ food is banned, those kids are quite likely to grow up as binge-eating adults. And kids who diet early have a higher risk of developing eating disorders. There’s also a genetic component with eating disorders, which makes me wonder about Susan’s mother and her own eating issues.  One thing that stuck out was the vivid descriptions of what restricting her food felt like as a child - powerful, a feeling of being in control. For most of us on a diet, we feel pretty crappy. For some of us, perhaps those with quite a restrictive relationship with food, that experience of restriction is quite elating. They describe that feeling of being in power, being in control, and get hooked on that feeling of not eating. There’s a disturbing description of Susan ‘going off sugar’ at age 12, of feeling empowered. She also related how, even with these feelings of being empowered, she would sneak food and hide food - which she reads as evidence of her ‘addiction’, but I read as being evidence of the severity of her restriction.  By the time Susan was 15, she described herself as ‘overweight’, and feeling ‘enormous’ compared to her thin mum. Again, she unquestioningly accepts that there was something wrong with her body at 15. My non-diet lens tells me that our bodies are changing when we’re 15. It’s perfectly normal to gain weight as you grow, maybe it was just growth? She continued dieting and stumbled into drugs, from ages 14-20, including acid, ecstasy, meth, crack. Quite serious. She talks about the impact on her weight - when you’re on drugs like that, you do reduce your weight. It’s a harrowing story, to be hooked on such terrible drugs for your adolescence. Susan found herself at rock bottom and in a 12 Step program at age 20, and found recovery from drug and alcohol addiction through the 12 Step model. That’s an amazing story! It is not easy to turn your life around like that, and she did it. But in the book, that victory didn’t bring her peace, because her weight increased and she felt terrible about it. She was also still thinking of herself as a food addict, and began attending 12 Step programs for overeating. Episode 30 of All Fired Up is about Overeaters Anonymous - check it out. It looks like Susan did stuff like that for years and years and years without reducing her weight.  It’s clear in the book that Susan is not perceiving herself as someone who has issues with her relationship with food, but as someone with weight to lose who is addicted to food. At times she received diagnoses of Binge Eating Disorder and Bulimia, but she did not receive any eating disorder treatment. In 2003, she joined a more extreme unnamed 12 Step, which I believe may be ‘FA’ or ‘Food Addicts Anonymous’. Like all the other 12 Step programs, they are free support groups to help people who perceive themselves as food addicts - and FA has very strict rules. No sugar, no flour. Three meals a day, absolutely no other food. You have to ‘commit’ your meal plan each night to a buddy, mentor, sponsor in the program for the next day. You weigh out each meal according to a strict meal plan. It’s intense, it’s extreme. There’s a lot of mentorship and buddyship to ‘support’ each other - but I would say it’s more like policing each other, to make sure they don’t eat. Susan was happy about finally losing weight in this strict program.  But she grew to be distressed with the amount of time the program was taking up - about 20 hours a week of planning, talking to mentors and more. She mentions that her husband considered leaving her, and she was annoyed with the lack of science around the food rules in the program. By this point, Susan had gone to university and studied cognitive science and was now a neuroscientist. She decided she was going to write a book and start an online program, combining her knowledge of the brain with the strict program. What she calls ‘bright lines’, I call ‘very strict rules’ or ‘diet prison’.  The ‘online boot camps’ she began offering took off very quickly, and eventually she hired a team and  published her book. The diet in the book is basically the same as the FA diet - but FA is free, and Bright Line Eating is for-profit. Her husband is now the CFO. The bootcamps are very expensive, as are all the add-ons in the program. Every level of support requires payment, and Susan justified charging this much money for the program by saying that it’s not just the FA program, it’s a community and it’s combined with neuroscience, and that her team is going ‘cutting edge research in the field’. So, not only has she monetised a popular 12 Step program, but she’s using ‘neuroscience’ and the cache of her PhD to help her ideas gain cred.  Susan talks a lot about the brain, and seems to understand that body weight is tightly controlled by our brain (particularly the hypothalamus) and understands that only a small percentage of dieters keep weight off long term. She understands that the hypothalamus is like a thermostat that controls body weight, and it’s out of our conscious control. So, she pays lip service to that, and then spends the rest of the book talking about how her neuroscience tips will fix that - as if it’s broken.  What’s being missed here? The science that shows us changes in body weight are countered by these established processes in our brain. She never mentions this - the ‘defended weight range’ - which is pretty fundamental science about how our brains defend body weight. In her whole book, she never mentions it. In a minute we’ll talk more with Dr Aamodt about that. Susan does talk a lot about leptin regulating our body weight. Leptin is a  hormone stored in fat cells, and as fat cells get larger they secrete leptin which tells our brain that we’re comfortable, we’re at the right weight, we don’t need to seek out more food. Susan claims that people in larger bodies have too much leptin that isn’t getting to our brains to tell us to stop eating - she says that larger bodied people are ‘leptin resistant’ and our brains think we’re starving and tell us to eat more. She claims that the cause of leptin resistance is insulin resistance, which is caused directly by processed food. Very sweeping generalisations - in essence she is saying that larger people are insatiably eating because leptin is being blocked by our brainstem, which causes us to mindlessly eat processed food all day. So basically, we are all ‘leptin resistant’ humans, mindless processed food eating machines. I’ve got some issues! Not all large people are insulin resistant. Insulin resistance is impacted by an enormous range of factors - genetic, environmental and social. It’s incredibly simplistic to say it’s just due to processed food. For Susan, anyone who is larger is by definition sick or deficient. She continually refers to the ‘right size body’, which is your ‘thin’ body. A complete disregard for body diversity, and lack of data to back up her claims about leptin. She’s also left out the impact of weight loss dieting on leptin. When we try and diet and lose weight, our leptin levels drop. This drop stimulates a huge increase in our appetite and interest in food. So, although she’s concentrating on this idea that larger people are leptin resistant, people may instead have lower leptin levels due to dieting and that’s what is telling our brains that we’re starving. So, leptin drops and interest in food is very well documented in neuroscience - because it’s a very primitive and important danger signal to the brain.  Let’s not forget Susan’s target audience of middle-aged women, who likely have dieted many times before and may have lower leptin levels due to this. She knows this. She even mentions the Biggest Loser study which notes how damaged people’s metabolisms were from strict dieting. She says that during the ‘weight loss’ phase of her bootcamp, your metabolism will slow down something like 80-90%, but in the next breath says that there’s no evidence that this will continue to happen - “we’ve never seen evidence of this in Bright Line Eating, there is no reason for alarm”. This really annoyed me. She has no evidence of it because she’s done no research on it. Simply because you don’t look for harm doesn’t mean there’s no harm.  Another claim from the book is that you can choose your goal weight based on the lowest weight you’ve ever been, and she pretty much guarantees you can reach it. This flies in the face of weight science and our understanding of all the factors outside of our control. There’s no evidence to say that Bright Line Eating is any different from any other weight loss program. Talking about cravings - Susan describes them as a “brain-based bingeing mechanism”, located in the nucleus accumbens which has become ‘overstimulated’ by the plentiful food in our current environment. She uses her own experience as a drug addict to paint this vivid picture, describing her need for higher doses of drugs to get the same high. That is tolerance - it’s well documented in addiction literature, especially for opiate receptors. Sarah says food behaves in the same way - flour and sugar in particular are acting in the same way as heroin in our brain. She doesn't have very much data to support this idea that flour and sugar behave like a drug. She mentions rat studies to back up some of her sugar claims, but even she admits there’s nothing in the research to show flour is addictive. Food addiction was excluded from the category “substance related and addictive disorders” in the DSM-V, due to lack of evidence. We’ll hear more from neuroscientist Dr Aamodt on this. One of the ways Susan is trying to convince us that sugar and flour are toxic poisons is pretty weird. She asks us to google images of flour, sugar and heroin and look at how similar they are. For the record - things that look like drugs are not necessarily drugs. In her view, processing things is what makes them drugs. In Susan’s view, the way sugar is processed makes it a more toxic drug. What about the way we process mint tea? Dried chillies? I think that this Bright Line plan will keep people in a state of deprivation and restriction, which increases those feelings of addiction. The longer we’re deprived, the stronger our desire will become for the forbidden thing. We know that if people are full when they’re doing an experiment where they’re exposed to food stimuli, their reward centres are less activated. When you think about it, you’re never going to be full on Bright Line Eating and you’re going to feel like an addict. And if you then go to a bootcamp or on one of the forums, it’s going to feel more real. Another bugbear - she repeatedly scares people by referring to food in this book as ‘drugs’, ‘toxins’, ‘poisons’. But then later she says it’s fine for children to eat them, because they’re ‘young enough to burn off the calories’. What? This is a woman who is desperately attached to thinness as a measure of self-worth.  If she really believes sugar and flour were toxic poisons, why is she recommending them to children? The rules she’s lifted from FA are full on, and she’s using neuroscience-talk to give them a sense of validation.  “It takes some willpower to set up and then little to none when it becomes automatic”. Susan has science-washed extreme deprivation and disguised it as normal.  Susan likens the automatic level of food behaviours to brushing your teeth - but our bodies and brains aren’t hard-wired to desire tooth-brushing as a survival mechanism, and feel under threat when we haven’t brushed out teeth in a while. Susan knows this. She wouldn’t have to set up such extensive support systems if permanent restriction truly was automatic. Introducing Dr Aamodt, who wrote the book “Why Diets Make Us Fat: The Unintended Consequences of Our Obsession with Weight Loss”. She also has a much-watched Ted Talk about why she stopped dieting and switched to mindful eating, which has been watched by 4.5 million people. Before she was an author, Dr Aamodt was Editor-In--Chief of Nature Neuroscience, a leading scientific journal in the field of brain research. Dr Aamodt was pulled into neuroscience due to personal experience -  as a teenager she remembers her mother commenting that she was “eating like a fat person”. She was not at a higher weight at the time, and looks back at photos of that time and thinks “what was mum doing?”. Dr Aamodt began making complicated food rules for herself, like not being allowed to open the refrigerator herself. It was almost like that comment unlocked disordered eating for her. Sandra then spent about 30 years cycling through diets, and while she never met the definition for an eating disorder she veered very close. Sandra vividly remembers how difficult it was to force herself to move away from dieting. In her early 30’s, Sandra was exposed to some feminist writings about dieting which seemed to unlock some things she’d kind of known for years but hadn’t been paying attention to, such as weight being neurologically controlled. She hadn’t connected the dots that her own body would behave that way. We’re biological animals with physiological regulation, but we’re also social animals living in culture where we’re expected to look and eat a certain way. It’s as if one day someone said to Sandra, “you don’t have to do that”. A blog Sandra credits with some of these early moments of unlearning is ‘Shapely Prose’. The biggest advantage of not dieting for Sandra turned out to be psychological, not physical - the amount of mental space that weight and eating were taking up in her brain turned out to be unbelievable when it stopped. She describes it as like having ringing in your ears for your entire life, then one day someone turns the ringing off. In Susan’s experience, you can’t just tell people ‘don’t diet’ - you have to tell them what to do instead. The message of ‘don’t control your weight’ is too uncomfortable.  Sandra came across mindful eating, which gave some structure to make that transition away from dieting. Sandra initially didn’t know when she was hungry - how could she, after all those years of strictly regulating herself?  There’s a lot of psychological research showing that people who diet frequently are not good at picking up interoception signals from their bodies - such as feeling your heart beating. But even after many years of ignoring your body, you can reconnect and hear those signals again. Sandra is much better at it than she used to be. Unlearning takes time! All those neuroplastic changes can be reversed, if you take the time and energy to do it. For Sandra, moving from dieting to not dieting was a huge upgrade. What is the ‘set point’? Scientists call it the ‘defended range’ which Sandra says is a better term. It’s a small range of weight where your body is comfortable. When you’re within your defended range, weight works the way that random people on the internet think that it works all the time. You can make your lifestyle changes and nudge it a little up or down. It’s the range where your body and your brain are not fighting you. The body is comfortable. Once you get outside that range, in either direction, this is where the brain says ‘this is not right, we’re not regulating properly, we need to fix this’. And this is where calories in, calories out becomes unreliable and the way you process food starts to change in dramatic ways. Metabolism changes to try and get you back into that defended range.  It’s normal to be more hungry when you’re not getting enough food! It does seem as though the responses are asymmetrical - that the body’s compensatory mechanisms become more intense over time if you’re under your defended range, but will become less intense over time if you’re above your defended range. So, your brain is much more relaxed with being at a higher weight than being under your defended range. From an evolutionary perspective, starving is really serious and you should never take it lightly.  How do we know our defended range? It’s genetic to begin with - there are strong genetic influences on it. A number of life experiences can affect it, for instance people who didn’t get enough sleep as children generally have a higher defended range as adults. Also, children who had a lot of stress and/or trauma in their lives have a higher defended range as adults.  If your childhood environment is scary, unpredictable, like something bad will happen at any time - there’s a strong evolutionary argument that it would be okay for your body to store extra energy for future dangerous times. The body makes sense! Your body does its best to survive. There’s a genetic link as well in who is susceptible to constantly being invited to ignore their bodies, and whose bodies have such strong hunger and fullness signals that they seem to be completely immune to those kinds of external messaging.  And then dieting itself - attempting to get under your ‘defended range’. The brain desires that we stay within that defended range and functions 24/7 without a break - and we try to combat this with willpower, which we cannot do 24/7. We can do a lot of these things for a while, but at some point it gets to be like holding your breath.  The food addiction model - the idea that if we remove certain foods from our diet we can permanently change our set point, our weight, and our brains will relax and finally do what diet culture says they should do. What does Sandra think about that? Sandra thinks the food addiction model is basically a rebranding of Binge Eating Disorder. The restriction itself is what produces the sense of being ‘out of control’. The easiest way to see that is in experiments on rodents, who aren’t bombarded with media messages telling them their bodies are unacceptable.  Inducing Binge Eating Disorder in rats is actually done quite reliably - rats are starved to about 70-80% of their starting weight, then given high sugar foods. The rats will eat past fullness - they will ‘stuff’ themselves. If you make this a cycle and repeat several times, you can get rats to the point where they will binge on regular boring rat chow. They don’t even require the food to taste good to overeat it. That sounds familiar, right? We are those rats. We often miss the deprivation with Binge Eating Disorder and focus only on the eating. There are also changes in the brain’s reward system that are associated with that behaviour, but that doesn’t immediately jump out at Sandra as being that the solution is to restrict what we eat. If the restriction causes the disorder, it probably isn’t also the cure. If the rats weren’t starved, would they have this response to high sugar food? No. Rats who aren’t starved and are presented with novel foods will eat until full and then stop. These rats are not trying to diet, they’re not struggling with mixed cultural messages - they’re just having a straightforward biological response to a stimulus that suggests that maybe you should put away some reserves for the future because every so often, somebody comes and takes your food away. It’s quite a simple, elegant, neurobiological response to famine. So, the food addiction model is rebranded deprivation models, or Binge Eating Disorder models. Nobody has come up with evidence that is convincing Sandra that it’s any more than that. The scales that measure food addiction have a lot of overlap with the scales that measure Binge Eating Disorder. A definition of addiction that Sandra likes is ‘when we continue to want things that we do not like” being drawn to repeat behaviours that you don’t actually enjoy. And some people would describe Binge Eating Disorder in that way, but Sandra doesn’t think that implies that the treatment is doing more of what created it in the first place (restriction). Huge thanks to Dr Sandra Aamodt for sharing her experience and  bringing us some logic and more of a whole picture, not just a narrow view. In some ways, Dr Aamodt and Susan Peirce Thompson are quite similar. They both grew up in diet culture, both developed eating issues as a result of trying to control their body weight, and they’re both neuroscientists. However, one has chosen to monetize this in the Bright Line Eating program, and one has chosen to help people find real freedom. The idea of ‘freedom’ in Bright Line Eating is very, very different from the idea of freedom that Dr Aamodt and I (Louise) have. Ours is about laying down our weapons and learning to reconnect.  Next episode we’ll talk with Dr Martina Zangger about her experience with Bright Line Eating, and look at the economic reality of how enormous this machine is. And more dodgy research claims! It’ll be a zinger.  Resources Here's Dr Aamodt's wonderful Ted Talk And her awesome book You can get in touch with Dr Sandra Aamodt at sandra.aamodt@gmail.com and on twitter at @sandra_aamodt

Susan is synonymous with Memphis music. Marshall’s first pro session was with producer Tom Dowd and Lynyrd Skynyrd…not to shabby. As with many of our guests this season we discuss transitions. In Susan’s case, transition from musical theatre, to session vocalist, to artist, to producer. We get into when to simply shut up and listen and other nuggets of wisdom in this interview that need heeding.

We’ve got to work on ourselves before we can work on anybody else. As leaders, emotional intelligence is something we constantly have to work on and improve upon. Today’s guest dives into how you can become emotionally fit in work, leadership, and life.   Susan Packard is the author of two books, including her most recent book, Fully Human. Throughout her career, Susan has had her hand in developing long-lasting TV brands like Food Network and CNBC, and she built HGTV into a $15 billion business when she was COO for the organization. Today, she mentors both men and women who are curious about their promise and wanting to grow their potential.   In Susan’s book, Fully Human, she interviewed a wide range of leaders to get into their heads and really find out what makes successful people tick. Susan found out that it takes some time to build emotional intelligence. In Western culture, people don’t really stop to ask themselves what they want out of their life; instead, they are so laser-focused on producing, doing, and keeping busy, even if it’s to their detriment.   A leader with a good emotional IQ knows when to give their employees a break and doesn’t try to demand too much of their time away from home. Susan shares a story from her HGTV days. She was working late to deliver some important budget-related documents when she noticed that there was a big financial mistake in her work.   At prior careers, this mistake would have meant Susan would have been reprimanded in some way, but not at HGTV. When Susan told the CFO about the mistake at 12 a.m., he told her that they would both come into the office early that morning, look it over together, and fix it together before sending it off. The calmness in the CFO’s approach made Susan feel respected and trusted. A leader with emotional intelligence knows when it’s important to work together and not punish people for being honest.   Interview Links: Susanpackard.com   Resources: Scaling Up Workshop: Interested in attending one of our workshops? We have a few $100 discounts for our loyal podcast listeners!Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshop: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTube  

There are many ways to be in denial. Today’s episode features guest Susan Relic. After 35 years of marriage, she discovered her husband was having an affair. At least that’s what she thought at first. Then she dug a little deeper. Her husband’s sexual partners were exclusively pre-operative transgender escorts. Join us for this discussion at the very intersection of gender and sexuality, and what it is like for the wife who was caught in the middle, stumbling in the dark with no answers. In Susan’s own words, on the role heterosexual lovers played in her healing: “Rebound sex did me good! It was like being watered…a plant in the desert having water on it for the first time in years. And it just perks up! And my depression lifted…because being starved of touch is depressing…physically it leads to a kind of depression. It’s sensory deprivation. It really was like a gray veil lifted from my life! And every day I wake up and I’m happy I’m not in that anymore!” Please Use the following link to leave comments on our podcast: http://www.straightspouse.org/straight-spouse-network-voices-podcast-comments/

Susan Joseph has been working in the blockchain area for the past 4 – 5 years. As a lawyer she has consulted with the insurance industry and most recently was the North American representative for B3i, the blockchain for insurance consortium. In this podcast we discuss two of Susan’s passion: “Innovation and diversity in the insurance industry”.   What is blockchain? Blockchain is a foundational technology that provides a highly flexible set of tools allowing businesses, governments and others to re-examine their commercial relationships. It brings opportunities for greatly enhanced efficiency and development of new products. Inherent in the technology is the ability for diverse parties to cooperate in a way where trust is brought about through cryptography or promoting diversity through the development of the technology in the belief that the widest spectrum of perspectives will foster the most valuable innovations. On a more technical side it is an additional communication layer on the internet / web 3.0. It's based on advanced cryptography, computing and game theory. Susan likes to refer to it as a distributed value technology and for her it presents the next step in the digitization of data - both communications and assets, while the data is created transferred and stored. It has wide-ranging implications for commerce, society and behaviour.   Is the insurance industry good at embracing innovation and diversity? In Susan’s point of view, no the insurance industry isn’t particularly good at embracing innovation and diversity but that isn’t too different to a lot of industries though. Innovation, in the insurance industry, is highly regulated and particularly in the United States where you have 50 state regulations in addition to some federal ones. Systemically it’s hard to set up innovation in this space and yet you see a demand for digital projects and easier access to products and different kinds of products. Innovation has to happen, or the industry just isn't offering what the market wants. With regard to diversity that's a problem with every industry - services, technology and insurance. When you look at cutting-edge technology, Susan believes it's even worse. The amount of diversity in a cutting-edge area that just isn’t there. Susan think it is really interesting in that in this technology, such as blockchain, which is intended to democratise, that we need to have this diversity of thought and diversity of voices. it's not, there's not a full-throated diversity effort let's just put it that way and I think it's really interesting in this technology which is intended to democratize, the more diverse thought and diverse voices in there that needs to happen. Because that's a population that we want to serve. Diversity is diversity in terms of gender, types of voices, cultural and a lot more. It is an inclusion play. Plenty of studies have shown boars with three or more women really start to affect the culture and change and increased profitability. A set of diverse voices and thoughts will improve the innovation side of any company. It’s really hard to innovate in an echo chamber.   In a study by McKinsey in 2017– “Companies with more culturally and ethnically diverse executive teams were 33% more likely to see better-than-average profits.“   AM Best – Scoring and assessing innovation AM Best is a global rating agency and information provider with a unique focus on the insurance industry. On the 14th of March 2019, AM Best published a report requesting comments from market participants in the insurance industry and other interested parties on the draft of a new criteria procedure, “Scoring and Assessing Innovation.” AM Best defines innovation as a multistage process whereby an organization transforms ideas into new or significantly improved products, processes, services or business models that have a measurable positive impact over time and enable the organization to ...

Merry Christmas! As our gift to you, we at Wonderful To Tell are happy to introduce to you our friend Susan, a self professed Global Nomad. In Susan's story, she shares about God's gifts to her. How in very practical and personal ways God has provided for her needs. As we celebrate God's greatest gift to us ~ the birth of our savior, Jesus ~ it is amazing to realize that God, the creator of the universe, delights in US and cares for us intimately. We hope you enjoy this gift from Wonderful To Tell to you! To see photos from this story and learn more about all our storytellers, please visit us at wonderfultotell.com

When we are intentional moms, it assists us in becoming less-stressed moms.  When we bring our babies home from the hospital, our dream is to raise them in a happy and healthy home. But, from the time that we get pregnant or we announce plans to adopt, others begin giving us their opinions about what we should or shouldn't do. If we're not careful, other people's input will confuse us and add a lot of stress to our already busy lives. Today, I'm continuing my fun and freeing conversation with my friend, Susan Seay. If you listened to part one of our interview, the podcast ended with Susan saying that she hit the wall after the birth of her seventh child. "I became so burdened with my efforts to be a “good mom” and trying to do all the things a “good mom” should do. My list of “should’s” was so long I was ready to give up. In fact, I did give up. I announced it one night at dinner with a simple. I announced to my husband: “I’m done!” - Susan Seay, speaker and author During this episode, Susan shares about the crucial conversations that she had with her husband, Ron about their individual expectations of what it meant to be a good mom and a good dad. In Susan's effort to be a great mom and Ron's drive to be a great dad, the couple discovered that their unspoken expections actually drove a wedge in their relationship with each other. As you listen to Susan talk about how they worked through this challenge to their marriage and family, you'll love her sense of humor and insight. Ultimately, Ron and Susan discovered the key to reshaping their family and unifying them for the future. What you'll hear in this episode: How core values can keep your family focused and help you make decisions with less conflict; Why Susan always lets her kids let go of a hug first; How Susan uses technology to stay connected with her kids;   LINKS FROM TODAY'S SHOW Susan Seay  Website  |  Facebook   | Choosing Your Values Podcast   About Susan… Through the “Mentor 4 Moms” Podcast and the relatable style found in her book The Intentional Parent: Parenting On Purpose When Life Gets Busy, you get a sense of Susan’s heart to provide encouragement to moms combined with helpful practical tools. As a wife and mom to 7, she truly understands the challenges of trying to be an Intentional Parent. Susan has been a mentor to women locally in Austin, Tx and Internationally for over a decade.    About your Better Together podcast host... Barb Roose is a popular speaker and author who is passionate about equipping women to win at life with Christ-empowered strength and dignity. Barb loves speaking at women’s conference and leadership events such as the Aspire Women’s Events, She Speaks Conference and the UMC Leadership Institute. Barb is the author of multiple books and Bible studies, including her newest releases: Winning the Worry Battle: Life Lessons from the Book of Joshua and Bible study called Joshua: Winning the Worry Battle. Barb’s writing has been featured in magazines or blogs such as Simple Truth Magazine, iBelieve.com, Crosswalk.com, More to Life Magazine, Just Between Us Magazine, Cherished, InCourage and Women of Faith.  An avid traveler, reader, and lover of all things chocolate-peanut butter, Barb and her family live in NW Ohio with their dog, Quimby and a very grumpy 10-year rabbit. Visit Barb’s online home at barbroose.com.    

Self care is a topic that is currently receiving a lot of attention. But despite it being tha latest hot topic, most women still have a hard time giving themselves permission to take care of themselves. Self care is not selfish. It is crucial for our wellbeing and more so when we are going through divorce or any crisis. It allows us to  walk through the added responsibilities and stress more effectively. It helps clear our minds to have a better overall outlook. It is setting healthy boundaries for ourselves to manage the three valuable but limited resources that we have - time, money and energy. Susan Pokorny is a trauma informed Yoga trainer, an aromatherapist, an Amazon bestselling author, and is extremely passionate about helping women around the topic of self care. In today’s episode we break down the myths around self care and how it relates to our three valuable resources of time, money, and energy. Time A lot of women have bought into the myth that we don't have enough time to take care of ourselves. But we do have time. We only need to evaluate what is essential, what is really going to bring you life, what is going to bring you health and what is going to support you in going through this time. When we make good choices in health and wellness, it can actually give us more time because we're more effective, we're thinking more clearly, our brain is nourished, and we're rested. We can't produce more time, but self care can multiply and maximize the effectiveness of the time that we have. Money Self-care is an investment that we make for ourselves that will benefit in the long run. If you look at investing in whole food, it might cause more upfront, but the long term benefit outweighs the initial investment. We need to look at self-care as putting money into an emotional and physical bank account that's going to build up our resources. But it does not always mean spending more than you normally would. There are a lot of different things that you can to to nurture yourself that costs little to no money. In Susan’s book, Two Inches of Wool, she shares hundreds of tips and ideas for self care that don’t cost too much money. Energy There are good things that we can do, good choices that we can make in our life that will give us energy and there are choices that will draining us of our energy. We can support our body to do what it needs to do to eliminate the bad stuff. But it needs good fuel, and good food choices fuels our body. It takes energy to go out of our way and make better choices but when we're filling up our health and wellness bank it will help us get through difficult situations. We can  look where we could be more proactive and practical with our health. “Self love has measurably deepened my relationships with the people that I love” Self care is investing in yourself that is essential for your long term and short term wellbeing. When we take care of ourselves, we deepen our relationships with those that we care about. That is the essence of self care. It's deepening a relationship with yourself, but it's also, it's giving the best of yourself to doing it. Resources Mentioned: Two Inches of Wool: The Simple Art of Self Care Susan's Instagram, Twitter, and Website --- Visit The Women's Financial Wellness Center for a full directory listing of experts. https://www.womensfinancialwellnesscenter.com/our-supporters Be sure to reach out if you would like to connect personally with The Women’s Financial Wellness Center. You can visit our website at https://www.womensfinancialwellnesscenter.comor grab a complimentary 30-minute consult at http://bit.ly/dashboardwfwc.

Elia Photography Susan and I had a powerful connection, right from that very first moment. We discovered that we even shared giving birth on the same day, both to girls. But that was just a fun discovery. Susan talks about her 25 years of experience in the photography world, and her love of capturing beautiful women in portrait photography, of all shapes and sizes. She took her experience from a hobby to a true business powered by passion, in an era powered by selfies. In Susan's words, women are the people we cherish and the ones we hold dear. Experiencing a photo shoot with Susan can completely change the way you see yourself.

Elia Photography Susan and I had a powerful connection, right from that very first moment. We discovered that we even shared giving birth on the same day, both to girls. But that was just a fun discovery. Susan talks about her 25 years of experience in the photography world, and her love of capturing beautiful women in portrait photography, of all shapes and sizes. She took her experience from a hobby to a true business powered by passion, in an era powered by selfies. In Susan's words, women are the people we cherish and the ones we hold dear. Experiencing a photo shoot with Susan can completely change the way you see yourself.

Interview! Susan Rosenberg, Director of International Animal Programs at GreaterGood.org “I am working to save everything from ants to elephants.” One could say that Susan Rosenberg has been managing animal shelters since she was 8 years old—at that age, she was covertly caring for abandoned animals in her backyard and using her allowance to do so! She has received two “calls of a lifetime,” as she calls them—first from Paul Jolly to work for the Petco Foundation, after her tremendous success in setting up a community adoption program at her local Petco; and second from greatergood.org, who offered her the director position of International Animal Programs. Susan’s work has touched the lives of animals and people quite literally from coast to coast—while working for the Petco Foundation, she orchestrated community adoption programs at stores across the country. It is now a company-wide mandatory program for every Petco location!   It doesn’t stop there. In Susan’s work for greatergood.org, she finds herself in the happy position to help not just companion animals, but wild animals as well. The organization’s highly successful funding efforts allow her to choose interesting and unique programs to assist, such as a bat sanctuary in desperate need of a well. Susan’s work is truly changing the world and making it a better place!

In Susan's first podcast back from hiatus she shares the emotional lessons garnered from a close friend who recently passed of stage four cancer.  An entrepreneur, loving husband and father, chose to create several ‘rules' to apply to the final fifteen months of his life.  This is a must-listen for anyone wanting to create greater fulfillment in their lives.

Susan Stuart is a professional Intuitive Counselor who has over 30 years of experience in her field. Her undergraduate studies and graduate work centered on psychology, cultural anthropology and hypnotherapy. The work included research on American Indian Shamanism, in-depth studies of hypnosis and an examination of the relationship between Astrology and Jungian Psychology.   Susan's Intuitive Development Institute was established in 1981 to promote a more expanded awareness of intuition, metaphysics and astrology. The institute offers Intuitive Scanning, and Intuitive Counseling for individuals as well as couples and Intuitive Development Classes and Medical Intuitive Trainings. In Susan's 30 years of counseling 1000's of clients, she has gathered wonderful information ‘About the Conversation and Connection ~ on All Levels'. Susan is joining us today to share some of her wisdom! Susan Stuart - site    

Decorating Tails’ host and Interior Design Hound Cynthia Waldenmaier catches up with the talented and Canine inspired designer Susan Jamieson, ASID for a colorful interview that you won’t want to miss. Susan gives Decorating Tails the latest scoop on her travels for her design projects and shares tips on creating a colorful Pet-friendly home. Just how much of a Dog lover is the globe-trotting Interior Designer and founder of Bridget Beari Designs? I’ll let you decide-- but here are some clues: Susan’s Interior Design Firm is named after two Dogs: "Bridget & Beari." In Susan’s new paint collection, Bridget Beari Colors, you’ll notice more than a few colors inspired by her four-legged friends. One of my favorite colors is Wagging White. Along with fabric samples and floor plans, you’re sure to find a few design animals running around her studio in Richmond, Virginia. So join us and learn Susan’s insider tips on how to sniff out the best paint colors for your next Pet-friendly decorating project. More details on this episode MP3 Podcast - Decorating Tails - Episode 7 Dog Inspired: Susan Jamieson’s Designs Have Colorful Canine Style on Pet Life Radio.