Ep23: Peaceful Plates - A Simple Way to Stop Overeating and Feel Good After You Eat

In this special Thanksgiving episode, Dr. Brook shares powerful, personal stories and practical tools to help you ditch the food guilt, avoid the post-meal crash, and finally partner with your body during meals.

Whether it’s a holiday feast or a random Saturday lunch, this episode will help you learn how to eat with intention and satisfaction—without the side of shame or discomfort.

You'll learn:

• Why you might feel the urge to clean your plate (even when you're full)
• The childhood beliefs that sneak into your adult eating habits
• How your stomach and diaphragm team up to signal fullness
• A 3-phase approach to eating in peace: before, during, and after your meal
• What to do when your favorite dish runs out—and how to walk away satisfied
• How even a 5-minute post-meal walk can transform your digestion and energy
• How to use the bodyOS framework (Pause, Connect, Ask, Adjust) at the table
• The deeper message your stomach may be sending you

✨ Plus, Dr. Brook shares the Stomach card from the Talk To Me Body Deck and unpacks what it means to feel full—not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually.

🎧 Whether you're navigating a holiday table or just want to build a better relationship with food, this episode is a must-listen.

🎧 Stay Connected + Explore More Support:

If today’s episode spoke to something deeper in you, there’s so much more waiting for you inside my world.

💬 Start meaningful conversations with your body using the Talk to Me, Body affirmation card deck. Each card is written from your body’s perspective to help you shift from fear to faith in your healing.

📔 Track what your body is whispering with the My Body’s Whispers Journal, a gentle guide to help you connect physical symptoms with spiritual, emotional, mental, and lifestyle insights.

🌿 Want to deepen your listening practice and explore real-time body wisdom with others? Join the waitlist for the bodyOS™ membership, where we learn to decode the body’s signals together.

🌐 For more tools, free downloads, and upcoming course releases, visit drbrooksheehan.com

📲 And come say hi on Instagram: @drbrooksheehan

⭐️ If you loved this episode, would you take a moment to leave a five-star review on Apple or Spotify. It helps more women learn to listen, trust, and transform their health.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Thanksgiving and Food
• 1:49 Personal Story and Food Beliefs
• 5:44 Mindful Eating Practices
• 6:57 Peaceful Plates Framework
• 17:26 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Transcript

I am taking a tryptophan nap. Have you heard that? Yes, turkey has a lot of tryptophan, but it's really not the tryptophan in the turkey that is making you so sleepy. Welcome to the body speaks podcast with me, Dr. Brook Sheehan. Join me, on a journey, in discovering how to interpret the subtle signs your body uses to communicate with you - the whispers, the screams, and everything in between. Your body truly holds the answers for your health and wellbeing. It’s time to discover them, together. Let’s dive in.  Hi friend, Dr. Brook here with another episode of your body speaks. I am so excited to be sharing this with you today on today. So today in the United States is a big holiday called Thanksgiving and we're going to be talking about food and how to have a peaceful plate. If you checked out my episode prior to this one, I got to sit down with Brittany Braswell, a registered dietitian talking all about food and how to have food freedom. Now during Thanksgiving, this is a time when all inhibitions go out the window and people tend to eat and eat and eat to the point that they do start talking about, I am taking a tryptophan nap. Have you heard that? Yes, turkey has a lot of tryptophan, but it's really not the tryptophan in the turkey that is making you so sleepy. It's because you actually had too much. And we're gonna talk about a way to actually work with your body so that you are not overeating and you're eating until satisfied and you're supporting your body's natural physiological processes. I wanna share with you a personal story before we dive in to really set the tone of this. When I was growing up as a little kid, we grew up in a really big family. We didn't have a lot of money and we were told that you needed to eat every item on your plate, eat the whole plate because there were kids in other countries, third world countries that didn't have enough food. And while this... idea or the thought process that was embedded into us from a very young age came from a very sincere place. They wanted us to finish our plates. They wanted grandma to be happy that we enjoyed her food and so forth. But really what ended up happening is we would tend to overeat. And I'm going to speak for myself and not all my siblings, but myself, I would overeat. Now, I didn't struggle with a lot of weight issues when I was younger, because I was outdoors running around. So I didn't think twice about it. But it has actually filtered through my adult life even through today. Now, when I say that, I have this tendency and my husband... can totally attest to this and he might be listening to this, amening everything that I'm about to say, but I feel like I have to eat everything that is presented in front of me. Now that may be way too much food for my body to handle. And then I end up in a place where I can barely breathe because the reason for that is your stomach and your diaphragm are so closely connected. Now, if your stomach is over full, your diaphragm is not gonna be able to expand and release the way that it should. So that causes those issues of oh my gosh, I'm so full. I can't even breathe. So growing up that way, I carried that into adulthood and continue to fight against that. should say I fight against that every single time and having to constantly ask my body where are we at? Where are we at fullness wise? And I have to set it down and go, should I put another bite in my mouth or am I content? And through this process of developing a relationship with my body where I can talk to it and get information back from it, I have found out that I don't need to eat as much as what is presented in front of me. And I know I'm not alone in that. I know that that is not something that only I have ever experienced. Maybe you, and here's another childhood story, because we grew up in a very poor household, and my mom got remarried and my stepdad and her would go to Costco and they'd get a lot of food at Costco, right? Well, I have four other siblings. Now I'm the oldest of the total of five of us. And it would be like the hunger games, okay? Trying to make sure that we got all of our favorite items at Costco and that somebody didn't eat the last of whatever. So we would hide things in the would hide things in drawers or put it behind things, other areas where our siblings wouldn't look, only to find that the very last one was eaten. We'd race home trying to get it and it'd be gone. It was frustrating. It was so frustrating. And so again, in my adulthood, I've kind of carried that through where I'm like, but if I don't eat this all right now, this beautiful dairy-free gluten-free pizza that is so delicious, I'm gonna put it in the fridge as leftovers and somebody else is gonna eat it. Isn't it interesting how old beliefs and old patterns of doing things really do stick with us and we have to consciously make a decision. Wow, is that really true? Now there is nobody in my household minus my husband who likes to munch middle of the night, calling you out there Michael, who would even remotely think about eating what I put in there, right? My kid's not gluten-free. She doesn't like the food that I like. And so I don't need to worry about these things, but I still carry that with me. Now, how does this relate going into this big holiday? And I pray that you listen to this episode before you even start embarking on your dinner or your food excursion that you're going to be taking today because the reason why these things are important is because so many times what we do is we grab for something because it's in front of us or it's placed in front of us. Now we're doing a potluck style Thanksgiving amongst our entire family and friends this year. We did it last year and we did it a lot growing up and if you're facing that too or even plating actual food, Make sure you're actually pausing even a split second and thinking about, do you want this on your plate? Does your body want a green bean casserole on your plate? Sure, it looks so good. Sure, it looks amazing. Or maybe three different people brought stuffing. You do not have to try every single stuffing. However, if you did want to, you could take a small spoonful of one stuffing, a small spoonful of another, and a small spoonful of another. And then you can have your blend, but you don't need to overeat. So how do we practice peaceful plates? There's three different steps. The beginning, the middle, and the end. Amazing, kind of like a story, right? You have the beginning of your story, you have the middle of your story, and you have the end of your story. So we're gonna break this down through the pause, connect, ask and adjust framework that bodyOS is built on and the physical, spiritual, emotional, mental pillars. But mainly those pause, connect, ask and adjust because it really relates to those peaceful plates that you're going to be putting together this holiday season. And if you're listening to this and it is a random Saturday in June, welcome, I'm so excited you're here. And this still pertains because, we like to overeat as a society when we're presented with a lot of food in front of us. So the first thing with peaceful plates is when you are going to start your meal. If you're a family of faith, maybe you do grace, maybe you guys go around and do some sort of, I'm thankful for this person or I'm thankful for this in my life right now, gratitude challenge. Whatever you do prior to starting to get your plate, take four slow breaths and ask your body what would feel gentle right now. You don't have to go and grab everything that's on the counter or get a little something for everything that's on the counter, right? Because there could be so many dishes. There can be so many different things there. You can portion control. You can do so many different things depending on how your family does things. Now, you're gonna take those slow breaths and you're gonna pause. And you're going to take just a few seconds. It doesn't have to be long. What feels gentle for me right now? Now I want you to practice. You take those four small breaths and you start moving through the pot luck line, or you sit down at the table and the plate gets put in front of you, I want you to then just sit there, pause, and go, okay, where do I need to start here? These questions don't need to be difficult, it just needs to be acknowledged and thought through. We don't think a lot of times when we're going and racing to eat, okay? After you sit, so. right before that meal starts or you're moving through that potluck line, the very next thing you're gonna do is while you're eating, so the middle phase of that, during the eating, I want you to connect with your body So every bite you take, and yes, this may not be entirely culturally, society-ally, however you say that word, accepted, because we're just watching people, having conversations with people, eating, eating, eating, not even thinking about it. But what I want you to do here during the meeting, the idea here is to eat until you're comfortable. The way that you eat until you're comfortable is you put in the connect. So we've already paused before the meal. Now we're going to connect. Every single bite of food, set your fork down as you chew and then swallow. So you're taking very intentional bites. You're not shoving it like a shovel into your mouth. You're not swallowing within two seconds of it getting in there. You're really being intentional. So after you connect, then you're going to ask. As you're moving through your plate, remember there will be plenty left over. And if there's not, if you miss something of your favorite that you're just like, ⁓ I wish I put more on there, a double portion. I wish I got more of it. Kind of like when my siblings and I would hide food, we're like bummed out that it's gone. It's okay. It's not the end of the world. I have survived 40 plus years on this planet, despite the fact that my brother took taquitos out of the freezer that I had saved to have for me to eat after school lunch. Okay. You will survive if something you love is gone. At this point, you're gonna ask your body, how do we feel right now? The idea is to be about 70 % full. You could go upwards of 80%, but I would stay within the 70 to 80 % full. If you go any higher than that, you're going to feel so stuffed to the brim and you're going to say statements like, the tryptophan in the turkey got me. Really? Did it though? Okay, yeah. So I'm being nice. I'm not trying to be rude, but you hear what I'm saying. Like we really need to work through the way that we think about food, especially during holidays. And not just this one, but going into the Christmas season as well, where there is a lot of food and a lot of people because food brings people together and... We love that. It's beautiful. It is such a beautiful thing. But I don't want people to develop wrong relationships with food, whether they're not eating or they're overeating during these seasons. We have to nourish our body's Our body's needs food for fuel. We need fuel to keep everything going like our brain function and our immune function and our lymphatic system and our heart beating and all the things. OK, so after you connect, you're going to ask, how full am I? Right? Between that 70 to At this point, then if you find yourself within that frame and you wanna take a bite, an extra bite, because you're just like, okay, I'm not quite at the 80, I might be at like 76%, I'll take one more smaller bite and I'll be okay. Then you adjust. That adjustment is stopping. Stopping your food when you're satisfied. Putting the fork down. picking up your plate, maybe packaging up a to-go container if you're at someone else's house. It's not that big of a deal if you don't finish everything on your plate. Yes, there are kids and yes, there are people starving in third world countries. And yes, we should have so much gratitude for what we do have. Gratitude is such a huge tool to just not only helping us physically, but also spiritually, emotionally and mentally. But that starving kid in that third world country is not going to be impacted in any positive way by you finishing your plate today. So now what do we do after we're done eating? We've had all these beautiful conversations. Our bellies are content. We are good. We are not overstuffed. We're not sleepy. We feel really good. The next thing after your meal is to take a brisk walk. It does not have to be long, but even five minutes of a walk and really lifting up those knees if you can. Do the best you can. I'm not telling you to push yourself beyond what your body can do. Remember, we are honoring our body. This is what this entire show is about, is honoring our body, but picking up those knees and helping get those big quad muscles to pull all the sugar out of your blood. And when I say sugar, I'm not talking about you just ate a bunch of cheesecake and you just did all this sweets and cookies and all the things. I'm talking about the sugar that you get from food. So carrots, broccoli, green bean casserole, stuffing, all that's sugar, right? There's sugar in that. This is not bad sugar. We need sugar for energy. It's the important types of sugars, okay? But those quad muscles in your legs, they help pull the sugar into the muscle. And these actual muscles, these... big, muscles in your body, they're called sugar pits. They pull that sugar into the muscle to be used as energy to go, oh my gosh, I can use this. I feel really good. I feel energized. I don't feel exhausted or tired or any of those kinds of things. So taking that brisk five minute walk after you're done eating can do wonders in your body. for the rest of the evening or the rest of the day and even until the next day. And so just those three simple steps, incorporating the four steps within the body OS Framework, so the three steps before your meal, during your meal, after your meal, four steps of the body OS Framework, which is the pause, connect, ask and adjust, you can see these tremendous results in your body. Now, just a recap, a quick summary, pause, taking that pause before you even start plating food on your plate or before you pick up your fork. So sometimes people are gonna be sitting at an actual dinner table and their plate is going to be plated. Other times you're gonna be moving through a potluck line. Before you do any of that, take the pause. During the meal, connect with yourself by taking a bite, chewing it, fully, putting your fork down and then moving through the next bite and the next bite. The ask portion is asking your body, how full am I? Do I need to stop here? And then the adjust, when you get the yes, please stop, I feel good, I'm content, put the fork down. All of your favorite items, if they're gone, they're gone, not a big deal. If they're not, take something to go. Package it up or save it for later, right? If you're gonna be at that person's house, family member's house for a few more hours, set it to the side. Hey guys, this is my key lime pie. You better not touch it. I'm putting this aside for me. So what we gotta do in my family, just being honest. So anyway, that's what you do for peaceful plates. I pray that you have the most beautiful holiday. And like I said, for you who might be listening to this on a random Saturday in June, I pray that you're having a beautiful rest of your day. And I pray that this was super impactful and just got you thinking a little bit more on things before you put them in your mouth. With that being said, if you gained any value from this, it would mean the world to me if you can share this with more people. If you can like, review, subscribe, do all the things, it really does help get this podcast out to more people. I wanna take a moment really quick right here and I want to highlight the stomach card in the Talk To Me, Body card series. Now the stomach, I wanna read this to you. I mentioned you want to really tune into your body during the asking part to find out where it's at between 70 and 80 % of fullness, right? In the beginning, I said your stomach and your diaphragm are so closely related. that if your stomach is so full, it can actually make you feel like you are having a shortness of breath moment. Now this card says, I am your stomach. I do more than digest. I sense stress and hold your worries. When I'm overwhelmed or out of place, I can make your heart feel like it's faltering. That's a hiatal hernia right there that I'm talking about. We will not talk about this today. There are other episodes previously that I talked all about that hiatal hernia. but I'm not working against you. I'm simply signaling that I am stuck. It cannot move. Don't overfill me or ignore my signals. It's telling you 70 to 80 % fullness and I'll support your energy, your clarity and your peace. And the scripture on this is Philippians 4: 6, be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication.