What's Possible This Season β Turn Down the Noise with Sonja Irina Johansen
Episode Transcript Β· Recorded live at the free hour that opened The Quiet Season
You were never broken. You were biological. I'm Sonja Irina Johansen, and for decades, I believed my struggle with food was a character flaw, until I learned the science that said otherwise. This is Turn Down the Noise, the show about why we really reach for food and the gentler way through.
All right. We've got, we've got a house full of people, and it's 5:00. It's really important to me that I start on time. So I just want to say thank you for coming. Thank you for being here, and I hope that you, if you have a question, that you can put it in the chat thread.
If you have a curiosity and you're not quite sure what the hey I'm talking about, please message me, and I will put it in the chat thread. If I can't, Sharon will absolutely knock me on the head. Metaphorically, of course. All right.
So all right, let's get going here. While we're gathering here, the chat is open and I am a little nosy. There's a lot of people on this call. I'm really curious. Is this a friend that elbowed you to come here? Is this something that you saw me talk about ad nauseam over the last couple of weeks and you were like, "Okay, Sonja. Already, already."
Is this something that you've been wondering about and curious about and you're looking at the, the next three months as this massive hill to climb? I'm just really curious how you're here, why you're here, and whether or not you know me. 'Cause I haven't seen everybody that's on here, so I just wanna make sure I'm honoring the time here, it is Tuesday evening, it is September, and some of you came in maybe tired, a long day. Maybe dinner dishes maybe still sitting there. Some of you came in skeptical because you've sat in rooms about food before and left with homework and shame. Some of you saw the word sugar season and felt your stomach do the thing, because the aisles are already turning orange and you know what's coming.
Wherever you walked in from tonight, that's exactly the right starting place. You do not have to arrive differently than you are. That's rule one of this room. Actually, you belong. Wherever you are right now, you belong, and it starts now. So here's what this hour is and isn't. It isn't a webinar where I talk at you for 50 minutes and then show you a price.
Yeah, I think you already know how much this thing costs, but today is free. And we're going to do a small piece of real shifting, the same shifting the season room does all fall, and you'll leave holding something you wrote that's yours, that no one can take back out of your hand or your mind. I'll also show you around a little where things actually live, and near the end, I'll tell you what the season is, because some of you asked.
Then we're done. Cameras on or off, pajamas honored. Frankly, if anyone knows me really well, it's 5:00 here, and I'm practically ready for bed. I'm up at early on most days, so this is, this is my bewitching hour. You don't have to believe a word of this tonight. I just want you to hear this. I just want you to consider, skepticism is welcome here, and consider that you've had decades of broken promises, and you've earned it.
All I ask is the two minutes of writing, and check everything else against your own experience. So one note, I am recording, so I can share this with those who couldn't make it live. But when we get to sharing, your voice is welcome in the recording, and if you'd rather stay off it, the chat is yours. I will do my best to respect your privacy.
I try really hard not to name a name when I'm talking from something on the chat. So let's arrive together the way the room always will. I want you to take a breath in as quickly and fast as you can, and exhale out longer than one out
And let's try that again. And exhale out
Your feet are somewhere. And your shoulders, are they down from your ears yet? If they are, great. If they're not, let them go. I want you to notice how that felt, both before and after, 30 seconds ago versus now. Keep that noticing. We'll come back to it.
Maybe you were worried that you weren't gonna be on time. Maybe you weren't sure what this was going to be. But breathing, that, that kind of breathing we call straw breathing in my community. And it actually lowers expands your heart rate variability, and it calms us without even trying. Okay. I wanna start with the thing nobody ever said to us.
Aren't we always blaming ourselves? Raise a hand or throw an emoji in the chat if you have ever, even once, blamed yourself or your willpower for how a food season went. It's always our fault, right?
I'm assuming every hand is up or could be. Every year, including mine, for decades. The word willpower is getting bandied about everywhere now, much more than when I started paying attention to my brain and my body 10 years ago. But here's a second question, and this one might sting a little, and I ask it with love.
How many plans have you tried?
Diets, programs, resets, protocols. Do you even have a number? I just flashed on the, the the grapefruit diet and before I went vegan, the, the hot dog diet. I mean I can't even imagine how many. I don't even have a number. And if you count restarting I, I-- To me, it's a number that's way too big. But think about what those numbers represent.
Look at them. Now hear me, those numbers are not evidence that something is wrong with you. They're evidence that the route was wrong, and you kept being handed the same route with a name on it. Grip harder, follow the rules, do it alone, blame yourself in January. Same road, 40 different maps. Tonight is intentionally different.
The people who've walked with it with me keep telling me the same word, quieter. Quieter, not quiet. Quieter
So what road are you talking about, Sonja? All I know is I see a diet, I think, "Okay, I'm gonna do that." Here's what I know now and what this whole hour stands on. The part of you that reaches for food isn't weak. It's protective. It's a nervous system doing exactly what it learned to do with alarm, with loneliness, with too much.
You were never broken, friends. You were biological. You maybe heard me say that a couple trillion times. Every one of us uses something to support a nervous system. Ours happened to be food. Do you have any idea how many other things are out there that we could have used? Food worked brilliantly for me on so many levels But there are other things, and they all provide and solve different problems, but they all provide and solve problems.
And if it is biology, the way through isn't grip, it's quiet. Let me actually explain that because it- it's the whole shebang, and it's- isn't obvious. Okay, I want you to think of this. Think of your nervous system as a loyal old guard dog, and I'm saying old with complete honor and deference, okay? Loyal old guard dog.
Its one job is to keep you safe, and it takes that job seriously. It barks at the mail carrier, the doorbell, the wind. The food reach, that's the barking. Now, you cannot discipline a guard dog into feeling safe Think about that. Yell at it, punish it, put it on a stricter leash, it barks more because now even you feel dangerous.
Every diet you've ever done was leash and discipline. I am not telling you to stop your diet, but I want you to hear this analogy here, and it's really important. What actually settles a guard dog is this. Day after ordinary day, it watches the yard and learns with its body, not its mind, that the yard is safe.
And then one afternoon, without being told to, it lies down. And I know what the diet brain is saying right now, "If I stop gripping, I'll lose all control." Friends, notice that fear is the leash talking. We're not dropping the care. We're changing what's holding it. That's the work. We don't fight the barking.
We make the yard feel safe daily until the dog lies down on its own When our nervous system feels safe, actually safe in the body, not as an idea, the food gets quieter on its own. Not silent overnight, but quieter And the honest science of how the yard gets safe because you deserve honesty more than hype.
Nothing rewires in a weekend. I'm sorry. I'm sorry to break it to you. No thirty days of this, no fourteen days of that, no pill creates real change on its own. Real change is built slowly. Attention, a little challenge, reflection, and meaningful repetition over weeks until the new path is worn smooth enough to walk without thinking So much to say about that one.
Ugh, I just wanna veer off on a tangent. If you wanna hear more about that reflection, meaningful repetition, a challenge, that's the focus. That's the thing. When you can look back on something that happened yesterday or last week, when you're really upset with yourself because of the choice you made, you feel like it's a choice.
You can reflect back on these. They're gold. It is gold to reflect back. It's hard, though, and that's why we have accompaniment. That's my synthesis of what the research keeps pointing at, and it's why I'll never sell you a breakthrough. This is something that takes time. There is no nervous system that transformed because of one great Tuesday, including this one, which is exactly why what I built this year is a season, not a seminar, and why the one honest thing I can give you tonight isn't the whole path.
It's a real first step taken with company. So are you ready to take it?
All right. Get your pens out if you have them. You can use the no- your note on your phone, you can use... You can type, whatever, I don't care. There's some science that says if you handwrite, but I've never liked handwriting because it just takes too much time. I like to type. So I'm just telling you. Get your pens out or whatever you use to write with.
And what we're going to do is called the touchstone, and I have a beautiful touchstone here. I have another one here. I have them all over. This one. Oh, where's my heart? I had this really big heart one. I don't remember where I put it. So the daily heartbeat of the quiet protocol shrunk to tonight's size.
This is a little taste of it, okay? Two little check-ins on paper. In the season, this little check-in lives in a form on your phone that you can access at any time. That's the beauty and the difficulty of this process. We need tools in the moment. That's what I'm trying to help with. So this takes about 30 seconds, but, but tonight, paper is perfect.
No wrong answers. Need you to hear that. Nobody sees your page. Okay, first check-in. Where is your system right now? Not your opinion of your day, your body. Is it revving? Busy, buzzy, braced? Is it flat, tired, checked out, far away? Or somewhere near settled? Write one word, just the true one. Close as you can get.
You can put it in the chat thread too if you'd like. I'll do mine out loud. Tonight, I've got revving in me. Can you tell? And I promise it's not caffeine, it's passion This is a big day for me and an important day, and I just really appreciate that you're here Here's why writing one true word matters. A little science plainly.
Naming what's happening in your body is one of the most studied calming moves there is. Remember, we're trying to get quiet, right? When a feeling gets a word, the alarm centers of the brain quiet down. Y- I- you can feel it. There's a calming, and you're moving your, y- from your amygdala, which is the trigger center, to your prefrontal cortex, your executive function.
The thinking part comes back online. Researchers call it affect labeling. I call it "name it to tame it" And you just did with one word what no amount of gripping does. That's not woo-woo, although it could be. That's wiring
Second check-in, the reframe. Whatever word you wrote, finish this sentence about it. That makes sense because... Because it's been a long week, because this room is new, because Sonja's crazy and I'm tired and I wanna go to bed, because sugar season is loud Because I don't wanna think about sugar season, but I have to think about sugar season because I have this thing planned for next week, and oh my gosh, before I know it, it's Christmas.
Whatever's true And feel what happens in your chest when you, when your own state gets to make sense instead of being a problem That little unclench, a part of you just got heard. Think of it like the guard dog relaxed because somebody finally listened That's the whole protocol in miniature. That's what we practice daily until it's how we live.
There's, believe me, there's a whole lot more. I don't know if you took my real reasons you go to food, but there's a ton of reasons we do this. But this, but this touchstone gets us to learn how to calm and center ourselves in the moment So how is this hitting you? What are you feeling? Is this making any sense to you?
There are a lot of newer people here, and if you can, I'd love, I'd love to hear what's going on in the chat thread. Let me see. Oh, we got a lot of stuff going on. Let me look and see. All right Hmm. I started read... Thank you. I started reading your book and I've been watching your videos. So impressed. Thank you.
I know of you, Sonja. Yes, I know of you too. Been vaguely aware of you for a while. Friends in common. Yes, we do. I can't think who it is now, but yes, we do. Oh, I'm attending because you encouraged me and I'm excited. Thank you. I'm reading your book. Thank you. I started reading your book. By the way, that's my book.
It's it's available where all books are sold, not just Amazon. It's Audible as well, and you can get it on my website, and if you get it on my website, then you can get all the things, a video read it if you're interested in watching me. I'm in the magic and I know you. Love you. It's a massive hill. I came because the information and support is so helpful.
I'm making progress I'm gonna name a name because she's, like, really popular. Pami has spoken so highly of you, so I wanted to get to know you better. Thank you. I need to survive sugar season. You wanna thrive. We're gonna help you thrive. Your email popped up just when I needed it. Excited to be here.
Someone introduced your book to me, and I decided to get curious and dig a little deeper. All right. I've been working with your quiet protocol that I connected with by following you in the Magic accompaniment calls that I attend regularly, two of the three opportunities each day. Yeah, there's three calls in Magic.
Yeah, we connect, and through the advanced recovery meetups on Saturdays. Thanks. All right. Too many to count. Twenty-five or more. Twenty-four. Number of plans, 20, 30s. Too many. Yep, every diet. Yep. Lifetime. Lifetime. Settled. Settled. Ooh, settled and... Ooh, very good. Rattled, braced, settled, tired, anxious, tired, and racing.
I witness myself as revving right after dinner and when I first sat down, now aware that I'm tired. Yeah, that makes sense. I've had a busy week and a lot going on around me. All right. The book is called Thinking Outside the Box. There we go. Thanks. Thanks, Kel. Said your name. All right. I've had weight creep and need to get settled again.
BLE. Yep, makes sense. I just came across you on Facebook. I've been practicing somatic exercise for years, so I understand nervous system stuff. Excellent. Great audiobook as well. Love to listen to my voice. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Okay, let's keep moving here. So this is making enough sense. If you have questions, you're welcome to write them in the chat thread, and I will happily answer after I'm done with all of this.
We're gonna go on to what I call Movement B. And this one starts from the opposite direction of every ledger you've ever kept, okay? If you've been on diets for decades, you have a PhD in yourself, I wanna give you mad props for that. You've run more experiments than any researcher alive. You've just never been asked for your findings, okay?
So I'm asking, and I'm asking for the findings the old ledger refused to record. I'm assuming we're getting the prompt in the chat thread. I basically want you to finish three things around food that are already quietly working for me. Three things. Small counts. Small especially counts. I want you to hear that.
Especially if you're noticing it. That's the point. The breakfast that just works without drama, the water you drink, the walk, the friend you text when it's bad, the meal you make on autopilot that leaves you fine. The old ledger erased every one of these because they weren't dramatic enough to count.
Tonight, we count them. So I'd like for you to write it for two minutes. I'm gonna try and close my pie hole here for a minute. Two minutes. I'd love for you to write down some things that really resonate for you that you are doing well
All right. I'm seeing a few things here. Berberine, green tea, juicing, water intake, 64 ounce. I wanna say something about the thing that I have found that is most fascinating to me is that there's almost anything that can trigger someone It could be the coffee smell in the morning. It could be a certain sound.
It could be a musical thing. It could be a certain someone, the way they talk reminds us of someone else. So when I say these things that are going on here, these are individual things, and I just need you to hear, I don't give a flying patootie what your plan is. You need support underneath. You need support about what's going on underneath all of that.
All of that is important, but you need to understand why you're going to the things that you don't want to do anymore and why you're struggling to make the choices that you do wanna make. So I'm gonna read a few things, and I just hope that this, that this hits you because I'm not afraid. I think of it like, like saying Voldemort over and over and over again.
Voldemort, Voldemort, Voldemort, okay? Eventually, you will relax and your system won't brace anymore, and that's what we're working toward. Okay? So water intake, healthy breakfast, and eating veggies. Daily stuff or things you don't anymore. No BLTs, drinking lots of water, eating my veggies. Fast, easy prep meals, parts work, meditation.
Exercise is not a chore. It's something I do as part of my life. Yes. My health- my large, healthy breakfast, great. Water, check-ins with like-minded people. Focused on whole, non-processed, not making it complicated, plant-based. Morning pea protein shakes, salads in restaurants, eating veggies for snacks. Reframing food thoughts, keeping my health at the forefront of.
I agree. Wait until I'm hungry to eat in the morning, intermittently fasting 14 hours, fast 10-hour eating window. You make so much sense. Thank you. Daily Zoom meetings with BBs, boundaries. Sorry, I just got... around eating times, drinking plenty of water. Support is so essential. Letting go of shame. Oh, please, yes.
Less self-criticism. I heard someone say they... Okay, I do not mean to... I heard someone say that they were, that they were going to be naming their inner critic a male name so that they could easily say no to them. I don't know if that's true or not for you, but it made me giggle. Made me giggle. I would much rather thank my inner critic so very much for all you've helped me through.
Can we try a different tack? Can we change the map? Can we shift some things, please? I started by doing one thing, no snacking after dinner. Yep. Quiet moments, keeping it simple, noticing when my nervous system is activated or rising. Taking food with me when I leave the house, buddy support, having veggies prepped ahead of time, not buying S and F products, trying to l- ta- walk in the morning best I can, do the things make, do the things that make me happy.
Love my distractions, i.e. the things I love to do. Yes, absolutely. Do you hear this? Do you hear this? Fasting, protein smoothie, exercise, and daily Magic group Zoom. When I stop doing these things, I know I'm getting off track with my self-care and need to figure out what's going on. I like to call that my prickly pear syndrome.
If everything's outsized that normally doesn't bother me, that's a time when I can look at my self-care. I get, I get triggered by what's going on in the, in the kitchen I'm sure nobody, nobody feels that way ever, but I do. And, and I recognize the prickly pear. And that's when I go to my self-care and I look at it and go, "Oh, yeah, well, it's been days since."
Set up a standard to-go bag every time I leave our home. Maintain three friends where we discuss food challenges. Attending WTMH one to two times a week. Exercise five times a week. Oh, what, when the magic, what the magic... WTMH, where the magic happens. Find joy every day. Okay. Are you guys getting this? We don't focus on this stuff.
We're always focused on the crap that happened. But there's a reason. Our brains are going to catalog that stuff because it, brains, our brains need us to stay in community, and our brains need us to stay safe. They don't care if we're happy. That's not what our brains are wired for. That's what we get to do as sentient beings, is to look for the happy.
The, the, the ledger that we're p- that we're keeping track of is not this stuff, and that's what I wanna shift for you, because we can. Because that's not a tiger in the kitchen. That's just a thing on the counter. Can I do something about that? Abso-freaking-lutely. Okay. All right.
So nobody handed you a plan here. You were just asked what's w- already working. You already knew. Three entries the old ledger never once counted, and they came out of your own pen in two minutes. These are the first entries of a plan that will be entirely yours. I'm telling you, it's probable that you can make this happen.
Now imagine 14 weeks of exactly this. Your knowing, asked for weekly, written down stretch by stretch with a room that gets it sitting beside you through the holy loud season. That's not a fantasy, and believe me, there's more science and there's more making sense, and there's more ways to look at things because There are so many reasons we use food, so many reasons.
That's why it's so noisy. It's so funny to me. I was watching Andrew Huberman yesterday. He was touting his new book. He was on, I don't remember what T- what Tonight Show or somewhere. He was somewhere last, a couple days ago, and he was, he was talking about the food issues and the, and the problems with the...
and the issues with GLP-1, et cetera. And he was saying, he had that, that noise thing. I just wanted to like, "Look, dude, you don't get it. Okay? You don't get it." But it's okay. He gives me good science, so I listen to him. But he just didn't get it. It was hilarious for me. If you find that clip, let me know and I'll share it out.
All right, so what is this season? Before I tell you what the season is, let me tell you how I know what it can't be. Almost every plan I ever ran died on a holiday, crashed on a Halloween, a Christmas, a birthday cake, and here's why. Plainly, a plan built on no is rigid, and rigid things don't bend. They shatter.
One off-plan bite and the whole structure goes. How many have felt that? Raise your hands Because the plan's own math says one crack equals broken. I led 17 Gideon games, guys. One crack equals broken. Researchers even have a name for the spiral that follows, the what-the-hell effect. So once the day is ruined, the rules are off until the mythical clean Monday.
Hear this, the plan didn't fail because you were weak on a holiday. It failed because it was brittle. It had no way to hold a holiday. I am not saying you cannot forever re- remove sugar and flour from your... I've been doing it for a decade. But I want you to hear, I don't say, "I don't eat sugar and flour." I say, "I eat wonderful, delicious, yummy vegetables."
That's the shift. It's the same plan, I just say it differently. I'm telling you, it's this simple, over and over for 14 weeks. So we build the opposite, a plan that bends. So that's the other piece that I want you to hear. Every ti- You can flash on it. How many, how many ways did you make a mistake in the last week?
How many ways did you s- do something wrong? In, in your eyes and in the eyes of the programs that you're in, how many ways did you do something wrong? This holiday season is loaded with probabilities, and I don't mean that as a, as a certainty at all. But we all know. I mean, I'm 67. I've had a few holidays under my belt But they're on the syllabus this year in the season.
We're going to, we're going to prep in advance and talk about the things. Because it's usually not, even though there's a ton of... I mean, w- in my experience, the buffet table is much bigger on the desserts than it is on anything else. I'm from, I'm from Minnesota originally. I went to my aunt's birthday party.
And I'm laughing because I called ahead to the restaurant and I said, "You know, I just need to know i- if there are salads, lots of salads on the buffet table." And the guy goes, "Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Sure. Lots and lots of salads." Guess what? Every single one of them, I am not kidding you, every single one had pasta in it Okay.
So I punted. I made different choices. The waiter became my dear friend. I still talk to him. No, I'm kidding. So here it is, no mystery, the Quiet Protocol and the Quiet Food Walk, fully jam-packed with lecture and science and oh-so-much daily wisdom designed to shift your nervous system. So much easier when accompanied.
For the first time, we're doing this accompanied. A bunch of people tested this, thank you very much all of you, tested the first six weeks of this. It's 14 weeks, and it's c- accompanied with what I call the Quiet Food Walk. So there's the Quiet Protocol and the Quiet Food Walk, and they're both designed to walk together.
14 live Tuesdays. The first stretch, we write your plan together from entries exactly like the ones in your hand into a full food map before the holidays peak. There's a whole section on writing your own food plan, and not from a, "I should be nutritionally following this."
Now, that's an important piece, but from a what, what is working for me and what isn't? And I, I come by this honestly. I struggled mightily with eating raw vegetables. I struggle with nightshades. I struggle with gluten. My body does not respond well to those substances. They are not food to me, NF. It's not my, not, not my food.
They're not food to me. They don't work for my body. So I've created a plan that works for me, and I adjust it as I need to, and that's the process that I want to teach you. So we live it together, accompanied through the deep weeks. There are sessions before Thanksgiving and December holiday season where we plan the joy on purpose.
You'll get your first email, one small email each morning. Promise it doesn't feel icky. At least I haven't felt it. I've gotten a lot of, of praise from people who've been getting it. Mine comes in... I'm on the Pacific Coast. Mine comes in at 4:00 AM.
You don't, you know, unless you've got your email ding turned on. 4:00 AM here, 7:00 AM on the East Coast, and I'm sorry, I never do the math for the Central and the, and Mountain Times. But that's when your email comes out, within a minute or two of that. Every call on Tuesday is recorded, and it will be li- landing in your app in, by the next morning, the recording will.
A community space where the room lives between Tuesdays. That's where we talk a lot. I, I could create a Facebook group, but I'm kind of done with all of that. I'd really rather you get onto my app and work through that system. If you struggle with it or have any questions- I love to answer questions.
So I really can't stress enough, whatever plan or practitioner already holds you, it comes with you. All of this is and, not instead. I am not gonna give you a plan. I might give you some suggestions if you ask me. If something you're struggling with, I might be able to come up with something for you, but I have a feeling you probably know.
There are, there were so many things that were written in there. There was one that was talking about intermittent fasting. I do that because of my past type 2 diabetes. I'm vegan because I was also high cholesterol, and I find it to be, and I also have a, a sanctuary or two in, in the back 40 here, and I believe very strongly in that.
That is nothing to do with whether or not you are or not. I am happy to support you in whatever you choose. I do know a lot about things and how they affect our bodies, so that is one thing that has been really helpful to me. And I wanna say one more thing, because some of you are being left out of this conversation from both sides.
Some of you are on the new medications, and somewhere along the way, someone said the sentence to you, a doctor, a headline, your own 2:00 AM brain, "If you ever get off this, you'll gain it all back." Ugh.
Hear me this, that sentence is not the certainty it pretends to be. It's a forecast about a person whose life never changed. It comes from watching people stop the medication and go back to the same nervous system, the same evenings, the same aloneness, the reasons untouched. Of course, the food got loud again.
Nobody ever made the yard safe for them. Ugh, it makes me so sad. The medication turns down the noise, and what a mercy that is. Ugh, it turns down the noise. I've heard this from others. I don't, I have-- I don't know what I would have done 10 years ago. I'm pretty sure I would have tried that myself. I just want you to hear, I just haven't needed it.
I don't have the noise. I have a lot of quiet. But it doesn't touch the reasons. The medication doesn't touch the reasons. It turns down the noise. So the people who do beautifully over the long haul are the ones who use the quiet to do the underneath work with company. That's not instead of your medication, that's alongside it.
Keep it with my blessing and your doctor's, and bring it walking with us. And this is the same that we've told ourselves after how many diets where we released then regained.
I, I lived in abject fear for two years and I thought, "Well, I don't wanna live like this." Are you in abject fear of gaining your weight back, or did you show yourself, "Oh, well, see? That happened. I have proof. I have all the data"? That fear is not just for the GLP-1ers. It's for all of us And we can move from abject fear to agnostic, just like I feel about my ex-husband
Keep your plan. Keep your practitioner. Keep your medication. This is company, and not instead. Thanks for walking with me today. Everything I make lives at transformwithsonja.com. Until next time, with love and light, Sonja.
