Why You’ll Never Change | Cynthia Pasquella-Garcia on Health Theory

In today's episode of Health Theory with Cynthia Pasquella Garcia, we talk about her near suicide, the importance of suffering, getting to the emotional root of your health problems, and how to battle depression. Everybody, welcome to Health Theory. Today's guest is Cynthia Pasquella Garcia. She is a best-selling author, celebrity nutritionist, and transformation expert who takes a deeply individualized and personal approach to health and wellness. And she's built her extraordinary career by helping people realize that there's a gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it. And Cynthia, that's where I want to start. Like the the whole notion of change or die. Sure. And that when presented with the option to change or die, what percentage of people choose die? It's a huge percentage. I mean, it's above 80%. There's been a couple of different studies that have been done on this around asking this question. Um, for people with, you know, diseases, lifestyle diseases, diabetes, those types of things that can completely be prevented. But when asked to either change or die, they don't change. It's fascinating. I'm sure you know people. I know people. Same thing. They get in that situation and they're unable to do it. Talk to me about fear. Like what is it that makes change terrifying on that level that they would rather coast into dying than, you know, actually shake things up and and make that change. You know, there are very clear reasons that we have for doing the things that we do. And there's also very clear reasons, um, but maybe not obvious as to why we simply won't change. You know, one of the things that I've been fascinated with since I began my career is why do you know what to do but still won't do it, right? And people say, "Oh, I I want to lose weight. I want to get healthy. I want to be successful. I want to do all of these things, but then we see them not taking the simple steps to actually make that possible. And what we're talking about, Tom, is such a a bigger conversation. There are such deep-rooted um issues and deep-rooted events and deep-rooted pains and traumas within us that it's not as simple as do this and then you'll be skinny. Do this and then you'll be successful. Um it's it's really runs much deeper than that. Transformation is thrown around a lot. And I love the definition uh the way you Krishnamurti defined it. He said, "When you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation." So, what he's saying is, you know, don't seek to just disregard everything that you've been through and what's got you here where you are now, cuz that's what we try to do, right? We just try to take a new road. Don't disregard that, but instead try to understand it. Try to understand who you are as opposed to trying to just be different, cuz when you can understand who you are and why you are that way, that's where transformation happens. And then once you understand that piece, change is is so much easier. All right, let's walk through that. So, one thing that you've sort of made a manifesto about that I think is incredibly powerful is you said, "I'm tired of just being on a show, on another podcast, talking about theory. I'm only interested in things that become actionable." Right. So, I love that. How do people go about that process of saying, "Who am I?" Like, how what is Is it an excavation process? Is it a turning inward meditation? Like, what what What are the mechanistic steps people can go through to figure that out? We have to go back to where this all really started, right? Where did we actually lose touch with who we are? Like, why don't we know who we are? Why don't we know the things that bring us happiness and joy? I actually was working with a client one time as an example. She was in her early 50s, had always supported her husband and son's career. I'm having this coaching session with her and I said, "Look, tomorrow morning you're going to wake up. Nothing is going to stand in your way. You're going to live the life that you want to live. You're going to do what you want to do in the world. You can have any experience. Like the thing that really lights you up, that brings you joy, that brings you passion. What is that?" And she lowered her head and she started sobbing. She looks at me with tears just streaming down her face and said, "I have no idea." Now, the crazy thing is that's not a random case. I've seen that happen in hundreds, if not thousands of people over the years. We don't know who we are. So, here's how I believe that happens. So, we're born and we're these perfect little babies. And it's a really great situation. You know, you want something, you cry, and people give it to you. Like that doesn't work today. I've tried. But it's really powerful when we're young, right? But then something starts to happen. We start to get older and we start to kind of come into ourselves and our personalities and our bodies. And we'll run and we'll yell and we'll scream. You've seen kids are completely uninhibited. But then we start to hear the message, "You're being too this. You're being too that." So, what we begin to hear is that there's something wrong with me. I am inherently flawed. And typically this comes from our parents, right? Now, they may not be meaning to do this, but they're essentially letting you know that the way you are is not okay. So, we think, "Okay, if I'm going to survive, I need to be accepted. I need to be different. If I want my mother and father's love, I need to be accepted." So, we start to kind of fall in line, you know, and we start to change who we are. And this is only perpetuated as we get older, you know, through the media, through society, through shoulds. You know, we're told that you should, you know, go to school every day and get good grades so you can get into a good college and we're expected to get that great job and the perfect man and have the 2.5 kids and, you know, be a rockstar in um the boardroom and a pornstar in the bedroom and look like a Barbie doll while doing it. Now, that's not even the crazy part. The crazy part is we buy into that. And we say, "Yeah, that's what I need to do." And we become so busy trying to be who they say we should be that we forget who we are and we completely lose track of that. So, now what's happened is we've created all of these voids, right? Because parts of us are missing. It's like you have a house with all of these rooms in it and you just start closing the door and you have no idea what's in that room anymore. So, if I'm going back and I'm opening these doors and I'm looking at things and I'm sure some of it is going to be beautiful stuff that I've forgotten that I love, that I found joy in and some of it is going to be painful and trauma that I haven't wanted to look at or think about. Yeah. Um what is that what does the process of acceptance look like? Mhm. I want people to understand how you started in diet and nutrition and realized that this was a component that had to be dealt with in order for that all to make sense. So, where does that all come full circle as we try to reintegrate these parts of ourselves? I have a confession to make to you. I was never interested in nutrition. I could not have cared less about health. I didn't know a protein from a carb and I didn't care. I thought people were so silly for talking about these things, right? Until I had my own health struggle. So, and I think that happens for a lot of us, right? So, I was um actually here in Los Angeles, I was a model and a television host and I was living this crazy, crazy lifestyle. You know, I was um essentially partying all night and working all day and just pounding the pavement auditions that whole thing. I was doing to really numb out from my own past traumas and my own past pains, but it all caught up with me really quickly. I ended up being about 30 lb overweight. Um so you like in place that I know you could get it. I had cystic acne all along my jawline, my chest, my back, my hair was breaking and falling out. I was exhausted from morning till night. I could sleep a 20-hour night and still be so tired. I suffered from short-term memory loss. I was finally diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome um and a lot of other we don't know what's wrong with you. Yeah. So I tried everything. I mean I tried every diet. I tried prescription medications. I did energy healing. I was hypnotized. I popped the pills. I drank the shakes and nothing worked. So I was clinically depressed by this time. And I remember I got up one morning and I thought maybe today is the day I'm going to start feeling better. So I get in the shower and I find a lump in my left breast. And of course, you know, I reached for the other, found a lump. And I I haven't ever known what it's like to just have no thoughts in your mind cuz my mind is always racing until then. And I remember I just sunk to the floor in the shower, the water's still coming, and I just wrapped my arms around myself and I just started rocking just back and forth, just back and forth, like much like you'd rock a child. And I don't know how long I sat there, but I remember the water being cold and I'm shivering. So I got out, I put a towel around me, and I just sat and I just stared at the wall for hours. And the day turned into afternoon, turned into evening, and by this time it was wee hours of the morning. And I was done. I was done. Tom, I had tried everything. I just I couldn't do it any longer. I wasn't upset. I was just done. And I decided to take my own life. And I'm sitting in the corner. And um I have a Diet Dr. Pepper on one side of me and a handful of pills. And I was on my way out. And I thought, "You know what? They can't say I didn't try. They can't say I didn't give it a good shot." I had been struggling my entire life. You know, I grew up in a home that was filled with domestic abuse. Um we were very, very poor. Like I remember not having food to eat and and having to go to bed hungry. Uh there was a lot of um drug and alcohol abuse in the home. Lots of strangers around all hours day and night. And uh I was sexually abused from a very young age multiple times. So, I had been fighting so hard for my entire life. I lost loved one after loved one from suicide or random car accidents, you name it. So, that night, sitting there after just feeling like I've been fighting for my entire life, I was just so sick of fighting. And I felt hopeless, and I felt worthless, and I felt useless. And I thought, "I'm done. That's it. I'm out." And the more I came to terms with that, and I'm sitting there, I started to get angry. I was angry at the people that I went to for help who didn't help me. I was angry at myself for getting in that place. And I was angry at God. I was like, "Why? Why me? You know, why has my entire life been a struggle, been a fight? Like, why?" And the more I kept saying, "Why me? Why me? Why me?" and I'm in just this other state of mind, it was just I mean, call it whatever you want, you know, a divine download, uh my come-to-Jesus moment, whatever you want to call it. And I just heard this voice say, "It's happening for you, not to you." And it was like someone turned on the lights in that moment. And I understood that I was supposed to go through this, that it was all for a reason, that this was part of my journey, and that it wasn't supposed to be over yet. And that was a big deal, you know? And I thought, "I'm meant to do something really great." Look, coming from someone who'd been told my entire life, "You You are worthless. You will never amount to anything." For me to think that was huge, right? So, I got up, left the diet and diet Dr. Pepper, put the pills down, and I went to my computer, and I hopped on Google, um and I searched for nutrition programs, cuz I thought, "Well, if I'm going to figure this out, I should probably understand the difference between a protein and a carb." What made you start there? That's so surprising. I felt very broken, and my mind felt very broken. I mean, think about living with a mind that tries to murder you every day, and how that would feel. So, I knew that in order to fix that and to heal this, that this had to be in alignment, that I had to have the strength, I had to have the energy, I had to be functioning enough to be able to take that next step. So, it was really about laying the foundation. So, you start going down the diet route. What What were some of the early wins? I know that you landed on what I think is the absolute truth of nutrition, which is that it's insanely individualized. gosh. So, how did you break through some of the the really dogmatic paradigms that would have been in place 14 years ago? Yeah. Um get past that to actually get into what worked. Yeah. Well, it was trial and error. Okay, what does work for me? And it was really about trying things, to be honest with you. I I we see people and and we say, "Oh, that that guy had a great transformation. That girl had a great transformation. I'm going to do what they're doing." And unfortunately, it doesn't always work like that because as you said, it is highly personalized. But the problem with that, um a lot of diet books out there, I wrote one, right? And they are cookie-cutter. And so, what happens is if they don't work for someone, then that person starts to feel like, "Ugh, I knew it. I'm a failure. It's my fault. I'm never going to change. I'm hopeless. I'm worthless." You know? So, it's tough. It's It's not an easy conversation and it's not an easy kind of road to navigate. Yeah, that's how I know that we're really getting to the truth of it. And hearing you talk about diet and your approach to working with your clients, it rang so true to me in terms of, all right, we've got this complex animal here that's going through a lot. And I think in as the science continues to come out, we're going to see that there's just an inter- um mingled, totally intertwined connection between the body and the mind. Oh my gosh. And walk me through what struggles you had early in the journey that made you realize just understanding the biology, just understanding macronutrients, it's not actually helping me. And that there's a deeper thing that I have to deal with here cuz I think that unique intersection, um you're you're uniquely gifted at getting that across to people. It's based on my own journey and that of clients. So, once I started going back to school and started learning, you know, the basics, I am trained um in traditional clinical nutrition, right? So, that's where I started. And you can write out a plan. It can be a a great diet or meal plan, but then we don't follow it. And I thought, "Why? Why? Why when we have all of the answers?" But if information was all we needed, then we'd all be, you know, healthy and thin and successful and have great relationships and great sex and all of those things, right? We'd be we'd be done. So, it was clear to me that it was more than that. So, why do we know what to do and still won't do it? One of the things that I looked at was why do we self-sabotage? You know, well, we don't think we're worthy. Well, why don't we think we're worthy? Because we were taught that at a young age. Well, when were we taught that and how did that happen, right? So, I started looking at beliefs that we have. Here's what I believe a belief is. I created an equation. It's three E's. It's the event that happened to you, the emotion that you felt, and the explanation that you gave it. A bad equals a belief, right? So, really simple example. You come home and you have your report card and Tommy, you have not done so well. It is it is not pretty. So, your parents sit you down and they say, you know what, Tommy, you got to do better than this. You know, we expect more of you if you're going to get a good job and you're going to build a good life for yourself, this has to change. The event was just the conversation. You felt emotions. Now, emotions, those bad girls are the key, right? Because it's emotions that where you start to embody your trauma. Your emotions is where you feel. Your emotions are what trigger the biological reactions, right? We start to create these neurological pathways. We also do something called um we have a negativity bias, which means we're trained to believe the worst, and then we'll spend the rest of our lives looking for evidence to back it up, right? So, then there's the explanation. And that's the explanation that you gave it because it didn't have any until you made one up based on the event that happened and the emotions that you felt in that moment. So, your explanation might be I'm not good enough. My parents don't love me. They think I'm stupid. I am stupid. I'm not smart. I'll never amount to anything. I'm not meant to be successful. I can't get good grades, right? All of these explanations. So, what you what you have to start doing is going back to where these beliefs first formed, right? And you have to start dismantling this equation. And you start with refilling the emotions, revisiting the explanation, and then saying, "What other explanation could I give it?" Right? Give it a new explanation. You know what? Your parents just wanted the best for you. They wanted you to have a good life. It wasn't about how intelligent you were, how capable you were. They just wanted what was best. So, you let go of that explanation. Well, now what emotions do you feel? Probably better, right? Probably love and and gratitude for having parents that cared enough to sit you down and have this conversation. So, now all that's left is the event, and the event doesn't equal a belief. So, now you no longer have this belief, so now you no longer sabotage your results and your progress. So, is that something that you focus on a lot with working with your clients to to do the or play the I wonder why game? Mhm. Yeah. So, what exactly is it and how do people um leverage that for those those moments of self-awareness? Sure. So, it's not easy to just say, "Hey, go back to the earliest time that you felt worthless and tell me about that." You know, it's um it's not that simple. It's very scary. I mean, you have to remember that for many of us, this was very traumatizing. These were very painful moments in our past. And so, most of us have spent our entire adult lives trying to numb those feelings, right? And so, what I thought was, "Well, we have to have a really um non-threatening, simple approach that anyone could do." So, I taught my clients to play the I wonder game. I wonder. Just wonder. I wonder, right? Um and it just sort of started naturally. When I was would be coaching, I would say, "I wonder why you feel that. I I wonder I wonder when that's happened to you before. I wonder when there's been another time that you've felt this way. Um I wonder what the earlier moment was when you felt that way. And all you do is wonder. And what that allows you to do is without trying to find fault, without beating yourself up, without looking at maybe ways that which you've been wronged, it allows you just to go back, right? To go inward. We spend so much time going outside of ourselves to other people and things looking for the answers, when we have everything we need right here. So, you just say, "I wonder." You know? And this could be used for anything, Tom. Um gosh, I'm I got so angry when that person cut me off in traffic. I wonder, what did that trigger deeper?" Well, it triggered um this is a recent incident. That person doesn't respect me. Mm. "I wonder I wonder when else you felt like people didn't respect you, right?" Well, I remember being young and I remember people talking over me as if I didn't matter, but I did and I had something to say and I felt irrelevant. So, what that allows you to do is to step out of yourself, to step out of your emotions, to step out of the current situation, of the struggle that you might find yourself in, and really become the observer. You're just the observer of you. You don't need to take it personally. You don't need to really dig your heels in and feel justified in your beliefs. It's not even about that. You just need to wonder. So, in that process, obviously, people are going to encounter a lot of things where so-and-so did this, they wronged me, whatever, and now it's kicking back up a lot of emotional things from when they grew up. You've talked about how to deal with that, how to process it, let it go. Um what does that process look like? Well, you start with the beliefs equation, you know, because our beliefs really do determine our outcomes. But, there's a lot of pain, you know, and you've carried this around for a really really long time. There's a process of forgiveness that has to to done. Holding a grudge is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies. You know, it's never going to really work out for you. It's really interesting. I find it fascinating how much of this stuff comes back to childhood. As somebody who just really wants to believe that we are eternally malleable individuals, it is pretty fascinating how much people are A impacted by their childhood and B somewhat blind to how malleable that is in terms of framing, right? That they could look back, review it, go through the process you're talking about it. Sure. Look at it anew, and in giving it that new meaning, they can begin to really form new beliefs and new worldview that allows them to move forward in a more powerful way. But often they don't. They get stuck in that. And what I want to talk about is self-worth. It's really, really interesting how deeply people struggle with that. So, um walk me through how do people get a grip on their self-worth? And um you know, what plays into that? Yeah. So, it really is over time, not overnight. When I was on my own healing journey, I went to a coach and she said, and you know, I poured my heart out, Tom. I was like just sobbing. And she said, I have all the answers. And I thought, all right. Yes, you know? And she said, you just have to love yourself. I don't think I've ever wanted to harm another human as much as I did in that moment. And I thought, well, gosh, thanks. We make it seem like it can happen just like that. It goes back to understanding yourself. You can't love something that you don't understand. And that's where spirituality really comes into play. So, what I do is called transformational nutrition. And there's three pillars to that. So, transformational nutrition is the study of human health and wellness on multiple levels, including the biological, the psychological, and the spiritual areas of life. And when I say spirituality, I don't mean um religion, even though it could certainly be religion for you, but what I'm talking about is connection. And there's really three pillars that we study at the institute, and that is, you know, your personal spirituality, communal spirituality, and environmental spirituality. So, personal spirituality is about you. It's about your connection to yourself. It's about understanding who you are, where you came from, the truth of that, telling your story, accepting your story, right? Not trying to change it, not trying to numb out. But then there is, you know, communal spirituality, and that's our relationships with others. This is huge. I always say, if you want to understand or just get a a quick snapshot of someone's health, ask them about their relationships. That's interesting. It's a direct correlation every single time. So, how how healthy your relationships are is how healthy you are as a person, right? It's all just an outer reflection of what's going on on the inside. So, you know, creating spiritual partnerships with people. Uh Gary Zukav coined the term spiritual partners, and, you know, he says friends don't want to rock the boat. And spiritual partners turn the boat over to help you learn how to swim. And then there's environmental, which is, you know, the connection with the earth, the connection with something bigger than you, whatever that is for you. It's really about embodying all three of those. So, again, you start to understand who you are and why you're here, and you start to connect and explore and dive deeper, right? Um that's the hard work, you know? Diets are easy. This is where it gets a little messy. That is really interesting. I love that, cuz everybody thinks about the diet is the hard part, that, you know, I don't want to give this up. I don't want to like eat less or whatever. Why don't you want to give it up? Why don't you want to eat less? I wonder why. I wonder. And you've also talked about the whole notion of that sometimes you need to let people feel pain. Yeah. Why? Well, because it's part of their journey. And who are you to take that away from them? We go through pain in order to prepare us to step into our power. And what I believe is that everything that happens to you is just setting you up and preparing you for what's to come. In the very early on in my coaching career, I just wanted to make people feel better, right? Cuz we get uncomfortable when people don't feel good around us. Oh, Tom, you know, it's it wasn't your fault. You did everything right. You know, um it's they don't even know. They don't even know who you are. Like you're the best. Like those are our friends, right? And our spiritual partners will let you be in pain. And they'll say, I wonder why you're hurting. I'm sorry you're hurting. And I wonder if there's something deeper for you. Here's the interesting thing about pain. Um you may know this. Do you know how long an emotion last for? 90 seconds. 90 seconds. That's it. That's as long as an emotion last. Now, when I first heard that, I was like, there's no way that's true. Cuz I have been on the floor sobbing for hours. I know pain lasts longer. But it doesn't. The thing that keeps it going is the stories we tell ourselves, right? And that's why we don't like to feel pain, because it's not constructive pain. It's not helpful pain. It's just suffering, right? But when you can help people to see that this is for a reason. And if you can take advantage of that, you can turn your deepest, darkest pain and shame into your greatest power. Do you have techniques or anything that you use to like really facilitate the the journey? So, there's this thing that I like to call white space. We often react to things. Something happens, you react. Something happens, you react. It's just instantaneously. But when you can just take a deep breath and sort of zoom out and become the observer and think, "Oh, what is this triggering, right? I wonder." Back to I wonder. You can do this with food, you can do it with anything. "I wonder why this is happening." Then it creates this white space, right? And at first, it's a little tiny sliver. It's a little tiny amount of light. But it's enough. And in that sliver of white space, then you can decide. Do I react or do I respond? And here's the thing, there's no right answer, right? I mean, yell at the person, eat the donut, scarf down the pizza, whatever. That might be the wrong decision for people, but it's it's it was perfect for you in that moment, right? It's always perfect because you made that choice after being the observer and thinking consciously about it. Now, what happens is, the more you do that, then the longer the white space gets. And you start to really embody your power, right? That's where empowering really comes from. It's not about willpower, it's about finding your power. And this is how you do that. I think about this a lot cuz people write into me every day. Like, they have some dream, there's something they want to do. Yeah. And they're willing to pour themselves into it. Yeah. And the only words I've been able to come up with are, "The struggle is guaranteed, the success is not." And so, love the struggle, right? But like, what advice do you have for somebody? Like, one, I know that you want them to feel that pain. Sure. But do you tell them like it's you need to take action, you need to be active in the role of growing so that when the next thing comes along that you're ready for it? Like, what does that look like? kind of the opposite of that. Um it's more about relaxing into it and not taking action. It's really about letting go of your attachment because that's where the suffering is, right? Um we we We a lot about pain and we talked a lot about suffering. It comes in a lot of ways from holding on to something so strong. We're just so unwilling to let go that it keeps us It keeps us stagnant. It keeps us where we are, and we can't grow, and we can't evolve, and we can't see the next better thing down the road when we're just stuck here, you know, being upset that things didn't work out the way we wanted them to work out. And look, letting go is not easy. It's something that I still deal with. So, when we can start letting go of those attachments, the suffering starts to fade. The mind starts to open, and the heart starts to open, and we'll start to see opportunities and possibilities that we would have been completely blind to before. Listening to you talk is so surreal because I'm sitting here thinking that you were one handful of pills and a swill of Diet Dr. Pepper away from not going through this and learning all of this and and putting it together. I mean, it's really pretty extraordinary. But, what I love is that you've talked about how depression is an ongoing thing. It's something that you still deal with. Yeah. Um what do you do to deal with that? What advice do you have for people cuz I know a lot of people in my community struggle deeply with depression. Yeah. And I'd love to know like what um what you've learned about the ongoing maintenance of that situation. I used to believe that I was broken. Mhm. Hopelessly broken. And now I realize that the breaks are how the light gets in. I think that as tough as it is dealing with depression, again, something where your your mind tries to murder you, is so different than anything I've ever experienced. And I also think that it can be empowering. Because I feel like if we can really open to that darkness and if we can be in it and try to understand why and and come through it, every time we come through it, every time I come through it, I am so much stronger for the next time and the next time and the next time. And one tool I have, and this is from my husband. I remember I was going through this really dark moment and you know, the darkness is so heavy and so thick. And I've had people say, "Well, just cheer up." But I'm not sad. Do you understand? I'm depressed. I'm not sad. Those are two totally different things. I can feel sadness sometimes, but that's not depression. And so I remember I was in this one night and um my husband was there holding my hand like a good spiritual partner would do. And he said, "Just find the pinhole of light." cuz I kept saying it's so dark and he said, "Find the pinhole of light. Just the one thing. Just the one tiny little thing that you can focus on in that moment." And um in that moment it was my daughter. And she was my light. She was that tiny little pinhole of light. So, whatever whenever you find yourself in that situation, whatever you can grasp, whatever you can hold on to, whatever that one tiny little light, that one glimmer of hope is, find it and hold on for dear life. You know, that that's really what it's about. The other thing that I do is take mental health days. Really practice self-care when it comes to your mental health. Uh nutrition is so key, you know. Uh we talked about the omega-3s, all of those things. It's so important to your mental health. Really feeding your soul, right? Feeding your heart, discovering what it is that you're really hungry for, and allowing yourself to consume that, allowing that to nourish you, is really powerful. Um, practical things are therapy. I actually made a huge painting. It sits in my bedroom. It's just this black heavy circles of paint, and in the middle is one tiny point of light. See if you can get ahead of it, and most of us don't do this, and I'm guilty of it, too. I wait until the darkness settles in, cuz I'm too busy. I don't have time for that, you know? I don't have time to go sit and meditate some more. I don't have time to do a piece of art every week, you know? But that's that's um, really making the struggle harder for me, cuz then when it does hit, I'm just blindsided. Mhm. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. All right. Talk to me a little bit about nutrition. Where do you start somebody? They come to you, they want to transform, and obviously we've talked a lot about the emotional side. Where do you begin just sort of as a general rule with food? Yeah, we start where they are, right? You meet them where they are. I think that's really important. Sometimes they're here, and we want to start here. So, I think that's really key. You have to take baby steps. I'm a firm believer that the way you create permanent change is to do it again over time, not overnight. Like, I like to do swaps with with people, right? I'll trade you the diet Dr. Pepper for a sparkling flavored water, right? Maybe some Hint sparkling water, something like that. So, you start with those baby steps, and you have to give people early wins. I think that's really critical. The other thing that um, we teach at the institute that I really focus on is co-creating protocols with your clients, right? Cuz here's the thing. When we just give someone a plan, or we give them a diet book, or we give them whatever, we will go along with it, you know, from Monday until about Wednesday afternoon, and then we're done, because something happens, right? There's an argument with your significant other, your boss is just, you know, uh you a hard time at work, whatever the case might be, and then you're done, right? See, this is where and this is where I hear willpower. I don't have any willpower. It's not about willpower. You have to stop taking away their power in the first place and giving that back to them. You see, when people have um input into what happens into what they eat, into the workouts that they do, into the lifestyle that they live, they're way more likely to stick with that than just following orders from someone, right? Again, we're teaching them to go in to find their own solutions. We just I just educate them, you know? I give them options, and then I let them choose, and I support them on that journey. That makes a lot of sense. All right, before I ask my last question, tell these guys where they can find you online. Yeah. So, my website cynthiapasquella.com, um and all the social links are there, and then on transformationnutrition.com to learn more about the institute in this whole process of nutrition. That's amazing. All right, my last question. If you were going to have people make one change that would have the biggest impact on their life, what change would you have them make? Um I I would help them discover what they're really hungry for. Because until you understand that, until you understand what it is that feeds you, which is very different than what feeds me, the food, the diets, the workout, they're never going to quite have the effect that you want. You're never just because you're skinny doesn't mean you're going to be happy, right? Just because you're healthy doesn't mean you're going to be happy. Just because you're wealthy doesn't mean your life is going to be fully together and you're going to be filled with bliss every day. It doesn't work that way. The only way you're going to feel that hunger is by understanding what it is that you're really hungry for and then nourishing yourself with that daily. Mhm. I love that. Awesome. Cynthia, thank you thank you so much for coming on the show. That was absolutely amazing. Guys, this is one of the most unique approaches to health and wellness I have ever come across in my life and I have spent a lot of time in the health and wellness space, but somebody that is really at the forefront of looking at the whole human, looking at why we eat the way that we eat, looking at why there are certain things that we really don't want to give up and understanding that and being recursive and going inside yourself and giving people the tools to deal with that and how to understand that and bridging the gap between your relationship with food, your relationship with yourself, and your relationship with other people. It's absolutely extraordinary and doing it through the lens of not only the science and the psychology, but the spirituality and bringing that all together. It is It is truly a 360° approach to wellness, to understanding yourself, and really being able to grow. And I loved it when she said that that's why we're here, that we're all here to learn and grow and push ourselves. And when you start coming at food from that angle and when you understand your health and nutrition from that angle of you trying to facilitate that growth, you're trying to be in that yourself and push yourself to want more, to experience the pain, to be around people that aren't just trying to rescue from that, so that you really can step into yourself and open those doors back up in your house. It's really amazing. You guys will enjoy diving into her world, I promise, because it will be so impactful in your life. So, be sure to go deep. All right, guys. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Thank you. Thank you again, Sonia. Thank you guys so much for watching and being a part of this community. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. 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