Food as Nourishment, Not Punishment: Intuitive Eating with Ann Kent

Food as Nourishment, Not Punishment: Intuitive Eating with Ann Kent

In Episode 20 of Your Life Is the Medicine, Dr. Sonny Miles welcomes her very first guest — registered dietitian, certified diabetes care and education specialist, and certified intuitive eating counselor Ann Kent — for a conversation that gently turns the whole framing of food on its head. Instead of asking what to cut, restrict, or fix, the two explore food as a literal building block of the body: the raw material of our hormones, our neurotransmitters, and our capacity to heal. This is integrative medicine at its most human — two practitioners who left the conventional healthcare system to make room for exactly this kind of unhurried, compassionate conversation. Together they unpack what intuitive eating actually is (and the common misconceptions about it), how diet culture teaches us to override our own hunger and fullness cues, and why so many women — especially those navigating a busy life or a history of trauma — quietly decide they aren't worth nourishing. Ann shares her framework rooted in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the practice of "nutrition by addition," and the somatic art of the pause: learning to notice whether a craving lives in the belly or somewhere higher, in the anxious tightness of the throat. It's a tender look at the mind-body connection and at food as a doorway into nervous system regulation rather than a battleground. The episode also holds the harder, more nuanced questions with care — including GLP-1 medications and weight loss, and how to approach these tools from a place of deep listening rather than shame. As Ann puts it, "you can never hate yourself into a body you love." For anyone weary of the checkbox mentality and longing for a more grounded, self-trusting relationship with their body, this conversation is an invitation toward holistic healing, resilience, and the slow, worthy work of reclaiming your body as your own. Learn more about Ann Kent at peasandhoppiness.com [https://peasandhoppiness.com/], explore her app at app.peasandhoppiness.com [https://app.peasandhoppiness.com/], find her book The Brain Plate at thebrainplate.com [https://thebrainplate.com/], and listen to her podcast Nutrition Nuance With Dietitian Ann at peasandhoppiness.com/podcast [https://peasandhoppiness.com/podcast]. Learn more about working with me: https://www.healingwithintentionim.com/ Follow on Instagram @healingwithintentionim https://www.instagram.com/healingwithintentionim/ All links: https://linktr.ee/healingwithintentionim

The Medicine of Balance: A Seasonal Guide to Summer Wellness and Nervous System Regulation

When summer arrives with its long light and outward energy, the invitation isn't to do more — it's to find balance. In this seasonal episode of Your Life Is the Medicine, Dr. Sonny Miles, an integrative and palliative care physician, explores what it means to move through summer in genuine relationship with the body. Drawing on Traditional Chinese Medicine's fire element and the wisdom of seasonal living, she reframes the season's fullness as an opportunity for nervous system regulation rather than depletion. Dr. Miles opens with a personal reflection on energetic shrinking — the quiet, protective habit of becoming small in spaces where we feel we have no agency — and offers a simple somatic practice for reclaiming presence and power. From there, she moves into the practical rhythms of summer wellness: hydration, cooling seasonal foods, sun protection, and the often-overlooked art of rest. Woven throughout is a deeper conversation about mind-body connection, self-trust, and the ways holistic healing asks us to listen inward rather than override the body's signals. More than a seasonal wellness guide, this episode is an invitation into sensuality and presence — into the ordinary, sensory moments where joy actually lives. For anyone navigating burnout, fatigue, or the pressure to keep performing, Dr. Miles offers a gentler path rooted in integrative medicine and somatic reclamation: one where balance, not intensity, becomes the medicine. Learn more about working with me: https://www.healingwithintentionim.com/ Follow on Instagram @healingwithintentionim https://www.instagram.com/healingwithintentionim/ All links: https://linktr.ee/healingwithintentionim

The Healing Power of Women's Circles: Why We Were Never Meant to Heal Alone

In this soulful episode of Your Life Is the Medicine, Dr. Sonny Miles — integrative and palliative care physician — opens the door to one of the most transformative practices in her own healing journey: women's circles. Recorded in the luminous days leading up to the summer solstice, Dr. Miles reflects on how circle work entered her life only six years ago, born from a painful career transition, and how it revived a part of her that had long been "neglected and squashed down" — the spiritual, nature-connected, intuitive self that modern medicine left no room for. With characteristic warmth and honesty, she explores why gathering in community offers a depth of holistic healing that one-on-one work alone cannot reach, and how the simple act of women witnessing one another becomes a profound force for resilience, belonging, and somatic reclamation. Listeners will discover how circle work supports nervous system regulation and creates a felt sense of safety that allows the body to rest, repair, and heal. Dr. Miles speaks candidly about the conditioning so many women carry — the hypervigilance, the unspoken belief that they are the problem — and how shared storytelling dismantles that isolation. Drawing on the wisdom of seasonal living, she shares the elements at the heart of her "Root and Bloom" solstice gathering: arriving and grounding, moving emotion through the body, journaling for inward reflection, and ritual as "the art of making the unseen seen." Throughout, she returns to a quietly radical idea rooted in integrative medicine and shamanic practice — that no one is broken. Every person arrives already whole. This is an invitation to step out of linear, task-driven time and into the circular, qualitative time where deeper self-trust and inner wisdom become accessible. Whether someone is navigating burnout, longing for connection, or simply curious about the mind-body connection that links inner world to physical wellbeing, this episode offers both refuge and reawakening. Listen to Episode 18 of Your Life Is the Medicine, then subscribe and share it with the women in your life who are ready to remember that healing was never meant to happen alone. Learn more about working with me: https://www.healingwithintentionim.com/ Follow on Instagram @healingwithintentionim https://www.instagram.com/healingwithintentionim/ All links: https://linktr.ee/healingwithintentionim

What My Horses Taught Me About Trauma, Nervous System Regulation, and Self-Trust

In this deeply personal episode of Your Life Is the Medicine, Dr. Sonny Miles shares the story of how her horses, Galileo and Ding, became her most profound teachers in trauma recovery, nervous system regulation, and self-trust. In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, she offers a soulful, grounded look at the work so many women carry quietly — the anxiety, the hypervigilance, the long practice of learning to trust ourselves again. Dr. Miles walks listeners through her three-part framework for healing anxiety and depression, explores the somatic wisdom of fear, and reflects on what it means to show up for ourselves over and over, even when healing feels slow. This is an invitation to widen your definition of holistic healing and notice the teachers already present in your own life. What You'll Learn * A three-part framework for working with anxiety and nervous system dysregulation * How to recognize what your nervous system needs in the moment * Why self-trust is foundational to lasting healing * How everyday relationships become medicine when we let them Subscribe to Your Life Is the Medicine for honest, integrative conversations about resilience, the mind-body connection, and somatic reclamation. Learn more about working with me: https://www.healingwithintentionim.com/ Follow on Instagram @healingwithintentionim https://www.instagram.com/healingwithintentionim/ All links: https://linktr.ee/healingwithintentionim

The Labyrinth Within — Reflections on Becoming, Authenticity, and the Medicine of Self-Trust

In this deeply personal episode of Your Life Is The Medicine, Dr. Sonny Miles invites listeners into a sacred pause — lighting a candle, drawing an oracle card, and reflecting on the winding journey of becoming herself. Through the ancient metaphor of the labyrinth, she explores what it means to release the conditioning of who we thought we were supposed to be and return to the truth of who we actually are. Drawing from her own decade-long path as a physician, mother, and entrepreneur, Dr. Miles shares how stepping outside the conventional healthcare system became a parallel journey of somatic reclamation and self-recognition — a slow, sacred unlearning of perfectionism, performance, and the patriarchal scripts that shape so many women's lives. Weaving together wisdom from The Gap and the Gain, the myth of Inanna, the Pachakuti Mesa cosmovision, and her own clinical insight as an integrative and palliative care physician, Dr. Miles offers a refreshing reframe on success, resilience, and holistic healing. She speaks honestly about burnout, the cost of being "moldable," and the quiet courage required to build a practice — and a life — rooted in intuition rather than external validation. This episode is a love letter to anyone who has done all the "right things" and still feels unseen, exhausted, or disconnected from the woman beneath the rubble. What You'll Learn * How the labyrinth serves as a powerful metaphor for nervous system regulation, healing, and the mind-body connection * A reflective exercise from The Gap and the Gain to measure your growth across the last 10 years, 3 years, 1 year, and 90 days * Why true success is built on self-recognition and radical responsibility for your own happiness * How entrepreneurship and authenticity can become parallel paths of becoming * The difference between fixing what's broken and nourishing the whole self If this episode speaks to the part of you that's ready to come home to yourself, subscribe to Your Life Is The Medicine wherever you listen to podcasts, leave a review to help more women find this work, and share it with someone walking their own labyrinth. Your life — exactly as it is — can become the medicine. Learn more about working with me: https://www.healingwithintentionim.com/ Follow on Instagram @healingwithintentionim https://www.instagram.com/healingwithintentionim/ All links: https://linktr.ee/healingwithintentionim