Gut-Brain Healing, Body Image & Spiritual Wellness with Erin Kerry | ANEW Ep 92

In this powerful Part 2 of our conversation, integrative nutrition coach and Sparking Wholeness podcast host Erin Kerry returns to ANEW Insight to dive even deeper into the connection between gut health, mental well-being, and whole-person healing.

Hosted by clinical psychologist, registered dietitian, and award-winning author Dr. Supatra Tovar, this episode explores why your gut is the second brain—and how trauma, nutrition, and nervous system regulation are more connected than most of us realize.

Erin shares her own story of childhood trauma and chronic digestive issues, and how discovering the gut-brain connection transformed both her mental health and career. She explains the critical role the vagus nerve and gut microbiome play in neurotransmitter production—including serotonin and dopamine—and how your dietary choices can influence mood, anxiety, focus, and more.

Dr. Tovar and Erin also unpack the lasting impact of diet culture and restrictive eating. They explore how low-carb, high-protein diets may harm mental health by depriving the brain of its primary fuel source: glucose. Instead, they advocate for a healing approach to food—one rooted in nourishment, not punishment.

This episode also tackles the deeply personal topic of body image. Erin discusses how women internalize messages about their bodies from a young age, how societal standards create lifelong struggles, and how shifting the narrative to “body partnership” can create emotional freedom.

And finally, they explore the spiritual dimension of wellness—how aligning your body, mind, and soul can help you discover purpose, self-love, and the ability to show up in the world authentically.

If you’ve ever felt limited by a diagnosis, defined by a number on the scale, or stuck in an endless loop of “fixing” yourself, this episode is your invitation to heal—through education, nourishment, and self-compassion.

Erin Kerry’s upcoming book, Live Beyond Your Label, drops this fall. Be sure to follow her @sparkingwholeness for updates and preorder information.

🔗 Visit anew-insight.com to explore the book, course, and podcast offerings.

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Thank you for joining us on this journey to wellness. Remember, the insights and advice shared on the ANEW Body Insight Podcast are for educational and informational purposes only and do not constitute medical advice. Always consult with a healthcare professional before making any changes to your health routine. To learn more about the podcast and stay updated on new episodes, visit ANEW Body Insight Podcast at anew-insight.com. To watch this episode on YouTube, visit @my.anew.insight. Follow us on social media at @my.anew.insight on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Threads for more updates and insights. Thank you for tuning in! Stay connected with us for more empowering stories and expert guidance. Until next time, stay well and keep evolving with ANEW Body Insight!

Transcript

Dr. Supatra Tovar: 0:00

Welcome back to the ANEW Insight podcast. We are back for the second half of our interview with integrative nutrition coach and Sparking Wholeness podcaster Erin Kerry. Erin gave us some invaluable insight into her path to lead teaching and pursue nutritional coaching. I cannot wait to pick her brain some more.

Erin Kerry: 0:01

Yeah, I think for me, the biggest reason I make it a focus is 'cause I had no idea what it was. Nobody ever told me that my gut and brain had anything to do with each other. And as I mentioned in the, in part one, I, I, experienced pretty significant trauma when I was a young girl, and I didn't realize until a few years ago even I was looking through some old journals that I kept at that time. And vagus is spelled V-A-G-U-S. And what I always say is what happens in the vagus nerve does not stay in the vagus nerve, 'cause your vagus nerve is connected from the base of your skull all the way down, it really attaches to every little organ along the way. It looks like a little alien in your body, but it is an incredible communication. We are essentially more bacterial cell than human cells in some ways because we are just made up of so much bacteria and that bacteria signals everywhere, right? And so that that bacteria in the gut is helping to synthesize neurotransmitters based on what food you're receiving or not receiving. And so if you're receiving, like we talked about before, a lot of nutrient dense foods, like your leafy greens and your vegetables and your good healthy fats and your good quality, quality matters of animal protein. If you're getting those things. Then your gut is gonna be able to synthesize the nutrients that you need to build neurotransmitters, and then that bacteria is gonna be able to communicate with the brain and help to produce things, like I said, serotonin, but dopamine. Are you getting tryptophan from protein and plants? Because if you're not, if the gut has enough going on, that's I would say irritable, right? Like IBS is kinda that catchall phrase, but if the gut is not digesting well, if there are some issues there, whether in your bathroom habits, then it's, there's a really good chance that you might not be producing all those co-factors to make the serotonin. And that would've been a really great puzzle piece for me to learn. But that wasn't talked about. And so I do focus on gut health because as Hippocrates said, many years ago, thousands of years ago, disease starts in the gut. So whether it is something like depression or even bipolar disorder to an extent or something like diabetes or autoimmune disease, for sure is a big one that starts in the gut.

Dr. Supatra Tovar: 0:05

Yes. I think that there's such a disconnect. I think people don't really truly realize just how much nutrition affects not only your physical health. I think people kind of understand. I. That, but there seems to be a disconnect there that, you kind of can eat whatever you want as long as you're like, you know, staying in a calorie deficit and exercising a ton, that's just, it's just not true.

Erin Kerry: 0:06

That's, that's a really good question. I think when it comes to the nutritional impact, I think we spent a lot of time focusing on what people shouldn't eat, so that they could be smaller so that they could lose weight and there wasn't enough focus on what to eat to live right? To function to have high quality of life. And it had to be because you're on a diet because you're in deprivation mode. Well, that's a whole mindset issue, right? So then I'm essentially telling my body. Well, this natural, whole food, sources of food that this, it doesn't even taste good. There's nothing good about it, and so it just impacts even the digestion when, when I eat it right? It's, I, I have a phrase I love to say that's a body and stress won't digest. And if we are stressed out about what we're eating, whether it's because we think it's gonna be bad for us, right, or, or if we think it's just gonna be tasteless because it's quote healthy and we don't And I think that that's a word that we don't associate with eating. I love thinking about food as therapeutic food as even a somatic practice. When we think about somatic therapy being kind of a, a buzzword in, in therapy right now, right? Like somatic being of the body, lots of people are doing EMDR or any of these emotional processing, visualization, all these things that connect the brain and body. Well, food does that. When you are receiving food that is nutrient dense, that tastes good, that's colorful, it is a sensory experience and it's somatic therapy. And so food really I think should be therapeutic, but we just, for forever, it was like, well, what can I eat to be the size I wanna be to lose the pounds? Yeah. People if we just could understand nutrition. And I think that it's very confusing out there because what you see in the media and what you see, just promoted, especially in social media, uh, are a lot of, of fallacies. They may help you lose weight for like, the time that you're on the diet, but you're really going to be losing water and you're gonna be losing muscle, and you're not going to be losing fat because the body is stressed out. you've struggled. You were dieting yourself, I dieted myself as well. How do you help people reformulate This will be great. Being a woman, it sounds really cool to fit into clothes in a different way, but then when things don't, you find out you don't look, you didn't develop the way your friend developed, right? Or you don't look like this person. And then the comparison game and the magazines. Oh, I was obsessed with People Style Watch and all of the, all the fitness magazines and all the regular magazines, but I image was really important to me and so I, I found that most of my clients There, there's a lot and, and there are women that are struggling with their bodies just because they're struggling with these mystery symptoms or autoimmunity. And so as women, unfortunately, and I say this as it is, just even just heavy saying it like we just have was, I don't wanna say wasted again, that that's a negative connotation word. Because that's, that's what we're here for. We all have purpose. We have a body to be the instrument of that purpose and reframing what that looks like then that trickles down all the way to nutrition, to sleep practices, to relaxation, to movement, to, if I can think about creating an environment for nurture, creating an environment for healing, creating an environment where this is, I've got one body, this is my friend. Maybe my body didn't come in the shape or size that I wanted, but this is my vessel to live out my purpose. And that's, that's different. Nobody really talked about that when we were little, and I, and I, I think there's a lot of women there are there are of them, those little girl parts that are just aching for somebody to tell them, you are fine.

Dr. Supatra Tovar: 0:15

as opposed to something to catch the male gaze or whoever's gaze you wanna catch. Uh, your body is a complex network of cells and fibers and muscles, and all of this is designed to propel you forward to do what you want to do and what you were, born to do, put here on earth to do. So I want I want you to give us a picture of, I talk about mind, body, spirit. That's my, that's my thing. That's why we're, we're, we're total kindred spirits on that. And there's a lot of noise out there, right, that, that we can get lost in. And until we can figure out, like back to your point of that partnership over punishment or trying to beat our bodies into submission and it, it's a way to step back and go, wait a minute, what do, at the end of the day when I am I. 75, 80 or at my funeral even. Like, what do I want people to say? Like, oh, she did such a great job maintaining that figure. I mean, that's kind of a, a, a cliche topic that I've heard people throw on, but it, but it's true. It's like, and nobody's gonna say that, like it's really about how you live, what you've been given, your gifts, your abilities, and how you've loved, how you've served, how you've shown up in that body for other people, like I think about how our bodies are meant to show people love, right? Right. I I. Never been happier than. And I really think it's so important that people do look beyond that external. And I have to have a car and a, a husband or a wife and this career, all these external things that don't necessarily truly matter maybe at the end of your life, if you could be thinking about that now, your life would be very different. We just want a magic fix because we think if we can achieve that, then we're good, then we don't have to struggle. And so I think. Getting people away from that man mentality. It's really looking again, at at things as a journey. Like this healing process is a journey of little steps that we take over time that can help us to emotionally regulate ourselves, right? Spiritually regulate, nutritionally regulate. There's a lot of regulation that needs to take place so that we can have leftover energy to do the things we need to do without burning ourselves out. And that takes a step by step process day by day. And it's not gonna come in a quick fix. I mean, you can take all of the, weight loss injections in the world, but if you don't change I think first that that body partnership mindset, if you don't change the pace of life that you're running full speed at, there's not a lot that's gonna change at the end because of course we do know, I mean, unless you're planning on staying on that for the rest of your life, you're gonna, you're gonna gain the weight back. That's. clear, but I, I just, there's so much more to that and maybe some people need to go that, that direction first to find out well actually, huh, this didn't help me. Right? I've, I've been in that place before many times. It's like, well, that thing that I thought that I really wanted, it didn't actually give me what I wanted. We talked a little bit after I'd gotten sick and my, I was giving my body some rest time, but today it was just a beautiful day to go walk and go, oh, this is what I needed. So being able to help people figure out. What do you need? What does your body need? What does your brain need? Again, for that regulation of the nervous system, regulation of the whole body. direction to go in the future. And you were, you were mentioning your book, so this is a part of it. I really wanna hear about. You've got a two book deal we think. That's really wonderful. Congratulations. So just tell us about the book that's gonna be coming out in September. Right? But then eventually. The labels became identifiers that felt more like burdens than things to help. And so, that's where that comes from. And it's broken up into four parts. And it just comes from kind of an acronym that I follow as a, as a coach, which is LIVE. And L stands for Learn to Address Stress because of course stress can be emotional stress, but there's physiological internal stress like. When we talk about the gut microbiome, that that plays a role and it's all tied together. I stands for Identify Root Issues. And so that's looking at things like, do you even know what you're feeling on a day-to-day basis? Right? Like, I didn't, I stuffed my feelings, I didn't wanna feel things, I was worried they were gonna get pathologized, right? What would that do for your body? Just to, just to be present in it. Some people can't, can't start there. That's hard. That's really, really hard if you're not comfortable being in a body that you don't like very much. Many of us are over-functioning because we're not comfortable in the body that we have, right? And it just really is like, your calling card out to the world and, and, and really a sending the message out to as many people as possible. So however I can support you, I am here for you. Please tell people how they can find you and how they will be able to purchase your book. I. Oh, I cannot wait. I think that the world needs to hear this message and it's just amazing how adversity early in life can be the thing that sparks your wholeness and that, we have to be grateful for every experience that we've had because it's, I really firmly believe that, that this is Earth School. Me too. Let's, let's dismantle this labeling thing, okay? And that's gonna start with you. So thank you so much and thank you for tuning into the ANEW Insight podcast. I'm really looking forward to the next guest and the next interview, and we will see you next time.