Are you using food as a coping mechanism? Perhaps you do, and never stop to consider it. But today we will be with our special guest Rebecca Schauer, who discusses stress and emotional eating. She has some fun sayings like “quitting dieting is for winners”. And another one is “you need to slow down to speed up your results”. She shares her personal struggles with food and gives us some concrete steps to take this holiday season. 

Before we jump into our topic of stress and emotional eating…please tell us a little bit about yourself, Rebecca. 

·         Thank you, Darla, I am happy to.  I am a mindset coach for stress and emotional eating. I am also credentialed as a registered dietician, nutritionist. And I've been doing this specific work for about three years, I've been a dietitian for about 20 years. And the reason that I got into this sort of avenue within the food area is because I went through my own eating disorder. And it started for me in college and lasted for several years. After that I basically had to hit a rock bottom, before I was able to get the help that I personally needed to get out of that. And ever since then I have felt called to work more, or with women on that mental and emotional aspect in terms of the relationship with food, more than just about the food. So that's my professional background and how I ended up doing what I'm currently doing.

That's interesting when you said “not just about the food”, it's not just about the food, right for helping women break free from this stress and emotional eating. What would you say would be like your greatest turning point? 

• For me, I wanted out for a long time, I was an exercise bulimic. And so, for anybody who doesn't know what that is, I would binge on food and the way that I would purge, instead of you know, vomiting, I would over exercise. And I didn't want to continue to do that, even though I got into that behavior. And like I mentioned earlier, it started in college. And for a while, it was kind of a comforting way for me to deal with my life, any time that we have an addiction or compulsion too it is kind of a way to care for ourselves and to kind of get through stressful or traumatic things in our life. However, you know, we always reach that point where it's no longer maybe being the help that it once was, even though it's harming us. When we're doing it, it's helping us but then it finally gets to that point that it's only harming us and no longer helping us. And I'm sure if anybody's been in any sort of addiction or compulsion type of place in their life, they know what I mean, where it just finally reaches that point where you just want to crawl out of that pit, you feel like you're in a deep, dark pit, and you want to get out and you might try on your own, but you just keep falling back in. And that's where I was. And for me, too, like I mentioned, get that help I had to go through a divorce. So, my husband left. And he didn't just leave because of my eating disorder, but obviously the eating disorder, then anytime we're in those types of compulsive behaviors or addictions, they impact every area of your life. So clearly, it had impacted my, relationship with my husband. I don't believe that's the only reason that our marriage fell apart, but it was definitely a big contributor. And so that was a wakeup call. I was blindsided. You know, looking back, I should have seen it coming. I shouldn't have been surprised that he just came home from work one day and wanted a divorce. I shouldn't have been surprised. But I was. Because when you're in an eating disorder, that is your life. And you kind of have this you don't really see the big picture. You're so focused on that thing, your addiction that you can't really see the 30,000-foot view of what's happening in your life. And until you get out of it, then everything becomes clear and you see why things happen the way they did so that for me to answer your question, it was literally my husband, not wanting to be married to me. And If I speak with complete honesty, I wouldn't have gone to treatment. If I wasn't trying to save my marriage, if it was me trying to save my marriage that I wanted to show him, okay, I'm going to go to treatment. But he, you know, even though he still cared for me, he just didn't want to be in the relationship anymore. You know, no matter what I did… so that obviously didn't save my marriage. But that was the rock bottom that I had to hit, you know, that life circumstance for me to go and get professional help. Because like I said, I had tried to do it on my own, and I just kept falling back into the pit.

Well, thank you for being so vulnerable and, authentic with us and telling your story, I'm sure that there's many of our listeners that are identifying with some aspect of how the addiction can any kind of addiction can get us stuck in self sabotaging. So…I've heard you say, as we strive to do better or be better, it can sometimes keep us stuck in that self-sabotage routine. Could you maybe talk about that a little bit? 

• Yeah, so basically, when we're trying to strive to make something happen in our life, or strive to fix something with that, or underneath that is this feeling of, I'm not good enough, I'm broken in some way. Like I don't, I'm not what I'm supposed to be, or I don't have what I'm supposed to have. So I therefore need to fix it. And so, we strive to fix it. This can show up in every area of our life…whether it's we're trying to create a result with our eating or a weight loss goal or create a result in a career or result in a relationship. You know, it shows up in any area of life. And so, we want to make something happen, we want to change it, we want to fix it, we want to make an outcome. And we strive and we create a plan, and this is what we're going to do, we're going to take this action and that action. And with that comes stress. Because we're coming from a place of lack, essentially, we're living from a place of either there's a lack within myself, or there's a lack in my life. And anytime we're coming from the place of not having and I'm lacking something, we're kind of in that flight or fight response. And that's naturally the stress response. And anytime we're in the stress response, then there's this deprivation and depletion that happens because we are fighting or, you know, fleeing and freezing, we are having our sympathetic nervous system activated. And not only do we get physically depleted in terms of our energy, but also there's depletion of nutrients out of our bodies, but our minds and emotions get depleted. And we go into survival mode. And we use things like food to cope, or we might do other things or have other ways of coping with just all that discomfort of not being where we want to be or not be in our life or not being who we want to be in our life, ideally. And we get to that place of really not feeling good. Either. We're not achieving what we want to achieve, or we're not showing up as the people we truly want to be showing up as in our lives. And we all of a sudden get motivated. And we're gonna fix it. And we start striving again. And basically, we just keep going around this loop of striving and then with that the stress and then with the stress comes to depriving the pleading, and then we go into that survival mode. We're just basically living in the fight flight freeze 24/7 and chronic stress cycle. Right. And that when we're trying to feel better from that place, we're just in perpetual self-sabotage, you know, even though we think we're taking actions to make our life better, because we're taking that action from a place of stress. And I have to take this action to feel better. Otherwise, I can't feel better. That is the definition of self-sabotage, we're always going to come in some way, because it's going to feel hard. This is where self-sabotage comes in and the motivation is good. Like you do, you do really want to create a different result in your life. But your internal being of who you are, right how you see yourself in the world, and how you think and feel is not aligned with the result that you actually want to create. Because it comes back to…I'm lacking, I don't have it, therefore, I have to make it happen. And anytime we're coming from that place, we're going to hit resistance along the path. The initial intention and motivation might be good. But then as things go, and we are in that process of trying to create some result, our internal resistance hits us. And in that moment, we go to food, or we self-sabotage in some way, whatever result we're trying, we create an argument with the person that we're trying to restore the relationship with…we go to food, when we're trying to lose the weight, we don't show up for the job interview, even though we really want the new job, the new career, whatever it might be, we'll do things to kind of just escape the immediate resistance and discomfort we might be feeling in trying to achieve a new result. Because our subconscious is resisting it is what it comes down to. And so you know that that's why striving to feel better, striving to make big things happen, keeps us stuck in perpetual self-sabotage, because we're always chasing in when anytime we're chasing, we're always going to keep chasing, we have to just decide inside like that we already have it. And that it's already within us, even though we don't see it on the outside where we're not lacking anything. Like it's all available to us, it's already in there. We don't have to strive to make it happen. Instead, we have to allow ourselves to receive what's already available within us.

That is so insightful. I really like that, that if we're coming from a place of lack to begin with, even with the best intentions. And the clearest intentions are kind of setting ourselves up to just go in circles to just do the same old thing over and over again, if we're coming from a place of lack. And I think that's just so insightful the way you said that. I've also heard you say quitting dieting is for winners. Well, you talk about that a little bit. 

• Yeah, absolutely. So it very much relates to what I was just talking about. So when you imagine dieting, what are you doing, you're striving to lose weight? So you're striving to lose weight. And then you feel stressed about it. Because there's all these rules, don't eat this, eat that good food, bad food. And then with dieting, there's also this deprivation, like, well, I can't have that, and I shouldn't eat this. And I'm only allowed this much and we feel deprived. And with deprivation, there's also this depletion, you know, because anytime we're stressed, like I mentioned earlier that we get depleted not only of our mental and emotional energy, but oftentimes if we're not fueling our bodies, ideally, we're restricting foods in a certain way to lose the weight, we get nutrient depletion as well, that affects how we think and affects how our body runs. And, you know, dieting basically puts us in survival mode. That's the next step, it puts our lower brain, like the primal animal part of our brain, into high alert. And what happens is a natural side effect of dieting, of restrictive dieting, I'm not saying choosing to eat healthy, or you know, well balanced, that's different. But when we're restricting ourselves and we're on a restrictive diet, whether we're restricting calories, or you know, I can't eat this, and I can only eat that, anytime there's this restriction there. There's this survival mechanism that kicks in biologically but also psychologically, which makes us want food more. And there's even been research on this, in terms of the biological aspects when there was a researcher named Axel Keys back I believe it was during World War Two, he studied these men who were conscientious objectors to the war, so they were like male college students at the time, and they wouldn't go into the draft and I think the other option was then more you can go into this research study and he was studying the effects of food shortages on soldiers. And so basically, these men who were put into this study, their calorie levels were decreased to kind of represent what a soldier maybe on the front lines would be eating on a day when there's food shortage when food couldn't get to the front lines. And what they found is that these men, these healthy young college men, when their calories were decreased from maybe their normal way of eating down to let's say, 1600 a day, 2000 a day, which for a young college man is not a lot. They started to have these binging behaviors where they would go and find food because they weren't in prison. Like even though they were in this research center, they still had free access to a kitchen and things like that. And so they would sneak food that wasn't, quote, unquote, on their daily plan. And they would, they started to obsess about food. And they started to read, cookbook, books and things that normal college men would never do, you know, 18- to 22-year-olds and they became hyper focused on food and obsessed about food, in addition to wanting to binge on it. And so that was kind of the first time that we scientifically saw food shortage leads to food obsession, and also binging behaviors. And so basically, if there's any women out there listening, that have maybe gone on the diet, or restricted their food in some way, whatever mainstream diet out there, you know, is being taught, there's so many of them. And if, after the diet, you kind of went off the rails and you ate all the food that was forbidden on the diet, just know that it wasn't your fault. There's biological things that happen, when you know them from our lower brain that causes us to want food more when it's restricted. But then there's also psychological stuff. I think we know as humans, like anytime we know from children, anytime our childhood, when our parents would say, you can't have that we would want it more. And we would beg for more. There's also this psychological response to want what you quote unquote, can't have or shouldn't have. And so not only do we want food more by dieting, from the biological responses in our body, from food deprivation, but also the psychological deprivation, when it especially when emotions hit, maybe stress is high, or maybe you have an argument with the spouse. And the first thing you want to go to is you want to go to the food, because that's the one thing that you've been depriving yourself of. And so that's why quitting dieting is for winners. It's all about having that willingness to not do dieting practices, which in our culture is the way that we're taught to lose weight. But it's not the natural way to lose weight, the natural way to lose weight is in partnership and connection with your body. And dieting is the exact opposite of that. It's about trying to control your body and restrict your body and ignore your body's true needs. And I can leave it at that we can expand on that if you have more questions about it. But in an overview, that's why quitting dieting is for winners. 

Well, thank you for sharing that. And that's such an interesting study by Keys. And I think it's really fascinating to hear the biological and psychological aspects of it. So thank you for sharing that. That was very insightful. And then you did mention that culturally, we're not there yet, for sure. We're not in that mentality. You know, it's so easy to slip into the lack and deprivation and dieting of whatever the latest trend is, is more what our society and culture is doing right now. 

• Absolutely. I mean, when you think about it, the diet industry is multi billion dollars. And, you know, I've heard other people say this, and I'll just say it as well. You know, they're a multi-billion dollar industry because they have repeat customers over and over. And that's a bad sign. 

Yes. When it comes to dieting, that's a bad sign to have repeat customers for sure. 

• Exactly. You know, I don't believe that it's intentional. I don't believe there's, you know, people out there that look at creating diets to harm people, but it just comes down to it's an outdated way of trying to help people lose weight. It's just been debunked by research over and over that restrictive diets, you know, calorie controlled diets, omitting food groups, that for most people, it's going to cause way more problems than it's ever going to have for the long term. Of course, there's immediate results like you will lose weight. But in the long term, it's going to come back on plus some. And there's been research by a doctor in I think he's with Harvard Medical School, Dr. David Ludwig, who has repeatedly shown that calorie restricted diets in addition to other researchers, but he's the first one that comes to mind right now that repeatedly shown that it's not calorie is that is cutting calories that's needed to lose weight, it's the quality of the food that you eat, that is important. It's not about the amount of calories, berries. And so, there's so many diets out there, whether they are saying that they're a calorie restricted diet or not. The vast majority of them in the mainstream diet industry are restricting calories in some way, even though they don't say that that's what it is. And so, with that comes that backlash over eating the overeating behaviors on the other side of the diet after the diet. 

Yes, and that's why that term, yo-yo dieting is, you know, just recognized by so many people, because they've been there, they've done that. So why do we need to slow down, if we want to speed up results? 

• So what I was talking about before…the one we're striving from that place of, I got to feel better, I'm lacking something, I'm either lacking a good feeling, or I'm lacking a result and the stress response kicks in, right? And stress, this fight, flight, freeze, it's all about movement, or completely shutting down and you know, trying to protect yourself, like hunkering down right. And, and just kind of feeling paralyzed in life. And so you're either fighting with life or you're paralyzed, and you're not doing anything with life. And so instead of striving, you know that the opposite is like, we're not going to strive, we're going to slow down, it's not that we're not going to take action, but we're going to take the action from more of a inspired place, I call it that, that is aligned to Oh, I already feel good inside. Therefore, I'm inspired to take this action to create something that I love. And to get to that place, we have to first slow down, I also call it coming back home to yourself as another way to describe it, it's more of getting to know yourself again, because so often in life, we are going after things that are shoulds, or to dos or what we perceive from our culture, or from our upbringing of what is expected, or what is quote unquote, normal to do. But if we haven't made that connection within ourselves, like who really am I, as a person, what are my true wants, and my true desires. If we haven't made that connection with ourselves, we tend to get stuck in that striving cycle. And so slowing down to speed up is about Wait a minute, I'm going to come back home to myself, I'm going to get to know myself, I'm going to really tune in with myself, I'm going to take time for myself, to really understand who I am, what my true needs are not my “shoulds or thoughts” or you know, others expectations, but my true desires. And you know, the only way we can do that is to slow down and do that inner reflection. And from that place, then we can speed up because that, you know, like I mentioned from that place, then it's a true choice. And it's not like well, I have to do this. I want to do this, I'm meant to do this, I deserve to do this, I'm worthy of doing this, I would love to do this. And when we're taking action from that place it leads us to thrive versus striving to privately survive. And that's why we speed up so instead of going in a circle or going in a downward spiral, like when we're doing that strive thing from that place of lack. We're instead able to kind of do a stair step upward trajectory in our life. And so Over the long run, even though we might be slowing down initially to like reconnect, to get to know ourselves to reevaluate our life, in the long run, we're going to end up speeding up, and we're going to be creating results that we truly love and that feel good, and that allow us to thrive. 

When we talked about doing that deep work, I love the way you were describing that as almost stairsteps. And when we look at doing some of that deeper work, how can we actually determine if we are using food to cope? If food is a coping mechanism?

• I think the first way is “how do you behave with food?” So there's a couple things that are, your first way of knowing is if you can, if you notice that you're getting emotionally triggered, something upsets you or you feel stressed, and you kind of go on autopilot and you go eat food, there's a trigger, go eat food, trigger, go eat food, then you know, like, you're, you're using food to cope with something that's emotional versus using food to nourish your body and satisfy true hunger, true physical hunger, that's one way is just kind of noticing when you get triggered is, is the behavior of eating, connected with emotional triggers. Also, if you're using food to cope, if, you notice that you're just eating unconsciously, where you kind of do this thing called “task snacking”, where you might be sitting in front of your computer or in front of the TV, and you eat foods, just always the thing you do when you do that task. That's another simple way to kind of assess” am I using food, to cope for emotional things”? Maybe the task is not your favorite thing to do, you know, a work task or something. And to help you cope with doing that you munch on your favorite snack, or, or maybe you have a really hard time sitting down in front of the TV in the evening without food in front of you. And it's just, there's just this connection between this activity and eating food. So that's another way you know, if you're using food to kind of cope with life, because underneath that there's something there's some sort of, you know, what we call dis ease, that's not allowing you to just be present with whatever you're doing. And so those are kind of the two main ways stress and emotional eating show up for people. There's either a trigger, that then food is the next action that people do to kind of soothe themselves. Or there's like an unconscious eating pattern related to certain tasks in life, especially if stress and emotions maybe are higher IQ. Like just kind of give you an example. Like a woman coming home from work, let's say work has been stressful, and she has this pattern when work is stressful to just sit down in front of the TV in the evening with her favorite food item or a glass of wine. And this pattern seems to get more prominent, you know, when life is maybe not as fulfilling and more stressful. And then when she is more fulfilled or happier in life, she's not doing the pattern. That's just kind of one example of how, you know using food to cope can show up but it's really an individual thing, you know, for me, using food to cope was more of a complex, you know, disordered pattern like I explained earlier. So I think there's a spectrum that it can be for people. It can be a full-blown eating disorder where you're either not eating food or overeating food to feel like you can survive in life. Or, or it's just as you know, my mourn the minor end of the spectrum is like yeah, work is stressful. And so I'm going to eat ice cream every night until this work project is done. It just varies depending on the person. 

Thank you for those great tangible examples of Yeah, because well, I think we all have our own personal relationship to food. And even if we don't always use food to cope, I'm sure that we I don't know I just think it's human for most of us to have. Have times when food is the coping mechanism, I would be surprised to hear any humans say that they don't connect food to emotions or different, you know, activities like family gatherings, we're going to get into the holiday season. And I know that if we talk about making up some rules for the holiday or rules for food intake, I, I find myself doing that almost every year, just going, Oh, I better watch what I'm eating now. Because I'm not going to, I'm not going to make myself not eat the holiday goodies. And so, will you talk a little bit about making up your own rules? 

• Yeah, absolutely. So in You're 100%, right about food being emotional for everyone! It absolutely is, you know, that Yeah, well, food is one of the first things we receive after we come into this world, right. And there's an emotional component immediately, you know, whoever, even if it's not our actual mother feeding us after our born, there's some caregiver that's feeding us and we immediately emotionally bond like in that first moment of life, you know, first hour, whatever, when, whenever they first feed you, yeah, after you come out. And then it just keeps going on, you know, for the rest of our life. And so yeah, food is emotional for everybody in some form. And, you know, the holidays, especially, there's the holidays are all about food, and family, and there's so much emotion wrapped up in both of those. And, you know, one, so basically, I'll just give some pointers, maybe as they come to mind about how to deal with all the extra delicious food around the holiday season. So number one is, you know, not entering with a diet mentality. Meaning like I can't have, so it's like what you said there, of course, we, you know, someone who cares about their health and wellbeing they, they probably want to prevent overindulging. Because they realize, Oh, when I overindulge. I don't feel as good or this and that, right. And so it's like, we want to have some parameters for ourselves. And so making your own rules for what works for you, and not going into it. Well, this diet says, I can't have this type of food, and I can't have this type of food. And this food is bad. Oh, I learned from this expert or guru, this food is bad. So even though that's my favorite holiday food, I really shouldn't have that. And oh, and if I eat it, I'm going to feel so guilty about eating it. So making your own rules about, you know, that word's true choices is deciding, you know, maybe thinking ahead is a really powerful thing to do. Anytime we're kind of going into a holiday season thinking ahead about what foods do I absolutely love, like, what are those holiday foods that if I don't eat it, I'm going to feel that deprivation because I think we each as individuals have the foods that if we don't have it, we're not going to miss it so much. And then there's the food, like, if we don't have it, we're going to totally miss it and feel like we're not getting what we really want. And so I think when you're going into the holiday season, kind of deciding what are the absolute foods that I love to enjoy this time of year, and then if I don't get to enjoy them, I'm gonna feel deprived. And then from that place, giving yourself the permission to have it just allow it and when you do eat it, to eat it in that mindful way to save her. You know, one of the things that also dieting does to people because there's the judgment around food and it creates that fear of food, you know, that good food, bad food, right food, wrong food. So if we have that diet mentality, we're gonna enjoy food that might be categorized through the diet industry as right, wrong, good, bad. You know, often it takes away our pleasure and an enjoyment when we do choose to eat that food because while we're eating it, we're feeling guilty or feeling like we're doing something wrong and that we shouldn't be enjoying this food or, oh my gosh, if I eat this food, it's going to make me gain weight and all that mental chatter that starts to show up, which disconnects us from our body's enjoyment of that food. So going into the holiday season, you know, deciding what are the foods that I absolutely love that I want to allow myself and then choosing that I'm not a bad person for eating this and none of that person for enjoying this. There's no moral value assigned to food and allowing yourself to savor it, like enjoy that moment, you know, cookies, let's just use the example of Christmas could be sugar cookies. One of my favorite things is Dunkin sugar cookies and milk, you know, and, and just allowing myself to savor that whole experience and be with it. Because when we do that, we feel more satisfied. I'm sure most every person listening to this has at some point had that instance where they keep going back to food because they feel unsatisfied like, Well, I'm not really hungry, but I need more, because I still don't feel satisfied. There's various reasons for why that happens. But one of the biggest reasons that happens is because we're not being present, when we're eating, we're being even though the food's going into our mouth and into our body, we're not actually tasting it, and enjoying experiencing it. So over the holidays, that can be one of the most powerful thing you do, especially with the distractions and of the socialization and the conversations that we have at these gatherings is like when you are eating your food, to allow yourself to be present with it, and to taste it and enjoy it and savor it so that you can find that satisfaction without needing to go back for seconds. Third sports sort of thing. So those are some of the main tips that I have, that are the first that come to mind. There's many more, but I think they can be two of the most powerful for people and easy to implement right away. Yes, I really appreciate how easy those are to implement. And, and that idea of making a true choice. And then once you've made that choice, just allow it to be okay. You know, you are not to you know, Judge, you're not judged by it. And I think self-judgment is really big for some of us, that just allow it and then to savor and enjoy it. And to be present, which is so important. Anyway, you know, to be present in the, in the current moment and the here and now. And when you talked about not being satisfied, going back and going back and going back again, I think that when we're ungrounded I know me personally, if I'm not connected to the Now moment, if I'm distracted or thinking about something else, or you mentioned the socialist socialization being in a large crowd, you know, or being with friends and busy chatting, and not being present with the food in the moment. I know I've experienced that before where I haven't, I haven't felt full and it's actually because I didn't take the time to even savor what I was eating. Yes, I think we've all been there. I know I definitely have. And there's science behind that. Because the brain and the stomach are connected. They speak to each other directly, like there's a system of nerves and whatnot. And if our mind is not present, while we're eating, like you said, that ungrounded kind of place then the stomach and the brain are communicating. So even though the belly might be full, like we might feel that distension in our belly, but the mind or the brain is still like but wait, I haven't received that signal yet. I still want more. And that presence. Mindfulness allows the brain in the stomach to communicate in the most ideal way in those moments.

Well, I just appreciate the conversation we've had today. And I feel like we could continue on and deeper in this conversation. But as we wrap up, I want to remind everyone that your information, your contact information will be on our show notes page. But let us know how we could take another step with you. 

• Sure, so the place to kind of get to know generally about me is my website, www.findfreedomwithfood.com. Also, anybody who wants to email me I'm very open to people reaching out to me and feel free to do that. It's just Rebecca@findfreedomwithfood.com.  Social media I'm Rebecca Shauer RDN, which stands for registered dietician, nutritionist, you can find me on most all the social media, the main social media platforms there. And, yeah, like I said, I've got various ways for people to interact with me, I have a Facebook group, I have an email list that people can subscribe to, if they go to my website, there's a free email course that they can sign up to receive. And periodically if you're on my email list, I do special things for my community, you know, through the holidays, which this'll be showing up probably around the holidays time. So this opportunity might be passed, in terms of what I'm going to be doing with my community through the holidays. But what I'm getting at is afterwards, I have classes, free coaching, opportunities for women to interact with me and get to know me. If this really resonates with them if they struggle in their relationship with food. Coaching is absolutely available if it's the right fit for both of us. So that would be something that is absolutely possible for women who feel called to be in my community. 

Well, thank you so much. And I think that phrase” find freedom with food” is so appropriate and will call to many of our listeners to find freedom with food. So I just want to give you a big Virtual hug and thank you for being on with us today. 

• My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. Dar 

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