If we’re answering to emotional hunger more often than not, it’s going to make it very hard to achieve any kind of health goals. You might be snacking when you’re not truly hungry, eating meals just because it’s a certain time, or munching on something to numb the anxiety you’re feeling.
Wherever you are on the emotional eating scale, we want to arm you with the tools that can help you move closer to where you want to be. We’re all human and it’s rare for someone to only ever eat when driven by physical cues of hunger. We all have stresses, worries and frustrations that sometimes drive us to food as a solution. The goal here is not perfection. It's simply to become more aware of what our body needs and why.
In this episode, you will learn:
To read the full show notes for this episode, www.TheWLCC.com/102
Quotes
01:04 - “If we're very often answering to emotional hunger, which is eating for reasons other than physical hunger, we have a very hard time actually making our goals happen.”
16:02 - “Hunger is not an emergency. A lot of us fear getting hungry. We fear it because we've been conditioned by the diet industry that if we're hungry, maybe we won't be able to eat.”
17:54 - “Often, when a screen is on, I don't think you're at your full consciousness level to focus on how your body's feeling with food. So I have made a personal loving boundary for myself that I don't involve screens when I'm eating anymore.”
21:23 - “When you stop emotionally eating, whatever feelings you were eating over will bubble to the surface.”
23:07 - “We don't need to eat something right away to feel better. You can just feel annoyed for a few minutes in the day. It passes. It's a human feeling. You don't have to feel happy all the time.”
Audio Stamps
01:16 - Dr Matthea begins by explaining the difference between physical and emotional hunger and asks us to consider where we would be on the emotional eating scale.
05:09 - We find out what the first step is to start working on emotional eating.
07:07 - Dr Matthea explains the importance of checking in physically with yourself and discusses the issues with ‘eating by the clock’.
10:40 - We learn what to do if you’ve identified that you’re emotionally hungry.
13:24 - Dr Matthea addresses concerns around waking up in the night hungry.
16:01 - We hear about the second step to overcoming emotional eating, including how to eat more consciously, and the problem with watching screens while eating.
20:28 - Dr Matthea talks about step number 3: how mindfulness can help you to get in touch with your emotional life and identify certain feelings.
27:37 - We discover the fourth step in the process and the importance of time and patience.
29:22 - Dr Matthea asks listeners to consider one takeaway from this process of overcoming emotional eating and which element needs more practice.
If we’re answering to emotional hunger more often than not, it’s going to make it very hard to achieve any kind of health goals. You might be snacking when you’re not truly hungry, eating meals just because it’s a certain time, or munching on something to numb the anxiety you’re feeling.
Wherever you are on the emotional eating scale, we want to arm you with the tools that can help you move closer to where you want to be. We’re all human and it’s rare for someone to only ever eat when driven by physical cues of hunger. We all have stresses, worries and frustrations that sometimes drive us to food as a solution. The goal here is not perfection. It's simply to become more aware of what our body needs and why.
In this episode, you will learn:
To read the full show notes for this episode, www.TheWLCC.com/102
Quotes
01:04 - “If we're very often answering to emotional hunger, which is eating for reasons other than physical hunger, we have a very hard time actually making our goals happen.”
16:02 - “Hunger is not an emergency. A lot of us fear getting hungry. We fear it because we've been conditioned by the diet industry that if we're hungry, maybe we won't be able to eat.”
17:54 - “Often, when a screen is on, I don't think you're at your full consciousness level to focus on how your body's feeling with food. So I have made a personal loving boundary for myself that I don't involve screens when I'm eating anymore.”
21:23 - “When you stop emotionally eating, whatever feelings you were eating over will bubble to the surface.”
23:07 - “We don't need to eat something right away to feel better. You can just feel annoyed for a few minutes in the day. It passes. It's a human feeling. You don't have to feel happy all the time.”
Audio Stamps
01:16 - Dr Matthea begins by explaining the difference between physical and emotional hunger and asks us to consider where we would be on the emotional eating scale.
05:09 - We find out what the first step is to start working on emotional eating.
07:07 - Dr Matthea explains the importance of checking in physically with yourself and discusses the issues with ‘eating by the clock’.
10:40 - We learn what to do if you’ve identified that you’re emotionally hungry.
13:24 - Dr Matthea addresses concerns around waking up in the night hungry.
16:01 - We hear about the second step to overcoming emotional eating, including how to eat more consciously, and the problem with watching screens while eating.
20:28 - Dr Matthea talks about step number 3: how mindfulness can help you to get in touch with your emotional life and identify certain feelings.
27:37 - We discover the fourth step in the process and the importance of time and patience.
29:22 - Dr Matthea asks listeners to consider one takeaway from this process of overcoming emotional eating and which element needs more practice.
Today we're gonna talk about the difference between physical hunger. and emotional hunger, and some of you might be super familiar with this and others you have no idea what I'm talking about. So I'm gonna lay the foundational groundwork here and I'm gonna need all of you to really give me your input as we go through here, cuz then I'm gonna be able to figure out how to help everybody best here. The reason that we're talking about this today is that if we are trying to work on whatever health goal it is, whether maybe it is some intentional weight loss, maybe it's just having a better relationship with our body. if we're divorced from what true physical hunger is, and that's what food solves, right? That's what nutrition does. And if we're very often answering to emotional hunger, which is eating for reasons other than physical hunger we're, we have a very hard time actually making our our goals. So, let me start with this. Physical hunger is your body gives you a physical clue that you are hungry, whether your stomach's rumbling, you get low energy, you feel your energy start to dip down, things like that. What I want to know from you is if we took a scale of zero being, I only eat when I'm physically hungry and I have no problems, and 10 being I emotionally eat a lot, so you're not hungry. Maybe you know everyone at the table's getting dessert at a restaurant, so you eat that or you know you've had enough, but you just keep going because it tastes good. Things like that. I wanna know on a scale of zero to. How often do you think you're emotionally eating? So again, zero is, I'm only eating when I'm physically hungry, no emotional eating, and then 10 is all the time. I feel like I can't stop when I've had enough. I'm eating stuff when I'm not hungry. I'm wanting snacks when I'm not hungry. Things like that. Where do you think you would place yourself? So I know that, I think this is a really good check-in. This is Emotional Eating Scale is the name I'm gonna give this. So it's a really good check-in because it lets you know how much or little work you have to do here. So, great. So I'm seeing a few answers popping back here. I'm seeing 10 honestly lately, and that's just good to know. Right is good to know where you are. I'm seeing seven, let's see, three, eight. Okay, so we're. we're all at different places and that's good to know. Nine or 10. This is definitely my issue. Yes. And, maybe middle of the road five. So you see we have a really wide spectrum, so we have everything from three up to 10. Okay. That's your first step is just to even know where you're at with this. And I think that at least our philosophy within the school of sustainable weight loss, it's never gonna be that you're perfect with this. I think it's amazing people that only eat when they're physically hungry and they don't ever have any other cues, stresses, triggers that have emotional eating come out. I think our goal can always be this, that we can decide where we wanna get to. For me, I don't quite, I don't know that zero is ever gonna be realistic for me, that I only eat for physical hunger and not ever any other reasons ever. But I would like it to be on the lower side. I would like to use food for fuel and to get that relationship and not be using food for other reasons. That's my main goal. So looking at where you're at right now, you can just decide just inventory for yourself. Where would I like to get to? If you're, for example, you're finding yourself at that 10, maybe you could say, Hey, over the next half year I'd like to get that number down to a five. Where just not as often I feel that food that I'm wanting food to solve other things for me. So you can kind of decide that Someone said Here, I'm happy at a three. Perfect. So good. So you decide, and this is again, this is where we all get to like pick our own adventure, right? I'm not ever gonna sit here and be like, you know, you have to be where food is only fuel. I, it's almost. maybe it's not realistic in the world we live in. So you get to decide, so someone said here that they're happy at A three. I want you to decide what that looks like, but just first realize that the key here is realizing I might be eating for reasons other than physical hunger. That is emotional eating. Okay. Someone said here, I'm probably a five now and I would like to be around a two. So good. So what we're gonna talk about today is kind of how can we start to work on this? Step number one here, what we just went through and someone all said here, I'd like to be at a three. So good. Isn't this so good that we're putting these numbers out here? Cuz what we're seeing is the majority of us in this community, and this is probably cuz of how me and Carrie think, we're not trying to get to a place of perfection. Notice there's like room for being human It's always what I say. I love that we're all kind of putting these numbers out. Okay, so what I have here is this, I kind of broke down a few steps here and we're gonna go through them, but I would like you to, you're gonna figure out whatever method works for you, but here is how I have realized I started to work on it and I think Carrie would agree, cause we talked about this as well. Step number one, when you're working on this, Is to just start to check in with yourself every time you're gonna eat. I don't care if it's a snack, a meal, whatever it is. Step number one, it's a pause and it's just asking am I physically hungry? So we wanna start to get really familiar with, I honor my body and I check in physically. it doesn't even matter, and we're gonna talk about this if you end up eating or not. Okay? But what needs to start to happen here is that you realize, yes, I'm physically hungry, or no I'm not. That can be challenging sometimes, like gimme a yes in the comments. If you've ever had this where you're like, I'm actually doing the work. I don't know. Am I physically hungry? Or is this emotional hunger? So the best way that I see to go about this is to ask yourself. would something that I have very, yeah, I'm seeing a yes. Would something that I have very little desire for solve this hunger. So for example, I give if you're a meat eater, like what? A dry piece of chicken or just like, like something like really unappealing. For me as a vegetarian, I like to give the example of a boiled egg. It's just something where it's like, yeah, if I'm hungry, give me that egg. Sign me up. Right? Or, you know, give me whatever food is there. But if I'm not hungry, I typically won't want to eat those things. And here's the other thing, it's a very specific request usually emotional hunger. It's not wanting the healthy meal that's already prepped, sitting in the fridge. It's something super specific. So I love this. Someone put here in the comments, I include this on my planner, on my, under snacks. Love that. That's the check-in, right? And by the way, I wanna highlight that comment because part of us doing the planning, okay, whether you're listening recreationally or whether you're actually in our program, part of planning is putting things like that. Like I'm actually gonna physically check in at I hungry or not. And it's like, if you're hungry, great, go ahead and eat. But if not, I'm gonna figure out what else is going on there. So I don't know when I'm hungry a lot. It. Um, I eat cuz it's, cuz it's time sometimes, right? So that, I call that eating by the clock. That's a habit. I wanna extinguish So I know that a lot of you might be working in professions or in scenarios where you are going to want to fight with me that, because it's like that time of the clock, like that's the window you get to eat. If that is the case, then we've gotta modify the rest of the day so that you're hungry at those times. So that's fine. If you're gonna tell me, no, I've got to eat by the clock, then we're gonna have to get real ninja about the other times so that you are physically hungry when those times come. Otherwise we've got to throw that rule book out. The other problem that eating by the clock creates, it's that you find yourself in scenarios where you do not have flexibility. So let me give you an example. If you maybe have been a lot more active over the weekend, you might be more hungry in the morning Monday, Tuesday, but if we're not able to change the times when you're eating or the amounts that you're eating, things like that, you're in a scenario where you're locked in and you feel powerless. We need to give you your power back. So if you can. I would encourage not eating by the clock and just experiment for a week or two with, can I wait till I'm physically hungry and then eat? And you're going to see patterns emerge. You're gonna see, oh, interesting, I'm really always hungry at X, Y, z time. Can we honor that naturally or do we need to change the ways in which you're eating so that you're hungry during certain windows? Like if you're a teacher, things like that, you get, you know, this break that lunch, things like that. I'm fine to honor that, but then we're gonna have to change things. So I'm seeing here, my urges are usually. only as specific as quote unquote fat, salt. Sweet. Yes. Right. It's the definition of an urge. Right. Okay. Anything I can find that fits that category? Yes, definitely. I'm seeing someone here. Yeah. Ready to fight eliminating eating by the clock. Yes. Like if that, that could be a goal for everyone. I have to tell you, that was massively, powerfully, a game changer when I did that. because when I first started it was like, we're gonna eat it this time, this time, that time. And then I realized maybe I'm not hungry at those times, and maybe it's an hour later. And you know what? It took a lot to change that because I grew up in a family where it was like, we're all gonna sit at dinner and eat at a certain time. It was never a question whether I was hungry or not. It was just like, Parents are home from work, this nice dinner's been prepared. We're gonna sit down. It's family time we talk again I never saw anything wrong with it, and maybe at that time growing up at worked, but it no longer works right now for me. So we've got to examine everything about your life if we're gonna figure out physical versus emotional hunger. All right, so step one is really, am I physically hungry? The way you're gonna figure this out is would food, I do not have desire for just regular. is that gonna solve it? A boiled egg, a cheese stick, an apple, whatever food it is where you're not, you're not particularly excited about it. Like you'll eat it if it's there and you'll eat it. If you're hungry, you're grateful for it, but if not, you're like, eh, I'm not really gonna go get that apple. Like, I'm good. That's emotional hunger. All right? If you are physically hungry, please go eat. Amazing. But what majority of this, what we're gonna talk about today, is tackling emotional hunger. All right? You have now in step one, identified. I am not physically hungry. if you've not done this work for a long amount of time, this work might be your work for a few months. Again and again, ask yourself, am I hungry? Am I not? Okay, great. I am now a master at being able to check in physically. Remember, we ask our physical body for hunger, not our mind. The mind always wants little fun treats and things like that, but your physical body, you're gonna get really good at starting to really check in and, and hone in on that. Okay? Now, once you've really mastered, You will get to the branch point where if you're physically hungry, you've eaten, and if you're not, you know, I'm emotionally hungry for something else. What do you do with that? What do you do with that? That's a million dollar question. And here's what I want to suggest. You've got to pause and you've got to ask yourself, what do I really need right now? This is that compassion pause that we talk about. right? We talk about this a lot, and by the way, we have like a million more tools within the school of sustainable weight loss, right? Like we just did a call this past Friday. If you're one of our members, go back and I did it. I talked about urges and we talked about the SOS technique, but on here we're just gonna talk about the compassion pause. So you ask yourself, what do I really need right now? So you're not physically hungry. Another question you can ask yourself is, what am I thinking that this food is going to provide? It's just like a simple. but it's super loaded what you're gonna get, what your brain's gonna provide to you. And so I'm wondering if any of you can put this here like a time, think back to a day or two ago when you were not physically hungry and you noticed like this is totally an urge, a craving. I'm, I was just emotional. What's happening right now. Did you ever ask yourself like, what do I really need right now? What do I think this food is going to provide to me? Right? So I'm seeing some comments here. Let's see. I love not eating by the clock. Easy. When I live. But even when I've been at my sister's, if I'm not hungry, I don't eat. That's amazing. I wanna like high five to you for doing that. That's a skill to build out. And what's interesting is the more you do that, not eating by the clock. It doesn't matter where you are anymore. You're just like, yeah, I'm not hungry. That's strange to eat. It becomes abnormal for you to eat when you're not hungry. Right. Instead of it being just a norm that I don't listen to myself. So let's another comment here after, the guest call with Kush Exactly. It hasn't made it on the podcast yet. That's gonna be coming up soon though. So that's great. That's an, a nutritionist, very educated that's gonna be talking. I've tried to. Snacking and spend and spread meals out by about four to five hours. If I can't make it that long, I reevaluate my last meal. I feel like snacks are usually emotional eats for me. So good to hear you say that. So what you're noticing is you're really honing in on. I wanna like highlight here what the gem is in the comment. So you're h you're really focusing on, what am I eating? If I can't get four or five hours, let me re-look at the meal. You're being the, the scientist, you're being the detective, you're really looking at like, does that food actually fuel me or is it that I need to change things? Cuz otherwise if I'm eating snacks all the time is there something emotional? Are my physical meals not supporting me enough? So, so good there. I'm seeing another comment here. I worry that I wake up at night hungry, so I sometimes will eat something small before bed that doesn't, this doesn't, doesn't happen or doesn't help. Can you clarify the comment there? So it's interesting. So you're worried that you're gonna, let's see that you're gonna, that you're gonna wake up at night hungry. Has that happened to you? I'm just wondering, is that a common pattern for you where you wake up in the middle of the night hungry? I wanna start with like, investigating that a little bit more. So it's interesting with, with talking about hunger and night. You know, I am someone definitely, I start to get hungry as I go to sleep at night. I used to be really panicked by this. I used to think this is a problem, that I need a snack. And what I, what I came to realize is that I actually think I was misinterpreting getting tired for hunger, like, and this is part of what we're gonna shoooo out today. And so I had to play around with what happens if I actually don't have a snack at night and I just go to sleep. What I ended up finding was that I was not waking up in the middle of the night hungry. I was not waking up hungry either. in fact, quite the opposite. I was unaffected by it at all. And my sleep quality was better So I was like, wow, that snack really wasn't helping on a hundred levels and I didn't realize it. So someone's saying here, I, um, I, I almost always snack when I'm bored and it's around 8:00 PM Yes, that's a habit. and I can relate. I feel like the, like if I had to think about like the past few years, what's the biggest thing I've had to change and get over? And it's the nighttime snacking because it was just like decades of me having fun eating in bed at night when I'm bored. And it's funny, it's like, you know, I'll be watching a Netflix or something else going on, but to me it was like relaxing and comfort and the taste and the dopamine hit. I mean, it's so complex what's happening. Simple in the sense that it's a habit that's happening, but you're getting a lot from it that you're gonna have to deconstruct. Meaning I'm getting a dopamine hit as I eat the food. I'm putting a lot of meaning into the snack time being rewarding, the fact that food is actually enjoyment for me and that it solves my problem of boredom or what I think to be boredom. So there's a lot going on there, right? That's really, so I don't wake, yeah. So I'm seeing, so, so I don't wake up hungry. And so the question is like, we've gotta experiment with like, does that even happen necessarily? If you take away that snack and if you truly are getting up hungry in the middle of the night, then again, we just need to be the scientist that we. we will need to put a snack in. If it's truly serving a physical purpose for you, then we're gonna do that. Right? But, but before I would do that, I would look at what are you actually eating for dinner? And I would see is there enough protein, good fats in there. I would really be experimenting with that before I would be always seeing that a snack is needed at night. Just kind of figuring out the timeline on that. So I'm seeing her a comment that, yeah, the habit of eating at night. I had the thought today about, what a void it would be without that. So good that you noticed that. Right. So what avoid it would be without that. So let's keep going here cuz we're gonna, we're gonna tackle this more. So number one, you've asked, am I physically hungry? I, I, I consider step one to be checking in physically again, dry, undesirable food. Would that solve my problem right now or not? Number two. I want to suggest that hunger is not an emergency. A lot of us fear getting hungry. We fear it because we've been conditioned by the diet industry that if we're hungry, maybe we won't be able to eat. You know, there's been long periods of time maybe where you've been doing programs where you're counting calories and points, and if you were hungry, there was no allowance for what to do, or they were telling you to eat foods. you know, are not gonna get rid of your hunger like cucumbers. It's like it has nothing in it. It's essentially water that you're consuming water and fiber and you're thinking, oh, I'm gonna have that. And it's like you already know in your brain, your protective brain already knows that isn't gonna work. So to not fear hunger, hunger is a suggestion. It's not an emergency. But the reason I'm gonna suggest that, you can even have that thought, it's cuz if you're truly physically hungry, we're gonna go eat. But otherwise we're, we're gonna be building out tools for what you can do otherwise. So this is why we don't need to fear it anymore, because we're not starving your body anymore. We're not doing that version anymore. So that's the reason I wanna suggest here that this stimulus of you being hungry, if you're physically hungry, you're gonna go eat. But if you're not, we're gonna sort of deprogram this response of that Hunger is a problem if I'm emotionally hungry and I let me know if everyone's following me on that, cuz it's a little bit of a. So seeing a comment here, nighttime, Netflix, noshing. Yeah, I like to think. What a screens on our brain checks out. So I don't think that we're the most conscious at that time. And there's a quote here that I wanted to bring up from the book, words to Eat By, which is a great book. If any of you wanna, read more about really, really more like the intuitive eating mindfulness questions that you can ask yourself before, during, or after eating, if you're really working on that loving relationship. And one of the things she says here is, I'm willing to stay conscious. and I love this thought for whether you're deciding if you're hungry or when you're eating, are you willing to stay conscious? And often when a screen is on, I don't think you're at your full consciousness level to focus on how your body's feeling with food. So I have made a personal loving boundary for myself that I don't involve screens when I'm eating anymore. And this was tough for me, Okay? Because I love like watching like a life below zero, like in Alaska. Like I, I like to watch all these different types of shows, and so it was like for me to realize I'm not gonna watch those things as I'm eating in the name of the fact that I've gotta figure out when I'm hungry, when I've had enough, I need to. Let that soak in a little bit. I'm gonna separate the two. And so that's how I, some of the nighttime snacking got better because I just don't pair food in bed. I don't pair food with screens. If I'm gonna eat, I'm gonna enjoy it. Like I'm, it's not gonna be a separate experience anymore. Yeah. Cucumbers equal, equaling crunchy water. Yes. that's, I, by the way, I love cucumbers. I have them with a lot of meals, but I'm not, Thinking to myself that that's somehow gonna solve a true physical hunger Okay. All right. Removing screens. While eating is so hard for me, I've been working on eliminating it one meal at a time. Yes. That's the 1% upgrade, right? So the 1% upgrade says if you're really ingrained in a habit. And that was me too. Like, at work I would watch, YouTube when I was eating. Nowadays it's more TikTok. But again, I had to eliminate that, that that's not something that's helping me. That's not a way I'm gonna relax. I'm gonna relax by actually enjoying this food, focusing on it, thinking about how my stomach's responding, how my brain's feeling with it. I did not know my body until I turn the screen off so that you get to decide what that is for you. But for me, the two don't compute. I found if I'm watching TV during a meal, I forget my pause to pause halfway through the meal and I forget to leave two bites. Looking at my plate and I'm thinking, oops, yes. That's what happens, right? Like, you just like, you just blew past it. like your foot was on the cruise control. You were going 50 miles an hour. You didn't even realize you were in a school zone at 25 miles an hour. totally. It's like we can't even blame you, okay? This is when we say it's a system problem and not a you problem, as in the system of sitting in front of a TV like that setup isn't gonna work. We just need, that's a quick fix, right? We sit you at a normal table, we sit you at an island wherever you have access to, and we just turn all the screens, all the podcasts, all the things off, and we give you 10 minutes to spend with yourself. It's an easy fix. Okay, so you have, you're realizing it's not an emergency because you're re you're gonna be open to answering true hunger, or if not, you're gonna be willing to dig a little bit more in. All right. Number three, I have here for, with the difference here, we need to, be open to mindfulness, to checking in with what's going on. So we just said that, you know, number one, are you physically hungry? Number two, hunger is not an emergency. All right? Let's say you're not physically hungry. And you're noticing it's emotional hunger. And I've said, you can ask the question, Hey, why do I want this food right now? What do I think it's gonna provide to me? All right. And then you get that answer. What do you do with it? So what you are doing there, and you've got to name this and realize you're doing this, you are building up some emotional resilience. You are seeing what the emotion is. So I'm frustrated, I'm mad, I'm angry, I'm tired. Whatever's going on, that is you getting in touch with your emotional life and we are gonna get in touch with that instead of using food to mask what's going on because I've got news for you when you stop emotionally eating whatever feelings you were eating over will bubble to the surface. They will massively bubble. It's like, hello, I'm here I've been tired for a year and you didn't acknowledge me and now the food's not here. So you're gonna get really familiar. So it might feel intense because we took away a soothing thing like a lot of us have found food. Because it's solved, it's helped us to feel better. It's helped us for entertainment. It's helped us with a lot of things. So now if we're not physically hungry and we're not gonna give that, we're gonna have to learn what to do with these newfound emotions. So I'm staying here yesterday I named the emotion hunger, and then I chose to keep going. Love it. Love it. When you are doing this work, you are gonna realize I'm building out some skills right now of realizing what is actually going on. Notice nowhere here, have we gone into fix it, Felix fixer mode, where we're like changing everything about our life. We need to know what is first going on in order for us to be able to change things. So I'm gonna recommend and feel free to disagree with me. I'm gonna recommend that for a few weeks. You just get really familiar with asking why you're wanting to eat, because it's gonna take again and again and again when you're not physically hungry asking what the reason is for you to figure out what it. And I wanna know, you tell me in the comments, if you've been doing some of this work, what always comes up for you? For me, it's always the same. I'm tired, I'm exhausted, I'm annoyed. It's this resistance to just feeling some of those human feelings, and I have to get familiar, like I've had to train myself. We don't need to right away eat something to feel better. You can just feel annoyed for a few minutes in the day it passes. It's a human feeling. you don't have to feel happy all the time, And ironically, I feel happier when I feel the annoyance Isn't that a funny thing how that happens? Right? So I'm seeing here anxiety can come up. Yes. So anxiety can be like this low hum, right? Like, did I do the right thing with whoever? Maybe I took care of something business-wise. Did I do that right? Action. What's gonna be happening with my kids later today? You know, we, we all have things going on and that low hum am I willing to just experience like, yes, I'm a loving mom, I care about my kid, or yes, there's this big change going on. Am I willing to just like, yeah, to experience that, like, I'm going through this and usually remember when we name it, the, the feeling goes. So usually I'm just gonna quote a random number here that I've heard, but I've heard about 90%. The intensity of the feeling goes down if we name it. So instead of sitting there and thinking, I gotta eat, I'm not hungry, but you know what's gonna make me feel better? If we say I'm really feeling anxious right now, usually anxiety down about 90% because we're acknowledging what's there. We're not trying to push the ball under the water anymore and pretending like it doesn't exist. Some other comments here. I'm always bored sometimes. and I am seeing your tired, stress, anxious. And lemme just pause there for a second. This is just good to know. It's good to know that I'm bored, I'm sad, I'm stressed, I'm tired. can that be there? Can we honor the fact that you're going through that instead of ignoring it? Because, you know, there's, again, there's this you know, different ways of kind of looking at this with coaching and often one of, one of the ways that I really like to tell people is that all parts of us are showing up to help. So there's a part of us that's like, please listen to me. I'm tired, I'm stressed, I'm sad. And for us to ignore that. Like think about if a friend came and told you these things, would you tell them, listen, just eat this chocolate. Right. Would you provide that to them as a tool or would you say, tell me more. You know, if you're, I, I, if you're a parent here and your, your kid comes home from school distressed. I know growing up, some of us in, in my family, we experienced bullying and, the fact that my mom would be like, tell me more, like, I'm looking back now, having kids myself, looking at how my mom handled that, and I realized, wow, that was a really loving thing. She didn't try to fix it necessarily minute one, she wanted to figure out how are you feeling? What's going on with you? Please do this for yourself because there's something going on there. We're not listening to it. We've ignored it a really long time. And let's just let that bubble up for a minute. Okay. I'm seeing another one here, quote unquote. Time for myself. Used to be a big one when kids were small. Like you don't need an excuse to take a break when you're eating. Yes. That's a really big one for me. I'm glad you brought that up. You know, I have a three and a half year old, and I know Carrie talks about this too. One of the things I realized, I used to overeat with dinner a lot, and what I realized is what you just commented, so thank you for saying this. It was, well, it's acceptable if I keep sitting at the table and I can say, Hey, can you help with whoever, you know, I'm still eating. That's, that's like socially acceptable. I had to. I can say, Hey, can you take care of whatever's going on? You know, I I have a great loving husband. I can ask that. But can you, can you hold onto this for a moment? Cuz I need to go take a break and I've, I've talked about this within our group, but I actually at the end, like if I've had a really long workday. I need five, 10 minutes to just lay in bed and like unplug like emotionally unplug, just relax. Let my body calm down. I didn't know these needs existed until I stopped overeating, until I took away the overeating and took away the emotional eating. It became really clear really quickly what was going on. Okay, so I'm seeing a lot of here. Tired, overwhelmed, irritated, empty, bored, anxious, usually upset, wanting to escape. Yes. Let me tell you something. Do you see that a lot of us are saying the same? all the same words I would use. So number one, I want you to realize like you're not alone. Like look at this common human experience here, right? And. sometimes I know this is gonna sound, different than what you might have heard, but by experiencing that, like just being like, yes, I am anxious, I am overwhelmed, I am feeling these things and normalizing it, it helps to bring the intensity down and to realize you can expand your capacity to feel these things and not go use food in a way that hurts. So this might be new to some of you if you, if you haven't been joining us before, but I'm just so glad that we get to talk about this. So that's the kind of the mindfulness part that I put on here. And then I, I put number four to practice. I want to encourage you, this is a, the work of your life. This might be, and this is again, just a way that I like to think about things. But maybe you are just someone where you just use food as a. And you got really used to, that you like the taste of food and how it makes you feel, and in many scenarios it really works for you and that is fine. You've figured out a way to make it through many scenarios using this. But if it's no longer working for you, if you're like, I don't like how I feel in my body, I don't like how I'm experiencing food, that I feel out of control or that I'm tired, stressed, anxious, and food is the answer, cuz it doesn't solve the fact that you're tired, right? In fact, it might even make you more tired. if you're not physically hungry and you're eating things, and so we're, we're pulling ourselves down in a spiral, right? It's not ultimately bringing us where we wanna go. So I want you to realize that this takes time and patience to let these things bubble up, to let them surface, to be willing to look at them. There is nothing broken or. Dark and dirty at the core. Literally, these are just some human emotions that we haven't learned to just let them be there a little bit and they dissipate with time. In the beginning, it feels like this is something where, oh my gosh, is it always gonna be this intense? That's a comment I get often from clients and that I have with myself at times. Whenever I do the next weight loss push, it's always like, wow, there's a lot here, and it always ends up dissipating. The less you resist and the more you just allow these things to come up and look at what's actually there, it changes with. I've talked a lot today and I know we normally keep these to 30 minutes, but we've just had a really good conversation today. I'm wondering what your takeaway today is hearing about the difference between physical versus emotional hunger. Think about your life. Where do you think is a good starting place for you? From everything you've heard today, what's the one gem, the one thing you wanna take away and go practice, go implement, go do. What do you think it is for? I, I feel like for me the like step number one, just, are you physically hungry or not? It's that pause button, that questioning, just keeping it so simple, just really simply, that is something I could continue to practice for life because it's always changing when I get hungry. Things like that. So someone said checking in with myself? Yes. Love that. And remember, it's gonna get more and more nuanced. You checking in because you're gonna get better and better at, oh yeah. Physical hunger is no longer my problem. All right, now I dig more into this other thing. There's layers to this onion as we're going through it. Another one here, biggest takeaway. Food is not an emergency. Yes. Because remember, like, and this might be something you need to consciously tell your brain, if I'm hungry, I go eat, no problem. But if not, I'm willing. I'm willing to stay conscious and open up to what's going on there or to even start to question it versus just to assume that that's always the answer. Starting practicing by using step one. Love that. So checking in physically, am I physically hungry? Would this broccoli cheese apple, whatever it is, would it physically solve it or not? If not, is something else going on? And I'm seeing a last comment here. I might start with writing down the words that come up. Love that. and you take it slowly because no one's asking you to figure this out in quote marks overnight. Remember, there's never anything broken or wrong with you. This is just something that you might wanna figure out more, something that you might wanna change with how you're doing things. But there's nothing inherently wrong with who you are right now. This is one thing you wanna work on. This is one habit. It's not the essence of who you are. So someone's saying, here's so I'm bored. What can I do? Instead of eating re paint, knit, crochet back, back to my old hobbies. Yes. I love that. So maybe building out, you know, I love this. If you're saying I'm bored, it's like, well, how would I solve boredom? Would I ask food to do that? No. I'm gonna go, go do all the fun things I love in life and like building that. So I'm gonna leave it here. If you have other thoughts, either after this or you know, coming up in the future days, you're watching this, leave the comments down below. But I encourage you to start wherever you're at and you just take this next step. And if you need to re-listen to this, you might need to re-listen to this episode just to, just cuz you'll be in a different place in a few days or weeks from now. So just kind of be willing to work with yourself and keep going from where you're at. Yeah, someone said Thanks. Such a great dialogue today. Thank you. All right. I love being with you guys on here. I will see you next week. Have a great rest of the week. Bye.