355. Why Do I Feel So Out of Control Around Food & Weight Since Divorce?

Maybe you're eating more.

Maybe you're eating less.

Maybe you're thinking about food all the time.

Maybe you've gained weight, lost weight, or feel like your body doesn't respond the way it used to.

And maybe you're wondering why something that once felt manageable suddenly feels so complicated.

In this episode of Dear Divorce Diary, Dawn, Tiffini, and Joy explore the often-overlooked connection between divorce, grief, stress, loneliness, and our relationship with food and weight.

Because the truth is, food works.

Food can create comfort, connection, distraction, relief, control, and even a temporary sense of safety when life feels overwhelming. The problem isn't that it helps. The problem is that the relief is temporary, while the deeper pain remains.

Together, we unpack:

•  Why divorce can dramatically change the way you eat 
•  Emotional eating, stress eating, under-eating, and food restriction 
•  The connection between food, loneliness, grief, and nervous system regulation 
•  Why food can become a source of comfort, control, protection, or relief 
•  The hidden fears that often drive food and weight struggles 
•  How childhood experiences shape our relationship with nourishment 
•  The difference between self-soothing and avoiding ourselves 
•  Simple questions that can help you understand what you're really hungry for 

If you've ever found yourself standing in the pantry wondering, "Why am I doing this?" or looking in the mirror and feeling disconnected from your body, this conversation is for you.

Because this isn't really about willpower.

It's about understanding what your nervous system, your body, and your grief may be trying to communicate.

One step at a time, with curiosity instead of judgment.

💛 Join us inside Cocoon, our free divorce recovery community, for deeper support, resources, and conversations with women who understand what you're navigating. There is nothing wrong with you. You're healing through one of life's biggest transitions—and you don't have to do it alone.

Transcript

Noisy Clocks And Comfort Rituals

SPEAKER_05 1:40

Good morning, sunshines. Hi. When you did that, your cuckoo clock chimed and it was like paired and it was like the perfect moment for me.

SPEAKER_03 1:53

I love a noisy clock. We have several of them in this house. I think it reminds me of my grandparents, and it's like, I don't know. And I love that it's German. It's very it's very German, right? Yeah. It's very German. And I love that like our daughter, she could lay in bed and she could wait for the clock to chime and she knows what time it is or whatever. But like that's now ingrained in her brain map about her childhood, right? Like when the clock chimes and her I don't know. It's just feels like a I love it.

SPEAKER_00 2:22

I have my grandparents' clock too in my house. It's a grandmother clock because it's not as big as a grandfather clock, but um their neighbor made it for them. It's beautiful. So I have it in the house.

Why Food Works When Life Hurts

SPEAKER_03 2:33

So today we are talking about our relationship with food when we're stressed or grieving or I don't know, fill in the blank, right? And as much as we're talking about the tendency to reach to food for like for food to soothe, I also think the reverse can be true, like under-eating to soothe or like controlling eating to soothe, right? So it's like our relationship with food is the conversation. And the the reality is is that as far as food goes, like it's effective. It um changes the brain chemistry, right? It changes our stress hormones, it impacts our neurotransmitters, like it creates a real physiological shift. It's reliable. The problem is that it's temporary, the relief it gives, right? And um so the deeper issue is how do we balance, like, okay, we can use food to temporarily shift how we're feeling. And, you know, when we add divorce, grief, loneliness, stress, poor sleep, financial fear, like all the things. It's like the body just wants to know how can I feel better right this second. And we're trying to balance, like, how do we create lasting healing, obviously, alongside the food piece. And I think it's really important to acknowledge that our relationship with food is somewhat belief-driven or or emotionally driven or nervous system driven, but it's also microbiome-driven and hormone-driven, right? Like it's all connected and complex. So this is by no means meant to be a conversation that oversimplifies our relationship with food down to like a therapy issue alone, right? I think too many women like feel like they need to be more disciplined when really there's this sort of holistic thing that needs to shift. Hi, love. Welcome to Dear Divorce Diary, the podcast helping divorcees go beyond talk therapy to process your grief, find the healing you crave, and build back your confidence. I'm your host, Don Wiggins, a therapist, coach, integrative healer, and divorce A. Join me for a fresh approach to healing grief and building your confidence after divorce.

What Our Snacks Would Say

SPEAKER_03 5:02

So let's talk about our relationships, like, you know, with food and what that looks like or what it's looked like in our healing journeys and whatnot. Cool, cool. So the goal is to get curious about what our body is trying to communicate and to listen from layers. But let's start with sort of like an out-of-the-box question. If food could talk, like if our food could talk, like if all of the dark chocolate I have littered around the house could talk. And it could be like, ladies, let me tell you about Auntie Dawn. If food could talk, what would it say it's doing for us? Like, I know all the chocolate litter around the house would say, like, ooh, we'd be helping her manage that stress.

SPEAKER_00 5:57

We keep her going when she doesn't feel like it. I'm a salty girl. So for me, it is potato chips, specifically kettle chips. The crunchier the better. And then cheesets. Yeah, cheese-its are my favorite. Um, my cat will steal a cheese it if I don't watch what's happening. She also loves Cheez-Its.

SPEAKER_02 6:16

Have you seen the weird Cheese It commercials lately? They're really weird.

SPEAKER_00 6:20

Yeah, they're a little out there.

SPEAKER_02 6:22

They're weird.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

They're a little out there. I'm so excited.

SPEAKER_02 6:25

I recently discovered you both. They're out there.

SPEAKER_00 6:30

Who is in charge of their marketing? I recently discovered the extra toasty ones. So those are the ones that are like burnt in the process and they shove all the burnt ones in a box. Oh shit. Like they're so good. So, so mine would probably say, yeah, like she she comes to us at night, mostly at night, if there's an issue. Like anytime I'm eating after seven o'clock, I know that there's something that I'm ignoring or avoiding because I don't eat after seven. Like that's just a cardinal rule for me. So if I'm out in the pantry, yeah, like they're looking at me and they're like, oh, here she comes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 7:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 7:07

What would food say? I think food in my house would say I eat a lot in on the go, like walking through the kitchen, I'll grab something. I remember this one time where I was at a like a um, not a distillery, that's not the right word, but like a tap room type place and made a comment about pizza and this bartender, no name, no idea who he was, but I felt so seen because he made a comment about how busy moms just eat the ends of the pizza, like the the bones of the pizza, the crust of the pizza, because you know, they're they're busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, and the kid eats the good part and the the mom eats the leftovers. And I felt so seen in that moment because that's literally how I survived for a lot of years just eating the crust of the grilled cheese or the, you know, like the leftover macarine cheese on the plate as I'm doing XYZ. So I feel a lot my my food would say a lot of nervous system activation in terms of keeping myself busy or not not having capacity to be wise, you know, like she's like slow down and discern.

SPEAKER_03 8:20

Yeah. And I think our relationships with food like tell a story throughout life, to your point, right? There's a motherhood story about food. There's a but like there's like life is not static, right? It's dynamic. So like 10 years ago, if you had asked me this question, I think my food would have told you, like, oh, she's really rigid. You know, uh I and but like I felt like if I didn't control what I was eating, and this was true to an extent, like my body wasn't well metabolized enough to be able to detox itself. So I had to eat like so specifically in order to literally protect my cellular health. But like, what was that saying about me, right? Like, ooh, she's sick, she's rigid, she's a control freak. Like that all would have been true, right? She doesn't feel good, she doesn't feel good, she doesn't feel good.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

I counted calories for years, like I counted calories and measured food for years. And I could probably rattle off what I would do on my servings because I knew it was a three-ounce thing of meat and a half a cup of a side. Like I literally measured like that. I had a food scale. Like there were times in my life where I got very, very controlled around what I was eating because I had no discipline.

Food As Connection And Survival

SPEAKER_00 9:35

Food for me, and I'm just gonna start by saying this, and I think that this is gonna ring true for a lot of women out there. Food in my family was a place to connect with each other. We ate when we were happy and celebrating. We ate when we were sad and something catastrophic happened. Food became the bonding glue that held my family together.

SPEAKER_05 9:54

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 9:55

And even now, like when I would go visit my mom and we'll joke about it, her and I will sit at the kitchen table and we will just eat chips, we'll pound Oreos, we'll go get ice cream. Everything revolves around food still with me and my mom when we're together. And so I think that for me, it was always that comfort and it was a way of connection. Yeah. So that was my thing. That's how I connected with others was through food.

SPEAKER_04 10:19

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 10:21

Let's talk about the times that maybe we're not even I don't want to say enjoying it, but not hungry.

SPEAKER_04 10:29

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 10:30

But we're trying to feel different.

SPEAKER_02 10:33

Mm-hmm. There I'm Yeah.

unknown 10:35

Go.

SPEAKER_05 10:36

I relate to that a lot, in which, you know, before I started IFS work, internal family systems work, I ate. Like it was just a thing to do. Like it was it was brand new information that people eat people don't eat when they're not hungry. Like, what? But I remember texting you, this was years ago, Don. But do you I I went out with my girlfriends and we went to my favorite place and I ordered my favorite salad, and I knew driving there wasn't hungry. And then I sat down and I'm not hungry. And then I ordered this salad, and it's a large salad, and it's like a buffalo chicken. It's like makes my mouth water thinking about it. Um, it's so delicious. And I ate the entire thing. And then when I'm done, now I'm miserable because I wasn't hungry to eat. And then I text you, like, why would I why did I just do that? And it was very much for me, it was a kind of a social, you know, like I didn't want to be the person that was weird and didn't eat when it was dinner time, or I reached for food because I was dysregulated, or I was in pain. I was in a lot of pain for a lot of years.

SPEAKER_03 11:47

That's a really good soothed, right? Cortisol reducer.

SPEAKER_05 11:51

Like when you eat something that you enjoy, it reduces cortisol. And then if you eat something sugary, and I don't, I don't, my sugary isn't my bent, but like the the crack the crackly, crunchy chips, like if I ate something like that, I got the dopamine hit. I got the the it was almost like I didn't feel good in my body if my body wasn't miserable. And I don't know how to say that differently, but like if I was not in pain, I didn't know how to handle it. And then if I was in pain, that's how I handled it. So it was like multi-layered on multiple facets of um, I ate until I was miserable, not until I was just full. Does that make sense? Because I felt more most comfortable, miserably full. When my stomach hurt, that's when my nervous system felt like it was calmer, but actually made it worse because now my body is working on over. You know what I mean? Like it just added a different layer, complexity of what my body was actually doing.

SPEAKER_03 12:56

I hope so many women feel seen in this moment because the truth can be, or or, you know, the the experience can be the same for some women about feeling empty, right? Like that they have to feel empty, they can't tolerate feeling full at all. So it's super interesting about how our brain maps are and really understanding that what we're wired for, what is common, what is familiar. It's that idea of the nervous system seeks homeostasis, even if it's horrible discomfort. It seeks what is familiar because it knows, it likes, it prefers to deal with a familiar threat versus uncertainty. And how interesting, right? Um, and all of these lived experiences that we've had, they came from somewhere. And it's such a journey to unwind it. So I wonder if we take it out of the like literal food realm and we take it into the metaphorical realm, what are we all actually hungry for in these moments, right? If it's not about actual hunger, what are we seeking? What are we seeking? Like relief, but like, okay, but from what?

SPEAKER_05 14:06

Tell me more, right? Relief was probably the best word because you I wanted relief for everything. Basically, right? Um, uh, and that's I feel like looking back through my my childhood, I was very, very sick as a child. I had, you know, like my my family. Anyway, let's not that's that's an onion that doesn't even have to be. But I do see the patterns that my family, you know, just spent some time with them in the mountains. Like I see the patterns of um eating to satiate, not eating for nourishment, and um how that plays out in nervous system and integration parts work. Um but again, just relief. Relief.

SPEAKER_03 15:01

Yeah, relief. And isn't it interesting, like where do we get stuck there around why do we keep doing this form of relief versus creating a longer-term solution or relief? Where do you see women get stuck there, Tiffany? Where uh you know, maybe the thing we're really hungry for isn't necessarily food, maybe it's relief or deeper connection or more freedom or rest, right? Like like I've heard Joy say a lot of times, like when she was tired, she would eat to stay awake. Like I we I think we eat for so many reasons or for pain relief or whatever, right? Where do we get stuck where we keep reaching for this thing that then we judge ourselves for, which is a whole nother conversation we ought to have?

SPEAKER_00 15:48

Right. Yeah.

When Eating Becomes Numbing

SPEAKER_00 15:51

So it's like in a system for IFS, it would look like something like this. It would look like if you're a person who has perfectionist tendencies, or you have an image manager that only cares about what other people think and you have this fear of being judged, right? So then when everything gets too overwhelming, you eat. Eating is one of your firefighters. It's one of the ways that we numb. It's in that category of numbing. Whether it's controlled eating, overeating, undereating, whatever it is, it's to numb. And so then what happens is you have that perfectionist part of that image manager that then gets activated even more because they're like, you dumbass.

SPEAKER_03 16:29

Like you are.

SPEAKER_00 16:31

Yes, you're gaining weight. You know what I mean? People are gonna judge us even more, you're gonna stick out even more. There's also a protective part, and I want to call this out in a very gentle way, but there is a direct relationship between women who have been sexually abused or molested as children or as adults, could have been raped as an adult, right? Um, and their tendency to overeat because they feel like their weight will serve as a form of protection against men. And that's a very spicy take, but that is a very true take.

SPEAKER_04 17:03

And I made me try to get over and over. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 17:08

Yeah. Yeah. I remember thinking as a kid, I don't want to be pretty. I don't want to be pretty because what happens when I'm pretty, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 17:17

Like Yeah. When you get attention from men, it's bad, right? So for me, I especially when I was in my period of celibacy and I was not drinking anymore, I gained quite a bit of weight. And at one point I got I got up to the point where I weighed the same as I did the night I gave birth to my daughter. And that was kind of a wake-up call for me. I was very unhealthy. I was afraid that I was gonna die. Like my family has heart issues, diabetes, like all of that. So I think that I used it though as a mechanism. And it's funny because it's kind of a joke, right? Like I feel like I still got attention from men even when I was overweight. Um, so that didn't really help anyway. It just made me more miserable. But yeah, so I think that again, these are parts coming in to protect the system. And I, you know, when women come to me with overeating issues, the first question I tell them, the first tool is ask yourself, are you hungry before you reach for something? And it's something that sounds so silly, but it's like nine times out of ten, the answer is gonna be no, I'm not. And then we have to get in, well, what's underneath of that that's making it so uncomfortable for you to sit with yourself right now instead of, you know, you know, the stillness, right?

SPEAKER_03 18:28

And eating isn't stillness, like eating is still us being it's it's like a million ways not stillness because of all of the cascade of neurochemical, you know, hormonal signalings it does. Yeah. Yeah. So here's a nuanced inquiry. What's the difference between self-soothing or comforting ourselves and avoiding ourselves in this context, right? Like we talk so much about our kids needing to learn to self-soothe and us needing to learn to identify and meet our own needs and ask for help and right. So in a moment like this, where we reach for a snack to get by, when does it cross the line from self-soothing and comforting to avoiding ourselves? How does a woman understand if she's crossed that line?

SPEAKER_00 19:31

It's out of urgency, right? If you're eating and you're not hungry, you're ignoring or avoiding something. When I actually started eating healthy and I would get that pang of hunger, and I'm not talking about hangry level. Like now, right? Hanger is a whole nother metabolic issue, right? Yeah. Yes. I'm talking about just that tiny little pang that I was a little bit hungry. That felt so foreign to me because I always felt like I had to be filled up. And not to Joy's point. Like sometimes, yes, sure, I would eat like you to the point where I was miserable, but mostly I just needed to be full all the time. And if I felt that little panger of hungriness, it felt so uncomfortable for me and so empty that I had to like get rid of it right away.

SPEAKER_03 20:14

I wonder how much all of this relates to loneliness in general, right? We talk about loneliness a lot in the context of divorce. And I think when you think about attachment style and what allows that to stay activated, you know, I related to be feeling so lonely all the time as a kid that I was somebody who would tend to keep myself empty rather than full. And I think because if I ate, then I was gonna want more and I wasn't gonna let myself have more. And so then it was just easier to keep it to to deal with nothing, right? To have nothing than it was to have some. That's interesting, right? Like, think about what that says in terms of like love, relationships, connections, safety, security. I'd rather let myself have none rather than some. What would the flip side of that be for fullness, right? I can't tolerate the feeling of loneliness or aloneness or emptiness on any level. And so to distract from having to feel that, I will keep this, you know, version of it full, and then I can pretend I'm not lonely or I'm not alone or I'm not. And that makes sense, Tiffany, especially if you were saying it was during your celibate, you know, single days. Yeah. Then you kept you kept that feeling at bay by staying full. Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 21:35

Food is very much the friend. I've heard a lot of women say that, and I a hundred percent believe it that a lot of people view food as a friend. It's a very strong comfort, right? Right.

SPEAKER_05 21:47

But it's not just the eating, it's the prep, right? So, like my my children are away this week and my house is quiet, like too quiet. And so last night, I actually I was so un un like listen, again, it's a different episode. We're too codependent, the four of us, my three children and I. I we all know this. So we're actively working on it, but my house was too quiet. So I went into the kitchen last night to eat, and I realized I wasn't hungry. So I didn't, but I meal prepped. But it's because it's like it's something to do when the house is quiet. So like I I, you know, chopped up the chicken and I did this and I did that and I did, you know, like it was busy work, and so pre-IFS and pre-I understood my uh like at post, right? Post all this work, I understood that I was dysregulated and I understood that my body was calling for something, but I also understood that it would cause more problems to just gorge myself or whatever. So I just did practical things moving in that space because it doesn't like we say this a lot, like this work doesn't absolve you from having triggers and and dysregulation generally.

SPEAKER_03 23:02

A regulated nervous system isn't calm all the time. A regulated nervous system has the ability to experience stress and expand to to to whole have the capacity to process the stress and then recover, right? A regulated nervous system has this capacity for recovery, for expansion and contraction, expansion and contraction to have self awareness and be able to meet our needs and to be good listeners. Yeah. Well regulated nervous system. Like doing this work doesn't mean you're calm all the time.

unknown 23:33

Right.

SPEAKER_05 23:34

Okay. So like, you know, I meal prepped and I I was able to be in. Be in self, but understand that I wasn't in self. Does that make any sense? Like I knew what I would typically do and understood the pattern and saw the pattern. And so I just did that, Tiffany.

SPEAKER_03 23:54

I was able to be in self, but also not be in self.

SPEAKER_00 23:56

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Self is, and I tell people all the time, right? Self is basically just awareness. You are aware that there is another part that is coming in and taking over at that moment. And so there's a way that we can say, Oh God, I just my people pleaser is on fire today. You know what I mean? Or I'm sacrificing for everybody else today. Like you can see it. So that's what that means. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 24:20

Mm-hmm. Having a dual awareness. Yes, having dual awareness. Almost like you can observe it from a higher perspective rather than getting totally swallowed by it.

SPEAKER_05 24:29

And not not numbing it with a drink. You know what I mean? Like not being. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 24:35

So what other patterns have y'all heard women talk about with food, either like on the internet or in our programs or just your girlfriends, right? Like what other things do you see women really struggle with? I think it's so common to know this is going to cause me pain and do it anyways. And it's so interesting that we that we do that.

SPEAKER_00 24:56

And it's so accessible. Like I will never forget when we when I hosted Exchange students from other countries and they would come and live with me for 10 months. The thing that blew their minds the most was the amount of portions that we have at restaurants, the amount of groceries that I would buy for a week, and then also the fact that we could literally get anything delivered in the comfort of our home at any time.

SPEAKER_03 25:20

And so with it away most of the time.

SPEAKER_00 25:23

Right. So it's like it is an addiction that we have access to all the time. It's not like you can just, you know, with drinking alcohol or doing drugs, yes, we can just not buy those things. But food, you have to have it. And so if you don't have a good relationship with it where you feel like you're either undereating or overeating, it's something that is in your face every single day. It's not like you just can't step into a bar. Like you have to go to a grocery store. That has to be a thing.

SPEAKER_05 27:00

Yeah. And frankly, if you don't eat, there's more comfortable.

SPEAKER_03 27:08

Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So many of the food-related issues and diabetes, even, right, are rooted in unresolved emotional pain.

SPEAKER_00 27:20

And I know we're talking a lot about overeating, but even under eating, like let's touch on that for a second, right? Because I had friends in high school growing up that were bulimic and anorexic and all the things. And it's touched my life in a lot of personal ways, not with me, but with people that are very close to me. And the pattern is there is a need for control. There is some point in their life when they don't feel like they're in control. And so it's like to a lot of moms out there, too, that suspect or that fear that your children, and I know we don't talk about it enough with teenage boys, but that can be a real thing too. But if you suspect that your kids may have an eating disorder, understanding that there is some area of their life where they're lacking control and your divorce, unfortunately, is going to be one of them. Yeah. Um definitely. And so it's being able to lean in and sort of pick out and identify that and hit it head on instead of burying your head in the sand, because you know, that's something that can really affect your kids' health, their ability to have children, you know, their ability to fight disease in the future, you know, all of that can really be. But there's some, again, sense of lack of control when you're under-eating or when you are doing controlled eating.

SPEAKER_03 28:27

Well, and I think like as a society, gosh, like we almost fall in one camp or the other, I would argue, right?

Releasing Control And Trusting Your Body

SPEAKER_03 28:34

Where it's sort of like uncontrollable overeating or uncontrollable controlled eating. Does that make sense? Like it's rampant, rampant. You mentioned earlier that you used to count calories, and I absolutely can remember most of my life, even if I wasn't counting calories, I was definitely like calculating all of it through the day. Like maybe not like officially on paper and weighing it, but there was such an inability for me to trust my body that I could eat until full and that I wasn't gonna gain weight or become like unattractive or whatever. And I definitely weigh more now than I would typically probably have held. But it's like my whole relationship with perfectionism and needing to control everything has shifted so monumentally. Like I don't track anything anymore. I eat a lot of chocolate. I eat what I want, I eat what my family's eating rather than having a different dish that's lower calorie. Like I did all of that shit, you know? And my like getting on the scale is probably plus or minus three pounds, what it's always, always, always, always been, right? Like I work out a couple of times a week, I move my body, I have a range of food choices. Some are very, very healthy and wise, some of them are just for funsies, and some of them are medicinal. And like that's it. And am I gonna be like the hottest chick at the beach? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. But like, I'm not gonna shame myself for that anymore either. You know, like I don't know. It's such a more comfortable way to live, but man, it was a journey to get here because absolutely like permission to access certain foods came via withholding or like overworking, or you know what I mean? Like it was like I didn't, I wouldn't go to a restaurant and order what I wanted to order. I would go to a restaurant and order like what was allowed on the day based on what I had already consumed. And I am still health conscious, but just like people sometimes think that I'm this paragon of health and that I wouldn't take a pharmaceutical. That's not true. I will take a pharmaceutical if needed, and I'm gonna eat myself some pasta if I want it now, you know? Like I yeah, but wow, what a journey that has been to uh through self-acceptance, through being able to trust my body, through like being able to trust my body that it's gonna tell me and that I'm gonna have the capacity to listen, because that's the other thing, right? Like maybe my body was telling me all this time and I always knew it, but I didn't understand how to unlock it, or I didn't understand how to give it what it needed, or I didn't have the capacity to do the long-term fix versus the short-term fix. Or yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:25

For me, what I learned is when it when I have to try too hard to maintain the weight that I'm at, I'm at the wrong weight.

SPEAKER_03 31:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:32

So for me, like I had lost a lot of weight several years ago, and it was so hard. I mean, it was like obsessive for me because I couldn't maintain that weight. And so I had to be able to gain weight where it's like, no, actually, you're supposed to be 10 pounds heavier. You know what I mean? And and that's the weight that you should be at because you can maintain that through exercise and diet without restricting yourself all the time. So yeah, like that's what I've learned is like to be comfortable with it. And I'm gonna say this, this is crazy. Like, I will be 43 on a Sunday. I went to the pool with my, we'll say mother-in-law for all intents and purposes, but my my boyfriend's mother, or we went to the pool earlier last week, and she's 71 years old, and we both showed up in bikinis. We both showed up in black bikinis. And I'll tell you what, at 71, like she says what she wants to say about her own body, but I was like, holy shit, like this woman is 71 years old, she's rocking a black bikini at the pool, and like no one gives a shit. You know what I mean? Like, to reach that point where you're so comfortable in your own skin and really don't care what other people think necessarily, I think that that's a really good place to be in. And I've kind of embraced that part of myself too.

SPEAKER_03 32:47

Yeah, or not care so much that you're like not living your own life, right? Like, that's the thing. We've all been tempted to trade something to to be approved of by the larger internet community or whatever, right?

SPEAKER_02 33:03

Or whoever.

SPEAKER_03 33:04

Like it's like yeah, to like want to pursue what lights you up over pursuing approval from others is a whole different way to live. So during this like super acute divorce phase where like everything is on fire

Tiny Pauses That Change The Pattern

SPEAKER_03 33:23

and everything feels hard, what's the next step? Right? It's it's not to like put an unreasonable expectation on yourself about all the things with regards to food because it's a relationship that you have with, you know, something that you need, uh, and it's not gonna change overnight. So what's like the next step that women could consider taking just to be in that conversation about food?

SPEAKER_05 33:52

I'm gonna plug in IFS because when I first started IFS, I would say I just don't even know I'm doing it until I'm doing it or until I'm after the fact. Like so often, because I'm just like, I don't even know how to start. Because how do you start correcting behavior of something you're not even if it's so understanding? Right. So I would start there and also actually, I don't even know if I would start there. I would also start with feeling, like understanding what makes you feel good and what doesn't make you feel good. And my personal experience, it goes both way. Like it you it's both. It's both. You have to be able to understand when you're full and what's nourishing to your body.

SPEAKER_03 34:40

Right. But then you need the ability to intervene on it. And I think that's right. Sounds like dual like you have to be able to do both, yeah. Yeah, to change the pattern. And that's where so many women get stuck.

SPEAKER_00 34:50

And I would just be very mindful. Yeah. I'd be very mindful around why you're doing it right. So the women that are overeating, really just pausing, taking a 10-second pause to say, Am I really hungry right now? And if you're not allowing yourself to sit for even just 15 minutes, sit with whatever and journal a little bit. Just allow yourself to sit and pause. And if you still want to eat, by all means eat. But you're at least training your nervous system and your brain to stop for a second and think about it. And again, we're asking for, I say it all the time, we're asking for progress, not perfection. So it's okay if you binge that whole gallon of ice cream and then come back the next day and be like, well, shit. But again, it's like starting to interrupt it slowly a little bit at a time. And then it's like sitting with simply asking yourself, what am I most afraid of right now if I don't eat in this moment of feeling? And also to the women who are undereating when you want to go measure your food, or when you're wanting to calculate, or when you're wanting to be so restricted, like what am I afraid is going to happen if I do not control this? Like there's fear underneath of that. It's like being very curious about it instead of scared or pushing your head in the sand and acting like it's not a thing. Cause it's definitely, you know, there's something underneath why you're continuing to reach for the food or whether you're continuing to restrict yourself. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 36:13

I'm thinking about all the ways it shows up eating disorder, disordered eating, right? Like shows up in the Materia Medica in homeopathic remedy selection. And so much of it has to do with mother wounds and or grief in general. Uh so much of it has to do because food, our the our original source of nourishment, right, is through mother. And so how we learn to relate to nourishment, I do think, is around mother and the uh responsiveness of our needs as when we're dependent infants, right? I think so much of that brain map must um be established then around our primary caregivers, how we were nourished or not nourished, and the relationship that was being established with our bodies and our nervous systems back then. Um but I I was reading this weekend about so many of the milk remedies of the various creatures, whether it's humans or animals, right? And the themes that come up in there in homeopathy and how we experience nourishment and our own identity. Yeah, how we see ourselves, how much we love and appreciate ourselves, how safe we feel joining or belonging in groups versus not. All of that kicks up, but you know, yeah, safety, identity, feeling nurtured, nourished, loved. Yeah. So long story longer, we're glad you're here because this is not a quick fix. It's part of a much bigger picture. And in this moment where everything's on fire, there are a lot of threads you could pull to pursue your healing. Um, and you can't pull them all at once. So please don't beat yourself up about it to your image manager, your perfectionist part, like it's gonna be okay, we're gonna tackle it all one step at a time. Um, but just know that it's part of this bigger picture. And if you can start to connect those thoughts, you could start looking at ways you can hear what your body is asking for underneath just that immediate cortisol um or dopamine uh hit, if you can move in the direction of creating more and more safety and stability in your life, it makes it easier to tackle all of these issues and for your body to feel safe enough to do so. So one step at a time. We are here, we hear you, we see you, we know. And if you want to talk about this more, have more support from

A Free Place To Get Support

SPEAKER_03 38:50

us, jump in Cocoon. It's a completely free community where you can be in contact with us, you can access all these other resources inside Cocoon, and you can have access to our monthly magic drop, which we want for you. Magic! Yeah, and sometimes we have food-related solutions in there, right? We've given away bags of organized and homeopathic remedies and various things that will definitely help support this journey for sure. So come check it out. Link in show notes. We love you so much. Peace.