How to Stop Emotional Eating Without Another Restrictive Diet

Understanding and Overcoming Emotional Eating

In this episode of the Muscles and Mindset Revolution Podcast, I delve into the common issue of emotional eating.

We discuss the impact of emotional eating on weight and why restrictive diets exacerbate the problem. I also outlines strategies for managing emotional eating, emphasizing the importance of addressing underlying thoughts and feelings, and offer practical tips on how to nourish emotional needs without relying on food. The episode includes actionable steps.

00:00 Welcome to the Muscles and Mindset Revolution
00:41 Understanding Emotional Eating
06:18 The Real Work Begins with Your Thoughts
09:45 Feel Your Feelings Without Food
14:56 Unlocking Happy Chemicals Without Food
17:33 Progress, Not Perfection
21:42 Final Thoughts and How to Dive Deeper

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Transcript

0:01

Welcome to the Muscles and Mindset Revolution Podcast. The podcast for busy, ambitious women who are tired of chasing quick fixes and are ready to finally achieve real lasting results, stronger bodies, sustainable habits, and long-term. Weight loss. I'm your host, Anne Jones, certified life coach and fitness professional for over 15 years. Here to help you break free from inconsistency, overwhelm, and burnout, build strength, feel confident, af, and lose weight without obsessing or stressing over weight loss, no bs, just simple sustainable strategies. Let's dive in. Hey friend. Hello. Welcome back to the podcast. Okay. If Summer has you reaching for tortilla chips, wine cookies, the second that stress hits this episode is your reset. Emotional eating is incredibly common and it is not a character flaw. So here's some things that I want you to know about emotional eating. It is research correlated with obesity and being overweight. It is not the only reason that some people may carry extra weight. It is not, obviously, the only thing correlated with obesity or being overweight. People who have never struggled with their weight, also emotionally eat. I've definitely emotionally eaten at times when I was not overweight or obese. Emotional eating is not disordered eating, but it can lead to disordered eating when it becomes your default coping strategy, coping mechanism, or as we call it, in muscles and mindset, SPB, self-protective behavio Now I have heard that my absence has been noted. So if you're wondering why this episode is coming out a little later than usual in the week, it's because May was wild y'all. And super fun. I. Met my mastermind in Nashville where I was like soaking up goodness with them. And then I flew home and pretty much immediately hosted our first ever live event here on the Sunshine Coast for our muscles and mindset clients, which was so fulfilling and so fun. And then we launched Summer60, which is our annual eight week fitness and accountability program, which is now officially underway. Although if you did miss out on Summer60, I will have. Another option coming for you in just a day or two. So make sure that you're on my email list via the link in the show notes here. So whether you're new or you found me through Summer60, or our recent strong Her challenge, welcome and if you are a loyal listener, thank you for being patient while I catch my breath. So today's episode is for the woman who's not looking for another diet plan. She's looking for peace. She's looking for self-trust, and she's looking to feel ease in her body again. So let's dive in. Real quick, this episode is sponsored by Muscles and Mindset. Muscles and Mindset is my signature fitness mindset and nutrition coaching program where we help clients integrate this work long term with coaching support every step of the way. And you can always apply via the link in the show notes. Okay. Emotional eating, part one. I eat because I'm unhappy and I'm unhappy because I eat. That line from Fat Bastard in Austin Powers. If you are a millennial, you will know. It's funny because it's true, right? It's funny because it's Mike Meyers, and it's funny because it's true, but emotional eating is not about weakness. It is not about being lazy and it's definitely not about needing more discipline. The real question is what problem are we actually dealing with? There are a few things that it could be it could be food addiction, which is chemical, neurological, and less common than we, than people think It could be binge eating disorder, which is diagnosable and psychological, and again, far less common than emotional eating, which is the most common and often the most misunderstood. Most of the women who we work with are dealing with emotional eating, so common, right? We honestly all emotionally eat at one time or another. Most of the women who we work with are not eating three fast food meals a day. They're not addicted to sugar. Even if they have been led to believe that. They are either truly hungry or stuck in a loop. Emotion, food, guilt, repeat emotion, food, guilt, repeat. Does it sound familiar? please remember we're gonna talk about this a little bit more, but emotion can be literally anything. It can be anger, sadness, frustration. I would say stress is the most common one, which is why we want to integrate other stress management techniques. But it can also be boredom. Boredom eating is still emotional eating. And then it's emotion to the eating, to the guilt, which remembering the difference between guilt and shame. Guilt is, I did something bad or the thought I did something wrong. Shame becomes when it's like I am wrong. There is something wrong with me, which I do see often with emotional eating as well as it does, it can lead into shame, as can many self-protective behaviours. Okay, part two, why restriction actually makes emotional eating worse. So you try to fix it, right? So you say, I'm an emotional eater. I eat when I'm stressed, I perhaps you binge eat, or it's just a little bit of emotional eating or whatever. What I see most often is you try to fix it, you cut carbs. You start another meal plan or you look for the correct meal plan, or you square off sugar Again, no sugar, no, no sweets. Here's the kicker. Restriction actually feeds emotional eating. It's actually making the problem worse. Restriction for emotional eating is actually like trying to put out a fire with. Gasoline because emotional eating isn't about food. It's about regulation. It is your nervous system looking for a way to feel better fast. Right. I think that probably speaks to you. You feel uncomfortable. You feel the emotion. You feel bored, you feel stressed, you feel sad, you feel lonely. You eat to feel better fast, to avoid discomfort, which is the reason that we do many things that we do, including all the SPBs self-protective behaviours. AKA are coping mechanisms. Now when we label that response as bad or weak, that is when we layer on shame. And nothing good grows from shame. And shame is more challenging to get away from than simply the thought, that happened. Or I did that or I ate that. Shame starts to become like a part of us. And it is quote unquote fixable, which is what we're talking about today. So that leads me to part three, which is that the real work to eliminating emotional eating begins with your thoughts. So here's what we teach inside muscles and mindset and just to be clear, if you don't already know, I have a fitness background. I have a life coaching background, and I have two amazing full-time coaches on my team who work with our clients inside muscles and mindset. And coach Natalie is, has been a nutritionist for many years and she has her own nutrition journey and story and she is a holistic nutritionist, so she is excellent at looking at the big picture. And then Coach Taylor is a moderation 365 nutrition coach. And moderation 365 is a. Nutrition psychology certification produced by my business coach and mentor, Jill Coleman. And I actually gifted it to Taylor. I put her through it because it spoke so well to both of us because I am all about moderation. I'm not about elimination forever, black and white. I'm like all the things fit. And Taylor loved it too. And I put her through it. And now that is what she does with clients, which is very much all foods fit, everything in moderation, learning to listen to hunger cues. And so inside muscles and mindset, we actually have a 10 step nutrition protocol and it brings in nervous system regulation, some concepts of intuitive eating, nutrition, education, macros, and micros. Education. I love to blend all the things that we have because I really think that we can only heal the anything to do with our habits at the level of the body. And we still need the science, the nuts and bolts, the nutrition education, right? So that's what we do inside the muscles and mindset. 10 step nutrition method, and I'm gonna share a little bit of it with you right now. And so inside muscles and mindset, whenever we're coaching or I'm coaching a client on anything behaviour or habit related or even just a thought, your act, we always start with the thought. Your actions begin with your thoughts. The circumstance is just a thing that is happening. We often allow our circumstance to dictate our actions, our feelings, and our mood, but our circumstance is actually just a thing that's happening. The thought that we have about the circumstance is what causes us to have a feeling, which causes us to have an action which creates our result. And this is what I walk our clients through. So, there's a circumstance like something happened, your boss yelled at you, you have a thought, I'm an asshole. I suck. Whatever makes you feel stressed. You emotionally eat, you get a result, right? Which is either just like your digestion sucks. Perhaps over time you gain weight, or it becomes a spiral like we talked about of you. Like go into guilt. That's a new emotion. Then you emotionally eat again, it starts a whole spiral. That's just one example, right? But what I really want to come back to is that your actions start with your thoughts. Most of us are having the same, I believe it's 60,000 thoughts. Every day we're having the same 60,000 thoughts on repeat today as we did yesterday, and if those thoughts sound like I can't stick to anything I've already screwed up, might as well just eat more. Like, what's the point? I just need to lose 10 pounds and then I'll be happy. Then of course, you'll feel out of control. Right, but this is the real work, actually not eliminating chocolate, although we might have to do that for a short amount of time if that's a trigger food. But in the long term, that's not the answer. But shifting how you think and feel in the moments that trigger the urge to emotionally eat. Part four. Feel your feelings without using food as a buffer. And today we're talking about food, but as I mentioned, there is a laundry list of self-protective behaviours. Addiction shopping, porn, exercise, alcohol, drugs. Fidgeting, overworking, caretaking, procrastination. A billion things that you can use as a buffer, as a self-protective behaviour. Today we just happen to be talking about using food'cause it's a super common one and socially acceptable. This is something I was actually talking to Coach Taylor about right before this is like, we're taught, we're taught to do this. We're taught societally. How many movies, particularly in my generation, include a breakup and a tub of ice cream? Right? It still happens. I saw it on for all mankind last night. She gave a bad interview. She's eating a tub of ice cream, which is fine. I, I'm just pointing that out to say that it is something that we are taught. We're sad and we eat, we're stressed and we eat. We see it everywhere, but. Here's a wild idea that we are not taught, and it is that you actually don't need to battle your feelings. You just need to notice them. So we teach our clients inside muscles and mindset to ask a few simple questions. This is specifically around food and emotional eating. If you could ask yourself these three specific questions, it would take you a long way. Am I physically hungry right now? Now this is a tough one cause again. What are we taught? We're not taught generally how to feel our hunger cues and feel our fullness cues. We are taught that just eating less is ideal. Eating certain things are ideal. Eating certain things are good and certain things are bad. Like we're taught all of these things outside of our bodies, which train us to get out of touch with our. Hunger cues. And then again, if you're in from my generation, all the magazines when I was a teenager and a young woman were like, ways to not be hungry. Drink some water, chew some gum. Just don't be hungry. So we were literally taught to override our body's cues. It's kind of crazy. So. You may need to relearn how to feel those hunger and fullness cues. And again, this is something that we do frequently with our clients is like getting in touch with how the body feels. Are we hungry or is this some other kind of discomfort or digestion or pain? Are we full? Do we know? And it requires some slowdown and some safety in our body to even get there. So. It's a different practice than I think people realize.'cause everyone's out here looking for the diet and the meal plan, not listening to their body, which has all the wisdom that you literally need. So that first question I want you to ask is, am I physically hungry right now? Do I even know what that feels like? The second question, when did I last eat? This is a reasonable question, right? If it was an hour ago when you're hungry, like I'm not gonna say that you're not going to eat again, but that's good information and biofeedback about your last meal, that's an opportunity to audit your last meal or snack because your meals and snacks should be epic and full of protein and satiety. They should hold you over and if they are not, that is an opportunity to audit what you are eating. And then the third question I want you to ask is, what am I actually feeling? So for many of us, whatever our self-protective behaviour is, often it's to eat or to check our phone, right? This is a very common one that I work with with clients what am I actually feeling? And this is not about overanalyzing or navel gazing. It is about. Awareness because we cannot change the behaviour if we don't notice what's happening first. So something that our coaches will sometimes do with clients is, is a mood and food journal. So sure we can. Track food in the way that we can write down like what we are eating or we can, you know, we, I'm not here for like specific tracking, restrictive macros, but we can track our food to see what we are eating and audit. Like I mentioned before, we can also do a food and mood journal. So what did I eat? What was I feeling when I ate it? How did my body feel after? And then even maybe like when did I get hungry again? This is great information. It's get this teaches you to get to know your body, whereas tracking in a specific macros count takes us out of the body. That requires no tune in other than maybe like, what do I feel like eating that fits into my macros? So that's not to say there's no place for macro tracking. But it's from a different lens versus this is all we have. It's more like, this is what's happening. How is it making me feel, and is it working because your body truly knows. So instead of pushing feelings down or punishing yourself with an extra cardio session, I want you to ask yourself, what would feel nourishing right now? Maybe it's protein. Maybe it's a cry. Maybe it's a nap. Maybe it's a walk with music blaring in your ears, or a podcast or calling a friend or sunshine, touch grass as they say. But when we don't pause to ask this question, we go to what we were taught or what our habit is, which very often is food, caretaking, overworking, nagging, whatever the thing is. Part five, unlock the happy chemicals without using food alone. So let's talk biology real quick here. Food gives us dopamine fast, and dopamine is known as like the motivation, anticipation, hormone. It's actually not, some people call it like the happy hormone, but it's actually more the anticipation hormone. We put out dopamine where we're like expecting or anticipating something, but there are other ways to feel good and create this excitement and anticipation that don't create a guilt spiral and don't create, digestion issues or weight gain. So here's your little cheat sheet. if your mood is unstable, so you tune in and you're like, oh, a little moody, you might be craving serotonin. Serotonin is provided by sunlight. So that's why I say you need to go outside, walk in nature, listen to music. If you are looking for the reward, right, the anticipation of the reward, that is dopamine. So finishing a task, not finishing all of your tasks, but finishing one task, doing something maybe with music, celebrating your wins, sharing a win with a friend or a community. Eating a nutrient rich food. A reward. That will give you a dopamine hit without just open-end emotional eating. If you're craving connection, you are craving oxytocin. You need to cuddle, you need to hug someone, you need to play with your pet. You need to call a friend. If you don't have someone to hug, you can do a ventral self hug. One hand on your shoulder, opposite hand on your rib cage, giving yourself a hug, rocking back and forth. Excellent for your nervous system. You can do it to yourself. If you are in pain, like physical pain, chronic pain, you need endorphins, you need a laugh, you gotta watch a funny movie. I go to my explore feed for, this is all I go to my explore feed for. I am not a scroller on Instagram and certainly not on Facebook, but I've kind of trained my explore feed to be full of like chicken and dog videos, which I don't generally spend hours scrolling. But if I need a hit, I will go to it and have a good laugh and share it with the most appropriate friends. Dance to a song, go to a dance class. Do a virtual dance class. Move your body. Eat some spicy food that will give you endorphins, you know, go on an uphill walk. that's kind of a little cheat sheet so that you know how to meet your own needs, because emotional eating is just an attempt to meet a need that's not getting met by the body. But we know sometimes food makes us feel better real fast. So like that becomes our go-to. But there are many, many, many, many, many, many other ways to meet your need better that is for your highest good. Part six. You've heard me say it before. You're gonna hear me Say it again. Progress not perfection. Progress not perfection. Let's be honest. You will still emotionally eat sometimes. I told you I've done it. It doesn't mean that you failed. It means you are human having a human experience. We're gonna need some compassion here. You will also miss workouts. You will lie on the couch sometimes. Sometimes you'll feel tired. You'll have your period. Sometimes you'll feel tired when you don't have your period. Sometimes you will eat the cookie and not want the salad. You just will not feel like it. That doesn't mean it's self-sabotage. That means it's life. And that's actually a good cue when it happens. It's happening sometimes that you are in your body and you are having a human experience and you are regulated. This is the things that my clients experience like they tell me I am not having cravings anymore. I would say within a few weeks through the muscles and mindset nutrition protocol, clients who were having sugar cravings, pasta, carb cravings are gone. Because they're meeting their need in another way. They're more in tune with the body and they will get that craving when they're in Italy for pasta. Or they will on a hot day, have a craving for orange sherbet or whatever. When they get very specific like that. That's you really listening rather than just anything, carbs, sugar, sweet. All the time. So that's a good, like differentiator. All that to say, the broad general consistent cravings will go away and the very specific fun cravings will show up you will honor them and cool, that's life. That's the point. What matters is can you keep showing up the next day, even if you're doing it from a place of emotionally eating, you eat the thing. Can you show up the next day stepping into the person who you want to become? What would she do? You do not have to wait till Monday. You don't have to wait till July 1st. Tomorrow, you can do it right now. You don't have to call the rest of the day a wash. Can you choose to feel your feelings instead of attempt to fix them with food or whatever your other self-protective behaviour is? That's the muscle that we are building. That's the muscle that we are strengthening the capacity to do this is already in you. You are just taught that it's not, you don't know. You don't have the tools. Someone else knows your body better than you. You don't need another food rule actually. You don't need more shame. You don't need to feel bad about the things that you eat or the things that you want to eat. You need to believe that your body and your brain are not working against you. They are trying to keep you safe. When you have a craving, when you wanna emotionally eat that is your brain trying to keep you safe. Your brain's priority is keeping you safe and comfortable. Safe and comfortable, but it's like it's just a organ. It doesn't have all the information, so you have to rewire it and train it to keep you safe when you're truly in danger only. And you will have to challenge it to push you out of your comfort zone.'cause it will always come back to what's comfortable and habitual. So the next time you feel that urge to eat the snack when you're not actually hungry. Try this. Can you just see it? Can you just pause? See the thought that you're having? Oh, I'm thinking that I want to eat that thing. Oh, what am I feeling right now? Because is it related to this feeling? Sit with it even for 10 seconds. Two minutes if you can. 10 seconds is great. Ask, like, what do you actually need? Are you just bored? And this is not from like a diety place of like, don't be hungry, right? This is if, if you're truly hungry, fucking like go eat. But if you are not, if you're bored or lonely or stressed or whatever, what is the feeling? Can you sit with it? Eyes closed, see what else comes up? Ask what do I actually need? What would feel nourishing? And then choose next from love, not lack or fear. Choose from love. So if you really want the orange sorbet, cool. Have the orange sorbet. Is it coming from a place of love and like desire or stress and anxiety? Or if you really don't want, your grandmother's offering you cake and you really don't want it. Cool. Is that coming from a place of love? Like you really, your body doesn't want it? Or are you afraid of the cake? Because those things are different. Always leading from love, not lack, or fear. This is the real way through. And if you wanna dive deeper into this work, this is literally what we do inside muscles and mindset. This is where we teach this step by step. We have a 10 step system. You get personalized nutrition coaching with one of our certified nutrition coaches. You get fitness training programs designed specifically for your life and the mindset tools to create real change. No guilt, no food obsession, just sustainable results that stick. You can always apply to muscles and mindset via the link in the show notes. We would love to support you. And that's all that I have for you guys, today, but this is a big one, so I would love to hear your feedback. Please leave a five star review or share this episode if they spoke to you or someone who you love. Thank you so much and I'll catch you next time.