Episode 20: The Missing Piece in Emotional Eating Recovery

In this episode, I’m talking about what I believe is the missing piece in emotional eating recovery and it’s not more discipline, willpower, or another plan.

It’s support.

So many women are trying to heal emotional eating, binge eating, food noise, restriction, body checking, and constant bargaining with food all on their own. On the outside, they look like they have it together. But underneath, there’s shame, pressure, and a nervous system that is carrying far too much alone.

In this episode, I unpack why trying to “fix” emotional eating through behaviour change alone often keeps women stuck, and why support is what actually helps the pattern begin to soften.

I share my floaty metaphor to explain why food becomes a coping strategy in the first place, why taking it away without helping your system build capacity only creates more panic, and why healing is not about controlling yourself harder. It’s about giving your nervous system the support it never had.

I also talk about the difference between being capable and having capacity, how under support drives emotional eating, and why so many high functioning women are still quietly struggling around food even if they look fine from the outside.

Plus, I share some of the ways I personally build capacity in my own life through sleep, rest, movement, meal prep, nervous system support, asking for connection, and reducing decision fatigue.

If emotional eating is still part of your life, this episode is a powerful reminder that there is nothing wrong with you. You may just be under supported.

And support changes everything.

The Self Led Woman podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for therapy, medical advice, or professional healthcare.

If this episode brings up anything difficult for you, please consider reaching out to a trained healthcare professional, therapist, or support service.

In Australia you can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or the Butterfly Foundation National Helpline on 1800 33 4673, which provides support for people experiencing eating disorders and body image concerns.

Come find me on Instagram → ⁠⁠@megandarnelltherapy⁠⁠

Breaking the Emotional Eating Cycle is coming. If you're ready to understand what's actually driving the cycle — not the food, the parts underneath it, join the waitlist to be the first to know when doors open and receive founding member pricing. → ⁠⁠[Join the waitlist here]⁠⁠

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Self-Led Woman. This is a podcast about emotional eating, the experiences that shape our relationships with food, and the path back to self-leadership. These conversations overneath behaviour help with deep respect for the wisdom of the body and the ways of learning to cope, adapt, and survive. And when we can peel back those layers and meet the parts of ourselves that need care, we begin to see that food was never the problem and we can return to who we really are. I'm your host, Megan Darnell. Let's dive right in. Today I want to talk about something that I genuinely believe is the missing piece in emotional eating recovery. People think that the answer is more willpower or discipline or a plan or control. But it's actually support. Support changes everything with emotional eating. And I don't just mean support like do some journaling or have a bubble bath, I mean real support. The kind that will increase your capacity, the kind that gives your nervous system somewhere to land. So you can stop doing this alone in your own head. And I know that the journey of emotional eating or even binge eating can feel like a very lonely one because so many women hold so much shame around this. So they feel like they're doing it all alone. But the part that people just don't say out loud is that like most women are trying to heal emotional eating in private, and with the shame and secrecy that comes with that, with the smiling on the outside, with you know having the rest of your life together, but inside there is a war going on internally, and shame loves that. Shame breeds in the darkness and in isolation, it grows when you keep it a secret and you keep trying to fix it all alone. If you struggle with emotional eating, restriction, control, lots of food noise, bargaining. So bargaining is where we are. I ate this, so I have to work out later. Oh, I skipped lunch so I can have a bigger dinner. On and on it goes. Did I work out today? Can I have this? Can I not? Oh, I said yes to this, so I have to say no to that later. You're constantly bargaining. I weighed myself and it's down a bit today, so I can eat a bit more. It it never ends. Body checking that can be weighing yourself, looking at certain parts of your body, checking your body in the mirror, feeling guilt after eating. I want you to know you do not have to do this all alone, and you were never meant to. So many women are trying to do this alone, and that's part of the problem. And it's probably because the wellness industry tells you that your problem is a behavioral issue, and if you can just change the behavior, you'll be fine, and that's what perpetuates so much shame because people are like, Well, they can do it, how come I can't? But it's just simply not true. Changing behavior, even if you do it temporarily without healing what's underneath, is like putting a lid on a boiling pot of hot water. It might work for a little while. But the moment your life becomes stressful, maybe you might be grieving, maybe you might be tired, maybe your capacity is different, and it will change. Life changes, things change, our capacity changes, we have different seasons of our life where we have different responsibilities. You'll go back to where you started, and the reason that that approach stays so popular is because there's an entire industry built on you going back again because it keeps them profitable. Buy another plan, buy another reset, another detox, start again on January 1st, and you keep thinking that that's your fault, and you keep thinking that if I just try harder, I'll be able to master this. But if you keep doing that, they stay profitable and you stay stuck. The work I do is different. I'm not here to help you control yourself harder. I'm here to help you heal the parts of you that have needed food to cope in the first place, and we do that through support. I want you to picture emotional eating like this. I've used this metaphor before, it's my floaty metaphor. But imagine you're in the ocean and you never got swimming lessons ever. You were never taught how to swim. So food became your floaty, like your emotional support. It became the thing that helped you stay above the water when you were overwhelmed, when life got stressful, when you were tired, when there were too many waves, like too much, too much storm in your life. Any emotion, like when you were lonely, stressed, emotionally full. Food becomes a floaty, like it literally keeps you going, it keeps you afloat as you go through life. The wellness industry comes along and says, just stop using the floaty, have the discipline, and that might work for someone that got the swimming lessons, that got the support growing up, that knew how to deal with their emotions, that maybe didn't have childhood trauma from their caregivers, that had their needs met, that person saying, Oh, take the floaty away, just be consistent, just be disciplined, just control yourself, just stop eating those things. What happens if you rip a floaty away from someone that can't swim? They panic, they drown, then they go back to the floaty. And it's kind of like someone that can't swim going back to the floaty, but shaming themselves for literally trying to survive. So they go back to maybe starting again on Monday and getting they're just stuck in the loop. Like having a nutrition plan or just stopping the behavior is like another floaty, but it's a temporary one. Sometimes you do need these things, sometimes you need structure or a plan or something simple that reduces your decision fatigue. I'm not anti-nutrition plans, but I don't think they're the answer either. I'm anti the lie that you've been fed, no pun intended, that nutrition plans will fix or heal emotional or binge eating because they don't. They might help temporarily or create short-term relief, but they don't get to the root cause. I see my work as the swimming lessons teaching your system how to swim. Not by ripping away the floaty, not by shaming you or making you look at things from a place of you need to control harder, but by supporting you. Consider me your swim teacher. But I help you build capacity. You think about when you learn to swim, you're taught like a stroke at a time, you're taught different ways to like keep afloat. You know, it starts with doggy paddle, but like you know, you progress into like more complex strokes, and by helping you build capacity, we're helping you to meet the emotions underneath, we're helping you to meet the parts underneath that learned that's that food was the safest option, which is essentially these parts were like, I need the floaty, because I'm going to drown if I don't have it. When you can swim, you don't need the floaty in the same way, and you might still use it sometimes, and that's okay. You know, when we're really tired and we don't have the energy to swim anymore, hey, grab the floaty, but you're human, and even though you might return to the floaty, like it might be your comfort food, it might be something that you know there might be a comfort in emotional eating, there's not the urgency there anymore. Because when before when you couldn't swim and you had the floaty, which was the food, you're holding on to it and you can't let it go. And if someone tells you to let it go, what you might be able to tread water for a few minutes or a little while, but like you're gonna get tired because you don't know how to swim. When you know how to swim, you've got the floaty, and it's just there as a support for you or as something to provide comfort. But if someone takes it away, you're not gonna freak out, you're not gonna have a sense of urgency around it. The food patterns won't feel so extreme or chaotic, or extreme in control as well. It stops being charged and running your life. Underneath emotional eating, it's emotional. There's a need underneath that that needs to be met. Your nervous system is regulating you in the only way it knows how. And the reason it keeps happening isn't because you haven't found the right meal plan or because you're undisciplined, it's because your system is not supported. And a lot of women don't just emotionally eat, a lot of women emotionally restrict or they emotionally control. Some women might look quote unquote healthy on the outside, but in their mind they're not free around food. They're tracking, they're monitoring, they're doing the bargaining, mental maths, planning how to compensate for earlier behavior, body checking, trying to stay ahead of guilt. They might have a part that makes them feel guilty when they enjoy a dessert. It might be dressed up in a cuter outfit as discipline, but it's still the same thing: a nervous system that doesn't feel safe. Now, I want to bring a piece that I think is so important, and I think don't like a lot of people just don't say it. That like everyone is in a different season, and just because you might be capable of something doesn't mean that you actually have capacity. This is one of the biggest lessons I think I've ever learned. A lot of women are extremely capable. The women in my world are amazing, like they're all very high-functioning, extremely capable. They can work, run a household, keep the wheels turning, show up, be there for their friends. But their capacity is cooked. They beat themselves up because they can't meal prep, or they can't cook from scratch, or they don't have the perfect morning routine, or they can't be consistent with gym, or do what everyone else is doing. But I want to say this: the best choice for you is the one that supports you right now, not the one that looks best on Instagram, not the one that makes you feel morally superior because we all have those parts that make us want to feel better about ourselves, not the one that someone else is doing, but the one that supports you. When we are under-supported, our system is going to look for relief elsewhere. And if you're trying to heal emotional eating while also holding your life together, you need support, not more pressure on yourself. So if you're listening and you are a woman who is carrying shame around not doing things properly, if meal prep feels supportive for you, amazing. It's certainly something that's I feel very supported by doing that, but it might not be. So don't do it. Buy frozen meals, make something that is super low effort just to get your nutritional needs met. Buy the 90 second rice, buy the pre-bagged salads, get the hot chicken on the way home from the supermarket. If you have to do that for five nights a week, do that. Nourishment is still nourishment. And if you're trying to cook everything from scratch while your cup is completely overflowing, that's not self-care. That's self-abandonment, sometimes dressed up as health. And I don't want that for you. Now I want to talk about the part that people do not want to admit, especially women in my world. They're just high-functioning, incredible women that have been doing everything themselves since the dawn of time. A lot of women need support, but they can't give that to themselves. And this isn't a weakness or something wrong, but emotional eating is often rooted in relational trauma. It's rooted in those feelings of feeling alone with your emotions as a child. It's being shut down or dismissed or being told not to cry. Or, and women in my world, this is so incredibly common. It's being told they're very sensitive as little girls. They're very intelligent, very perceptive, very intuitive. But because they are, they feel all their emotions, they feel everything, they feel the emotions of everyone around them. So they are expressing them, they are crying, they are seeing and feeling what's wrong often before the adults around them know that. And they express that and they're told, don't cry, don't be so sensitive, you're too much. So they learn very quickly. A part of them teaches them in their mind, like, I have to handle everything myself. So they become high-functioning women, they're independent, they're capable, they're a force to be reckoned with, but they also become emotionally alone. And food is just that one place where they can just take a breath and exhale for the first time that day. They don't have to be impressive or to fix anything or anyone else. So when you try and fix emotional eating alone, you're repeating the original wound. You're repeating that I have to do this all by myself. I can do this, I do everything else in my life. Why can't I just figure this out? And shame loves that. So if you hear nothing else from this episode, hear this. You don't have to do this alone, and there is no shame in needing help. And I want to share with you what I personally do in my life that really supports me, and this isn't a way to create rules or checklists at all, and this has been a lot of trial and error over probably the last 20 years, but examples of how I build capacity in my own system because truly capacity is everything, and the more capacity we have, the less urgent our coping strategies become. So, first of all, I prioritize sleep. This is boring, but it's so important, and if I don't sleep enough, everything around me gets louder. Everything around me is louder, my inner critic will often be louder, my anxiety will get louder. I crave certain foods I want to emotionally eat, I have no patience. When we are tired, we don't want a salad or something that, like, you know, a really nice, nourishing meal, like a slow-cooked, beautiful meal. We want carbs, we want relief, we want sugar, and there's nothing wrong with wanting those things or even eating them. I'm happy to eat those things, like there's nothing wrong with that at all, but it's when we're going for the thing that's not necessarily going to support us or be the most nourishing, which just then further exacerbates anxiety and you know our level of patience, our capacity, all of those things. So I just don't mess around with sleep, it's just not something I'm willing to compromise on. Boring, I know, buddy pulled it. I also rest when my body needs it, and this is something I really had to learn, and it was so hard for me to learn. But that rest is necessary and not just a little luxury that you can take on the weekend when you decide that nothing's booked in that weekend, which kind of never comes because then the moment you do, you're like, Oh, I could do this and this and this. But I had parts of me that would push through anything, parts that say, just keep going, don't be lazy, you're fine, you can handle it. And push past your capacity, but pushing past our capacity doesn't make us stronger, it's making you more likely to want to emotionally eat. So now if my body needs rest, I just rest. I don't feel bad for it, I don't try and make up for it later. I just say, I'm tired, I need more rest today. And even if I need to do work, I'll go like take my laptop and lie in bed and work. Like, if that's what feels most supportive to my system, I honor it. I also train at the gym, and I know this isn't for everyone. I've been doing it for 17 years. And whenever someone says, how do you stay motivated if they have trouble doing these things, I always say find an exercise that you enjoy. I don't train because I hate my body, but I train because it regulates me, it increases my capacity, it helps me to discharge stress or frustration, it helps me feel strong, it helps me get into my body and out of my head. And strength makes me feel really safe. If you hate the gym, do not try and force yourself to do it. Just don't. But find that kind of movement that feels good in your body. If movement feels punishing, it becomes another layer of stress. And then obviously you're more likely to emotionally eat if you're moving in a way that feels punishing. I also meal prep every weekend, and this is probably one of my biggest supports. And it's just because I hate cooking every night, like I hate it. I hate having to prep and cook a meal and then having to clean up, and that's just less time I get to spend with my husband and less time doing things that I want to be doing. It also removes decision fatigue, which is massive. I think we make so many decisions a day, and it's kind of exhausting, and especially for women who are then taking like looking after children. Maybe they are responsible for all of the meal prepping and shopping and all of the food decisions in the household. The meal prep really supports me. It's like every day I don't need to make any food decisions. I have breakfast, lunch, and dinner already cooked. That just works for me. I know that doesn't work for everyone, but it doesn't have to be every weekend and then you don't cook during the week. It could just be meal prepping three days, you know, you cook a big batch of something and then freeze the rest. Or if you have the opportunity, just if you like cooking every day and that's your thing, that's fine. But like maybe just do a big batch of something and put it in the freezer if you like. So then on the days when you're exhausted or you can't possibly make another decision, you've got something there. It's such a support. Food decisions aren't just like what am I going to eat? It's also, am I hungry? Am I not? Should I eat now? Should I eat later? How much should I eat? What do I actually feel like? What's healthy? What's quick? What's in the fridge? You're feeding kids and managing a household, multiply that by 10. The amount of time a day. Meal prep removes all of that. I don't have to think about it. And when I don't have to think about food, I have more capacity for the things that I value. I also choose the path of least resistance, and I want to say this because I want to give you permission. Because there were times in my life where I didn't have the capacity to cook. And it wasn't necessarily a time capacity, it was a mental capacity. I was working in corporate, I was emotionally exhausted, I was struggling with my mental health. But I also knew through my own journey, through my own experimentation with myself, that nutrition matters, particularly when we're speaking to our mental health. So I would buy pre-bagged salads from Kohl's. I would have it with a salmon fillet that I threw in the air fryer. I would do 90-second rice every day for lunch. I would just go and get groceries, keep them in the fridge at lunch, bring in my little salmon fillet, and I would just quickly make my, you know, very easy lunch in the lunchroom. It just supported me. And I didn't moralize it, but it and it can be a frozen meal. It could be, you know, just something on a wrap, like anything that is just a low-effort meal, just to meet yourself where you're at. My healing, and also me being connected to my body again. If I want to eat and I know I'm not hungry, or I want to eat at a random time of the day where I wouldn't normally eat because I'm pretty consistent with my meals every day, but I'll stop and just say, what is it that I need? Am I actually hungry, or is there something else that I need? No, I actually just need a hug, or I've actually just been working a bit too much today. I need to go outside and put my feet on the grass or get in the sun or just go and take a break away from my screens and have a cup of tea or whatever it is that I need. Or maybe there's just some emotional stuff coming up that I'm kind of trying to ignore. So I need to actually stop and sit with that. But there's no shame around it, just curiosity. And sometimes I might want to eat and I'm not hungry, but I still might eat anyway. But again, there's no shame around it. I'll just like have a little and then I might pop it away. I can hand on heart say that 10 years ago I couldn't do that. I would just eat mindlessly. There's no shame around any of that. Like it's just curiosity that we want to approach it from. Because the goal here is the relationship that we have with that, with ourselves, with our bodies. It's not about control. And when I can stop and go, actually, I just need this, I just need a hug, I just need to go outside. Like, and sometimes I just want food. But again, and in the previous episode, I spoke about cravings and what they can mean, but when we're craving certain foods, like when we're craving sweetness, it's often love that we're craving. When we crave warm foods, we actually just want to feel held and supported. When we crave crunchy food, crunchy, salty food, we often are wanting to express or we have suppressed anger and frustration. So now I know that if I'm craving or I want to go and eat chips, I'm like, okay, I'm not hungry, so what's going on? Am I a bit frustrated? Yeah, I've spent way too much time in front of the screen today. Maybe I just need to go for a walk. I might still have the chips, and that's fine. Like it doesn't matter, but it's just knowing yourself. I also regulate my environment. So I use lower lights at nighttime, like I put on lighting that's softer with dimmers, I use lamps. That makes me feel really regulated, and it also helps me to start winding down before bed. Your environment is a part of your nervous system, and if your environment is overstimulating or not supporting you for that time of day, your coping strategies will work harder. That includes food. And sometimes it's directly, sometimes it's not. If I felt like I needed it, like just to regulate. Or sometimes it can just be a hand on your heart, just that touch, it actually can be really regulating if that's what you need. Connection regulates the nervous system. I might feel a bit lonely or like I haven't spoken to my friends. So one thing I do with most of my friends is if we're going to catch up via phone, I will say let's do a FaceTime because that feels like I'm actually spending quality time with them. A lot of my friends don't live nearby, they live quite far away. Or I will check in with them via voice note because when we voice note, it feels much more connected than a text. But if we're not checking in and going, I need support, or what is it that I actually need, food will often become a substitute for connection, so I build that connection in small ways. I also keep caffeine in check. Like I freaking love coffee, like love it, but I know if I have too much, my anxiety rises, and when my anxiety rises, my inner critic gets loud. My inner critic gets loud, I start craving food. That like when I'm not hungry, it's emotional. I generally try and stick to matcha. I go back on the coffees sometimes for a few months and then end up going back to matcha. But if I have coffee, I just try and have one a day. And I guess I miss coffee like massively, but like I like my peace more. It's nice not having anxiety, just a tip. I also walk most mornings. I go for a beach walk, and they are nervous system support to me. Being out in the early morning, like obviously being exposed to the sun in the early morning is great for your circadian rhythms and a whole host of other things. Also being out in nature, but they help me to start the day present, so I'm not like on screen straight away or in my head, I'm in my body and I'm out in nature with oxygen, with you know the ocean, air, sunshine. It's underrated, honestly. And because I work from home, another piece around that connection is that I have to consciously create connection. I'm alone a lot, and sometimes being in isolation can be a trigger. You might not notice this, but your nervous system does. I also leave space in between my client appointments. I always leave 30 minutes in between each, just so I always do like notes for my clients afterwards, but it also gives me time to transition and just stop and see. Like, I might need to race to the bathroom, I need might need to eat or breathe or regulate or check in with myself. And all of those micro moments matter, like for a lot of high-functioning women, they don't ever stop to check in with themselves during the day at any point, and that's why they're in the pantry at 9 p.m. eating the chips because they haven't once stopped and gone, oh, what do I need? They've just pushed all of that down all day. So if you're pushing all of those micro moments down, like I don't haven't checked in, I haven't regulated, I haven't breathed, I probably skipped lunch. I held it for another hour or another half an hour. You're in the pantry at 9 p.m. because your body is forcing you to pause. And why all of this matters? Like, I want you to understand this that like support is not a luxury, it's the thing that creates capacity for you, and capacity is what helps you to start changing your relationship to reduce the emotional eating. Not because you put more control in place, but because your system just doesn't need it as much. Think of it as a swimming lesson, and if you're listening to this thinking, okay, but I don't have any support. Like I want you to know you don't have to do this alone, like you were never meant to. When women are stuck, they're trying to heal this in isolation, and shame's just keeping that cycle alive. Shame doesn't heal anything or fix anything, it makes you hide, and it makes cravings louder and it makes things harder. This is a work that I do with the women in Release and Reclaim, which is my 12-week one-on-one therapy container for emotional eating and healing the patterns underneath it, healing the parts underneath it. The reason why this work changes things for you is we're not here to talk about behavior or putting another nutrition plan in place or rules. It's giving you support, it's helping you build capacity, it's giving you the swimming lessons, helping you meet the parts of you that learned that food was the safest option and helping to heal the part of you that's been doing this all alone for a really long time. When that part of you no longer feels like she's all alone, doing it all by herself, carrying the weight of all of the responsibility on her back, the urgency or the noise around food starts to take a step back. And this doesn't come through force. It just comes because it's no longer required in order to get you through each day. So if you take anything from this episode, if emotional eating is still a part of your life, there's nothing wrong with you. But it might actually mean that you're under-supported. And there's no shame in that. But support changes everything, and you deserve to have it. No, this podcast is for education and reflection only. It is not a substitute for therapy or healthcare. If this episode brought things up for you and you need support, please reach out to a trained therapy practitioner or health professional in your area. Thank you so much for listening. If this episode resonated, please follow or subscribe to the podcast. Leave a review, or share it with someone who might benefit from hearing it. You can also connect with me on Instagram at Megan Darnell Therapy. If you shared the episode or want to let me know what landed for you, you're always welcome to message or tag me. I love hearing from you guys. Until next time, I'm Megan Darnell, and this is the Self Led Woman.