Episode 16 - The Emotional Eating Episode (No Judgement. Just Honesty.)

The Emotional Eating Episode (No Judgement. Just Honesty.)

Why you eat your feelings at 9pm and what to do instead

In this episode:

Let’s just say it. You’re not eating the biscuits because you’re hungry. You’re eating them because you’re tired, overwhelmed, and the biscuits are there. I explain the three biochemical forces driving the 9pm craving (low serotonin, volatile blood sugar, and high cortisol) and why willpower was never going to be enough against all three. Then I get practical: the 10-minute pause, the real need underneath the craving, and why pleasure is a nutrient, not a luxury.

Your One Thing this week:

Next time you reach for food when you’re not physically hungry, pause for one breath and ask: what am I actually feeling right now? You don’t have to stop eating. Just name the feeling. Awareness before action.

Links:

→ Grab the free 5 Riviera Standards Starter Guide: https://rivieramenopausemethod.kit.com/5-riviera-standards

→ Follow Riviera Menopause on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rivieramenopause/

If this described last Tuesday — or any Tuesday — send it to someone. Tell them: you’re not weak. You’re a human in menopause. And the biscuits are not your enemy.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Let me just say it since nobody else will. You're not eating the biscuits because you're hungry. You're eating the biscuits because you're tired, overwhelmed, underappreciated, slightly bored maybe, and the biscuits are there and they work for about four minutes, and then you have the guilt that arrives and the biscuits stop working and now you feel worse than before. I know all of this because I'm describing last Tuesday in detail. And here's what I want to do in this episode: I want to talk about emotional eating without shame, without a meal plan, and without the bloody word willpower, because willpower has nothing to do with it, and the sooner we stop pretending it does, the sooner we can actually address what's going on. So let's jump in. The biscuit tin, the cheese, the leftover pasta, the chocolate you hid from the kids behind the tin tomatoes. We're gonna talk about it honestly. No diet advice, no calorie chat, no before and after nonsense. Just why does this happen? Why does it happen more in menopause? And what can you actually do about it that doesn't involve hating yourself or restricting yourself? So the first thing we need to address is why you're not broken. Because emotional eating is a completely human thing, it's not weak. So let's just get that out of the way straight away. Emotional eating is normal human behavior, completely normal. Every human being on this planet has at some point eaten something not because they were physically hungry or in need of nutrition, but because they were feeling something that they wanted to feel less of. Or they were feeling nothing and wanted to feel something. It's not some kind of disorder, it's not a weakness or a character flaw, it's your nervous system looking for some kind of regulation, and food, specifically sugar and fat, provides a fast, reliable hit of dopamine and a temporary sense of calm. Your brain's learned that the biscuit works and it works briefly, and your brain is going to reach for what works. The problem isn't that you do it, the because every human does it. The problem is that there is a shame that follows it, and that shame is where the real damage happens. Because shame drives secrecy, secrecy drives isolation, isolation drives more eating, and the cycle spins. If we can remove the shame, then the eating itself becomes a bit more manageable. So let's start by removing that. You're not bad for eating the biscuits, you are human. Next question. Now that sounds really simplistic, but that is the reality. So let's say it again for good measure. You are not bad for eating the biscuits. You're human. They're designed to feel good. They're also designed with a specific ratio of sugar to fat that make your body crave it. So the food companies have taken the normal human behaviour and run with it to make it even more resistible. So yeah, thanks for that. And there is a reason why menopause makes this worse. There are three biochemical forces working against you, and this is why emotional eating tends to escalate in perimenopause and menopause. And the the reasons are probably not what you think. So the force number one that is working against you is serotonin is lower. Estrogen supports serotonin production, so when estrogen declines, serotonin declines with it. And when serotonin is low, your brain craves the food that boosts it fastest. Which foods are those, I hear you ask? Refined carbohydrates, sugar, the exact things that hit your bloodstream fast and give you a quick serotonin bump. This isn't your brain being greedy here. This is your brain being strategic. It's looking for serotonin and the biscuit is the quickest source it knows. Force number two that's working against you, your blood sugar is way more volatile than perimenopause. We covered this in episode two of the podcast. Uh, so if you want a little refresh, jump back and um and have a listen to that. But insulin sensitivity decreases in menopause, which means that your blood sugar swings are wider and more frequent. And when blood sugar drops, which it does, especially in the evening if you haven't eaten enough during the day, our body sends an urgent craving signal for fast fuel. Not a salad, not a grilled chicken, not something that the uh health food influencers would uh class as healthy, but fast fuel, sugar, starch, anything that will get that glucose into your bloodstream immediately. And force number three that's working against you, your cortisol is higher. Cortisol drives cravings specifically for calorie-dense, high-fat, high sugar food. And this again is an evolutionary response. So when your body thinks it's under stress, it wants to stock up on energy. And in menopause, cortisol is often chronically elevated, which means those cravings are running in the background all day. So you've now got low serotonin driving sugar cravings, volatile blood sugar sending urgent fuel demands, and high cortisol amplifying the whole blooming thing. That's three biochemical forces all pushing you towards the biscuit tin at 9 pm. Against that, willpower does not stand a bloody chance. Willpower is like a candle in a hurricane, and it's really important that you stop blaming yourself for the hurricane. So, what is the biscuit replacing? Because there's a real need here, and we probably could name it. Um, this is the part that probably matters most, and it's not about food. When you reach for the food when you're not physically hungry, the food is doing a job, and that job is almost never provide nutrition. It's providing something else. That might be comfort, uh, reward, stimulation, distraction, relief from boredom, relief from loneliness, a moment of pleasure in a day that was a bit shit and didn't contain enough pleasure. The biscuit isn't the problem here. The biscuit's just the symptom of the problem, and the problem is the unmet need underneath it. And until you identify that need, no amount of willpower or meal planning is gonna stop that pattern because the need will find another way to get met. Or it won't get met and you'll just feel worse. So I want you to start getting curious. There's not judgmental, but curious about what's going on. Next time you reach for food when you're not physically hungry, pause just for a moment. I'm not saying put the biscuit down, just for a moment, pause and ask, what am I actually feeling right now? Am I bored, lonely, tired, stressed, understimulated, overstimulated, sad, or do I just need a moment of something nice and a day that's been relentless? You might not be able to answer this at first, and that's okay. But the act of asking is the skill. Over time the answers will get clearer, and when you know what you actually need, you can try giving yourself that thing directly. So if you're tired, rest. Connection if you're lonely, pleasure if your day was joyless. The biscuit was always a proxy, and the real thing generally works much better. So, what can you do instead that doesn't involve willpower? We're still not going on the willpower thing. Practical, shame free strategies. So there are four things that actually help. None of them require discipline, I promise you. All of them do, however, require a degree of honesty. So the first one is to eat enough during the day. This sounds really obvious, but most women who eat emotionally at night, we've under-eaten during the day. We maybe skipped breakfast and had something tiny, we've had a rush lunch, we arrived home at 7 pm starving, knackered, ate dinner too fast, and by 9 pm our blood sugar is on the floor and our brain is demanding emergency fuel. And this happens a lot because we're busy, we've often got kids looking after ailing parents, a job, just all the things that need doing. But if you eat enough protein and enough food at regular intervals during the day, the 9pm craving loses so much of its physiological power. Not all of it, but most of it. Number two, you can have protein and fat at dinner because if your evening meal is carb heavy and low in protein, your blood sugar is going to spike and then crash. The crash will arrive at about 9 pm. So if you add protein and healthy fat to your dinner, the crash is going to be smaller. That can be rather than just having a plate of pesto pasta because it was the easiest thing that you could lay your hands on. Maybe while the pasta's cooking, you shave a chicken breast in the air fryer and chop that and put that through the pesto pasta. The craving is going to be weaker, the biscuit will stay in the tin, I promise you. This this is one of the one of the most important things you can do, and it really will help. The third thing you can do is the 10-minute pause. Now, this isn't a new thing, this is a trick that they use for smokers actually to stop smoking. So when the craving arrives, set a timer on your phone for 10 minutes, not to resist whatever it is you're about to do. So eating the biscuit, but just to wait. Because cravings come in waves and they peak and then they pass, they peak and they pass. If you can ride the peak for 10 minutes, the intensity will often drop significantly. If you still want the biscuit after 10 minutes, then eat the damn biscuit and do it without guilt. But often, often, after 10 minutes, you'll realize what you actually wanted was not necessarily the biscuit. It was to sit down or to stop doing all the things or to call someone, and the pause gives you the space to hear that real need behind it. Number four, build more pleasure into your day. And I'm not asking you to add stuff to your to-do list, I'm asking you to think about you and put you in the driving seat for once and think about things that you could do to make your day more pleasurable. This one sounds least like some kind of health advice, but it's probably one of the most important. Because if the only moment of pleasure in your day, in your entire day, is that biscuit at 9 pm, of course you're going to eat the biscuit. It's the only nice thing that happened at 9pm. The solution is not to remove the biscuit, that will just make you feel shit. The solution is to add other sources of pleasure. So a walk with a friend or a walk in nature, music, a bath, five minutes of reading, a conversation with someone who makes you laugh. When your day contains genuine pleasure, the biscuit's got some competition now. And that competition will reduce its power a bit. And I want to say something about the word pleasure, because I think a lot of women in their 40s and 50s, we've quietly stopped having any. Our days are functional. We get up, we go to work, we manage, we cook, we clean, we do some admin, we collapse. There's no pleasure in that cycle, there's only duty. And when the duty is all there is, your nervous system starts looking for a shortcut to feeling good. The biscuit is that shortcut. A walk in sunlight with a friend is not a shortcut. It's a slower, less immediate, it requires more effort, but it fills a much, much deeper well of pleasure. And a filmed well doesn't necessarily need biscuits. I'm not saying become a hedonist here and spend your days sitting on a chaise lounge by a lake in Italy drinking Hugo Spritz's. What I'm saying is that pleasure isn't a luxury, it's a nutrient, and if you are deficient in it, your body will look for substitutes, usually in the kitchen, usually at 9 pm. So your one thing this week. Next time you reach for food when you're not physically hungry, pause for one breath and ask, what am I actually feeling right now? You don't have to stop eating, you don't have to put the biscuit down, you just need to name the feeling. That's it. Awareness before action. Because when you name the feeling, you've got a choice, and a choice is what this is about. It's not about restriction, it's not about just telling yourself stop eating the biscuits at 9 pm or ridding your entire house of the biscuits, which we all know is impossible, especially if you have kids. No, this isn't about restriction. This is about choice. It's about not just doing it on autopilot without thinking. Now, this episode is the one I think will make most women kind of go, oh my god, thank God someone said it. Yep, yep, no, I do that, I do that. Because the 9 pm kitchen visit is the it's one of the most universal experiences of midlife, and it's one of the most shame-laden. And it really shouldn't be. It's a normal response to a biochemical environment that's actively pushing you towards food. You're not weak, you're human, and you're working in a body that's recalibrating, and that's tough. The way I approach food isn't about restriction, it's about making sure your body has what it needs so the cravings lose their biochemical power, and then addressing the emotional layer underneath with honesty instead of shame. Next week we're talking about something that affects every professional woman listening, your career. What happens when menopause meets your ambition? How do you protect your working life when your body is rewriting the rules, and the provocative possibility that you're dropping tolerance for workplace nonsense might not be a symptom, it might be a signal. If this episode on emotional eating described last Tuesday, or any Tuesday for that matter, then feel free to send it to someone. You know, if they're going through the same thing that you're going through, tell them you're not weak, you're human in menopause, and the biscuits are not your enemy. And they're delicious. I'm Laura, this is the Riviera Menopause, and the biscuits they were never the problem, so stop beating yourself up. But for now, that's me signing off with love from Monaco.