286. Mind Over Cravings: Navigate Emotional Eating, Overeating & Binge Eating with Heather Heynen

In this powerful episode, we sit down with Heather Heynen, a Licensed Professional Counselor who deeply understands emotional eating—both professionally and personally. Together, we unpack the hidden triggers behind emotional and binge eating, why evenings are often the hardest, and how unchecked stress and self-sabotage can quietly derail your health goals.

If you've ever felt stuck in the cycle of eating to cope—then beating yourself up for it—this conversation will hit home.

Heather brings 20+ years of clinical experience and her personal story of overcoming anxiety, binge eating, and restrictive dieting. She shares practical tools like urge surfing, gratitude practice, and emotional regulation strategies to help you finally stop white-knuckling your way through food struggles.

You'll also learn about “hidden hungers” and how emotional weight might be showing up as physical weight.

Don’t wait for another Monday to get a handle on your habits. Tune in now to discover how to break free from the patterns that are holding you back—and start building a healthier, more confident relationship with food.

Resources From The Guest

>> Heather’s Website

>> Heather’s Instagram

>> Heather’s Recipe Instagram

>> Heather’s Facebook

>> Heather’s Podcast

>> Heather’s Blog

Subscribe & Review
Subscribing and leaving a rating and review are important factors in helping the Reshape Your Health Podcast and the YouTube Channel reach more people. If you haven't already subscribed, please do that today.

We would also be grateful if you left a rating and review, too. In your listening app, scroll to the “Ratings and Reviews” section, then click “Write a Review” and let us know what you enjoy about our show. We appreciate you taking the time to show your support. Thank you!

Resources From This Episode

>> Insulin Resistance Diet Blueprint - https://www.zivli.com/blueprint?el=podcast

>> Free Low Insulin Food Guide - https://www.zivli.com/ultimatefoodguide?el=podcast

>> Join the Zivli Program Waitlist - https://www.zivli.com/join?el=podcast

>> Test Your Insulin at Home - https://www.zivli.com/testing?el=podcast

Have a question? Email us at: support@zivli.com

Transcript

Hey there and welcome back to another episode of the reshape your health podcast. Today we are talking about one of my favorite topics, which is emotional eating. We're also going to be touching on overeating and binge eating and strategies to help you break these habits. If you struggle with them, today's guest is someone who truly understands the ups and downs of health mindset and lasting change, both professionally and personally. Heather Heinen is a licensed professional counselor.

qualified mental health professional, life coach and certified exercise professional with over 20 years of experience, helping people create real sustainable transformations. Beyond her credential, Heather brings real life experience to her work. She knows firsthand the struggles of anxiety, binge eating, restrictive dieting and yo-yo weight loss because she's been through it herself. Now as the host of the Weight Loss and Wellness for Real podcast, she's on a mission to help others break

free from the cycle of emotional eating. Heather is an avid rock climber, mountain biker, and adventure seeker. She's proved that lasting change is possible at any stage of life. And she's here to share her insights and strategies for food freedom, body confidence, and sustainable weight loss. Heather, thank you so much for agreeing to come on the show. I'm really excited to learn some new strategies and tips and tricks. think the more tools that coaches like.

you know, ourselves can have in our toolbox to help our clients the better. So thank you in advance for sharing your time and expertise. Hello, Morgan. Thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here. Yeah. Well, let's dive into it. So how do you personally define emotional eating and then what role do emotions play in triggering overeating behaviors? Because, you know, there's, I just want to tease it out a little bit, like, well, what is emotional eating?

What is overeating? What is binge eating? Let's kind of start there and then kind of talk about how do emotions play into all of that. Yeah, sounds good. So I think emotional eating overall, just basic definition is anytime we are eating food, using food when we are not necessarily physically hungry or need physical nourishment, but instead we're experiencing some sort of feeling or emotion

And so due to that, we, and there's all different reasons for this, we go to food. We start to use food and we'll get into this to help sort of soothe those emotions. But emotional eating, and this is another side of the coin that people don't often talk about, can also happen when we're actually feeling good, when we're having happy celebratory emotions, you know?

And also emotional eating, it's not like we shouldn't ever emotionally eat. It's understanding and being mindful that maybe we are doing that at certain times. So I'm thinking of an example when we are celebrating and when we're at a birthday party for our child or something and we're gonna have that piece of cake. Is that emotional eating because we're not actually really hungry? Well, yeah, you could define it as that, but we probably should.

have a bite or two or the whole piece of cake. That's not like that makes something wrong with us. It's more when we are experiencing emotions and we're constantly trying to shift out of those emotions. We don't feel them. And so we use food instead. Yeah, that makes sense. So shifting out of the emotions, numbing the emotions. Yeah, that makes sense. So what's the difference? not to feel them. Like that and overeating. does yeah.

always accompany emotional eating? Here's what's interesting. I don't know for sure. It's like because everybody's so different. And what I would say is no, you know, we can have these emotional eating moments where maybe we're not actually overeating that specific food. I think there's not a clear definition. We can't just say it's this or this or whatever. It's more like for each individual.

If I'm overeating, am I getting to a place of where I'm taking in so much food that my body doesn't need? So maybe I am storing extra weight on the body that I don't want for health reasons or body reasons, know, or am I overeating to a point? A lot of us will overeat to a point of feeling physically sick. That's often a key. Yes, this is overeating. Yeah. And then how about the difference between overeating and binge eating? So personally, I can tell you,

I know I've struggled with overeating, both intentionally and unintentionally. think sometimes lack of awareness of how much food is appropriate for your body. Cause I think in our abundance, like portion sizes are just getting bigger and bigger. And so not educating on ourselves on calories and portions and stuff like that. Then it's likely that we're unintentionally overeating. And you're right, like not really eating that I can

absolutely attest to emotional eating struggles, especially being pregnant. think that they're augmented a bit. And then, but I've never struggled with binge eating. know people who have, but I wanted you to tease that out a little bit with what's the difference between over and overeating and binge eating. Yeah, yeah. And I personally, just for your audience, am someone who struggled with binge eating for a good 10 to 15 years. And so I have been in that space and how we define overeating versus binge eating.

Really, we get into the DSM five, which is the manual that we as licensed therapists use to diagnose and treat. So and I'm not going to be able to list off all the things, but but you can you can look that up. Like what is the checklist as we define binge eating disorder? And a couple of the things that are on there would be you eat. It's something along the lines of you eat more food than a typical person would in one sitting.

in a shorter piece of part of time. And then also another one on there is, and then you feel shame, guilt, regret afterwards. So to your point of where we might overeat just because we're not being mindful or because we haven't been educated on appropriate portion size and that sort of thing.

after we get done with that meal, we're probably not sitting there and regret about it, you know, or guilt. So that's one of the things that can help sort of define, do you feel regretful or ashamed? Shame is a biggie after binge eating. And if you do, and if you're eating those large portions all at once, that may be a typical person, you know, a normal eater, you know, wouldn't, then you might be into that binge eating, kind of crossing that threshold from overeating to binge eating.

And if you don't mind me asking what like was the activator or the trigger that started your binge eating and then I don't know, this is my one of my great friends also struggled with binge eating and it also took her well over a decade really to feel somewhat in control of the the of the behavior habit, whatever you want to call it. So what kind of caused it for you? And then why do you think it takes so long for so many people to

get a handle on how to help themselves. Yeah. And by the way, I'm an open book, so you can ask me anything personal about that. yeah. So for me, this was a lot of, you know, I am a therapist. So it was like, I knew for me, this was gonna probably be something back in childhood or something that had occurred that sort of set up this pattern for why am I using food to try to self-soothe, basically.

And so for me, you know, as I worked back through and I did a lot of this and therapy, and it had a lot, I believe to do with just my parents' divorce and the age I was at that time, I was 13. And so kind of in this stage of, not feeling good about, you know, those preteen years, not feeling good about my body, like all the girls are talking about their bodies, you know, and that sort of thing. And I was always short and I was always,

like bigger muscular, right? And so, and then there'd be all these girls who are so thin. And I was growing up in the eighties when like, you know, thin was the thing. So I just did not match that body type. So I had a lot of body issues. Parents getting divorced, I think then trigger just some extra instability. So these very uncomfortable feelings, not feeling good in my own skin. And so how mine started was actually restricting. So I would, cause I would, I was trying to lose weight. So it didn't just start.

by binging and this for many of my clients is how it gets started. It's like you go on a diet, you start this restriction process and I was pretty disciplined, I'm pretty type A, you know, which is another not great setup because it was pretty, I could really restrict, you know, and so then I dropped some weight, I feel good about my body and all the things.

But because you're restricting so much, the body eventually goes into, need nutrients, we need to survive. And so then all of sudden, you're in this binging mode. Then you binge, you feel ashamed. And now you're in this cycle of, binged, I'm ashamed, I need to restrict again. Now I'm restricting again. The body turns on the urge to binge. You're back in that cycle. yeah. So that's how my mind got going.

pretty parallel with my good friends as well. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. With restriction and then a comment about her body kind of triggered the binging it seemed like. And she really struggled for a long time and we haven't talked about it lately with the best approach. Like, okay, am I supposed to just cut out all of my trigger foods? I know some people don't like that word, but it's a pretty

descriptive word on like, okay, yes, yeah, peanut butter is causing your activating the binges or chocolate like, should, should they just not eat peanut butter ever again or not eat chocolate ever again? Or what did you find for yourself and maybe for like the majority of your clients is the best approach if somebody does struggle with binging both from a yeah, like a mindset, like a mindset side of things and then also just eating strategies to help them avoid that.

restriction and binge cycle. Yeah. The eating strategies that I find work best. And this hasn't been for every single person I've coached or had as as a therapy client. But typically I would say, mean, majority of people, the strategy that works best is really prescribing them to eat a little bit every single day of their trigger food. If we want to use that word, you know,

So let's say it is chocolate. I can get pretty good results if I can get someone to allow themselves to have chocolate every single day. And how this works is they do often binge on that chocolate for a time being. But as they get it every single day and as much as they want every single day, you eventually, and they do get to a place and it's

takes a little bit of time and you may put on a couple pounds with it, but you do eventually get to a place where it's okay, like I don't, I'm not restricting this anymore. It's interesting. It's like the urges for it start to go down. And the biggest hassle with trying to get that strategy in place is that people have such a hard time really believing that if they do eat this and then they put on a couple pounds, which is hard for a lot of people.

that eventually that urge to have that binge for that food or that trigger food will go, it's more trying to convince people to give that strategy a shot. So for some people, I've also done the thing of for them, we do just take that trigger food away for a bit to gain some success for them because mentally, emotionally, they need some success. Does that make sense? Yeah, that sense.

Yeah, and then once they're a little bit more calmed down, if you will, and have had a little success, then we can start to enter back in that idea of, hey, now we're going to try chocolate every day. And maybe we start with one chocolate bar a day and see what that's like. So both strategies, I've seen work, but I think, and you and I were talking about this offline, you get this, it's a little individual in how you approach these things. But if someone's in that restriction stage,

I just really have seen the allowing of the food, of the activator food, the trigger food, probably a little bit more beneficial in reducing the urge to binge. This is such a struggle for a lot of people. And some people it's a very severe struggle that affects Absolutely. How many areas I coach someone once who really just binged on like, I don't even remember what.

like artificial spinners, know, she'd put like 20 packets and like a water. And so I really wanted to highlight the fact that like, binging is not defined by the food type that you're eating. It doesn't have to be unhealthy food. You can binge on celery and carrots. The emotion behind the eating, how you're feeling when you're done. So I wanted to continue this conversation with the emotional side of it and

It does seem like many of the people that struggle with binge eating start in adolescence, which ironically is, you know, when we have the most emotional control, not going through puberty or anything else. Right, right. And here is, know, how does poor emotional regulation, which is so common in adolescent girls, even though we like to think that we know everything and have everything figured out.

in those teen years and our poor moms are probably just like, oh my gosh. I know. I do have a daughter. So I'll probably be going through that at some point. Oh, you will. have a daughter too. She's older. Trust me. You will go through that. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. So how do these, you know, poor emotional regulation, uh, how, like if they don't have the right strategies to deal with those emotions, how does that contribute to overeating or binge eating?

And then what are some practical strategies for managing emotions without turning to food? And I love that question so much. I have a lot of insights from my own life on kind of my current struggles with overeating. So I'd love to just kind of get some of your insights into my life as well as like a little selfish session here. So let's talk about the poor emotional regulation strategies because

Some people never learn it, but especially for women, girls and adolescents, when all this tends to start often, it's a struggle. Yeah, it's a big, struggle. And I think to your point, like when we look at those adolescent years, hormones, all of it, emotionally, we're all at that time of life in this kind of roller coaster ride of emotions.

This is how I think of emotions. And this would be any time in life when you're kind of feeling on that or that inability to regulate emotion. When we don't have that ability to regulate our own emotion, and I would also use a word to process our own emotions, we do not learn this stuff. The only reason I know this stuff is because I'm a therapist. So I learned this stuff because it's like, this is what you teach your clients.

unless you're going to therapy, unless you have a really, what do we want to say, parents or a teacher or someone in authority who's teaching these things to their kiddos, we do not get, it's not taught in school, we do not learn these things. So learning how to process an emotion and emotionally regulate is a skill. And when we don't know what to do,

Emotions actually are sensations in our bodies. And this is where I think a lot of us get disconnected. We think we're having a feeling and I feel sad. I feel mad. I feel frustrated. Those are kind of our typical words, you know, but there are thousands of emotions. And so when we're in this emotional dysregulation, the actual sensations that go on in our bodies with emotion is

This is my belief is what we're actually trying to get away from. So when I'm feeling an uncomfortable emotion, I'm actually having sensations in my body. For example, I experience and have always dealt with anxiety. So when I'm in high anxiety, I now know the sensations in my body. I almost get sick to my stomach. I feel like I want to go up a little bit. My heart is racing and my throat constricts. It's like almost hard to catch a breath. It's very tight in my throat.

when I'm having those sensations, those are horrible sensations to have. Your brain reads them as pain because they are pretty painful. And so now what do we want to do when we're in pain? What does our brain unconsciously, subconsciously, it wants to protect us. So it's like, we need to get out of pain, right? And so if in those moments we go to food, when we're feeling those uncomfortable sensations, all of a sudden rest and digest,

comes into play, that would be our parasympathetic system, which kicks in when we eat food, my goodness, for the moment, I feel better, I'm not in pain. The brain registers that, and so next time when I'm having all these sensations that the brain is registering as pain, it throws up the urge, remember when you ate? That helps, so go do that again. And so now we're creating these urges. And so I think that's typically the cycle that we get into when we,

don't know how to process or regulate our emotions. We kind of haphazardly go to food or maybe we go to alcohol. This could be anything. We go to shop, we go to scroll on our phones, you know. It helps regulate in the moment. Obviously, you and I and many people listening know the problem with that. It ends up creating all these other issues, but it also creates a habit of comfort, a habit of going to that substance

to deal with our emotions, which then never get processed. And now they're stored within us, they come out and all the, know, it's a lot of dysregulation over and over again. Yeah. One of my biggest questions and ponderances about this issue is why does emotional eating and overeating tend to happen in the evenings? Even if I'd like, that's for me, like if we were working on tax stuff last night, I hate taxes. Of course.

Who likes taxes? No, I know. I made these really good kind of healthy cookies with like peanut butter eggs, some coconut walnuts, a banana, some stevia chocolate chips. And this is my like, this is my MO that my justification for overeating is well, it's healthy. So I last night after we were working on taxes, it was late.

I did not need any food, but I went and got a couple of the cookies. Because it's just like, it's a way to, like you said, shift from that sympathetic state to the parasympathetic state. And in my mind, a more productive way to do that would be to go to my little chair where I do my morning mindset routine and I do my evening routine and read through some things that calm me down, maybe journal it out.

Why am I so impatient? And I'm not the only one to fix that. No, you're not. that's my kind of, it's a two-sided question. I think part of this emotional processing and regulation requires us to delay the gratification because it doesn't, for me at least, it's not as instant of a fix as eating some sugar, like some healthier chocolate or whatever. And then why in the evenings? Like, is it my will?

or in my motivation have like waned, the battery has waned. That's something I can justify, but curious on your thoughts behind those two things. Yeah, for sure. So first of all, that need for the instantaneous fix. And this is, you know, I talk to people a lot about this, like all your little things that, like you said, like going to your chair and maybe doing a little journaling or putting on the music and listening to the music or going to take a bath, none of those things.

are going to feel as good as eating does and often overeating because first of all, it is such a quick fix and all those other things. But also, like if we want to get into like dopamine release and like what happens in our nervous system, it's never going to be the same. And I like to just be very realistic with people about that and not try to say, well, if you get into the habit of taking a bath in those moments, it's going to be just as good. It's not.

It's just not, you know? So first of all, just being really understanding of yourself and compassionate with yourself of like, well, that makes perfect sense that I keep going to the food. And even though I have these other tools in my toolbox and you know, it makes a lot of sense that I'm immediately going to the food. And so there is strategies I teach people on how to get out of that habit.

It's not like we're gonna replace that behavior with something that feels as good, but we can use strategies to implement pausing. There's one called urge surfing and we can talk about that later, but where you're literally practicing the skill of, well, you said it, of not going to instant gratification. The cool thing is as you practice that skill and as you kind of train your nervous system to be in that uncomfortable state without the food,

As you get better at that, again, it's a skill, it's a practice. As you get better at it, you do find your nervous system starts to get it. It's like, well, we don't have to go to the food right away and we can instead maybe just go relax somewhere, do some restorative measures. Again, it's not as instantaneous, but you're more willing to do it that way versus the immediate gratification from the food.

And then what was that second? and then the evening eating. Yeah. Yeah. I think for many, that was always my thing too. It's like, I could restrict all day long or I could be good all day long. You know, I hear that all the time from so many clients too. But I do. What's that? I was good all day. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Which also we could talk about that language of never calling ourselves good or bad. Yeah. Cause that sets us up for overeating and binging too in this very psychological way.

I think of it as a capacity thing. It's sort of like we wake up in the morning because hopefully we've slept okay. We have a certain amount of capacity for our day, certain amount of energy for the day. I don't like to talk so much about willpower. I'm a real semantics person and how words create our psychology, therefore our feelings, therefore our behavior. So I don't like to use the word willpower

but I like to use the words capacity and energy and we have so much capacity, so much energy. And by the way, that changes daily. And you you will have that probably now as you're pregnant, your capacity might be a little different because you're building a baby, you know, you're growing a baby. And once you know, you've already had a child. It's like, once you have a kiddo and a little baby and you're not sleeping as much, your capacity might be different again. Yeah. Sleep deprivation. just, My husband and I were like,

We went back and forth on a second or third kid for so long. we finally were good with two. It took us years. And the next month we got pregnant. Of course. But my husband always said, if God wanted us to have a third, he would have made our first two sleep better. So we're really crossing our fingers for a better start. I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful for you. yeah, yeah. hopeful. Yeah.

But that capacity is a thing. Capacity is a thing. Energy is a thing. So I think what happens is most of us utilize that capacity. By the time evening comes around, we don't have much capacity anymore. And so often that's going to be where we start to feel the stress. We start to feel uncomfortable. We want to wind down so bad, you know? And so that's why we end up maybe doing some overeating.

in the evenings or a lot of people I work with who binge and it was me for years too, the binging doesn't really happen all day long. It often, 90 % of the time it's happening in the evenings. And it's a way to comfort. It's a way to calm down because I don't have capacity anymore to take the energy to move through those urges or to even engage in some other restorative measure for myself. And by the way, how I start to work with people on that,

is getting them to do throughout the day, like restorative snacks or restorative breaks, I call it. So we try to front load the day and throughout the day with a lot of different ideas that may be work for each individual, but things like the top of the hour, taking time to do some breath work. And people roll their eyes at that. But if I can get them to do it, it actually...

is very beneficial. They will find they don't have all those urges in the evening, you know, or if you have a really high stress day. I mean, I'm so guilty of working through lunch, just seeing clients straight through. And I've found that that would trigger stuff for me in the evenings. So even actually taking a lunch break and taking 20 minutes to breathe, to nourish my body, that actually then

changes my behavior in the evenings. So front loading the day. It's kind of like you're increasing your capacity and I think that goes to the importance of the processing the emotion. So over the years, I've done a lot of self work on this. And one of the biggest insights that I had was at times in my life, eating was the only time that I was resting. And so that is one reason why I would overeat at meals was I wanted to rest longer.

And so I love what you said about training your nervous system to be uncomfortable without the food. Training my nervous system to rest without eating has been an interesting approach. And then also just paying attention to what are those inciting emotions? Like when I'm about to grab some food, what am I actually feeling? And a big one for me was urgency, which

isn't often talked about with emotional eating, but I might want to grab some food if I'm running late to get the kids from school. And so for me, personally working on eliminating hurry from my life, which is like, has been very helpful. And the more that I can pause and rest throughout the day without food, almost like practicing that without food throughout the day with the deep breathing, maybe a short meditation.

Even if it's just like a walk or watching a little bit of TV, training your brain to rest without food throughout the day, to increase your capacity at night. And then for me personally, I'm also just working on my systems. I'm not perfect at this by any stretch of the imagination. But I think a great example of this would be, all right, after dinner, I'm gonna go brush my teeth. I'm gonna take a hot shower.

It's almost like a nervous system reset after I eat and that's kind of, that's it. We're not grazing all night long. We're not snacking after dinner, eating while we're putting the food away. And then after the kids are in bed doing like my evening routine again to reset the nervous system. People might not need all of this. right. Right. me, like it's such an ingrained habit. I don't know why, but

It's been a, it's you have to focus, you know, you really have to and create the systems and the processes throughout the day that get to the root of your emotional eating or of your binge eating. So that's kind of just some examples from my own life of strategies that I've been implementing that are successful when I do them. But yeah, like being mindful to do them throughout the day helps so much because it's not like most people are getting up and like,

you know, just binging on oatmeal or like eggs. Exactly. It's just exactly. It's just not like that. So I appreciate all those insights. Oh, and I circled something. Urge serving. So you mentioned, oh yeah. Will you explain what that is? Yeah, absolutely. So when there's there's two big prongs that I go at with clients when there's overeating, emotional eating,

binge eating and they're wanting to change. And the first one is getting them to start nourishing their body. it's really getting into, most overeater binge eaters need to be eating, they need to be eating about every three to four hours with nourishing foods and that sort of thing. And that really helps quell some of the bingeing. So that's one aspect.

The other aspect is really teaching this urge surfing, if you will. And it's the whole idea of being able to sit in uncomfortable feelings for a time period and doing that training of the nervous system. So the actual urge surfing, it would be, have this urge, I have this urge to binge, I have this urge to overeat. And if you've been there, it's like urges, I think of them as,

They're like the worst poison ivy. If you've ever had poisons, it's like the worst itch you've ever had. And so when we have urges, we have these real ick sensations in our bodies. It's, it feels urgent. Hence the urge. It feels like I need to be scratching. need to eat the food. mean, that's how it's so intense, you know? So our nervous system needs to learn. We can experience these urges without itching, without scratching.

but we need to sit in that uncomfortableness to really train the nervous system to start to bring those urges down in intensity and frequency. So you have the urge to overeat, to binge, you set a timer, 30 seconds, 60 seconds, 90 seconds. And the deal is you sit while that timer is going, you do not eat the food, you feel your feelings, you name what you're feeling, you we name it to tame it.

and you do a body scan and we do the body scan to really get in touch with the sensations that are going on. Body scan, you just start top of your head. I always think of like a floodlight slowly coming down, you know, and everywhere that light hits, you name what is going on in your body. And this takes a little practice and you might need to Google sensation words to give yourself the language of what you're sensing, what the sensations are.

but you do the body scan during that 30, 60, 90 seconds. And then the deal is in your brain, you tell your brain and we can binge, we can overeat, we can do whatever we want after this. But this, creates a pause. And over time, this is a skill that we build. The urge surfing is a skill. And the more you do it, you find the actual urges to binge and overeat lessen in intensity and they lessen in frequency.

So often I get people, really their goal is to lose weight, right? Like they wanna lose weight. But they're binging or they're overeating, but they wanna plan. They wanna know how to eat, what to eat, and none of that works because you have to be able to stop the binging, the overeating, because over time, all of that extra energy we're taking in is what's putting on the weight. So if I can get you to even have two less binges a week,

or I can get you to lessen the amount of food you're having in your binges, you do eventually see weight loss, but like that has to get hit first. So this urge surfing is kind of where we start with just trying to retrain that nervous system. The beauty of that method though, is that you're always telling your brain and we can still do the binge afterwards if we need to, we can still do the overeat if we need to. And that actually relaxes the whole system.

by telling it that, you know? So it's not like, and then you can't binge. Like you sit for the 90 seconds and then don't do that. Or, you you're going to be bad if you over, no, we just get very neutral, very chill about it, but we still train the nervous system and try to build that skill. I really like that. I wrote a couple of things down. To me, it's kind of like you're, creating space between the craving and the pause. And then I like to teach the stop method. So it's very similar to what you just

said with like, him. So s is like space. So putting space between you and the food. And then t is time. So setting like a timer 30 seconds, 90 seconds, whatever time you want. it's observed. like observe the emotions that you're experiencing, observe the feelings in your body. And then P is plan, like, are you going to go brush your teeth, have a sparkling water, are you going to eat the food, but we're going to do it, we're going to be intentional about it and own it, we're going to be mindful. Exactly.

Exactly. Paying attention. that guilt and shame too. Like I think sometimes it's that guilt and shame comes on like, why did I do this again? And almost like it's something happening to them instead of something that they're actively choosing. And so I think when we can make it a conscious choice, whether or not we're going to eat and how much we're going to eat and own our choices. I think that that's really where our personal power comes back in because

if we take responsibility for all of our choices, then we have more power to change any of those choices. We are empowered, exactly. Yeah, I love all that, yes. I thought you might like that stop method. I do. All right, I wanted to ask about self-sabotaging behavior, rebel behavior, because we can try our hardest to use our cognitive mind, which is exactly what we're doing, when we're trying to create this space between

our desire to overeat or emotionally eat and the actual action of doing that. We can be mindful to create our processes and our daily systems to allow for more rest and whatever we need that we're trying to get from food or whatever we're soothing with the food, we can try to experience those emotions throughout the day without the food to increase our capacity and our energy. But dang it, there is this part inside of you.

that just doesn't really care. It's like, I don't care what you're trying to do to fix this problem. I'm gonna be like this little saboteur inside of your mind. You classified as rebel behavior. So I wanted you to just discuss the rebel part of us that resists change, especially when it comes to emotional eating. And then how do you work with that rebel part of you to move forward? And I think maybe one of the reasons why it can take a long time to get

a good handle on these habits. Absolutely. Yeah. So that rebel, well, I don't know how familiar you are with therapy theory, but there's this one, we use different theories to help treat. So we have cognitive behavioral therapy, we have acceptance and commitment therapy, and one is called IFS and it's internal family systems. And within that, okay, cool. So within that,

we deal with the whole idea sort of is we have these all these different parts of us within us. And one of those parts is often called or considered the rebel part, right? And this is I like to think of the rebel part. It's like this teenager that is just like pissed off all the time and feels they deserve things and they're not getting what they want.

And so their response to that is just to dig heels in, screw you. And that's the part that kind of ends up sabotaging us because our authentic part, our whole altogether authentic us really does want to make these changes. We know it's good for us. want to be in the bodies we feel comfortable in. We want to be in the health that allows us to.

live out our lives in the way we wanna live it. So that higher, that wise mind part of us, the authentic part of us knows that, but we've got this, well, we got all these parts, but we have this one part called the rebel that often comes in with this. sometimes I link it to, and I had a couple episodes on this, like I deserve it eating sort of a thing. It is like this idea, I deserve something that I'm not getting.

And that could be really deep things. Like I deserve comfort and love and I'm not getting it. And you know, that's true. That's not like we're making that up, you know? The issue is, is that we often want to get that from other things and you can't because humans are not perfect. Substances are not perfect. They can give us that sense for time being.

but then end up making things worse for us in the end. If you're a spiritual person, that's really helpful because if you believe in a higher power, that can be really helpful here with providing maybe whatever it is your rebel has been missing. But if you're not, you can also do some of that work on yourself. How do I give that to myself? How does my authentic self come into focus?

and have a conversation with this rebel part of me. having those conversations, sometimes I'll have, like these would just be some strategies, but using different colored pens with journaling. And so one colored pen is the rebel part of you and this other colored pen, yeah, authentic part of you and you write back and forth to each other. So the rebel in this color pen gets to say everything they are feeling, why they're so angry, why they deserve it, why they wanna do it, all this stuff.

And then Wise Mind part of you on the next page comes back and talks to the rebel in a very compassionate, loving way. We want to give that rebel part of us what a teenage rebel would need. They need compassion. They need understanding. They need to know they're loved. They need to know they matter. And so doing some of those strategies, and you can work with a therapist on this or a coach on this too.

But really getting into having conversations with that part of us can be a great way to soothe the rebel. And so that the rebels not always coming up and doing these self-sabotaging behaviors. Yeah, I like that. And I wrote a couple of things down here that I deserve it eating was so it resonated with me after we had our son who was just so difficult to put down to bed. mean, almost every night I would come out and

get the food, know, get the popcorn. This was kind of before I get the popcorn and chips like I deserve this break. And one of my podcast guests said, I really like the term hidden hungers. Have you heard of that one before? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So she's like, what are you hungry for? Are you hungry for compassion? Are you hungry for rest? Are you hungry for love connection? Yeah. And you chip right. And

I don't know. just, I always like to say you can't fix an emotional problem with food. Like your emotions don't eat food. Like that's exactly it. They're just their thought energy. So it's just a different, it's almost like, um, it's a different, it's a different strategy. And I think that a lot of people struggle with physical weight issues because they have mental weight issues, which is what we've been talking to higher episode is really uncovering. What is that mental weight?

kind of wearing you down, what are your hidden hungers? And I love what you said about just people wanting a plan. Tell me what to eat, tell me how to exercise, what to do. And it's like, I can give you all of the strategies, but until you have the mindset to implement those strategies consistently over time, you will continue to struggle. And I think the other really cool thing that I wanted to highlight was these skills are very, very transferable.

So once you start to be self compassionate, once you start to really address your own hinted hungers, once you gain a little bit more skill in the realm of emotional processing and regulation, what I've noticed in my life is that doesn't just help with my eating behaviors, that helps with my behavior, that helps with my relationship, how I interact with my children, that helps with my, like not being reactive in work situations.

So I think that it's well worth our effort to really nurture this emotional side of us, this mental side of us and recognize it's not only about the emotional eating, but it's also about how can these skills transfer into other areas of our life, which is really, really cool. Yeah, I love that. And you are so spot on. It's so true. It's like these things, it's about everything. The way we live,

The biggest one for me was recognizing how putting these skills into practice and getting good at them is how that affects relationship. mentioned that one as the first one is huge. It's huge across the board. Yeah, it is. And there's such a ripple effect, right? Like if I can be less reactive towards my children, they can be less reactive towards each other and towards other people. And we can raise less, less reactive, more emotionally aware and mature children who

don't who hopefully like don't go through decades of like exactly struggles right like they kind of have a leg up. I just when we're talking about privilege right there's financial privilege or there's racial privilege. There's a geographical privilege privilege. There's emotional privilege if you have parents that are so aware of themselves.

and mentally healthy themselves, that is such a privilege for the children to grow up in that huge stable environment where they are safe to experience their emotions around somebody that can help them self-regulate. Because if you can't process, what I've realized is if I can't process and regulate my own emotions, how am I supposed to help my son or daughter process and regulate their emotions? Absolutely.

So I think that's one of the biggest motivators for me to continually work on these skills is to be the best mom to them that I can be. Like it's more than just the food behavior, right? It's about a deeper relational stuff too. So I just wanted to kind of bring that back home for everybody that this isn't about food and eating. This is about your entire wellbeing. These skills. Yeah, absolutely. All right, one more. go ahead, go ahead.

no, you go. was just going to say it just reminds me of, know, when we can really practice those skills, we know how to regulate. Co-regulation is a thing. So it absolutely affects our kiddos and how they're going to be then in their relationships with significant others down the road, friendships, all those things. yeah. Sometimes like just a really quick tip for parents or someone, people out there.

You know, there have been times in my life as a mom, I just locked myself in the bathroom and I'm like, cannot, I cannot deal with the crying right now. This was like when they were quite a bit younger, but still some seasons are hard. You bet. As a farmer. like harvest has historically been hard. working on, on that. But if I can remind myself, I can hold space for your uncomfortable emotions.

If I like physically tell myself that in my mind as my child is coming to me crying and if I can remind myself of that, like how much self compassion would that show if I'm having that urge to emotionally eat and I'm urge surfing and I just tell myself like I can hold space for these uncomfortable emotions in myself. I think that would be a really great thought habit to get into and almost like using the urge to eat or using the

Yeah, the urge to eat, I guess, as a cue. Yeah, I love it. Trigger that thought. And I think that's just part of this nervous system retraining, this thought work. Instead of using the cue or the craving to go eat, if we can practice. behavior. And remember those thoughts. And just for our members, we really work a lot on mindset work. And if you're struggling with this.

I probably will add this to my personal faith formula. That's what we call the document that we read every morning. Like a really good sentence to start telling yourself every day that I'll probably start telling myself is when I feel the sensation to emotionally eat or overeat, I remind myself I can hold space for my uncomfortable emotions. Something like that.

And I, it was just like a really beautiful parallel between like, you know, that inner family systems, parenting yourself. Yes, exactly. As you actually parent, not yourself in the bathroom, but being able to have the energy and the capacity to hold space for your kids, uncomfortable emotions. But anyways, that was kind of a tangent, but I think it's cool. So well, I love it. Sorry. I just said, I love it.

All right, my last question is about gratitude, which is also part of our morning mindset process that we teach. So how can practicing gratitude help someone heal from emotional eating and build healthier relationships with food and themselves? Because I think many, many people probably have this compartmentalized view of gratitude. Like, well, that's for the spiritual side of me. That's for my mental and emotional health. That's not really...

related to my relationship with food and my eating behaviors. So how would you reconcile that with someone who may have compartmentalized those areas? Yeah, for sure. So if we think about in terms of what we've been talking about, about emotional processing, about emotions, feelings, and then the sensations in our bodies being the trigger to overeat, to urge to binge, you know, that kind of thing.

If you think about when we practice gratitude and you know this and we have all the science backing this up at this point, but when we practice gratitude, we actually change how we feel in the moment and we change the sensations in our body. When we practice gratitude, we move into more of a parasympathetic state. We move into where, yeah, we're having different feelings, but again,

I always go back to the sensations in our body are different and you can really figure you can really experiment with yourself and see how that works.

There's a cycle here. It's when we, and you were talking about this before, but when we have a thought, the thought creates a feeling, feeling creates the sensation in our body. Those sensations drive us to behaviors. So if I have a thought, maybe something that stresses me out, I feel stress in my body. Now I'm having all these sensations that don't feel good. The brain recognizes them as pain. We need to stop the pain, go eat the food, you know, because that stops the pain.

So we've got thoughts, feelings, sensations, behaviors. When we're in gratitude, when we practice gratitude, we're having the gratitude thoughts, which create different feelings in our body. And the sensations that would go along with those feelings are gonna be more of this just very relaxed state. I know when I practice gratitude, that throat opens up that I was talking about, heart rate goes down.

If I had a blood pressure cuff, would guess my blood pressure goes down. We know from some studies that happens to most people when they practice gratitude. I feel less tense. The body feels looser. And so because of that, I'm not in this urgency or drive to shift out of uncomfortable feelings. I'm not uncomfortable. I'm feeling okay. I'm relaxed. So I think if we break it down that way, that's going to be a big way that practicing gratitude

can really help us lessen urges of intensity and frequency to overeat or to over-chop or to over-drink or whatever the thing might be. Yeah, and in your life, have you found that to be most helpful, like a morning gratitude practice, or is it almost like when you're urge surfing and you're like, okay, let's remember to practice gratitude here or?

How do you encourage your clients to use gratitude to help soothe those negative emotions and shift them out of that sympathetic state? Yeah, well, I think to your point, obviously, the more often you can go into that space, the better. But that, again, is a skill. It's a practice. And so, yeah, I do like the morning practice because I like the morning routine. I like getting my clients into some sort of morning routine, even if they don't have a lot of time.

find just three minutes to do something and often a gratitude list of even three to five things is included in that. I really encourage that. And also when we talked about those restorative breaks or those restorative times throughout the day, taking a break for just three things of gratitude as often as possible is great. And yeah, in the evening too, because so many of us are triggered in the evenings, it can be great to go through gratitude. Here's what I'm gonna say about this though.

Those are all great what's, that's what to do. But how do we actually get into doing the thing that helps us? And so I know with your program, you guys do this whole morning routine, which is awesome. And like I said, think morning routines are great to start a day. But then I'll often talk to people about setting alarm on the top of the hour every hour. And when that alarm goes off, have in your notes what...

to read through, read through three things. So you don't have to come up with it in the moment, like trying to make it as easy as possible, but also implementing these house, put a sticky note on the fridge, on the pantry that just says three gratitudes. So that when you're going to open that door or the pantry, you have the cue, it's so hard when we are lacking capacity and energy to remember to do these things. It's so hard. It's like, okay, we've got all these things in our mind that we can use.

And that rebels after us, the craving is just so loud and it almost just like drones out all of these available strategies. Yeah, so the cues are so important. Another one too, because some people will say, well, I don't really want my husband to know or my kids to know I'm working on this. So they don't want to put the note, the actual note. And so I've had some clients just use a sticker and they'll put a sticker on a sticky note. So no one kind of knows, but it's a cue to remind them

What am I training my brain to think right now so that I can feel this? These sensations can be this, and then my behaviors are this. So there's little tips and tricks like that. That can be really helpful. Yeah. Well, I could talk to you for hours on all of the tips and tricks that you have and just exchange stories. And I've really loved this conversation today. I hope that our listeners got some new strategies and maybe some ahas. Maybe it's a reminder of something that they already knew, but they forgot.

and that they can use this episode as a resource to just improve their own mental and emotional health, increase their resilience and their capacity and their energy so that they struggle less with overeating, emotional eating and binge eating. Can you let our listeners know where they can learn more about you? Yes, and first of all, thanks so much, Morgan. I really appreciate it. I love chatting with you. they can, website is my name. So heatherhinan.com.

And from there, you can get to my podcast, which is weight loss and wellness for real, or it's on Spotify or Apple podcasts, wherever. So you can just search that. Instagram is Heinen, H-E-Y-N-E-N, counseling and coaching. It's a long one, but that's there. I'm on Facebook, Heather Heinen. I think now I'm on TikTok, but that's new. So I don't even know what my handle is on that one. I don't even know if TikTok is active right now in the States, because at the time- it is.

like it came back, it came back. I know I never got into TikTok. So I'm just like this is, just did it like four months ago because of my daughter. And but anyway, whatever. Like I said, I don't even know what my handle is there. But so Instagram would be the biggie. And then of course, my just the podcast. Yeah, that's a good podcast to a lot of practical tips. So thank you. Have a wonderful rest of your day. Yeah, you too, Morgan. Thanks so much.