Emotional Eating and Why Diets Don't Work

Hi, and welcome to How Humans Heal. I'm Dr. Donni Wilson, and today I'm excited to introduce you to Tricia Nelson. She is an emotional eating expert and the bestselling author of Heal Your Hunger: 7 Simple Steps to End Emotional Eating Now. She's also the host of the Confessions of a Binge Eater podcast. Thank you so much for joining us today, Tricia.

Thanks, Donni. It's so good to be here.

Oh my gosh, it's good to catch up. And it's also so good to come back to this very important topic because I really am aware that so many people are experiencing emotional eating, even maybe referred to it as stress eating. And we can get into that some more. What does that mean to be emotional eating? But I think a lot of people experience it and may not even realize what's going on or what they can do about it. And here you are, someone who healed yourself from emotional eating, and now you help thousands of people to heal themselves from emotional eating. And so you're exactly the right person to ask all about emotional eating. So thank you so much for being here.

Thanks for having me. It's really good to be here. And I think it is a very misunderstood topic. I know for myself, I mean, when I first heard that term eons ago, My sister came home and she said, I'm an emotional eater. Like, she was very excited to have realized it, or she heard it and then she realized it. And I thought, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. And then my next thought was, I don't do that. I love food. That's it. End of story. I love food. That's why I eat. And yet, after having heard the term emotional eating, I started to observe my own habits and realize that it wasn't, you know, cut and dried. I just like food. It was like, wow, I, I really love sweets and I love carbs and chips. And when I start, I can't stop. You know, I think I'm gonna have a handful of chips and I end up finishing up at least half the bag. Um, you know, if I eat ice cream, I take the lid off and I don't put it back on the pint. You know, and so, and when I go out with friends to eat, you know, they order sandwich and it comes with fries and they eat their sandwich and pick up their fries. Well, I would look at them like, are you crazy? I eat my fries and pick up my sandwich. And so I just started to observe that my habits were different. And then I realized I am an emotional eater and I couldn't unsee it really. And so. What I feel like is the best definition is really eating to feel better. Like, instead of eating because it's mealtime or eating because we need the nourishment, we eat to feel better. And to me, that's the most unclinical and straightforward way to say it. It's like you're in the afternoon and there's a lull and you feel kind of bored. You go into the kitchen, you're like, what can I eat?

Right.

So it's, you know, people often say, I eat because I'm bored, or you get off a phone call and you're just kind of worked up and you go into the kitchen to munch on something. So it's an unconscious habit that we do, and we don't realize that there are emotions connected to it. People are like, oh, I don't eat over my emotions. I just like food, right? But if you look at your habits around food, even the boredom eating, I feel like, you know, we call it boredom eating, but a lot of times It's being uncomfortable with nothing going on.

Mm-hmm.

You know, we're just not tapped into the fact that there are some underlying emotions, some unsettledness, some sort of turmoil, some worry, some, you know, just feeling like, gosh, we just had a conversation that didn't go well. So it doesn't have to be some big deal thing or some deep, dark, big T trauma. It's like we eat to feel better, and it becomes a pattern that we don't know how to stop because it's so much a part of us. So to me, that's emotional eating. And emotional eaters come in all different shapes and sizes. Like, you don't have to be overweight. I mean, I was 50 pounds overweight as a result of my emotional eating, but I mean, I have clients who are normal size, but they're obsessed with food. They're obsessed with weight. They are constantly thinking about food and weight. And that is part and parcel of being an emotional eater because even the obsession, Donni, that in and of itself serves its own purpose because it distracts us from our emotions. Like when I can think about my favorite Belgian chocolate, when I get off of work, I'm going to go get it and then I'm going to sit in front of my favorite bingeable TV show and then I'll feel better. That's because I'm not feeling right and I'm looking to change that. So this idea of eating to feel better, I think, again, once you hear it, it's hard to unhear it. So that's why I'm so glad we're talking about it.

Absolutely. And thank you for all of those examples, because then I think people can relate to, oh, yeah, and maybe is it something some people may do in certain scenarios or More so under stress and maybe not all the time?

Yes, absolutely. Stress is a big part of it. It's called stress eating. And so that can be really a thing for people where they may be healthy a lot of the time, but then when there's like an important thing coming up in their life that they're nervous about and they start getting anxious. So anxiety causes it, stress causes it, being too busy. And just like packing our schedule with activities or commitments and then feeling really harried and overwhelmed, eating on the road, right? Not taking time for meals, and then of course grabbing the unhealthiest choices at 7-Eleven or whatever. So there are a lot of aspects of it, but stress is one of the major drivers of it. I will often say, and it's in my book as well, that there is a personality profile of emotional eaters. So we think about emotional eating as having to do with eating, but it also has to do with how we process stress and even how we process hard things. And then we make them more stressful than they need to be. And that is because of the personality profile that emotional eaters often have. Like, I'd say most emotional eaters have— at least some of the 24 personality traits of the— and that I call it the Anatomy of the Emotional Eater. So it's a personality profile and there's many different traits. And these traits have nothing to do with eating, okay? But they have everything to do with why we end up eating. So I'll give you an example. The top trait of the Anatomy of the Emotional Eater, the top of all 24 traits, is people pleasing. So we as emotional eaters take the cake on this, pardon the pun. So we love to, you know, we're very friendly, giving people, okay? Very generous of time, of attention, of money, you know, of care. Problem is we get the short end of the stick. And so we take care of other people and not take care of ourselves. So caretaking is also a trait, but the people pleasing is really top of the list because We are always seeking something outside of ourselves like validation, approval, attagirls, these kinds of things sort of baked into our personality to want that outside approval. And it often comes from the fact that we didn't get it growing up, okay? We were lacking sorely in this kind of positive reinforcement. in our childhood, but we're not gonna play the blame game. We're just gonna own it. Like, yeah, I was like a consummate people pleaser. I wanted people's approval. So I would do so many different things to get it. Like, I would overwork, I would overcommit, I'd be overscheduled, then I'd be overwhelmed, and then I'd overeat. I call those the overs. Okay?

That's interesting that they are related to— they connect.

Yeah. And the thing is, when we are like doing the extra project, we're staying up late to bake the brownies for the soccer team. We're constantly taking on the extra work that needs to be done. And what happens is we leave no time for ourselves. We're totally like stretched way too thin. Our adrenals are shot because we're running around like a chicken with our head cut off. And then what happens is we We finish the project and people aren't even as pleased as we think they're going to be. So we're not only overworked and overwhelmed, we're also pissed off because nobody's ever as pleased as we— in our mind, we played out like this is going to really pay off for us. Barely. People get used to us being the people pleaser and doing everybody else's work. And so being pissed off and tired, that results in the I deserve it binge. It's like, screw them, I'm going to reward myself. I got to thank you, but you can bet I'm stopping on my way home and I will reward myself with the I deserve it binge. And so that's how we're showing up in the world is resulting in how we eat, not to mention the stress, right? And the cortisol and how it makes us hold on to weight and be bloated and that kind of thing. So it's really important that we don't try to fix our relationship with food with another diet. Because 90% of all diets fail. And even with the GLP-1 medications now, they're still not solving the real problem, which is, why am I so addicted to food in the first place? Why is food my happy place? There's something wrong with that. When food is our happy place, food is like the thing we look forward to cuddling up with at the end of the day, our priorities are a little whacked and we don't even see it because we're just We're obsessed. We're used to thinking about food all the time. It seems like we barely even notice that that's where our thoughts are going. But that is an emotional relationship with food and diets or GLP-1s or any other crazy machinations we do around food or starving or binging and purging.

Like fasting for too long or—

Yeah, all of it. There's a lot of crazy we end up doing when we struggle with food and weight because we're so Desperate to fix the problem, but we're just putting Band-Aids on it, and it's not really addressing our relationship with food and what's wrong and what needs solving. So that's the important thing, is that we got to go deeper than just, I like food, or food's my happy place. It's like, well, you might need some more happy places. Food shouldn't be everything to us. But we can't just slap on another food plan or try to solve it at the level of the symptom. And that's the problem, is we're so quick to want to do another quick fix, but nothing's really been solved. And that is, how am I showing up in the world? What is my stress level? What are all the activities I've said yes to that I should be delegating? Where am I?

Right.

on that list of, you know, to-dos? Like, where's my self-care? You know, these are things that have to be rearranged. Our priorities are off, and it's all about looking good and getting the kudos. But we have to see, how is that really paying off? And what do we need to do in our lives to help us have more calm, you know, get some things off our list, have some other people helping out so we're not Playing Superwoman and super mom or super wife or super grandma, right? What can we do to make changes fundamentally so that things fundamentally change?

These are all such good points, and I'm so glad you're helping people to get to the deeper root cause of this. Because as you were saying, you know, sometimes we think, oh, if I just Lose the weight or lose this belly or lose 10 pounds. And so that's, I think, where the diet comes in, or now with the GLP-1s or other forms of peptides where people are like, okay, let me just do this for a period of time, lose the 10 pounds. But we have to keep in mind that the pattern is still there in the background. So once the— once the med— once you come off of the medication, It's likely that the food addiction is just going to come right back again. Do you see that for people?

Absolutely. I mean, the statistics are incredible that the rate at which people do regain the weight, whether they've done gastric surgery or a sleeve or GLP-1s. There's so much fear after losing the weight of putting back on. But it's a healthy fear because that's what's always happened. I mean, 98% of all diets fail because It hasn't solved the root cause. And so the minute you stop dieting, the minute you stop your medication, you will put the weight back on. It's just a proven fact. And I don't blame anybody for doing these quick fixes because I've been fat and I've been thin. And obviously anybody would prefer to be in a body that doesn't make their body hurt, to be in a size that They feel good and they feel attractive and sexy and all that. And again, no aches and pains. So there's so many benefits to being in a thinner body, but it comes at a high price if we haven't really solved the root cause and we're living in terror of putting the weight back on. And so then we're stuck. Like, do I stay on this medication the rest of my life or what do I do? Like, what do I do next? And it's kind of like in the same yo-yo cycle that we've always So jumping off that roller— dieting roller coaster ride, the yo-yo syndrome, and starting to take that deeper journey into some of the behaviors that we do do as emotional eaters, this profile of people pleasing and caregiving and not putting ourselves on our own list of self-care, being too hurried, too busy, packing our schedule. There's so many others.

Right.

racing mind, not doing something about how our thoughts rule us, being able to settle down and find some peace and quiet and really some peace. People are always saying, should I eat this? Should I eat that? And I say, it's really not about the food. It's about peace with food, where food isn't your everything, your go-to. And so That's just, you know, it's a shift in focus. It's a pivot from where our society puts their focus. But boy, oh, boy, the results are amazing. I mean, my clients are, you know, they're living their best lives. You know, they're feeling so happy that they're stopping being obsessed with food and starting to really care for themselves, you know, finding their voice.

Yeah.

One of the traits of the anatomy of the emotional eater is that we don't speak up. We don't use our voice. And so learning that—

And is that how you— because as you're mentioning your clients, I know you work with people online and from a distance. So you can help people a lot of different ways.

Yeah. Yeah. So my whole program is online. And so I work with people through training about what is emotional eating and what are the step-by-step system that I offer But a lot of, you know, besides the step-by-step system that really teaches people how to heal, we also do everything in community. So my experience is in order to heal from emotional eating or food addiction, and it's a spectrum. So emotional eaters are food addicts. Food addicts are not necessarily emotional eaters. Food addiction is just the high end of the emotional eating spectrum. And I have a quiz on my website, healyourhunger.com, where they can take the quiz and find out where they are on the spectrum.

Hmm.

Because we're all there. Like, even my partner, who's not an emotional eater most days unless he's frustrated and then the potato chips come out. We're all on the spectrum. We all can go there, right?

Yes.

So it's like, where are you on the spectrum? Are you an emotional eater? Are you a food addict? What are the next steps? But when you take that quiz and you get your personalized score, then you know what you're dealing with. which is so, so important. And that's how we start to heal. So I do this all online. But one of the traits that's so important for healing is community and being with other people who have the same struggle, because we all think we're the only ones who have done the things we've done. I have a TEDx talk that's gotten over 3 million, close to 3.5 million views. And I talk. I start the talk by talking about binging because I was a binge eater. I'd eat big quantities of food unintentionally, but it's again the lid would come off the ice cream and never went back on. You know, I start eating the popcorn and then it's gone before I know it. So the thing is, I talk in my TEDx talk about binging and then being so stuffed that I throw the rest of the food away. And then when I have more room in my tummy, I'm like, wait a minute, those there are. Perfectly good cookies in that trash can, and I'd go get them. You know, I'm like, I'm not done. I thought I was done. I'm not done. I go retrieve them from the trash. Well, Doni, I thought I was the only one who did that, and I chastised myself. I had so much shame. Like, I cannot believe you just ate out of the garbage. That is disgusting. You are the worst person in the world. Well, I did a TEDx talk where I kick it off with that story. There are thousands of people who are like, oh my God, I've done the same thing. And here we all— we're all thinking we did it and we're the only ones who did it, and then jillions of people have done it. And so community is so important so we can stop feeling the shame, stop kicking ourselves for what we've done, and realize how common this is.

And it's so common to be hard on ourselves, right? Like you're saying, And then that just perpetuates it because as soon as you're hard on yourself, then it, it kind of sets the addiction into a repeat. And then it—

yeah.

And then you feel like you don't know how to get out of it, which is why I love what you're saying, the Community helps, because I think that's something that helps break that cycle where we're just, we're in it with ourselves and we keep blaming ourselves and isolating ourselves. And then we go right back, it circles around and we go right back to the food again. And then—

It just Perpetuates it. Absolutely. So, yeah, so community is so important. So I do everything I do in community where we have group calls that we do together. We have a move and flow class where the women move, kind of somatic movement to help the emotions get rolling and out of our bodies because we have muscle memory for so many emotions. But that community element, we do writing because journaling is so important. And so we have something called the writing room where people can write in community as well and kind of get some feelings out. So it's very emotionally based. Most people come to me and they know a lot about nutrition, but they can't follow through on what they know. So I don't feel like it's really important to focus on nutrition when it's more about How do we do what we've already learned? Like, we know salads are better than pizza, but we want the pizza. So how can we stop craving the things that don't serve our bodies? How can we stop craving sugar? Right. And that's really, to me, that's the crux of the problem.

Having optimal cortisol and adrenaline levels is essential for health and longevity. And yet Both the stress in the present and in the past can affect our cortisol and adrenaline levels, causing them to be too high or too low. The thing is that we're not all affected by stress in the same way. So over the past 2 decades, I've been researching and discovering how to help my patients recover from stress, and I've identified the 5 stress types, which are the 5 common patterns of disruption in cortisol and adrenaline levels. The reason why this is so important is because the treatment is different. When cortisol is too high, we use different herbs, nutrients, and other modalities to bring levels back to optimal than if the levels are too low. So that's why I, through research, developed the Stress Type Quiz. Which allows you in under 2 minutes to discover what likely your cortisol and adrenaline levels are, so then you can make decisions about which herbs, nutrients, and other healing activities to choose to help optimize your cortisol and adrenaline again and improve your health now and into the future. Just go to stresstypequiz.com where you can take the quiz and take it from there.

It really is so important because I was thinking this when you were speaking a little bit ago that, you know, obviously as humans we need to eat, we need food. So it's— food is something that's essential for our bodies and our lives. And, and so, and at the same time you're saying, hey, but it's, it's about having a, having a healthy relationship with eating foods that actually benefit our health. And sometimes it's hard to even know that that's possible when you've— if you lived your whole life not realizing, right, that we could be eating foods and that that can be also enjoyable, right? We can eat foods that serve our health and that can be enjoyable, but it's not about trying to eat to change our— the way we feel. Maybe there's an interesting distinction there, right? Well, thank you.

Absolutely. And here's the thing, though. Most people who have been on a lot of diets and have been struggling with their weight chronically— and I usually talk to people, it's been anywhere from 20 to 60 years that they've been struggling with weight. Wow.

Lifetimes, right?

Absolutely. It's so frustrating and demoralizing for them. So here's the thing. People think because we come from a diet culture, people think That they're going to have to just deprive themselves, right? Deprivation is a scary thing. And what they're thinking and assuming is that they're going to crave these foods and not be, quote, allowed to have them, which is what dieting basically is. You want the food and it's off your diet, so you can't have it. Well, that works for a couple of weeks. Like, I'm on my new diet. I'm feeling good. I don't even want this stuff. But then If you don't deal with your emotions, if you don't change your life and your stress level, right? If you're in this habit, this day-to-day grind, and nothing changes on the inside, pretty soon you're going to want those foods. You will not be able to stay off of it. The new diet syndrome will wear off and you'll be craving the chocolate, craving the sugar, craving the chips and the bread, right? And so when that happens, you can't resist because you haven't— nothing's changed fundamentally. So people assume They're going to still crave it and just not be able to eat it.

Mm-hmm.

And when I show people a very easy system for healing at a deeper level, healing the emotions, changing their stress levels, learning to use their voice, the things that are driving them to eat in the first place that they're not always aware of, when they realize they can make changes that have nothing to do with changes in your food, then the craving level comes down. The food noise, if you will. That's the new term. Food noise.

Yes.

Yeah.

The food noise comes way down. And if the food noise is quiet, then you don't want it. Or at least you have a pause where you can decide, is that chocolate cake really going to fix me? Is that really going to make me feel better? Or is it going to make me feel better for a minute and then my body's going to ache again from the sugar? So it's like we can have that pause where we can literally do what's best for our bodies and our cravings will be for healthier foods. And people are just imagining that it's impossible. Like, you'll always want the thing and just not be able to have it, and nobody can sustain that. Whereas if you don't want it anymore, it's like, you know, if you told me I can no longer have, you know, pickles with, uh, peanut butter on top, I'm like, okay, like, I could care less.

Like, I didn't want that anyway.

Yeah, exactly. So that's the thing is, if we don't want it, then not having it is no longer deprivation.

So what do you find, Tricia, is really like— and I'm sure it's maybe a little different for each individual— but as you guide people through this process that you've developed for helping them to really Get to that deeper level of like, what's— because I hear you saying like some of it is in, you know, developing better self-care routines during the day so that you're making sure. And it's amazing what happens just by doing that. Believe me, that's one of the things I teach as well, is, is we have to start with that self-care where we're actually making sure we get enough sleep and making sure we get some what I call recovery activities during the day, like some time outside and some breathwork and Maybe some journaling, like you said, or listening to music. And these kinds of activities help us through the stress response so that we're not— the stress response is not at its height where we're more likely to choose other behaviors. We're actually choosing healthier behaviors that keep, keep it— our stress processing instead of rising. And, and at the same time, I'm thinking that that's the beginning of what you teach them, but then maybe you help them to even go deeper, like What, what are some of those maybe emotions or processes even from childhood that might be leading us to be the people pleaser? Is that part of what you do?

Yes, yes, absolutely. Because, you know, people's busy and people's people pleasing is very much a habit, a very deeply ingrained habit, and it does stem Often from childhood where we jump on that hamster wheel really out of a need to not be in our own bodies, to not be present with our emotions. And so we're just very much from a young age, I didn't want to be with my feelings. It was a little painful, my childhood, and there was stuff that went on. And I'm like, I'm kind of over this. At a young age, and food became my habit. I turned to food, like food soothed me. So that was my number one habit. The people pleasing is also a habit, right? When we don't have that strong sense of self inside, um, the busy, you know, it's easy to tell people they should meditate, but if you're an emotional eater, the last thing you wanna do is sit down and be quiet. Right? Because you're running.

Then you're just gonna hear the food noise.

Yes. And you're also— and maybe some other things that we don't wanna hear. Like, we don't want to be with ourselves and our thoughts. You know? So that has to be a new learned thing. It's, it's very difficult for people who have been running, trying to stay distracted from their emotions, from their inner lives and, and thoughts and feelings. So we are in a Very deeply ingrained habit. Again, this is why I do everything I do in community, because I do teach people self-care. We call them the self-care success secrets. It's reading spiritual literature, it's writing our feelings, it's meditation, it's prayer, it's walking, and it's talking. It's like letting the squirrel out of the cage. And so these are the self-care secrets. That are great, and we all need them, not just emotional eaters. We all need them. But for— to overcome emotional eating, we've got to change our way of being. And, and the community does help people see that it's possible because everybody on the planet knows they should meditate. Very few people take the time to do that, you know, whereas in my community, Women are starting to do that because they're doing it together. They're doing it not meditating together, but when you have to— if you want to change habits, you're going to have to be with other people who are changing habits too. Otherwise, you're hanging out with people who aren't, and you're going to be like, why should I? So it's really important that we get that reinforcement of changing in a community of people who are also doing that. It just makes sense. But it is hard, back to your point, When we have been so conditioned to not slow down, to not be still and present with our thoughts and feelings, it's going to take some time and some help. Like, literally, you need to be coached to do that. And that sounds so stupid. It's like, well, just sit down and shut up. No, it's not that easy when you're—

your whole—

subconsciously, you've built your whole sense of worth around what you produce. around your accomplishments. And we're just, as a culture, we're so hardwired that way. But it is backfiring. People are being forced to slow down on account of sickness.

Yeah.

We're driving ourselves into the ground, our health into the ground by being on that hamster wheel. So we'll either— we need to get off voluntarily Right. Before it's too late, or life will find a way to force us into better habits. So I prefer the former. I prefer to volunteer for it than to be forced into it. But unfortunately, when we have a crisis of health, fortunately or unfortunately, like whatever it takes, right? But if we're struggling with food and weight, don't go on another diet. Don't do the thing you've always done. Like, look at your track record. It doesn't work. You need to take a very drastically different tack. And for me, that is that inner journey. That is getting support to really heal your relationship with food so you're no longer just turning to food every time you hit a bump in the road.

It's so true. And I love the way you talk about it in a very gentle, nonjudgmental way for people to just Finally be able to kind of almost feel the relief of saying, hey, actually, yeah, I do see that in myself. And I do see that this is my opportunity to pivot. This is my opportunity. Maybe it's a— maybe the person is in either emotional or physical pain or both, or maybe it's weight gain, or maybe it's bloating or digestive issues that aren't resolving, or autoimmunity or any other kind of health issue. Maybe your blood sugar levels are high and your— or your cholesterol is high and you're— or you're just like— or you had some other diagnosis that you're like, okay, I finally need to address this. And the amazing thing is that simply by using these tools that you're describing to really get to that underlying pattern with how we process emotions and how we relate to our bodies and our And our daily routine, that can have such a ripple effect, right? So sometimes I'm sure people come to you thinking, okay, I just wanna solve this emotional eating, and then they end up solving so many health issues and transforming their lives, I'm sure.

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, it takes what it takes, but the good news is, you know, more than ever, people are starting to see the connections between so many health issues and our emotions and our stress. And so thank goodness our consciousness is changing around those lines. But I do think when it comes to food and weight, we're still very stubbornly ignorant and looking the other way thinking, oh, maybe it's this next quick fix, not realizing our relationship with food has everything to do with our relationship with our emotions and stress. You know, similar to any other health issues. And until and unless we look there, we're going to stay on that same frustrating roller coaster ride with food and weight and our health.

Oh my gosh. Well, I'm so glad that you do what you do and offer the support that you do. Do you find that it's mostly women who contact you, or do you also work with men?

I work with women. I have worked with men here and there, but I don't have enough men that really pursue this path. So my programs are built for women. As much as I know, it's not just women who emotionally eat by any stretch of the imagination. We do love our community of women who are working on themselves, working on this deeper journey. Finding their voice, finding their next chapter in life after the kids are grown, after the career is over, they are finally— or they're on their way to retirement, realizing that they need a new way of dealing with themselves and really a new way to be happy. Right? Because food— the older you get, the less food makes you happy. It just numbs you for a bit and then you hurt. Your body starts to talk back to you. So finding a new way to find your happy and to really live in joy. When you struggle with food and weight, I mean, again, everything I do comes from my own personal experience. It sucks. It sucks to live in a large body. It sucks to be obsessed with food and to be bingeing at night in secret and to hope nobody notices and to put the weight back on. All this is just It really compromises your ability to have joy in your life. And so even though it's not like we're crashing cars because we're drinkers, we're eating cookies late at night and it's not dire, ultimately it is. I mean, people are having limbs cut off on account of diabetes. People are really unhappy or depressed or anxious or, you know, unfulfilled and lonely. And, you know, the doctor doesn't say, well, how's your relationship with food? Like, we overlook this, and yet it is draining our energy, it's draining our life force, and we're just not living the life that I believe God means for us to live. Like, we're meant to live in joy. We're meant to, you know, really be exuberant and, and be loving ourselves so our light can shine even brighter and we can love other people. So my experience is our relationship with food falls under the radar so often as really a problem that needs real attention. Yeah.

I'm glad that you're really saying that it's possible, right? Because I think sometimes people think, I don't even know that possible to fix. But you're here saying you're proof that it's possible, and you see it all the time with your clients.

I do. I mean, so many people I have— I have kind of like an 80s-plus club. I have women in their 80s who are coming to me like, enough already, 60 years of dieting or Weight Watchers or whatever. They're like, so sick of this. And they're taking that journey. It's so beautiful. And women in their 70s and 60s and 50s, and once in a while, A youngin will make their way to me where they haven't totally destroyed their bodies. And I'm like, oh, girl, I'm so excited. But the point is, they are having a new lease on life. They are losing weight hand over fist without dieting and most of the time without GLP-1s either. And they're just relating with food differently, where food is no longer their go-to. They have new tools. They have a whole new toolkit of tools they can use to navigate life, you know, and to, to have more effective relationships and to get their sexy back and to feel like they're worthwhile and, and worth taking good care of. So it is 100% possible.

I wonder if, if you might just share one, like if, say, the example of the eating late at night, you know, what might be one example that you share with your program members of who's struggling with like, okay, it's late at night, I I get this feeling like I just want to eat this one more thing before I go to bed. Is there something that— is it that simple? Does it start that way where you could say, okay, try this instead just to start somewhere?

Well, I mean, late at night, it's just good to go to bed. So just opt for that instead, right? Well, the thing is, as emotional eaters, We not only hurt ourselves with food, we hurt ourselves with lack of sleep. Like, going to bed is hard for us. We push ourselves past the point of tired. Again, we don't listen to our bodies, so we push past. We watch one more episode, then we go into the kitchen, and we just fall down the rabbit hole of binge eating. And being able to put yourself to bed is part of self-care and not pushing beyond. And so that is really, really important. But to be honest, it starts first thing in the morning because we end up late at night in the kitchen when we are coming down from stress. So I say first thing in the morning, put money in your spiritual bank account. Start your day with some kind of morning routine, like a prayer, meditation, reading Bible passages, going for a walk in nature, something that feeds your soul. Donnie, it's really not food we're hungry for. We are hungry for soul food, connection, community, being connected to whatever our divine spirit is for us. We've lost touch with that, and we're on that hamster wheel. But my experience is if you put money in your spiritual bank account, even having one of those daily readers, those spiritual readers, where it's a positive message. It doesn't even have to be spiritual, but just positive, positive and life-giving, you know, something you can grab ahold of and take with you throughout your day. Put money in your spiritual bank account first thing in the morning so you can take withdrawals later. But problem is we pop out of bed and we're on that stress wheel and then we're exhausted by, and by the end of the day, don't skip meals. Skipping meals is a setup for binging late at night. And we often think emotionally, we're like, oh, I'm going to lose a couple of pounds here. I'm going to work straight through lunch. No, never pays off. We always end up overcompensating later. So again, good self-care, but start in the morning. If you don't want to binge at night, start in the morning and set your day up right with some calm and peace and presence and spiritual food. So that you can drop, make withdrawals throughout the day because life will be stressful. We're not going to get away from stress in our modern world, but we can make a difference in our day when we do prioritize that self-care and also get support. Like, we all need more support than we get or than we are willing to ask for.

Yeah.

So getting support is so important. And also getting support with your relationship with food is not a shameful thing. So often we'll hire a coach in business. We'll hire a coach in sports. We don't have any problem hiring a trainer at the gym because we know we'll play a better game. We will know we'll do all the reps if we do that. When it comes to food, we're all like, oh, no, I'm good. I got this. Baloney. Food is the hardest of all addictive habits. You don't got this. Like, you need support more than— with that more than anything in the world.

That's so true.

But all of a sudden, we're like so embarrassed, like, oh, I can't control how many cookies I eat. Well, so what? Like, that's a very common problem, you know? And so all the more reason why— and you have to eat 3 times a day. Like, you have to eat. You can't just put the plug in the jug like with alcohol or some other habit. So I say all the more reason why you should reach out for help and not feel like it's some moral failure. Because it absolutely is not.

Oh, I'm so glad you're saying that, and I completely agree. It's— that's why I'm so glad you do what you do and you offer this help to this. This is an addiction. It can be an addiction to food, which is something, like you said, you can't just not eat. We need to eat, so we need to heal the relationship and learn how to feed ourselves in a healthy way. And absolutely getting help, and it's not the same as a nutritionist. It's not Working with a nutritionist isn't necessarily going to help you with the emotional eating. And that's why it's so important to— that what you do and what you offer is to help people with that emotional eating so that then they can go do more nutrition work. It's really hard to do nutrition work when you have emotional eating in the way.

Yeah.

So I would say, as a naturopathic doctor, I would say let's address the emotional eating and then it's going to make any nutritional changes much easier.

That's right. Absolutely. Yeah. Then you can actually do what you know is the right choice for you. You can actually follow through on it.

Well, everyone listening in, I'm so glad you're here. And I will definitely have down below links to connect with Tricia Nelson and her, her quizzes, her program, her book, her TED Talk. All you can get, all you can, you can binge on Tricia Nelson. That would be okay.

Yeah. No, no bad side effects.

Go eat it all up, all of her information. And if it— if this is something that resonates with you and you feel like you would like more help, then, then please reach out to Tricia because she is someone who I've known for many years and I know is really true, honest, and very caring and giving and wanting to help people. It's one of those things where I understand where you figured it out for yourself, and so now you want to give it to everyone else, put that information out in the world.

That's right. Yep. You just, you just want everybody to stop suffering and live in joy and peace.

It's beautiful. So thanks again for joining me here at How Humans Heal.

Thanks, Doni.

You're welcome. And thanks everyone who's listening in. If you're new to How Humans Heal, I welcome you to subscribe. So you don't miss the next episode. And take care, everyone. Thank you again, Tricia.

Thanks for having me.

Thanks for listening to How Humans Heal. If you liked this episode, leave a rating and a review. And for more resources, visit drdoni.com.