The BEST WAYS To Heal Emotional Eating (Try This Today!) | Marc David

people will say I know what I'm supposed to eat I know what I'm supposed to do I just don't do it I sabotage myself so let's get a little more nuanced about that and take a dive in there what are the three biggest myths you talk about these three myths what are they and then we'll talk about each one of them and how we can navigate them you know first myth is that people think well if I emotionally eat there's something wrong with me that's number one so something is intrinsically wrong with me this is

a problem and we're gonna we're gonna bust that one in a moment myth number two is that hey if I emotionally eat that means I need willpower to control it so more of this magical substance called willpower and we're going to bust that one as well myth number three well if I emotionally eat it means I must sabotage myself somewhere in there there's this secret agent who's just out to get me I'm also going to handle that one as well okay so let's talk about myth one and the idea if you emotionally eat something's wrong

with you I mean right because a lot of people just beat themselves up when they don't actually eat well and they they're they beat themselves over the head with negative inner dialogue and self-talk and it it's really counterproductive and it's it's actually not necessary so that's that's the majority of people that I've ever met who emotionally eat so here's the thing I'm going to say right off the bat that emotional eating it's natural and it's inborn if you're a parent if you've ever been around a tiny infant You observe that infant and one moment they're

crying or screaming and the next moment there's Mama to give them bottle or breast and that infant goes from crying and screaming and upset to relaxed and mellow and happy and it all happens in virtually an instance so we have ingrained in our DNA not just from your own memories of this lifetime but from every human who's come before you we have this imprint this memory called feel bad eat food feel better and it works and there's nothing inherently wrong with that it's it's it's it's normal and natural you go for a holiday dinner holiday

is celebrational that's emotional eating I don't know you go out on a date date is date has its own emotional flavor to it that's emotional eating and yeah you know you come home from a bad day a bad experience and you know deep in your cells if I eat something especially if it's something I like I'm going to feel good food gives us virtually an instant pleasure chemistry release if you think about it what's the opposite of emotional eating would it be unemotional eating we are we're emotional beings right and and so I think we

really need to get that this is something that it's natural that it's inborn and it really makes us beautifully human and of course it becomes problematic when eating is our only emotional regulation strategy yeah and so what like what do we do with that what do we how do we sort of deal with the the pattern of emotional eating well you know here's the thing when we are constantly going towards emotional eating it's it's asking us a question and it's asking us on a certain level what else what else can you do what else can

I do to regulate to manage to be with my emotions other than food because food it's the infant strategy that that we've learned it's the one that we know it's ingrained in our DNA so in order to change a habit I think of habit as automatic emotional eating is this automatic unconscious habit that does itself you don't have to wake up people don't wake up in the morning and say I really need to try to emotionally eat today it does itself so in order to change an unwanted unconscious automatic habit we need to introduce Consciousness

Consciousness meaning awareness awareness meaning presence meaning that witness part of me that notices oh I'm about to emotionally eat huh what else can I do yeah and I'll have people write a list like you know write just write an inventory of everything in life that makes you feel good other than food persons places things thoughts experiences exercise music watching a goofy video I don't know and there's your menu of options if emotional eating sort of has its grips on you yeah I don't know if I learned from you or not it was a lecture maybe

a Canyon Ranch gave decades ago it was like you know when you're about to open their fridge you go you know what am I feeling and what do I need you know as a barometer like what am I feeling I feel depressed what do I need a hug I mean I'm angry what do I need to tell someone what's going on I don't necessarily need food right like I think a lot of the times we have these feelings and emotions that we don't act on through a more productive Channel such as actually expressing that emotion

and it gets sublimated into food and so you know I always I would tell my patients you know put a put a piece of paper on their fridge it says what am I feeling what do I need you know before you open the fridge or the cabinet and start stuffing your face with ice cream or whatever it is you know maybe I'm lonely I need to call a friend you know maybe I'm tired I mean my biggest emotional eating thing is is when I'm tired you know if I'm tired I'll just kind of want more

sugar carbs or whatever to keep my energy up if I have to function or work and that's terrible it's a terrible strategy I should probably just take a nap or cancel a meeting or do whatever you know but I don't do that yeah you know part of part of that one for you that's that's really a reframing because I'm the same way I think tired equals bad I should have Limitless energy to do whatever I want when I want to do it so if I'm feeling tired yes what do I have to do do I

drink tea do I drink caffeine do I go for something sweet and there's that moment of Consciousness oh wait a second I've been going at it all day and all week I am tired I am part of the human race so I need to relax and be tired and so there's that moment of Consciousness there's that moment of awareness that is where the game changes so the first myth is basically there's something wrong with you but it's really not true there's nothing wrong with you you're just having some experience that you're managing with food that

isn't about some character flaw or like a willpower it just points to the fact that you need to think about your life a little bit more carefully and what you actually need in that moment and not automatically fill some amorphous need with food right because if I think I am emotionally eating means there's something wrong with me what I'm missing is that food is actually my solution it's not the problem people think oh I'm emotionally eating emotional eating equals problem no food is your solution the problem is I have emotions that I feel uncomfortable I

don't know right I don't know how to manage food is my solution I feel better so let's just come up with better Solutions and at the same time we're reframing you don't I don't we don't have a problem there's nothing wrong with me because what happens when you think there's something wrong with you is we go into I'm broken there's something defective about me and if I feel broken and defective there's a part of my Consciousness where I'm not going to feel good about myself and I'm become susceptible to all kinds of nonsense strategies and

approaches and beliefs that are going to give me some quick fix so feeling broken often has us going through life not being the real me because I'm broken um so let's talk about myth two uh willpower and and why willpower is not an effective way to deal with emotional eating you know it's I've never seen anybody be successful with this strategy to overcome emotional eating it's like telling an alcoholic well you're an alcoholic don't drink alcohol or um heroin addict well just don't take the heroin or a gambler just don't gamble it's a more nuanced

conversation also think about it will power is a noun it's a thing it's this sort of mythical substance where do you where do you get it from so willpower I think so I think emotional yeah yeah it's it's a it's a mythical substance like it's it's like this Holy Grail that people think well if only I had more then I can just eat what I don't want to eat I I can just refrain from eating food and then I won't be an emotional eater and I'm not going to gain weight and in fact I'll I'll

lose weight but really we do don't need more willpower we need more nuanced we need a higher perspective and what I'm going to say is instead of looking for more willpower let's let's look to how is emotional eating a great teacher for me so if I'm going to really Embrace this challenge how is emotional eating asking me to grow and and asking that question assumes that you and I we grow through challenge we grow through our relationships our past hurts our abuses you had a difficult upbringing or I have physical ailments and my loved one

died or I had crappy parenting whatever it is for people oh people can grow through those challenges right and then stop so so we're here to grow through challenge I'm going to suggest that emotional eating is such a challenge and let's ask a powerful question so if I'm emotional eating how is that asking me and it's going to be different for each one of us how is it asking me to grow as a person you know for some people it might be asking us to I should examine my diet I should examine what I'm eating

because certain nutritional strategies will influence my emotional eating it might ask us to look at how am I doing relationship am I having a voice am I suppressing myself am I expressing myself do I have a purpose in life do I have pleasure do I have connection do I have intimacy am I being true to myself if I'm not doing some of those what I'm what will I do I'm gonna feel uncomfortable if I'm not expressing myself if I'm not being the real me if I'm not showing up in relationship or if I'm longing for

love but not reaching out for it so what do we do turn to food that'll make me feel better um once again it's the solution it's actually not the problem so that's that's really helpful Mark what about the the myth three that if I emotionally eat I I it means I sabotage myself can you kind of unpack that sort of that relationship between emotional eating and self-sabotage I love when people say that because we're always mystified like people will say I know what I'm supposed to eat I know what I'm supposed to do I just

don't do it and I I sabotage myself so so let's get a little more nuanced about that and take a dive in there you know some of the great psychological thinkers Carl Young Joseph Campbell they talked about the archetypes and the archetypes another word for archetypes are voices or personas different aspects of us you know normally we think I'm a person I'm me so yeah I am me and you're you and that's how we distinguish ourselves but the me that you think you are is actually a crowd so there's the me that's a father that's

an archetype or a Persona there's a me that's a son there's the me that's a partner to my to my fiance there's the me that's a teacher so when I'm with students I'm in a teaching room when I'm with a client I'm in a counseling role when I'm playing tennis I'm in a competitor archetype I can you can be in the lover archetype you could be in the scientist or the nerd there's literally thousands of them so they're different voices different personas so oftentimes what's happening when people say I know what I'm supposed to eat

I know what I'm supposed to do I just can't do it I sabotage myself what's really happening is there's a voice an archetype that's stepping in and it's unconsciously driving the show as an example A lot of people having them the rebel archetype the rebel archetype is the part of you and I that is like Gandhi was a rebel Martin Luther King was a rebel Mother Teresa was a she was a rebel it's it's it's going against a lot of the grain it's going against what society says finding a better way and Having the courage

to say no and to resist but the rebel can also be a rebel without a good cause the rebel can be a little immature so a lot of times when the rebel in US takes over it's it's as if we're saying nobody tells me what to do not even me and the adult in US steps out the health champion in me steps aside and the rebel takes over and I'm rebelling against whoever I'm rebelling against my doctor my nutritionist my dietitian my own inner voice I'm rebelling against whatever Society is telling me to do yeah

how do you handle it well part of it is is starting to notice the different voices that's operating inside you so it's it's actually doing a little bit of an inventory on what are the voices that might possibly be stepping in and once we start to learn about them and notice them this is another brief example the child you know we often think of the inner child so we all have a child in us the child is beautiful child and you and me it's innocent it's sweet it's loving it's open it's Carefree uh you know

and the child could also be a brat and the child also wants immediate gratification the child Wants What It Wants when it wants it and a lot of times people who are gripped with emotional eating they have been dieting since they've been young or they were bullied for being chubby or they were told by somebody in their environment my mother my father my sister my friends whoever it was my teachers that your body is not acceptable as it is you have to go on a diet and all of a sudden that innocence in US is

crushed because we have guilt and shame about our body and at some point the child and us just wants to scream I just want to eat whatever I want I want to eat the sugar yeah yeah I want him to come yeah and so as we begin so so in answer to your question how do I deal how do we work with that we start to notice when that voice steps in so you have to be aware because those voices are stepping in beneath our awareness we're just not present to it so we feel like

we're blindsided something sabotaging me well it's sabotaging you because your witness Consciousness or the adult in you or the king and queen in you is just not paying attention um so oh I'm on a diet right now because this is what's going to help me feel better when I don't eat so much sugar I have my energy I don't have brain fog I start to drop weight and so okay I'm going to stick to my low sugar or my no sugar diet and then all of a sudden I find myself opening up the refrigerator and

like I just wanted my screen to know a child in me what does a child need generally a child needs love and attention and a child also needs guidelines you know you can't let a child run the show you can't let them run the kitchen chances are they'll just eat and they'll eat breakfast cereal all day um so it becomes a conversation with yourself it becomes a negotiation what else can I give that child such that I can appease it and how can I breathe in my adult my king my inner Queen to be present

and make the choice um so it's a practice yeah and it's really important to learn the skills right you really understand the origins of your thinking around what you're eating because it's often not what you're eating it's what's eating you unless you figure that out it's really hard to to clear up the challenges we face around food and eating things that are going to help regulate our mood our energy our well-being extend our life all of it so I think that's super important um also I want to even talk about sort of this from a

little bit of a different angle because often you know our feelings can drive us to eat and eat in ways that are not good for us but also eating in certain ways can drive feelings that are problematic for us right so it's it's it's kind of a bi-directional thing you know if you eat the wrong food you'll feel like crap and then you want to eat more so I've noticed that like the more prep you eat the more you want to eat it and and it's really um interesting to look at the science around that

from the point of view of food and food addiction and the biology of food as well as the psychology of eating because they're very related absolutely food influences mood our mood influences our food I eat what food we eat and how we digest and assimilating calorie burn hit you know I think at the most basic simple level and you just mentioned this if I eat poor quality food if I eat junk food I'm I'm driven to eat more now a part of that a big part of that is poor quality food tends to be low

in nutrient density and head brain and gut brain the brain in your belly the anteric nervous system those two brains are constantly scanning a meal and they're scanning the nutritional profile of the meal and body wants good nutrition that's what it wants and when you feed a body food that is bulky it seems like there's a lot of caloric value here but it's lacking in the right micronutrition or macronutrition brain isn't always smart enough to say hey you know you need more vitamins and minerals you need more essential fatty acids the brain just generally will

scream hungry it wants us to look for more food because we're not getting what we need we're not meeting a nutritional requirement that to me is the wisdom of the Body for sure so many of the junk foods that you and I are exposed to are designed unfortunately to addict us to them they have the right crunch profile they have the right flavor and sweet and salty profile to capture us they have the right combination of sweet and fat there are certain 50 50 combinations of sweet and fat that'll easily get us hooked so and

then once we're hooked you feel bad about yourself because you think you're a willpower weakling but what's actually happening it's your biology that's driving you to eat more but if I think I'm a willpower weakling I'm going to go down the rabbit hole of I'm a victim what was me and we get disempowered and then we just feel stuck yeah it's so true I mean I think Kevin Hall did an interesting study where he basically I let people eat as much as they wanted or whatever was in front of them and they had basically one

group got Ultra processed food which is kind of pulverized industrial ingredients that aren't really any uh bearing any resemblance to real food and then he let other people eat just nutrient-dense whole food as much as they wanted and the people who were given the ultra processed food ate 500 calories more a day because they weren't getting the nutrition they wanted the nutrient density it's like looking for love in all the wrong places and it actually there is a meta there's medical conditions around this one of them is called Pica where little kids eat dirt in

order to get iron because they're iron deficient so I mean you know our biology is smarter than we are and we're going to keep eating and eating but if we keep eating things that have no nutrient density we're just going to overeat and then we're gonna get this fish a cycle and then those foods are addictive and then we gain weight then we feel worse and we actually drive hormonal patterns that cause us to eat more and so you've kind of got you end up with this kind of mishmash of biology and psychology that is

a sort of a disaster and you have to really elegantly Embrace both of both of those pillars you know here's another thing so many people have been taught that well in order for you to lose weight you have to go low fat and there's a lot of people that still believe that a lot of people are on low fat weight loss diet and low fat or low in essential fats we call them essential for a reason so your listeners know my body needs this but a lot of people don't understand that they don't get that

they're listening to old science so they're eating low fat and you show me a person who's eating low fat who's then becoming fat deficient and I'll show you a person who will be binge eating and emotional eating and overeating and thinking that there's something wrong with them because they can't control their appetite no what's actually happening is you should be on your hands and knees thanking your body because it's brilliant and it's letting you know you have a nutritional deficiency the challenge also is that a lot of times if we're fat deficient or if we're

protein deficient brain isn't always smart enough to have you crave fat as some sometimes you could be fat deficient and you'll just crave sugar or you'll crave carbs or a lot of people will be fat deficient and they'll crave poor quality fats if I want to go for the fried foods because that's sort of what their body knows and that's what their body wisdom is is is unfortunately driving them towards but the point is it's easy to be low fat you're driven to emotionally eat and and that drivenness is real you feel it and you

feel like God I gotta eat I gotta have this because the body isn't a isn't a little bit of a desperate place it knows that it it needs this nutrient so you can have a functioning brain and a functioning hormonal system so there's a little bit of an urgency there and that urgency feels like something's wrong with me yeah it's so true because you know a lot of people don't realize this but if you're obese um you're very likely to be nutrient deficient you have excess fat but you have low nutrients in your system and

I see this over and over again I had a patient in Cleveland Clinic was shocking you know I call them functional medicine virgins you know because a lot of the patients I see you know really tried everything try to be healthy eat well this is just someone who came into our program who really had never even heard of a vegetable basically and and and they were fairly educated but they just didn't understand anything about nutrition and they grew up eating junk food in their family and that's what they ate and she was you know massively

overweight or BMI was like 43 and she had diabetes heart failure or you know kidneys feeling liver feeling was quite amazing and and when I did her testing I was so shocked to see like the level of nutritional dysfunction in her system you know deficiencies of zinc and be by magnesium deficiency of omega-3 fats her Omega is six to three fat ratio was 20 to 1 which is just ridiculously dangerous and you should be like one to one or two to one I mean it was horrible and I was like wow she's so overweight but

she's so malnourished at the same time fascinating yeah fascinating what the body does yeah you know and and so many people so many people when they approach dieting is we we will generally go to the golden the seeming Golden Rule of dieting which is to eat less and exercise more which works when it works but there's a lot of people who are dieting and they're going so low calorie that what will happen is they're going too low calorie and they're eating and they're not getting enough nutrient density so what happens if I'm going low calorie

or I'm skipping meals you show me a person who's so many dieters what I see them doing because they believe food is the bad guy so let me try to not eat breakfast so they have a small breakfast maybe they have a cup of coffee and then they'll have a tiny lunch they'll have a salad with a non-fat salad dressing and then it is predictable that by three or four o'clock they're going to be binge eating why because they're starving and they think they have a willpower problem once again they think I'm an emotional eater

something's wrong with me I can't control myself it's actually no you need to learn how to become an eater and diets are teaching people how not to eat and most people need to learn how to eat like what are the right foods for me to eat the right way for me to eat them the right mental emotional state for me to eat that food that's where the action is yeah it's true and I I think you know I want to sort of dip into this because it's a complicated web of reasons why we don't have

a healthy relationship to food somebody can be biological as I just we just talked about where the quality of the food we're eating in America is driving our Behavior not our emotional problems but at the same time there's a whole set of psychological reasons and Trauma that drives overeating or poor quality eating and I think that's not talked about enough and I you know one of the questions that I have on my medical questionnaires have you ever experienced abuse or trauma or in sort of a vague kind of teaser question and it's just remarkable how

many people have been victims of abuse as children and we know now through the ace questionnaire which is a questionnaire that we have all our patients fill out an adverse childhood events it's highly correlated with cardiometabolic disease diabetes autoimmune diseases early death I mean it's just it's striking how powerful it is and obesity for sure and so um it like I said before it's not what's what are you eating but what's eating you and I think the question I have for you is what is the science and psychology tell us about dysfunctional eating and and

how connected is to Early Childhood trauma whether it's sexual abuse or emotional abuse or other things that are happening well so much research on weight loss resistance and past history of trauma or sexual abuse so so much research on digestive disorders and past history of trauma and sexual abuse and if if we let's just let's just take the word trauma for a moment in in and break it down in a real simple way trauma is undigested life experience trauma is a stress response that has never had the opportunity to resolve itself so I might have

a stressful event somebody steals my parking space that I was going to take I yell and scream in my car and then five minutes later I get over it hopefully so that's stress it gets resolved now oftentimes what happens is particularly When We're Young we experience life events that the child's mind cannot handle a child's mind does not know how to process sexual abuse a child's mind does not how to not know how to process you know death of a parent a child's mind doesn't know how to process intense violence that it was subject to

or saw so children are good and good observers but very poor interpreters so what often happens is the stress that we experience stays in the body it lives in the body it doesn't resolve itself and when stress lives in the body as unresolved it will invariably show up as unwanted symptom and or unwanted behaviors so if I have unresolved stress in my system hey what gives me temporary relief food I'm going to want to turn to food because it makes me feel better it's it works in the moment but it never touches it doesn't give

us the deep enough relaxation response that the past trauma requires to unwind it doesn't give us what that past trauma needs to resolve itself it's just a very temporary fleeting little drug that we put over it you know there's a correlation oftentimes with you know some of the biggest animals in nature are the ones that are most protected um you know yeah you can say the lion is the king of the jungle but it's kind of the elephant you know Nobody messes with the elephants they're really big you don't like to mess with the rhinoceros

they're really big so oftentimes when we experience a trauma particularly a sexual trauma at a young age um we will respond by having a big body and it's what body wisdom it's what the body wisdom of a child knows to do because some part of that child knows that if I get really big and if I gain weight I'm not a sexual Target I am safe I'm big and I'm safe big equal safe and big also equals not a sexual Target so some part of us knows that and hopefully at some point when we become

an adult and we have opportunities to understand better and have more wisdom and find the help that we need then we can begin to unwind the trauma because it's an undigested experience it just needs to be processed hmm that's a very interesting way of talking about an undigested experience you know remember you talking to me you know when I was going through my divorce and you were talking about you know we need to be able to metabolize our experience and if we don't metabolize them they eat at us literally or we eat at it and

I I think that's such a brilliant frame of how to think about way we are in relation to the traumas and emotions that we all go through in life and how do we not sabotage ourselves and how do we kind of get free a little bit because what you're talking about essentially through your Institute for the psychology meeting for your coaching programs and through your incredible online course you've offered to everybody not just coaches called the emotional leading breakthrough you know you you offer a road map of how to work through these things in a

way that destigmatizes it and allows people to get free from things that they didn't even realize they were prisoners of yeah I love I love creating programs that work you know so often where we're running around in circles and we're doing the same strategies you know people try to resist food and they try to not eat and they try to use willpower and eventually that becomes so uncomfortable that you turn to food to manage the discomfort that you have about the fact that you turn to food so it becomes an endless cycle so there's all

kinds of ways to really reframe and practices to do that help us really transform our emotional relationship with food and and that also helps us begin the process of very sort of more naturally finding our natural weight you know a lot of people are wishing for weight loss and oftentimes before we lose weight we have to sort of gain some life we have to embrace our own life and just kind of get to a deeper place of what's Happening you know it's it's so much of it as people think well you know when I reach

my ideal Target weight then I'm going to be happy then I'm going to be the real me then I'm going to be fabulous I'm gonna be confident I'm Gonna Be sexy I'll be doing all these things and when I ask my weight loss clients okay write down a list of who you're going to be when you lose weight there's only two things that they can't do now the only thing they can't do now is fit into their skinny clothes and feel like they're just light and bouncy otherwise you can start being more confident now you

could be the real you now you could be more outgoing now you could be dating if you're not in a relationship you can feel more sexy now but if I'm putting that off into the future then I'm basically proclaiming I am going to be unhappy now which then leads us to do all these unhappy strategies to lose weight so we can feel good about ourselves and we're self-attacking along the way I hate my body my body's no good my body will I will only accept myself when I lose weight so the question is how could

a journey How could a weight loss Journey that's filled with self-attack or self-hate possibly lead to a destination of I'm happy doesn't work you know the journey is always going to inform the destination it's so true it's so true I mean I think you know I would love to sort of uh talk about how we help people to reframe some of these beliefs around food and eating and how we can kind of change those because it seems very tough to do for people I mean we can understand the high level psychology of this we can

understand it comes from our trauma we can understand that if we eat nutrient poor food we're going to eat overeat and we can understand that it's not our fault but but how do we really really shift those beliefs um and around eating around food and eating that are driving us into this that's a great question really really important I think the first thing to do is to identify the beliefs that need to be changed the beliefs that are so powerful the toxic beliefs that are so powerful that they're holding us back example so many people

are walking around with the toxic dietary belief that food is my enemy why is food my enemy I'm trying to lose weight how did this weight get here it must have been food so if the weight is the enemy the fat on my body is an enemy because if I'm fat then I'm not going to be healthy and people won't love me and I won't be sexy and fabulous like like like the movies and the song say I should be so we conclude that food is the enemy so that's where restriction and diet Consciousness comes

from now food is the enemy think about it for a second what is what does the brain do when it senses enemy when the brain senses enemy it goes into a stress response and the stress response it's a it's a graded response there's mild medium intense stress but if I'm walking around day in and day out throughout the course of my life because I learned as a young child food is your enemy you're too chubby you're not acceptable until you lose weight then if food is my enemy I'm in a constant stress response so I'm

elevating my insulin my cortisol those two hormones for so many people can signal the fat storage inhibit muscle building stress response deregulates our appetite so if you want your most natural appetite regulation you got to be a relaxed human you got to be in parasympathetic nervous system dominance if you're in a stress State your appetite regulation is completely skewed um so people will get in a stressed State just by the false belief food is my enemy that stress state is impacting their physiology and impacts your digestion if you're eating food in a stress State you'll

be doing some degree of new nutrient excretion so you'll be eating the healthiest food in the universe but if you're not under the optimum state of digestion and assimilation which is the relaxation response you're you're not getting the full value from that meal so we have to notice do I have this belief that food is my enemy because a lot of people do as soon as soon as they get hungry by extension appetite is their enemy and that is that's like saying breathing is my enemy that's like that's like saying peeing is my enemy like

no you got to do it right there's there's no way around this so we have to notice that and then we have to and it and it becomes a practice it's a it's a personal practice it's a transformational practice you can call it a spiritual practice where you have to align yourself with how you're created with how life made you with with how biology Works you're an eater food is good you might as well make friends with it so it becomes a practice to make friends with food it becomes a daily affirmation it becomes catching

yourself when you notice you're repeating the Mantra food is my enemy it's great it's such great advice um yeah let's talk about this idea of self-compassion and not beating ourselves up and how do we break these patterns of emotional eating that keep us stuck can you talk about that yes you know self-compassion is uh is a very much needed nutrient in the whole nutritional conversation because what happens so much is that in the universe of weight loss in the universe of emotional eating and overeating and binge eating what people will tend to do is to

self-attack they will be embodying the archetype of the kind of of the perfectionist like I got to be perfect I've got to look perfect Got Away perfect I got to eat perfect and as soon as we're not perfect the abuser in US comes in and beats us up for not being perfect so always around the corner from our perfectionism tends to be self-abuse you show me a perfectionist who's eating really well and exercising really well and I'll show you a person who at some point is going to be hating themselves and abusing themselves with their

thoughts or their own words so self-compassion is a practice like what I'll what I often tell people is think about it if you're if your child has baby fat are you going to tell your child I'm not going to love you until you have six pack abs and Buns of Steel and you will be unacceptable to me until you lose all your baby fat like no no you wouldn't say that to a child you wouldn't say to your best friend oh you emotionally ate today I hate you I'm not gonna talk to you I'm gonna

punish you I'm like no you wouldn't isolate them so you have to start treating yourself the way you would treat a loved one the way you treat your child the way you treat your best friend and that becomes a practice there's a part of us that thinks that beating myself up is noble and and we absorb that Viral behavior from the world uh and it just doesn't work no it's straight it's not true not just for eating too I mean I I uh it's true for everything you know if we actually uh said out loud

everything we say to ourselves or we send it to a friend or anybody else you know it would be terrifying right we actually reveal our inner dialogue to ourselves it can be such a powerful tool for healing I did that work and I spent a lot of time literally every day writing on all the stupid [ __ ] my head said and I was like whoa and then I began to call in a higher state of witness and awareness and Consciousness in my higher self which sometimes is hard to find but It ultimately kept me

so much freedom and allowed me to learn so much about myself and stop having this I mean literally if you wrote it down and then you said it to a friend I mean you say like you know they would they would sort of probably hit you in the head you know what are you talking about right one of my great memories in life when I first started studying yoga my yoga teacher I don't know I must have been 19 years old and the teacher said you know as we're doing all these postures he said yoga

is the study of it's the practice of harnessing your mind and I thought huh and he started saying just you know empty your mind don't look around the room don't don't don't compare yourself to other people don't criticize your own body just get present in the posture and I realized how hard that was for me because I was I was doing everything he said I should be doing I was comparing myself I was criticizing myself I was like oh man I'm tight here and I can't do this and I can't do that she's better he's

better and I think to your point part of life you know is in in eating as in life we are learning how to harness the mind and regulate our emotions and oftentimes our mind has all these beliefs about food in the body that make us crazy and our emotions have us do unwanted behaviors like reach for food that end up making us crazy or cause us to gain weight or cause us to feel just as heavy and dense and it all goes back to where being human beings and it's kind of what you've been taught

since you were a child you know don't hit that's that's that's regulating your emotions you know yeah you can scream and cry and complain but after a while you got to stop and there's certain things you don't say to people you got to be respectful so we're learning at a young age here's how you be as a human so you can be your best self and yet we don't always learn the more advanced course you know a lot of times we just end up needing to you know go take a workshop or go read some

good books or do whatever it is that we need to do to really Turbo Charge our own personal growth so all for the purpose of being your best self having the life that you say you want to have begins with starting to look at the contents of my mind and just harnessing it getting it on a leash yeah getting it out it is like training your brain you know we talk about exercise and we don't talk about training our brain our thoughts and we are so undisciplined when it comes to our mind our thoughts so

I think a lot of the psychology of eating is starting to become aware of it and then starting to learn how to become more in charge rather than having our thoughts run our lives we actually can run our thoughts and that's a very novel idea to many people but it actually is the key to happiness and freedom and forget about weight loss just having a great life so it's really so important now I'm I'm waiting to talk about the archetypes you talk about in your work the rebel the good girl the artist can you talk

a little bit about that you mentioned the rebel briefly but um talk about how working when those archetypes helps inform how you work with people you know think of the archetypes the voices the personalities inside us it's kind of like our committee and if you want to have good a good life it's good to be in good stead with your committee it's good to deploy your Committee in a way that works for you so yeah we have the voice of the child in us that Wants What It Wants when it wants it I have the

voice of the Rebel in me that just like don't tell me what to eat I don't like food restriction and if I let the rebel take over if I let the child take over and sit at the head of the table and make the food choices then I'm I the adult in me the king and me I'm not going to get where I want to go when it comes to my health when it when it comes to being my best self you know one of the other archetypes that often shows up in our relationship with

food is the hedonist and in the positive the hedoness is the part of us that loves food that loves pleasure that loves life like this is great let's eat this this is so good and so many of us were so afraid of food food is my enemy that we have no pleasure from food and we are built to receive pleasure from food and if you're eating but you're not getting pleasure because you're eating and thinking oh my God food is my enemy you're in a stress response stress and cortisol the main stress hormone literally blunts

our pleasure receptors so if you're eating your favorite chocolate cake and while you're eating it you're stressed because you're saying I should be eating is as fattening as bad for me this is no good I'm going to stop I'm going to eat like 10 chocolate cakes and I'll never stop then you actually can't get the pleasure you're seeking and then you're going to be more hungry and then you're going to think once again oh I'm a willpower weak Lane but what's really happening is your body's hungering for a pleasure so there's a part of the

hedonist that knows we need pleasure there's another part of the hedoness that also understands or that you know hedness can go overboard and sometimes you know so many of my clients students over the years their hedonist archetype is very strong like I just want pleasure I don't want to be denied hey you know I'm going to die someday anyway I might as well eat whatever I want now they okay that's kind of reasonable but don't complain to me when that's not working for you if that's truly your choice so with the hedonist in me I

have to I have to negotiate with it um because I love pasta I absolutely love pasta and yeah I'll eat gluten-free pasta but every once in a while I have to have the real deal but if I have too much then I'm in a food coma you know um I forget somebody once said the problem with Italian food is like seven days later you're hungry again um so so it's so it's learning to dialogue with those voices you know there's another voice in us I'll often call it the All or Nothing eater and there's a

lot of us who have an All or Nothing mentality when it comes to diet either I am following my diet perfectly I'm eating perfectly paleo or meaning perfectly vegan or perfectly sugar-free or I'm jumping to the opposite extreme and I'm letting it all go and oh I meet a lot of these people and it's not only a way that they'll do diet but it's oftentimes a way that they do other parts of their life and it becomes a lesson in how do you find balance so instead of saying well I can only eat perfect I'm

all in or I'm all out like well no let's build in a little pleasure into the system let's build in a little forbidden Foods because you know you're going to go to the opposite extreme anyway so if we can do 90 healthy and 10 maybe not so healthy that's that's that's better than All or Nothing so once again we're using the archetypes the voices within us to negotiate and always always always the most aspirational archetype that I'm looking to help my clients invoke especially if you're you know 35 40 and up is the king or

queen in you the king or queen is the voice in you that is Royal that's Regal that's dignified that sits on your throne and you know who you are and yeah your weight might not be perfect but a good Queen doesn't sit on her throne and and say to her subjects do I need to lose five pounds will it make all of you love me more will you follow me if I if I can fit into a different dress I'm like no you don't want to follow that Queen so a queen respects herself she knows

who she is and she manages her kingdom a good King manages his kingdom so that's the voice we're looking to invoke when we're making our food choices or if you like you can call it the adult in you or yourself your higher self your health Champion I got a health champion in me who just loves Health like health is so much it's so much fun you know and and health Champion is just a great cheerleader um the health champion in me can get a little obsessed sometimes and drive me crazy um but when it's not

driving me crazy I it just helps me feel good so it's learning to it's less about fighting the child or fighting the rebel because that's what we try to do it's giving the other voices more of a say and letting them step to the Forefront because then there's no fight you know this is just such a such revolutionary information you know because so much of the narrative around nutrition is about what to eat what not to eat was good for you what's bad for you you know it just and it's definitely the world I live

in for sure but you know your work is is just such a breath of fresh air in terms of helping people understand the other aspects of eating which is not just the science of nutrition but the psychology of eating is emotional eating just high level question is emotional eating the same thing as having an eating disorder because I I know I emotionally eat but I don't think I have an eating disorder no not at all really an eating disorder is is an extreme eating challenge that generally requires some kind of clinical intervention anorexia bulimia extreme

obesity morbid obesity emotional reading and you've alluded to this already is is something every single human being on planet Earth will do at some point during their day or their week or their month I.E I feel a little bad I feel a little down I feel a little lonely I feel a little stressed anxious so I turn to food so there's something very human and humanizing about emotional eating if you love that last video You're Gonna Love the next one check it out here developers are happy because they sold the land what happens to the

community and this is an inevitable product of globalized capitalism it's happening all over the world hence the crisis of loneliness is is burgeoning all over the world