Understanding Emotional Eating: A Journey to Wellness

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Friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the Unhealthy Podcast. Part of this is my personal journey to live a better, healthier life, because in the end, the only goal is to live healthy and be happy. Welcome to the show, and for those of you that are regular listeners, you know that.

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I have kind of taken a different path than when I originally started. At first it was just to keep me on track and make sure that I was doing things to make myself better. But I found some friends along the way to give a different perspective and to help me better understand what works for everybody. Because not everything seems to work. But I found that talking to some people helps. And

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As it helps me, I hope that it helps you. Today, I have a new friend, Renee Jones, who we're going to look at food in a much different way than I think we've looked at it before, but before we get into that, Renee, welcome to the show. Well, thanks for having me, Marv. So it was nice to meet you, and I'm going to get the big news out of the way first. I don't.

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At first I thought I wasn't going to tell anybody, but you were big on the YouTube after a TEDx special. Yeah, that was an experience. And it's actually going to be a lot about what we talk about today, because I believe the title was pretty much what your whole program is about in terms of emotional.

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Eating right? Yes. Yeah, I think the title was lose weight and keep it off colon emotional eating. So Let me ask this just to get a little background from everybody How did you end up? Talking about this from an emotional standpoint Ah, well, I discovered

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much too late that I was actually an emotional a tar. I didn't realize that that was a thing. I just thought it was just me being weird. So when I sorted out my emotional eating, it stopped the self-sabotage so I could lose the weight I wanted to lose and actually keep it off. And I'm now 11 plus years at my goal weight after 40 years, and I'm not kidding, of yo-yoing up and down the scale.

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you did what I'm doing now, where you find something that works for a while and then it stops working, mainly because you stopped doing what was working, right? Okay. Yes. It's absolutely true. Every diet works until you stop. Right. So what was the turning point for you when you said you got through those 40 years of

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the yo-yo stuff, let me just go ahead and ask, was there a trigger, was there a moment in time, what was it that clicked for you? Well, I realized that I was about to turn 50 and I had been on this diet yo-yo for so long and I thought, if I don't lose it now, I haven't got a chance because, you know, around 50, things change for women and I believed that that would make it almost impossible for me to lose the weight.

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So I started New Year's Day on a diet, and I stayed with it for about two weeks, and then I fell off. And I started again, and I fell off until I got to April, and I actually needed a bigger size. And I thought, no, this was going to be my year. So I started doing some research, and I saw this term, emotional eating, and I thought, oh, that's me.

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And I also realized that after doing this for so long by myself, that obviously I wasn't very good at it. So I hired a coach who helped me walk through all the self-sabotage and helped me get free of that. And I actually hit my goal weight the week before my 50th birthday. Oh, well congratulations to that. Thank you. Thank you. Now you said you came across the term emotional eating. So,

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I had a question I was going to ask you about how somebody can identify themselves as an emotional eater, but you saw the term. Did that resonate with you just from seeing it or did you still have to identify what exactly it was? Well, I think it's an ongoing process, but when I saw the term, because my, I have a

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I thought, yes, that's it. That makes sense. That's what's driving me to food for comfort or stress relief. It's just emotional stuff. And I just hadn't thought about it in those terms.

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So let me...

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Let me kind of talk about what I envision as what an emotional eater is. Okay. So I think the stereotype has always been that an emotional eater is somebody that sits at home, is in a self-loathing, woe-is-me state, Friday night, Saturday night, in front of the TV, unhappy with life, and just stuffing down ice cream.

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pizza or whatever it is. I don't see you as that type of person. No. So, how is my mental aspect of emotional eating different than what it really is? Emotional eating is eating for any reason other than hunger. Okay. So it can be, you know, I'm upset, mad, frustrated, lonely, bored.

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Or it can be, I'm joyful. I'm celebrating. I mean, think about every holiday we've got Easter coming up and families will gather and they will eat together and they'll probably eat too much because they're just celebrating, right? It's a holiday and we tend to overeat on holidays. Well, joy is an emotion too. So it's all.

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Emotional eating unless you're actually hungry and then enjoy it. That's what's there for So all those times that I’m heading to the bar to hang out with the guys to watch Sports and we're eating Yeah, not always hungry but the food keeps coming out so we keep eating right It's part of the experience You are you are enhancing your experience by adding food to it

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Years ago I was coordinating activities at the center and I was trying to get the board on board with me for having an evening event. And they said, what are we going to eat? I said, we don't need food. Why would we need food? And they said, because no one will come if there's no food. I thought, oh, that's weird. But it's also very, very true. So we use.

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food, just like we use alcohol and coffee and all the rest of it, as kind of a social

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It just makes it easier to talk to someone when you've got something in your hands. Right. Well, it's almost...

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I don't want to say second nature, but yeah, the expectation is any event, there has to be food. It's like, what do we have? And now it's to the point of people who have either certain diets or certain likes, and it's like, well, what's going to be there? And they make the decision based on the food and not the event. Yeah, yeah. When the main focus of the event is actually to be with other people doing whatever it is your people do. Okay.

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So now that leads to another question I was going to ask you and I apologize if I'm doing these out of order or if they don't make sense, but there was a part of me that thought that there must be some sort of trigger for someone to be an emotional eater. Is that true? And if so, what are the triggers? Very often there are triggers and I will tell you that one of the exercises we did in the TEDx talk,

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was to think about a food that you just can't say no to. Can you get one of those in your mind? It's around, you always want it. If you're, it's your go-to to make yourself feel better? Are you asking me in person right now? I'm asking you if you can think of a, not to tell me what it is. Okay, so. But if you can think of a food. Oh, okay. Yeah, I can think of it. I just didn't know if you wanted me to tell you. Okay, all right. So think about, I mean, if you...

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If you get that food in your mind, you can almost see it. Yeah. You can see the container or plate or whatever. You can almost taste it and you can probably get the scent of it in your memory, right? And then think about when did you first have that food? What was going on and who gave it to you? And...

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very often people go, oh my word, I had no idea. Because they connected that particular food to an experience in their past. Now, my story was, I was addicted to peanut butter. And peanut butter is, it's a perfectly lovely food. Just not in the quantity I was taking it in. But when I finally worked out that it was connected to the love and encouragement my grandmother gave me.

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then I could tease that apart and realize she's not in that jar. We were really close and we bonded over peanut butter and chocolate, right? So once I could say, okay, I need to find that love and encouragement in a different way, then I no longer needed the peanut butter. You see how that works? CB Now, there are other triggers. I mean, people get stressed. They get upset about something.

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and they just want to feel better in that moment. And food always works. It gives us just enough dopamine hit. And putting something in our mouths is something we learn from birth. Because if a baby cries, we give them the bottle or pacifier or put them on the breast. We put something in, even your little finger can work to soothe the baby.

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and it's just oral soothing. Interesting. Unfortunately, we grow up and we trade it off for like a pen or a pizza or donuts and then we end up eating too much and all we're really looking for is that soothing. Okay, that just went into some deep counseling there that I wasn't quite ready for. But it makes perfect sense.

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that we learn something that early, it's just, you don't unlearn it. No, you learn to manage it. Okay.

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All right, so I guess now let's go back to.

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You came to this realization, what'd you say, 11 years ago? About? It was 2012. Okay. Did this turn you to coaching in this aspect and being on this mission to help others understand how to fix this emotional crisis, I guess?

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Absolutely because i recognize i mean seventy percent of our population is either overweight or obese seventy. And i recognize that I’m not the only emotional a turn in the country or in the world and i thought if i figured this out. I need to help other people figure it out because they want it because so often.

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They've tried, they're like me, they had tried to lose weight forever and they could never succeed because they couldn't maintain. And so much of it has to do with that emotional eating. And I thought, I can't keep this to myself.

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Now, there's a part of me that thinks that there are people that are going to just simply deny that emotion has anything to do with it. Sure.

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but.

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Trying to figure out if there's a way that, because if there's a heavy, heavy denial, that means that there's a little bit of truth to it, right? Usually, yeah. Because we only resist things like that when we're afraid that they might be true for us. Okay. What about people that say, check the science?

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and that some people are predisposed or some people have certain body types that are

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susceptible, I guess, to weight gain with certain foods or something like that. Sure, that's true too. And you know, Marv, I said earlier, every diet works if you follow it. It just kind of depends on how uncomfortable you want to be. But what I found is I lost my weight on one diet and I was tired and I was hungry and I was cranky all the time.

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but I wanted to get to my goal weight. And it's not like I'm a stick thin woman. I am 60 years old. I'm never going to be that size two. But then I ran across a concept that I now call the unique nutrition blueprint. It's a series of questions that identifies what foods work best for your body. And I was real skeptical about it,

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been at my goal weight for two years. I was now 52 and I thought, okay, we'll try it for a week and see what happens because what they were telling me to eat was quite the opposite to what I had been doing. And I actually lost two pounds that week eating the food that fits my body. And I was never hungry and I wasn't tired and my husband was very grateful I was no longer cranky. So-

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It's not necessarily the food, it's how you physically and emotionally react to it.

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Every diet will work if it fits your body. You can make it work just by holding on, drooling down, but finding what works for your body just makes it so much easier. Because most dieters fall off because they're hungry. Well, if you're not going to be hungry anymore, or not as hungry, I mean, obviously your body works and you do get hungry at times, but if...

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If you can find what works so that you're not constantly hungry, you're much more likely to stick to it and make it your lifestyle. CB. Right.

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Now, one of the things that intrigued me when we met is your website has a great name. Just saying that. Thank you. Pack your own bag. Yes. And I mean, yes, a lot of us are always looking for ways that we can self-do things. And so that's what it sounded like. It was like, oh, pack my own bag. I can do it myself.

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But can you describe for the listeners what your website is about and what your goals are?

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I believe, and this probably comes from my counseling background, that our emotional baggage gets packed for us. Our self-sabotage habits get packed for us. And, you know, every time I get home from a trip, I have to unpack all the flotsam and Jepson that accumulated from certain conferences, right? If we don't unpack some things, we don't have room.

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to pack for the journey we actually want to be on. So I encourage people to pack your own bag and pack stuff that was packed for you that you no longer need and pack what you want and need for the life that you're pursuing.

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Now you mentioned your background. So you've been doing some sort of coaching most of your life. Does that ring true? In different forms. I started out as an English teacher and then I got the opportunity to go to Wales in the UK to coordinate activities for a center there. And of course, when you've got various people coming through they want to talk about stuff.

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So I used the skills and then I came back to do grad school to get that counseling degree, went back for another two years to open a counseling center and used the skills then. And then I came back to the States to get married. And I served 20 years as a hospital chaplain, which is what I call rapid therapy because you may only see them once and you may only have five minutes. So you just...

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talk to them as best you can and listen to their concerns and answer them. So I think I have always been a coach. It was just under a different heading. Okay. Now, all of that other coaching and stuff, none of that was kind of related specifically to this emotional dieting, correct? No, no. All right. No. So when you made the switch, so if you made the switch in 2012,

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When did you do the TEDx? That was 2018. 18, okay.

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When did you actually go full force with this?

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Well, I shifted over right after I reached my goal, because I felt that was then equipped to, because it's kind of hard to listen to someone telling you what to do when they don't do it. Right. Right? So I shifted, and it was funny because my first five clients were men with marriage issues rather than ladies with weight issues. Okay. But it was still about,

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You know, um, self-sabotage. So I started from then I had clients in the end of 2012 and, and onwards. The TEDx kind of came about by accident. Cause I, I just thought if I hang my shingle, people will call me because they know that I'm, I can help them. And that didn't work out. So I had to learn some stuff about business and marketing.

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joy.

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But in the spring of 2017, my book had come out and my husband said, “I think you may want to think about speaking. And I said, love, I never going to be a speaker. And almost a year to the day later, I was standing on that TEDx stage not having a clue as to what TEDx meant. I just thought it was talk that I was doing.

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Surprise indeed My nephews think I’m really cool Well, because it's one of the most watched TEDx is out there It's well, there are a lot that have many more but yeah, they've it has done far beyond what I imagined. Yeah So you're focused now. So obviously you've got your pack and your own bag now. That's the website But there's also a coaching aspect that goes with it, correct?

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Yes. And I, I do two kinds of coaching. I can do weight loss, but for those who don't, you know, aren't into that, then I have what I call heal your heart coaching. And because we all get stuck in things, whether it's the weight loss or a relationship or a job or anything else where your past is stopping you from moving forward. So it's about getting unstuck from the.

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wounds that we have. But there's the make it happen package that is all about getting you on your way to your weight loss goal. And then there's heal your heart.

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Now, how does that reconcile with a lot of what we've just talked about where, you know, it's not about the diet. And in fact, one of your most recent blogs that I read where I think it was entitled diet magic, it's not the diet. It's not the diet. Yeah. It's because again, all diets work, but we have to work them. We have to learn from them. You don't.

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I mean, I remember this in those years. I'd get to the end of a diet and I think, great, now I can have anything I want. And I would have too much of it. I'd learned nothing from the experience. So you have to find what works for your body and then regulate yourself as you go forward. That's not about being on a diet forever. That's about being on a health journey forever

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I don't know about you, but I don't want to regain that 60 pounds. Thank you very much.

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For most people, I think the question is going to be, how do I find what works for me? So you mentioned your journey before it clicked for you. I imagine that there was a lot of frustration getting to that point and finding out, okay, this is what is going to click and work. How do you help other people? Because I think most people are going to be like, okay, I'm willing to try.

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but it's not because they found it. It's more of, okay, here's the next program that's out there. So how do you kind of differ from that perspective of people that are like, all right, I'll give this a try? Yeah, there are, I don't know, 10, 15 different diets out there and we just recycle them all the time. We call them different things. And the easy answer,

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is to think about what you've done that worked that kept you fairly satisfied.

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That's not an easy thing to figure out, but if you take enough notes and log your food and all that, you can probably figure it out. What I do with my clients is give them this unique nutrition blueprint questionnaire and we work our way through it. I ask the questions; they answer it and then they get a list of a color coded list of foods that work best for their body. They get a sample menu.

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and they know what they actually need. Now, they don't have to do it, but it's there for them if they want to follow it. And that's the same thing that transformed my diet history because it was no longer a chore. I don't always do it perfectly. Right, there's some foods that I really should never have, but I have them now and again, just because it's part of tradition or whatever.

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there are foods that I stay with because they work really well for me. So I think that's the difference is helping them identify not just, I mean, okay, a lot of people love keto, a lot of people love paleo, a lot of people do that low fat, low calorie thing, all kinds of diets out there. If you have the one that works best for your body, you're more likely to stay with it.

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And I can't tell you just by talking to you which one will work best for you. It takes analyzing to figure it out. Not every diet works for everybody. You can do it, but you'll be miserable.

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But when you find what works for you, it's just a whole lot easier. All right. So let me ask a side question. Okay. About, you mentioned earlier that when you found that one that worked and, you know, your husband was happy because you weren't cranky. Yes. Boy, was he happy? How much of what you do seeps over to them?

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did you have to change? Because here's what happens. I know a lot of times a family member goes on a diet. If mama goes on a diet, everybody goes on a diet. So that's why I need to ask, did that happen in your household? Well, he's kind of a healthy guy. Okay. But he's also, you know, got past his twenties when he could eat anything and everything and never gain an ounce. What I do is I have...

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my food is fairly basic. Meat, veg, I'm good. I'll do a potato for him or something. And I basically do all the cooking in the house and make almost everything that we have. We don't go out to eat a lot. I don't bring in a lot of prepackaged foods. I do a lot of cooking, and I love it. And I try to be aware that

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he doesn't need the same things I do all the time. So I try to give him a little extra stuff here and there so that he doesn't feel like he's being deprived. Okay, so it sounds like it's reasonable enough that families can enjoy their food and not be deprived. Because I know in my household, my wife and I eat completely different diets. So it would be.

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It would be hard if I had to change or make her cook what works for me. Yeah. Well, and I think I am blessed to be what is called a moderator rather than abstainer so I can see someone having foods that are not good for me, even though I like them and not be bothered by that.

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I can moderate my intake and it doesn't trigger me to have other foods. Some are abstainers. It's almost like an alcoholic. They got to stay away from all of it. If they're going to maintain and that, you know, that that's a, a greater struggle. I think, but yes, it is helpful that what I eat, he loves. We're just blessed that way. Nice.

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All right. And what do you think is reasonable in terms of when somebody finally understands what's either triggering them or why they're an emotional eater? What's reasonable in terms of the timeframe or the process that somebody can make a change and see the results?

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It can be instantaneous.

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I mean, like, what does that mean? Like, okay, awareness, fine. But what about the awareness and the decision? I'm going to do this now. That can be instantaneous. Now it depends on how much weight you feel you need to lose. I, you know, I, I get these texts sometimes. They're like, lose 60 pounds in 60 days. And I thought if I lose 60 pounds, I will be flapping in the wind. Come on, that's not going to happen. And that's, it's not good for our bodies either.

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I had a number of clients early on who've been through gastric bypass surgery, and they lost the weight and they lost it quickly, but they didn't learn anything about monitoring their food intake thereafter, and they slowly regained that weight within five years. I also had a lady who came in before she had gastric bypass because she wanted to have

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to know what she needed to do to maintain it. And she lost weight and is doing great. Five years later, she's doing great. So it depends on how much you have to lose. People say half a pound to two pounds a week is very healthy in terms of what your body can manage. So if somebody comes in and they're like, well, I really only want to lose 15 to 20 pounds.

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then I would suggest, you know, we do the three month program. And if they want that support thereafter, then I create a program for them to keep them in support while they're finishing the weight. If it's someone who's got 150 pounds to lose, we still do the three months, but they've got a lot of work to do thereafter to continue, but hopefully they've been equipped through the time that we spend together.

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to continue the work.

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So that goes against what we're seeing in the media and on the social stuff where, you know, all the pills and you mentioned the gastric bypass, the shots now that they're coming out with, just take this shot, don't change anything and you'll lose the weight.

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Well, here's what I know about those semi-glutide things, is that it does work and it does dampen your appetite while you're on it. And that's the same thing as just not wanting to be hungry. It works for some people. Some people feel sick the entire time, but you still have to learn from the experience. Because if you go back to eating the way you did before, you're going to get the same result.

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And I, for one, I'm done with that yo-yo thing. So once I got to my goal weight, I then chose how I would eat in order to stay at this weight.

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So whatever type thing you use, you've got to find your way to maintenance as well. Okay. So out of all that we've discussed with understanding what it is, what triggers us and all of that stuff, what do you think would be, I guess, the one main key takeaway is that people should understand about emotional eating?

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Or I will say that when I was losing my weight, my mantra was, face your stuff, don't stuff your face. If we figure out what's driving us to food for comfort or stress relief, and we deal with that, then you actually get free rather than just a band aid.

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So I interface my stuff.

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whatever it is that's driving, and it may not be something deep dark, right? It may just be, this is the route I take home from work every day and I stop by this store. Well, let's change your route or not stop by that store, right? It all comes down to what's the trigger, what's driving you. If we sort that out, you get free of it. That sounds like changing a couple of habits would help as well. Sometimes changing a couple of habits. I mean, there are people who lose weight by cutting out soda and sugar.

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But it all comes down to taking in fewer calories. Yeah. All right. Well, Renee, part of me wants to say that I hope we can chat again because I want to see

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what I can learn from checking myself and seeing if I've got any emotional tags that I need to remove. There you go. Yeah. So part of me says that would be lovely. Okay, great. In the meantime, though, I know that I mentioned your website, packyourownbag.com, but if people did want to find out more about you about emotional eating, where would you have them go besides the website? Or is that the only place? I'm on

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Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. I think I have something on Twitter I don't do it very much, but I'm around Alright easily find a bowl. I will I think I've sent you a link to update a guest page So a lot of that stuff will be there So if people check the show notes for this episode, you'll find all of her stuff there And I also will put a link in the show notes if you have not seen Her Ted X lose weight and keep it off

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You can check it out and see what she had to say back in 2018, which to be honest, folks, doesn't sound much different than what she's saying today. Nope, it's pretty similar. Kind of universal. All right. Well, Renee, thank you very much for hanging out. Thank you for having me. All right. And we'll do this again soon, I hope. And for those of you that are listening, thank you for taking time to subscribe to this show

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unhealthy podcast.com. If you're a new listener, click on one of the pod catchers and be notified when the shows come out and be looking forward to another here another show here with Renee and see if I can fix my emotional eating.

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Alright, that's going to do it. I'll be back soon with another show. We'll see you then Holla!