Confront Emotional Eating And Heal Your Hunger

Tricia Nelson

Thank you for having me. It is so good to be here, Sharon.

Sharon Stills, ND

Yes, I am very excited. You are pink, and we are in the red hues. I love it. I mean, I just want to jump in. How did you “Heal Your Hunger”, I mean, I know you got into this because of your own personal journey. I think so many listening can really relate when it is not just, well, what the data says or the studies show, but you, another woman, or just everyone sitting at home and watching who has a personal story. I would love for you to share it with us.

Tricia Nelson

Thank you for having me. Yes, mine is very personal. Anyone see my TEDx talk? I start with an episode of me eating out of the garbage, throwing my binge foods out, and then going back later and digging those cookies that I knew were there back out of the garbage, which, of course, doing that, brought me so much shame. I did that on several occasions, and it gave me so much shame. I thought I was the only person in the world who had ever done such a despicable thing. Turns out, I get hundreds of thousands of comments about, My God, I have done that too. But you do not know when you live with it; you do it in secret; you do not tell anybody about it, and then you think you are the only one, and then you beat yourself up. That was my life for a long time. I did become, by age 21, 50 pounds overweight. I was a binge eater. I was a secret eater, but not all the time. I mean, I could do plenty of eating in front of people, but the binges are right at my ice cream, my cookies, and my chips. Because you have to have salty with sweet. That whole binge ritual in front of the TV—passing out on the couch—I did that for a long time. I also did a lot of the conventional things you do when you gain weight and feel out of control.

I got a bunch of books; I read all these self-help books; I went to self-help groups; I took pills and potions; you try that; and I did an exercise program. I did a lot of things to try to lose weight and keep it off. You can lose weight on a diet, obviously, but sustainable weight loss is a whole other ball of wax. I always want to back up the scale. When I was a yo-yo, I had up 30 pounds, down 20 pounds, up 10 pounds. I had four or five different sizes of pants in my closet. I do not know where I am right now or my size. It is a journey; it is a real roller coaster ride. Basically, I got to the point where I just could not diet anymore. I looked at my track record, and I have been doing this for a good while now. Nothing is really changing except that I am starving myself on a regular basis and feeling deprived, and I just thought there has got to be a better way; this cannot be the way. I was very blessed to meet somebody who showed me a different way to get off the diet track and onto a path of healing emotional eating, and I did not know that was the crux of my problem. Looking back, of course, I could have written a nutrition book; for God’s sake, I knew what to eat and what not to eat, but I could not follow through on what I knew; that was the kicker. I am a smart girl; why am I still eating the pizza when I should be eating the salad?

Anyway, I was blessed to go on a journey of healing. Then, based on the things that I did, I started showing other people how to do them, and it turned into what is now known as “Heal Your Hunger.” It is a lovely path for dealing with and healing emotional eating as well as self-care. This is all based on, I mean, I wrote my book about six years ago, my podcast came out around that time, and then more recently that TEDx talk, but I am just all about letting people know they do not have to be on the dieting roller coaster ride in order to lose weight and keep it off; there is another path.

Sharon Stills, ND

As you were saying that, I was thinking about how often we think about how, when we go on these roller coaster diets and we go up and down 30 pounds, it really can mess with our metabolism and get in the way. It is good to see you sitting there and going; there is hope. Right away, I did have hope plastered across your forehead. We do not talk about that, and it is such a good point. We know, yes, eat this, eat that, but then we find ourselves with our hand elbow-deep in the bag of chips or the bag of cookies or whatever it is, and something takes over, and it is not enough to just know what it is; otherwise, everyone would do it. You brought up the word shame, and if you are listening, this is not about shame; this is about opening up the conversation; this is about saying there is another way and you are not alone. Because that is so true. I think we all could relate; I have had some stories like that. I think it is so much more common. Just bringing it out in the open is just a giant exhale and healing. Wow, I am not alone; this is more common than I realized.

Tricia Nelson

Totally. Absolutely. I think you are so right. I think we have it in us to emotionally eat. I think we are hardwired to have an emotional connection with food, starting with breastfeeding, and it is not a bad thing; it keeps us interested in eating for sure, which is how we subsist as a species. But people are at different places on that emotional eating spectrum. I actually have a quiz that helps people determine where they are on the spectrum because I think, in general, it is emotional eating, and when it gets worse, it becomes an addiction, a food addiction. Knowing where somebody is on that spectrum can help, and knowing that can help to know what the next steps are. I think you are so right that we all relate; we can all laugh about our adventures, but it does turn really dark for those who are on the higher end of the spectrum of emotional eating, where they have symptoms of social isolation: they do not want to go out with friends; they do not want to be seen; they do not want their video in Zoom; they do not want to go to the reunion; they cancel plans; it affects our job performance; when we are in a sugar coma, it is hard to show up and be clear and feel good; it affects our self-confidence. That self-confidence, boy, when you do not feel self-confident about how you look and how you feel in your body, that affects everything and affects your relationships, your sex life, how you show up at work, and how high you will hold your head when you go for the next promotion. I mean, there are so many areas of life that are affected that we do not think about. I cannot go to the beach in a bikini for sure, but it is so much more than that. It is all-encompassing when you are not feeling good about yourself and your choices.

Sharon Stills, ND

Let’s take that spectrum. On the lower end of the spectrum, what are some of the things you see? What causes emotional eating? Is it sadness? Is it anger? Do you see certain patterns or is it all over the place?

Tricia Nelson

No. I mean, I have done a lot of work to try to make it more understandable and specific. I love that you just asked. Let me talk about that spectrum for a second and what qualifies where somebody ends up on that spectrum. For instance, if somebody goes on a cruise and they prepaid, they are like, Well, I got all this; I got to get my money’s worth. They drink all the wine, they eat all the cheese and the desserts, and they come home and they are five pounds heavier. My jeans again, I cannot get them on; we all know that feeling, and they are like, Okay, well, I am cutting out sweets, and I am going to jog an extra five miles a week for the next three weeks, and boom, those five pounds are off, they are feeling better, it was a fun vacation, no biggie.

That is someone with very little consequence from their overindulging and a good amount of control; they can course correct, get those five pounds off, and they are good. Control and consequences are really, to me, what qualifies where we end up on that spectrum. Someone with a lot of consequences and very little control is somebody on the food addiction side of things. My experience is that was me, for starters, binges that started out just one night but then turned out to be the weekend, which I had trouble getting back on track the following week. The following weekend I was doing the same thing, and then my exercise fell off because I just felt gross and I did not want to put spandex on, and then the sex went the way because you did not want to be touched because you had gained weight, and it just snowballed into this thing that you could not pull back from you, you are not doing a good job course correcting from, and then it has mounting consequences. when you live there and cannot get back on track. I mean, we all have this new diet syndrome where you are doing it, I am doing it, and you do that for a while, but then when you fall off again, you fall way off. It is like a ski jump; you fall way off, and then it could be months before you get back to feeling good again. That is someone with mounting consequences. Because if you do that over several years, most of my clients are menopausal or post-menopausal. I mean, I have clients in their 70s who have been doing that whole thing I just described for literally six decades. When you do that long enough, your body is uncle, and this hurts a lot. The autoimmune issues, the diabetes, the pre-diabetes, the heart issues—I mean, it goes on and on, gut stuff. Mountain consequences and very little control to course correct—those scenarios I just described, and that is basically what qualifies where you end up on that spectrum.

People can again take the quiz they can take on my website. They can take that free quiz and find out immediately where they are on that spectrum. You asked about emotion. I want to go there now, if that is okay. Yes, it is a lot. But I have something that I talk about and teach called the anatomy of the emotional eater. I use the word anatomy, obviously as a play on words. But my experience is that most people think that cravings just happen. Most people feel that cravings just happen, but my experience is that they do not just happen. First, I am going to talk to you about the PEP formula, and then I am going to go to the anatomy of the emotional eater. Okay?

The PEP formula is a way of just identifying an umbrella set of three emotions that drive emotional eating because, yeah, we have a gazillion emotions. Which emotions are they? Okay, let us just distill this into three primary emotions, because I find that to be a lot more manageable. The PEP formula is a way to start by just identifying identity, even if it is emotional. Because I know there are people listening who will probably be, I am not an emotional eater; I just like food, because I said that too. It is easy to think, I just like food; food is good; I still like food, and it is easy to think that is skin deep; that is as far as it goes. The PEP formula will help you start to go, Huh, is this more than that? PEP is an acronym, and what it is an acronym about is what foods are doing for us, not what they are doing to us. We know what they do to us; we have had a lot of experience with that, but what I want people to do is start considering what it is doing for them.

The first P in PEP is painkiller. Food is a great painkiller. I am feeling some pain. I just lost a job, my kid just said something really mean to me, or whatever. I just got a really atrocious bill in the mail. We feel emotional pain; we call it an uncomfortable feeling. We go to the refrigerator, we munch on something, and all of a sudden we do not feel quite as much pain. That is emotional eating; it just softens the edges of whatever we are going through. But you do not think about it; you think, No, I just wanted some chocolate. The right hand does not know what the left hand is doing. What I want people to do is start considering, How is this serving me, this chocolate? What was I feeling? Am I using the chocolate for an emotional reason?

The E in PEP stands for escape. We use food as a form of escape—from what? Well, from really busy minds. My experience is that overeaters are overthinkers. We are off the charts. What did he mean by that? Why did she look at me that way? Why did I not get an invite? Am I working too much or not enough? Am I about to get fired? It goes on and on. That busy mind that is usually creating really scary scenarios—I am going to get fired? I suck; everybody is better than me; I am never going to find another partner—it is awfulizing; it is thinking of worst-case scenarios constantly. Who would not want to escape a mind like that? When we have all that reasoning in our minds, food settles it down, we get the serotonin effect, and we calm down.

My experience is that sitting in front of the TV with our favorite foods is a great escape. A good movie, but we never run a TV without the food unless we are in there on our healing journey. But the point is that escaping a busy mind and the fear that comes from our thoughts is another way that we use food—the way food is serving us. The first one is using food as a painkiller; the second is using food as an escape; and the third, which is a little bit more counterintuitive, is using food as a punishment. It is counterintuitive because we think of food as a reward. “No, I am going to reward myself. I have had a hard week. I am going to go get my favorite dessert. It starts out as a reward. But for those of us who do not stop at just that one pastry and we are like, No, I need some more and some more and some more, and before it, you feel stuffed and sick and pissed at yourself, that is more of a punishment.

Sharon Stills, ND

Yes, for sure. I feel it is a distraction, so then you could start focusing on how sick I feel or beating yourself up, and then you have moved away from the original, as you were saying, the overthinking of, Am I going to get fired? or Why did she look at me? or whatever is going on. It just.

Tricia Nelson

Yes. We use the food as a punishment. We are not just overthinkers, but we are also overfeelers, and we do tend. My experience is that emotional eaters also feel guilty more easily than the average person. We absorb, and if there is any shame running around in the air, it sticks to us.

Sharon Stills, ND

Then we’re going to snap it?

Tricia Nelson

It must be my fault. If somebody is mad, I must be wrong here. so then we beat ourselves up, using food as a painkiller, an escape, and a punishment, and the corresponding 19:50 emotions are, of course, pain, fear, and guilt. This is just a way, using that PEP formula and doing a little PEP test when you are going to the refrigerator, to dip your toe into what is going on here.

Sharon Stills, ND

What do you recommend when you go to the refrigerator? I know sometimes you are so in the stress or trauma response, you are just so out of your body that it is, it all happened so quick, you are just open and grab stuff, but are there any tips to break that cycle, or as you said, when you are at the fridge to check in with yourself?

Tricia Nelson

Yes. Changing your state is really important; we are in that trance. Breaking that state, that pattern, by doing a pattern interrupt, either by walking outside, literally leaving the house, or going for a walk around the block, can do amazing things. Just a walk around the block, and I recommend calling a friend, has to be a real pattern interrupt; you do not just want to stand there looking at the refrigerator and have a gun battle with it; you will lose that. You have to do a real pattern interrupt. But beyond that, Sharon, it is really important that we give ourselves a fighting chance—if you will, talk about fighting—a real chance by starting the day differently than we normally do. We have to backtrack a little bit to the beginning of the day because so much of our eating is stress, and so much of our eating is nighttime eating. My experience is that 75% of emotional eaters do the worst eating from four o’clock on, and that is usually because we have piled up a lot of stress in our day and we are also at the end of the day. You are at home; you are not running around like a chicken with your head cut off, and the emotions are starting to catch up to you. Starting first thing in the morning with some routine that can help you just be calm and still is really important. I think that people do not do this often, but it is really, really important. Meditation, prayer, spiritual readings, a walk in nature, yoga, breathing—something that gets just a few deposits in that bank account with common grounding exercises—those practices. I meditate on in the morning for 20 minutes, and I also read some spiritual literature. I need that time because I am going to make withdrawals later in the day when I am stressed and tired. But if you do not put that money in the bank, you are in the red.

Sharon Stills, ND

It is a good analogy.

Tricia Nelson

It is chocolate coffee all the way. That is really important. We cannot fight the problem when our hands are on the refrigerator door; it is usually a little late, and that is why, obviously, getting our house is good, but we can start earlier in the day by lowering, doing some stress-relieving things, and also getting grounded. It is often caused by stress as well, and we need some ways to de-stress later in the day as well. What can you do when you leave the house? I mean, when you come home and enter the house, can you go to your bedroom? Can you light a candle? Can you take some time to unwind? Because oftentimes we go straight to the kitchen and munch as a way to unwind, and we are in that trance of just eating out of the bag, and we do calm down, we start to freeze, and I just settle down, but it definitely costs us. Are there ways that we can unwind and de-stress that are healthy and do not cost our health, basically? Those are some things.

I want to get over to the anatomy because I promised I was going to get back to the anatomy of the emotional eater. What causes the stress? What causes the pain? What causes feelings of guilt? My experience is that, as emotional eaters, we have personality traits that definitely cause those things. The reason why that is good news is because it feels like we are victims of the compulsion to eat chocolate. It feels like we are just screwed; we are just going to eat chocolate, and there is nothing we can do about it, and my experience is that is not really true because the compulsion to eat chocolate oftentimes comes from stress that we created, which means we can uncreate it. We can stop creating it. That is what I like: because we are not victims of cravings. In my experience, is that 90% of cravings I know there are definitely hormonal things that go on in our bodies that create cravings, oftentimes. But my experience is that putting that. Taking care of that is vital, but beyond that, a lot of this comes from emotional cravings that come from stress that we created with these personality traits.

I am going to give you three of the top traits, because there are 24 of them. I think you would not be so happy with me if I launched into. The top trait is people-pleasing. I have never, I would say rarely, met an emotional eater that was not tied up in a people-pleasing habit—a really bad habit of people-pleasing. Part of this, I think, is because, well, a lot of emotional eaters are women; not all; there are plenty of emotional eaters, but as women, I think culturally, it is our way to try to please. But on top of that is the emotional eater personality type, which means that oftentimes we do not get a solid sense of self-worth growing up; we have trauma, we have dysfunction, and we learned at a very early age to please people. If you have a raging alcoholic parent, you better be a people-pleaser. Or you are going to get your butt kicked. We learn this as kids, even if you do not have alcoholism or something violent happening. If you did not get a strong sense of self-worth growing up for one reason or another, you are going to seek it from outside yourself; you are going to be seeking validation, and it is a human thing to do anyway.

But it sticks to us, and we bring that into our adult lives, and it might have been a coping skill that really worked for us as kids. But as an adult, it backfires on us because when we people- please too much, it is not really about pleasing people; it is about being validated by getting a sense of worth from outside of ourselves. When we do that, it usually involves overworking, overcommitting, being overwhelmed, and then being resentful. Because nobody is ever as pleased as we intend for them to be, and then we are, I pulled an all-nighter for this project, and I barely got a thank you. Well, screw you. I am going to reward myself, and then we have the I deserve it binge. That is an example of how people pleasing, which seemingly has nothing to do with eating all of a sudden has everything to do with our eating habits because we are exhausted for one thing. When you are a people-pleaser, it is a nonstop job. Because people are on us, she will do it; she will be able to do it; she will do the project; give it to her; ask her; and she cannot say no. We are suckers, and people know it. But then we are resentful, we are stressed, our adrenals are stressed, we are exhausted, and it just does not end well. That is an example, though, of something we can do something about. Start to have boundaries on our time, and we can learn to say no. It is hard as it is for people to say no, but we can learn to say no, we can get support in saying no, and we must put our self-care first, and we must. The thing is, the diet level is too superficial; it is not really an eating problem; it is a living problem.

Sharon Stills, ND

Exactly. For those of you listening, this is such an opportunity. Because I think sometimes in our human journey as women, you hear it differently with the years that have been on the planet for 50 years or 55 years, more so than 30 years. Sometimes I think, in those earlier years, we were engaging and maybe some not so healthy, but now we get it. That is why I love menopause so much. It is this time to just reclaim yourself, be wise, and change around those things, and people-pleasing is definitely one of them. And now there is some space; if you had kids, they are grown. It is this perfect time to make you the one you are going to please. You are going to be a people-pleaser; please yourself be a self-people-pleaser.

Tricia Nelson

Yes. We learn to use our voice more. It is really great. That is one of the traits. I will just give you quickly the other two. One of them is also, as I talked about already, the racing mind. Having that racing mind is very typical for emotional eaters to be overthinkers, and that is a lot of why we eat sometimes to slow down our mind and get that serotonin hit from carbs. In my experience, that is why meditation, yoga, or breathing are so powerful because they help calm our minds, and prayer does as well, and we just need that. Overthinking definitely leads to overeating because we react when we have this scary thought or this painful thought, and we react with food. When you do breathing exercises, EFT, yoga, or meditation, what you are doing is learning to just be, putting a little space between your crazy and your reaction time. We need to train ourselves to be, which does not come easily. For anybody who thinks meditation means you sit down and your mind is quiet, it is not. I just say if your mind goes from 50,000 miles an hour to 10,000 miles an hour, that is a damn good meditation practice.

Sharon Stills, ND

Yes. I love that because I am a huge proponent. I think mindfulness is some of the best medicine around. I teach it, and I was fortunate enough to fall into it when I was just in medical school. I grew up really understanding the benefits of mindfulness. I preach and teach mindful eating. When you can get into that state. I love that word you use, “trance”, because it really is a trance, and I know that because I have struggled with this in the past too, I understand that trance. You do not even realize until it is all done, and you are wondering, What just happened?  There is an empty bag of chocolate in front of you, or whatever it is, but when you can learn to meditate and be mindful, it is really not just about on the cushion; that is part of it, but it is being mindful in your day-to-day life where you can go to the fridge and you have had that morning deposit. I love that analogy, where you can say, Wait a second, let me just take stock here: am I even hungry? Am I thirsty? Am I lonely? Am I tired? What is going on? Do I really even want this? Am I really even hungry? When you can have that dialog with yourself, I think that is such a game changer.

Tricia Nelson

Absolutely. Yes. Observing your thoughts and realizing they are not all true.

Sharon Stills, ND

Yes. The things we worry about for the overworriers are, I tend to find, usually things that never happen, and then something side-smashes you, and you are, and I was not even worried about that, and why even bother worrying? Life is just going to occur the way it is going to occur. I want to ask you about a big thing, and I get asked this all the time: Dr. Stills, what should I eat? For me, obviously; yes, I am a naturopathic physician, and it is very important what you eat, but I am always about getting underneath that first and why you are eating it, and so on and so forth. What is your stand, your take on diets? There is keto, there is intermittent fasting, and there is fasting, and how do you know? I mean, to me, I think it is having that self-awareness, but I am curious to see what you have to say. How do you know because you can very easily be fasting or dieting from your unhealthy behaviors rather than because, I mean, I think fasting can be a good thing, but can you? You are shaking your head, so I know what I am alluding to. Can you speak to that a little?

Tricia Nelson

I love that you gave me that time. Well, you toss the balls at me that way. My experience is that people who are on the higher end of the spectrum I talked about, who are more in the addictive eating part of that spectrum, will try to do intermittent fasting mostly because, well, obviously, what they hear in their heads is a quick fix. Emotional eaters are very quick-fix-oriented. We have been trying this for 60 years, but nevertheless, we are looking for the next quick fix. There is nothing quick about it because we keep going to the next one. But the point is, no matter what the science says about fasting and all this and longevity, blah-blah-blah, we think it is sexy. For one thing, it is very sexy. But for the emotional eater, fasting, if they are on the higher end of that spectrum, fasting has some complications to it, and what those complications are is that, as emotional eaters, as children, food saved our lives. When we are dysfunctional, it is a dysfunctional home, and we have stuff going down. We do not have a lot of options, but food is there. Typically, we start overeating at a very young age, sooner than you might have scored drugs or smoked pot in high school or whatever middle school. We started very young, medicating our feelings; remember I talked about the painkiller? We medicated our feelings with food. I always tell my clients, Thank God, thank God we had food, because who knows what we would have done in that amount of pain and dysfunction? Food served an amazing purpose for us; it is just that, as adults, it is backfiring; it is not working for us. Overeating is causing more harm than good. The problem with fasting is that we have an internal trigger that, when it does save our lives, the idea of not eating brings up a panic. It sets off the alarms of danger: I am going to die. 

For emotional eaters, to be hungry feels dangerous. It feels scary, unsafe, raw, and way too unprotected. That is why we overeat because the food does make us feel protected—the food and the fat. Telling somebody who has that very deep psychic dependence on food to just starve themselves for 14 to 16 hours on paper is great, but in the reality of an emotional eater who has that trigger system, it causes binging. When they open up their window, they go overboard, and to me, it does not pay off even though the science can be very seductive, interesting, and helpful if you cannot do it without doing it appropriately. If you just keep trying it and then you go off the rails, you are just on another yo-yo diet, and you are really not helping your body at all. The other thing around that is that people who are out of control with food like the idea of not going to the kitchen for 14 to 16 hours because once they go to the kitchen, they cannot help themselves but eat. To them, it is these guardrails—these artificial guardrails—that keep them from going out of control. But I am here to say that there is a better way.

Sharon Stills, ND

Give us an idea. Yes, it really goes back to Yes, I love fasting and intermittent fasting and autophagy and all those things, but there is a foundation. What we are saying here is getting clear on what my relationship with food is and why I am eating. Once you have that handled, and having that handled does not happen this way, obviously, but then do those things. Because I see that sometimes in practice, the food rules are so rigid, and that is not healthy either; it is really bad to have. What you said is about whether you can go to the party and have that ice cream cone. Hopefully, it is dairy-free, but whatever, it is another topic. But can you have that treat without it derailing you? Can you just have it and enjoy it, and move on with your day, or do you beat yourself up? What is going on with you in food? I think it does start so young. Like you were saying, I was thinking, I remember my father used to hide the good stuff, the cookies, and I grew up on Long Island, Entemann’s cake, and he would hide it, and it was the forbidden stuff, and I can remember sneaking around, and he was not that great at hiding it; he would hide it on the dining room chair under the tablecloth, which I, okay, found, but it was this secret thing in it. I think about it all the time with my granddaughters because I am so much wiser now than maybe with my own children, but it is typical to say, You did a good job; here, have a cookie; well, eat your broccoli; and then you will get your chocolate bar. There are all these typical things, so I am always catching myself and saying, Wait a second, the cookie and the broccoli can be equal, and not making a huge deal about it.

Tricia Nelson

Yes, it is really tricky. I think that it is just, what is the net result of these things? My experience is asking oneself how you would treat your little kid, your sweet baby daughter, or your granddaughter. Would you say to your daughter or your granddaughter, would you say, Girlfriend, you are going to let us not feed you for 14 hours; you are going to shave a few pounds; you are going to look great? We would never do that to our sweet daughter; we would never do that, and yet we do that to ourselves daily, for decades. To me, that is a great litmus test: is this a good plan for your granddaughter? Again, there is nothing bad about a lot of these plans if used in the right way, but when you have disordered eating habits, it is hard to do them in the right way. Exercise is another thing. Exercise is awesome for our bodies, except if you use exercise to beat yourself up after a binge. That is the wrong way to use exercise. Nothing is inherently bad; it is the motive, and it is what the net result is. I love three meals with no snacking. I love three meals with no snacking just to get people back to some order and some sanity, and you can put 12 or 13 hours in between dinner and breakfast and still get some of that autophagy benefit. But again, if you are thinking about a kid you are feeding, it would feel like you are taking care of that sweet kid, and you are letting the kid know they are going to get fed on a regular basis, and there is not going to be any funny business, there is not going to be an erratic schedule, there is just going to be something that is stabilizing.

I just think for people who have been on so many diets and they have been up and down the scale and it has been deprivation or overindulgence, in that pattern we have to take a breather; we have to find something that just brings calm and peace. I like the no snacking thing because it enables people to make peace with hunger—physical hunger. Because our queues are all off, intuitive eating is a great idea, but if your cues are off, we cannot quite know what intuition is, especially when your emotions are all erratic as well. Just find a place of common peace, you said, stair-stepping and getting to a place as a time out; learn to feed yourself; treat your body as if it were your sweet daughters or granddaughters; and go from there.

Sharon Stills, ND

I love that. A friendly reminder: We all have that sweet little inner child inside of us, which is probably where all the hunger issues have stemmed from anyway. I think that is such a good point you brought up about making peace with feeling hungry. I often talk about that in silence. I think it is really the same thing because we are so uncomfortable with silence that we have to fill all the space, whether it is a podcast, music, TV, or talking to someone and just learning. I always say, Silence speaks loudly if you will actually listen. Being okay with the feeling of hunger, knowing what that is, and understanding it. A healed emotional eating looks like three meals a day to you; are there a few other things you can share before we wrap up?

Tricia Nelson

I am going to piggyback on what you just said about the silence because I did not give you the third trait. There might be somebody here who is counting. The third trait of the emotional eater is overdoing. Okay. It is similar to people-pleasing, but the overdoing comes from a need to be busy so we do not feel. Emotional eaters are typically maxed out; their schedule is so busy that there is no time for themselves whatsoever, subconsciously and intentionally, because they think to be with oneself is to feel really uncomfortable and to have all kinds of stuff come up that they have been running from for a lifetime. But as you said about the silence, we have to make peace with silence and with space between meals. Yes, you will have feelings, but they are not the boogeyman; they are not nearly as bad as we think they are going to be, and especially when you have a way of dealing with them that is helpful as a whole, I mean, a whole process of emotional healing, which is what I do with people, is I help them heal those feelings once they feel them because they are not so bad and scary, and they are much easier to acclimate to when you have a plan. Overdoing is something to be aware of because it just creates stress and the cycle of overeating as well.

Sharon Stills, ND

That was definitely me. Now that I am, my favorite thing about healing is blank space in the calendar, whether it be a block of time, a day, or a week, but under scheduling and just being able to be in the moment and be in the flow. Yes, it did not happen overnight; it takes time and working out. A lot of it does go back to our childhood, our trauma, and things of that nature. I was thinking about addiction, and I can speak from my personal past experience, but it is easy. Well, maybe easy is the wrong word, but you can say quit drinking alcohol, quit smoking cigarettes, or quit snorting cocaine because you can still go throughout your life and exist, but you cannot quit eating food. We need food, and it is one of those things. I find addictions can have layers, and often when you have the addictive personality, you just say, Well, I am not an alcoholic anymore, but now you are a shopaholic or your rageaholic or stressaholic or whatever a holic, and it is easy to shift that. I often think about that. I do not have personal experience, but I have patients who do the 12-step program. Then what is going on at the 12 steps? They are sugaring it up with donuts and coffee. We have to really be clear and remember to be kind to humans. You are on the journey; no one is perfect, and we are just learning to get better and better as we can. But that food can really be a place where addictions hide, and you cannot just say, Well, I am just never going to eat again for the next 70 years; I am done with food. It is a place where you really have to show up.

Tricia Nelson

Well, it is true; it does. It makes you toe the line more. To me, you have to dig deeper to heal from something that you have to handle every day. It does take more. The truth is, the food, the alcohol, the cigarettes, the shopping—they are symptoms, and that is why the diet has a short-lived effectiveness. 98% of all diets fail because you are just dealing with the symptoms of food and weight. When you do the deeper journey of healing, which does not have to be long and hard, you do not need 20 years of therapy to go to these places because there are. That is why I lay it out in the anatomy of the emotional eater: these are the 24 personality traits that will most plague you. You need to focus; it does not have to take so long, but that journey into the real cause, the underlying causes, is the journey that will bring you to freedom.

Sharon Stills, ND

Then, when you handle that, it just spills out into beautiful things in the rest of your life. Like you said, it is just a symptom, and not only do you heal your relationship with food, but you may find that you heal your relationship with yourself, your parents, your partner, or whoever it is in general.

Tricia Nelson

Yes, it’s got a ripple effect that will—I mean, you cannot heal at that deeper level without it having a ripple effect in every area of your life.

Sharon Stills, ND

This is a conversation that could go on for a long time. I so appreciate you coming on, opening the door, and peeking out the window. For those of you listening, maybe listen again, maybe take a deep breath, have a nice cup of camomile tea, and really think about how much of my life, not only my life but even just my present moment, is spent stressing about what I did or did not eat, or how I am going to do better tomorrow, or I am going to start on Monday, or you do something that maybe was not the best thing to eat on Friday and you are, well, I might as well just wait till Monday. How many of these behaviors are happening for you? Because if they are, then the answer is not just going gluten-free and making sure you get wild salmon and organic blueberries; those things are healthy, but they have to go mind-body, remember the connection, and they have to go into a body that does that.

I often say you can eat all the organic broccoli and grass-fed and finished steak or whatever your medicinal food is, but if you are eating it out of anger, or you are eating it in a sympathetic state, or you are eating it because you should be and you are not enjoying it, or you are not chewing, you are not breathing, and you are not sitting, then that food is not going to fuel you. I would almost rather you drink a chocolate milkshake and be exalted, enjoying it, and just being grateful for everything. There is something to really be said for that—not that I prescribe chocolate milkshakes, but just to make the point that it is really our emotions, and this is with our food and everything. It is not always what you are doing; it is who you are being when you are doing it. Food is something we all have to eat. Food can be a beautiful thing; we can break bread with friends and family, try new cuisines, and enjoy taste. There are a lot of benefits once we can weed out some of this emotional stuff. For those who are, okay, guilty, I need to do a little further digging on this. Where can they learn more about you and your work?

Tricia Nelson

A good place to start is my website, which is healyourhunger.com, H E A L, healyourhunger.com. That quiz we talked about is a great place to start, and that is front and center on my website. Go to HealYourHunger.com and take the quiz; it takes 3 minutes and it is free. But you will get a score, and then prescribe steps based on your personalized score. You can also access my podcast, The Heal Your Hunger Show, from the website or anywhere where my podcasts are. Also on Instagram, at tricianelson_, I have some fun videos on there about healing.

Sharon Stills, ND

I follow her there. She has some fun videos. She speaks the truth. Great. Well, thank you so much. I mean, you are as I said in the beginning, hope because you have done it and maintained it. Thank you for the work you do, and just for bringing it up is not the most comfortable topic. If you are listening and you are not, that is okay; just listen again, step away, and come back tomorrow. Sometimes it is things that we have to learn about ourselves that we want to push it away because it means we are going to have to go down a little bit of a healing rabbit hole. But this is so important to me. This is the time. It is not a time to go, well, I have been doing it for 50 years; I am just never going to get better. No, it can happen. It can happen when you are 50, 60, 70, or 80, and any time you choose to heal and change, no matter where it is, it is meaningful, and then the next days that follow will be healthier and more meaningful.

Tricia Nelson

I think every day. That is the truth. 

Sharon Stills, ND

Thank you. Thank you, everyone, for being here and being willing to have the more difficult conversations. We are stepping into our second sacred act, and we want to heal on all levels. That is why menopause is such a beautiful moment to pause and really look at where you could use a little more support.

Tricia Nelson

Sharon, thank you so much for your amazing work and for bringing this summit to people, because I know it will help so many. You are awesome. I appreciate being a guest.

Sharon Stills, ND

Thank you. My pleasure.  we will be back with another interview. Stay tuned.