How to Heal from Emotional Eating with Tricia Nelson

"I was afraid to be me. I was afraid to even know me, and be with my feelings and so food just kept me numbed out from that.  Food and food obsession kept me numbed out from that. But only by facing myself, was I able to just come back to myself, feel in control of my life, feel like, wow, I'm okay. Like I'm okay and  life isn't as scary as I thought it was."  - Tricia Nelson

Heal Your Hunger: How to End Emotional Eating Now In this episode you will learn...

• Why “comfort foods” are so comforting
• How to differentiate between physical and emotional hunger
• 3 Hidden causes of emotional eating and how to heal them
• How to deal with obsessive food thoughts
• The #1 weight loss mistake you should never make
• How to manage stress before it drives you to the kitchen

Tricia Nelson lost fifty pounds by identifying and healing the underlying causes of her emotional eating. Tricia has spent over thirty years researching the hidden causes of the addictive personality. Tricia is an Emotional Eating Expert and author of the #1 bestselling book, Heal Your Hunger, 7 Simple Steps to End Emotional Eating Now. She also certifies health coaches so they can get better results, referrals and revenue by helping their clients overcome emotional eating. Tricia is the host of the popular podcast, The Heal Your Hunger Show. She is a well respected speaker and has been featured on numerous media outlets, such as NBC, CBS, KTLA, FOX and Discovery Health.

Show Notes:  https://empoweredwithinworld.com/the-podcast

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Transcript

0:59

welcome to empowered within a soul glinting transformational podcast that will set your soul on fire through candid and inspiring conversations. Leading experts, celebrities, healers, and I share our journeys of how we've overcome challenges to living an empowered life from within I'm your host, Jennifer Pilates. Welcome to another episode of empowered within. This summer, I have curated a very special lineup of shows that include a never before heard excerpts from interviews, brand new episodes, as well as the top rated episodes by you. Our empowered within community. If you'd like to be in the know of all of our events, giveaways, and new episodes, head over to Jennifer pilates.com and hit subscribe. Thank you so much for being a part of our empowered within community and enjoy today's episode. Hi there and welcome to the show. Today's guest is Trisha Nelson. She lost 50 pounds by identifying and healing. The underlying causes of her emotional eating Tricia has spent over 30 years researching the hidden causes of the addictive personality. Trisha is the emotional eating expert and the author of the number one best-selling book heal your hunger, seven simple steps to end emotional eating. Now She also certifies health coaches so that they too can get better results, referrals, and revenue by helping their clients overcome emotional eating Trisha is the host of the popular podcast. The heal your hunger show. She is a well-respected speaker and has been featured on numerous media outlets, such as NBC, CBS, K T L a Fox and discovery health. Welcome to the show Trisha. I am so honored to have you here today. Thanks, Jennifer. I'm super excited to be here. Oh, I'm so excited. I can't wait to dive right in I would love for you to share your incredible transformational journey through healing and discovering emotional eating and how that affected your life. Yes, I'm happy to share. It goes way back. So, I started, I think, as an emotional eater from the get-go I loved food. I love to cook. I love to eat. I love to go out to restaurants, you know, serve it to other people. I just love that. And, it wouldn't have been a problem except that I gained weight really easily. So by age 21, I was 50 pounds overweight and I was not happy about it. I was very unhappy with it. I had a role in my tummy that I would scrunch up in my hands and imagine cutting off, like you've cut fat off the side of a steak. And I thought about getting some crazy disease where it automatically lose weight without having to die. And I even considered joining the army where I'd automatically lose weight, like at bootcamp. Cause I hated exercise on my own. So, you know, kind of some outlandish ideas, about how to lose weight simply because I was out of control Jennifer. I went on diets. Of course. That's what you do when you don't like the weight you're at. You're like, okay, I'll eat less exercise more. You go on diets. I could last for about two weeks and then it would get really hard and I'd be like, this is miserable. I miss my food, you know, and I imagine eating sayings and I thought that would just get me by, but I imagined it enough that I just did it, you know, so I would go back to eating and then I'd binge again, and then I'd be like, screw it, you know? And back on the rollercoaster rides. You know, my Willie definitely yo-yo as well. So like I lose 30 gain 20 lose 10, you know, so that's how it went from me. Yeah. So it was pretty miserable. And because I tried so many diets, I felt hopeless. I felt like, oh, I'm a hopeless case. You know? And I even did things like 12 step programs and therapy and eating disorders therapist I went to twice a week for a year, so it's not like. Really digging in and trying to get help. But nothing I tried worked for any amount of time. Long-term so eventually I was at my wit's end and I was blessed to meet somebody who became my mentor and he had been obese and lost over a hundred pounds and really was able to show me a different approach, which was weight loss from the inside out, and really addressing and healing, the underlying causes of emotional eating. So there's that word again? And that came back. And it made so much sense to me at first I thought, oh, I just like food. So that doesn't apply to me. But you can't unhear it, you know, like that's why I like doing podcast interviews because once you hear the information, it's hard to forget it, you know? And what happened for me as I started to observe my. Behaviors around food. And like, I go out to lunch with friends and they'd order a sandwich and it would come with fries and they'd eat their sandwich and pick up their fries, but I would eat my fries and pick up my sandwich. And I'm like, how could anyone leave a French fry on their plate? I didn't even keep the burned or the burned ones, you know? So, so I thought, you know, there's something a little different about my relationship with food. Like it's definitely a more connected and. Dependent on an emotional level with food. So no question, it was me. I just took me a little while to own up to it. Once I did, and once I had a pathway for healing, and it worked for me, I started sharing it with other people and I've done that. My whole adult life actually it's been my whole life is helping emotional eaters. And five years ago I founded heal your hunger. And started helping, people online through group programs so they could follow the same path I followed and I still follow to this day. So I'm, I've very much practice what I preach. And it's just such a pleasure to see people's relationship with food, with their bodies transform on account of it. That's an incredible story. So did you ever come to the point when you're diving in and you're really going deep to discern where it all started and where it came from? Absolutely. I mean, I had to that's that was the whole deal is I had to get off the diet track, you know, 98% of all diets fail. And so there was no way, you know, just focusing on the food plan or the exercise plan was going to get me where I needed to go. So I had to dig in and look at what the underlying causes were now. I find that a lot of people think it's just one thing like, oh yeah. Like my dad was an alcoholic, or I was sexually abused or, some trauma, they pinpoint one thing, this is where it all started, but I find that it's not that easy, you know, not that that's easy, but I just mean it's not one thing, because what happens is when we're children, you know, definitely trauma plays a big role. And I find that most, most leaders have had trauma in their lives. I mean, yeah. Basically the head trauma, some kind. What happens as a kid is you have very few coping mechanisms at your fingertips, and food is one of them. So food and then personality traits that just help you survive your child. So I'm in, and I don't have a bad childhood, but I definitely had sexual abuse. Which, is a very typical reason why people start packing on pounds because it feels like you're protecting your body. You're protecting yourself from other people. Even though it's kind of an illusion, you might protect yourself from other people, but you also trap yourself in, but the point is. You develop kind of different personality traits. And I refer to this as the anatomy of the emotional eater, which I write about in my book. And it's 24 personality traits that make up the emotional eaters, and I find that these traits developed when we had trauma as kids. and we had. Kinda morph. You know, we had a more for personality to get by with whatever was going on, whatever, you know, dysfunction there was in our family. We change our personality. And what happens is. We don't grow up with a strong sense of ourselves. And so the number one personality I find in emotional eaters is people pleasing. And so very typically because we didn't get a strong sense of ourselves, like rock solid self esteem, we get ourselves self-esteem from outside of ourselves and we, try to get the atta girls do good at work, take on the extra projects, you know, be the perfect, soccer mom. Up late making the brownies for the team. Whatever it is, do our kids' homework, these things, they give us a sense of purpose, a sense of ourselves, but it's fleeting, you know, it's not from within it's from outside, so we have to keep doing it. But the problem is we also get resentful because we overheard. It's very typical for Overeaters to be overdue wars. You know, we're always helping always caretaking. And this is very much part of the personality of the emotional eater as is resentment because we're stuffing things down with food, we're stuffing our emotions. So we knock ourselves out trying to get, the accolades from other people, the validation, but then we're resentful and. Part of what fuels are eating? Not always, but definitely this is something I see over and over weight and sharing all this. It's more of a living problem than it is an eating problem. And we're always so busy looking at the eating problem at the symptom of food and weight, you know, but this is why diets fail because at first you're doing, the diet, but it gets hard because we don't do anything about the living problem. We just take away. Way of coping, right? So we cope using food. You take that away, the excess food, the illegally chewy foods, the fun foods, you take all that away. And it's like, how am I going to get by? How am I going to deal with the stress with the anger, with a resent, with the uncomfortable feelings. And diets, don't give us those alternative coping tools and that's why we go back to the food. Cause it's what we know it's, what's comfortable and it's what works. Right. And in your book, um, you had even mentioned at one point that when you do try to take away the food, that then you're turning to something else. And will you talk about that? What I loved about reading your book. And we talked about this off-air is that this covers so much more and is so, so much deeper. I feel then just emotional eating, which is huge in itself. And it was very interesting because you think, well, all I'm not an emotional eater, and then you start to read this. But yet maybe I am. And so I'd love for you yeah. To chat about the will. Okay. Well, when we're on a diet or transforming into this lifestyle, how we start to turn to other things that people may not recognize. Yeah. And it, because the real theme is I don't want to feel, I don't want to be present in my feelings and because I didn't, my childhood had, I had a lot of uncomfortable feelings and again, it wasn't a bad childhood at all. I'm grateful to my parents for the amazing life that I was given, but at the same time, there were tough feelings that I didn't know how to deal with. And I think on a subconscious level, I'm not going to do this. Like, I am not going to be present for this. It's too painful. I don't know what to do with it. So I'm going to stuff it with food, but it's true that, it's not just eating, for me, it was, if it was worth doing, it was worth overdoing. So, it's like shopping, I do too much shopping or when I drank alcohol, I would go overboard. And it's like, we were sort of. Seeking missiles, you know, like we're looking for ways to just medicate our feelings nowadays, you know, pot, gummy bears or whatever. It's like, there's so many things that we can just order online, to take the edge off. And. That's not a sustainable way of living because all we're doing is constantly running from ourselves. We're constantly trying to mitigate our feelings, and we never get that grit that comes from dealing with things that are uncomfortable. Now, I find it hard to just turn around and do an about face and deal with stuff. So. I didn't know how to do that. I had to learn how to do that. I had to learn what my feelings were. I needed to. Eat in such a way that even had feelings. Cause I just grazed through the day and I didn't feel a thing, you know, except grows because I was always feeling too full, you know, and mad at myself for overeating. But yeah, when we're numbing out or missing opportunities to experience life to its fullest and also to grow in really important ways that makes us just more capable of dealing with, problems and situations and relationships and. Everything that life has to give us, which can create joy as well. When we build those kind of coping muscles. Totally. I completely agree with you in your book, you wrote a really beautiful statement. You wrote the subconscious mind can be changed only by means of the heart. Will you share what that means? Absolutely. You know, I went to therapy, as I mentioned to try to heal my eating problem, but I was in my head. So I would talk about situations. I talk about sexual abuse. I was very intellectual about it. But I kept the pain locked away in my heart so I could talk a good game, but I wasn't really releasing the pain of it because that was scary to me. Like I like to sound, it kind of fed my ego to sound like I really was super honest and like, I really had a handle on things, you know, and this deep, deep understanding of myself, but where I lived in my heart, I was very afraid of being out of control and having feelings. Uh, you know, I used to feel that if I were to open up this can of worms, I can never close it. You know, Pandora's box. If I looked inside that box, it would never shut again. If I allowed myself to go there, I felt like I'd be locked up. Like I thought, I felt like it was sort of subconscious. I didn't consciously think this, but I did looking back. I felt like, wow, I have to say so far away from that stuff. Because if I ever just. Touched on it. It would overtake me. And the truth is that, first of all, that's not true. and I did need safety. I need safe people in order to do that with, but just the opposite is true. Like if I stop and face the things I'm running from, they will lose their past. Like they will no longer own me and direct my actions, which is what exactly what they were doing. So, you know, my heart is where the answers lie. And also as emotional eaters, we tend to know. Listen to what's inside of us because we're full from eating or obsessed. Maybe we're under eating, but we're obsessed with food obsessed with weight, which is a distraction from our feelings as well. And the thing is that I was afraid to be me. I was afraid to even know me, and be with my feelings. And so food just kept me numbed out from that food. And, food obsession kept me numbed out from that. But only by facing myself, was I able to just come back to myself, feel in control of my life, feel like, wow, I'm okay. Like I'm okay. And life isn't as scary as I thought it was. Wow. it's such a beautiful statement and such a great way to explain that. And you touched on something that's very interesting and I'd love for you to expand on that a little bit. Emotional eating, just as about someone eating and being over. Yes, my experience has I use the words, emotional eating, because I think it's most apt for, basically an umbrella term for all different kinds of disordered eating. We have anorexia, we have bulemia. And, you know, binge eating, we have it all kinds exercise bulemia, orthorexia, there's so many different kinds of disordered eating. I was a binge eater, so I would get massive amounts of food and sit in front of the TV and Gorge myself and then hate myself. You know? I didn't do a lot of under eating. I tried once in a while, but then I'd break out in a binge. So we've all got our ways, but I find that they all fall under the category. Emotional eating, because even if we're under eating and restricting, it's for the purpose of mitigating our feelings of not feeling, or trying to control something that's out of control. You know, if it weren't out of control, he wouldn't be trying to control it. Okay. and the fact is the obsession with food, the obsession, with how much I weigh the obsession with, you know, my thighs or my tummy that. Distracts me from my feelings, that's emotionally driven as well. So it all to me goes under the, kind of umbrella term of emotional eating, because it's my emotions and fear of my emotions that's driving it. That makes sense. Um, what if it was possible to have local, fresh groceries delivered right to your door? Think of all the free time you'd have will Instacart gives unlimited grocery delivery for one low monthly. I forgot that special ingredient and your favorite dish Instacart can deliver it to your front door. And as fast as one hour, you can shop multiple stores, see deals in your area and save time and money. I've been using Instacart for over three years. I started using them in Arizona and I'm using them here in Florida. I love the time-saving convenience. They pick the freshest products and they keep my eggs. To receive your first delivery, free follow the link in the show notes. So that Instacart knows that we sent you and to help support the show. Instacart never stepped foot in a grocery store. Again. So explain what is the difference between when someone is emotionally eating versus them eating because they think they're hungry or they are. Yeah. You know, of course we have to eat and we deserve to enjoy our food. So we, you know, definitely it's a good thing. Eating is a good thing. I don't, I don't feel if I eating, but the thing is oftentimes I would eat beyond my nutritional need. We all need to eat. We all need a certain amount of calories each day, because we're just naturally burning those calories. Or if we're exercising, we might need more, you know, food obviously. But eating beyond what my body needs is, what I was doing when I was emotionally eating. I was eating because I didn't want to feel I was eating because I was feeling angry or feeling upset or feeling lonely. So I was using food. For emotional reasons, you know, and that's really what we're talking about here. My hunger that was emotional, had nothing to do with, how much I'd eaten or what nutrients I needed. It was that food gave me a sense of comfort. You know, and it worked, you know, and this is why I would eat, the things I was obsessed with eating were like carbs and sugar and fat, my favorite three food groups, by the way, you know? And so they, cause they would dead in my feelings. I wasn't bingeing on salad because that's watery and light and it didn't dead in my feelings. So I'll give you my little pep test. There's some people are like, ah, I don't know if I'm the most. Pep is an acronym and it's a good way to start identifying kind of the connection between our eating and our emotions. So I eat heavy foods for three reasons. The P the first P and pap stands for painkiller. It would dead in my opinion. Okay. If I was upset and I ate food, carby rich foods. I wouldn't feel as upset I'd feel nothing. Okay. So it would kill my pain and we all have emotional pain, you know, it's like, it's hard to live in life and not have things come up that are painful. You know, a death in the family, a sickness, social awkward, a relationship that needed to end five years ago, a job that no longer fits us life brings us opportunities to feel pain. But I didn't like feeling pain, so I'd kill it with carbs that E and pep stands for a state, and I would check out when I would binge and sit in front of the TV. The stress of the day, my worries and fears. I just wanted to leave them alone. I wanted them to leave me alone. And so I'd binge and it was just sort of like, take me out of my reality. Honestly, you know, there was no more time in the world that the w that we were doing this, then the pandemic, when it started, I mean, we're all like, oh my God, my whole life has offended. I can't leave my house. I got all this food in my house, you know? And, and this totally sucks. I don't know where we're going with this what's happening. People are dying. So we all were checking out, you know, I mean, people typically were doing this. I had friends climb me saying Trisha. I didn't think I was a mulch leader, but I am like, this is like serious. And so people are recognizing more than ever. I think what emotional eating is, so it's a great form of escape. It doesn't last very long because you have to come to it at some point. The last PM in the pep acronym is punishment, which seems counterintuitive because. Are typically our reward, but the way I ate when I'd go overboard and I'd have crumbs down my sweater and I feel gross and I cancel, you know, a lunch date with friends the next day, cause I was bloated and just wanted to stay in bed. That is no reward. Like I was hurting myself. I was abusing my body. I was getting. The issues, because of the way I was eating. So it begs the question, like what is going on. And I find that Overeaters tend to be overthinkers and over feelers. So we beat ourselves up, we feel guilty about everything and that drives our eating as well. And so just to review the pep acronym stands for painkiller escape and punishment. So this is just, I tell people to take the little pep test, like if you're going to the refrigerator, like five times. Go like, wait, am I, is there some going on that I want to numb from? You know, am I looking to check out from a situation that is just unbearable for me to think about? Or am I really pissed that I didn't speak up or that I said something I'm noxious, you know? And do I need to take care of it because I'm basically. Punishment punishing myself right now. And that's just a good way to start making the connection between your eating and your right. And I think that's great. Cause that goes for food that goes for drinking that, you know, like you said, that hundred percent, it really covers all. And definitely during the pandemic, I was eating things I never ate before. And that's when you and I actually had first met and I thought, oh my God, this is so wonderful. I think I have an issue here with some M and M's and I mean, literally. It was a troll. Yeah, I have since curtailed that. So you also have what you call the seven C's of. Yep. My, my book is called heal your hunger, seven simple steps to end emotional eating now. And the seven CS are the seven steps. And this is what I did to heal. And it wasn't until I found it, heal your hunger and wrote my book that I really codafide it into seven steps. And these are so like vitally important in my experience and also really good news because I find that most. Conventional wisdom around emotional eating is a little light, and not very substantive like people will say, oh, just eat in moderation, like just moderate your sweets. Well, that doesn't work. If you're an out of control, binge eater like me, like I, I started eating sweets and then I don't stop. I eat at M and M's, I mean the whole damn bag. So, it's not useful information, in the long run intuitively. I would Intuit that I should eat many more times than I really should have. So, you know, my mind would play tricks on me and convince me and rationalize my eating. So again, a good concept in theory, maybe it works for somebody who's not as much of a leader as I was, but I couldn't do it, you know? And so these are things mindful eating, I ate to not be mindful, you know, I ate to check out. These are, things that people suggest that if you're an out of control eater or if you're totally obsessed, 24 7, it's not going to cut the mustard. So basically I codafide what I did to heal. And I provide that for people. So they have actionable, real steps they can take. So it's not nebulous information that. Like doesn't really help you in your day-to-day life. And it just, you know, my clients know exactly what to do to heal, and if they do it, it works. If they fall off and stop doing it, they know exactly why we do a little, you know, Evaluation of like, what'd you stop doing? And then, they can get back on track. So it's just very actual, very practical steps people can take. Right. And it's really great because again, it's about a lifestyle. It's not about dieting. It's not about controlling. It's about taking on your life and being empowered by your life. Absolutely. Absolutely. What are three things or a few things that you would recommend to people who now that they've been listening? Huh? I think I might be an emotional leader. Like where should I start? What should I do? Yeah, I have a quiz on my website. My website is heal your hunger.com H E a L heal your hunger.com and it's a free quiz. And I recommend people start there, take the quiz, find out where you are on the spectrum. Cause I find that emotional eating is a spectrum. I think we're all emotionally uterus to some degree, but some people don't take it as far as being food addicted, which I was the high end of the spectrum is food addiction. The low end of the spectrum is emotionally eating and you find out where you are. Spectrum, you get a personalized score and then steps you can take after that. So I think that's a great place to start. Of course, subscribing to my heal, your hunger show. The podcast, is helpful. I do offer on my website to, emotionally eating break breakthrough sessions, which are complimentary. If somebody wants to talk with one of my coaches, they can do that as well. And it's just good, you know, it's good to find out and really to learn kind of what, what to do, you know, Yeah, that's great. Thank you for sharing that. So we are coming to that time in the show, Trisha, where I asked that one question, What is one thing that no one knows about Tricia? Oh my goodness. Um, I would say. What's one thing, like nobody knows almost no books. I'm like, how could somebody not know something about me? So what is something nobody knows? Um, let's take most people don't know this is that. I mean, my family members know this, but I had a dog named wiggy as a kid that pretty much saved my life. Because I was in so much emotional pain. My dog helped me get by in my life. He was my companion. He went on bike rides with me. He was always there. Nobody else was in the house. He was there. And I just, I literally, I, credit him with saving me during my child. Oh, that is such a sweet story to share all that is so sweet. And I'm sure a lot of people, like you're saying that I'm like, I'm tearing up. Cause I'm thinking about like my baby, who was always there for me. So definitely something that we can. To well, Tricia, I cannot thank you enough for sharing your journey and honoring us with your thoughts and your inspiration and your knowledge today. This has been incredible, and I know it's going to help so many people around the world. Thank you so much for being. Thank you so much for having me. It's a beautiful show. You're a beautiful woman. And I just appreciate your really generous heart for helping people heal. Oh, thank you. That is our goal is to help empower as many people as we can around the world. And you are definitely helping us do that today. So thank you. Will you share with our amazing family around the world? Where can they best reach you, contact you so heal your hunger.com. My website is a great place to go, to take the quiz, to access my podcast. Actually, you can do that. Or through iTunes, of course, Amazon actually has my podcasts as well. My books on Amazon heal your hunger. Seven simple steps end emotional eating now. And I'm also on Instagram at Trisha Nelson underscore. That's wonderful. Do you have any last parting words for our listeners around the world? Yeah. Like if you're struggling with food and weight, Try to remember. It's not about the food 95% of all diets fail. Let's go deeper. Let's address what it really is about. So you can heal and be free. Yes, let's do that. Well, thank you again. And as always, all of the information about Trisha Nelson will be in the show notes. So head over to Jennifer pilates.com. And as we say until next time, thank you so much for tuning into another episode. Please remember to rate, review and subscribe to empowered within with Jennifer Pilates. Your feedback is important. It helps me to connect with you and gives me insight into who you are and what you're enjoying about the show for today's show notes and discount codes from today's spot. Head over to Jennifer dot com until next time, may you live an empowered life from within.