#190 Healing Emotional Eating: A Guide to Finding Peace with Food with Tricia Nelson

The information provided in this podcast is educational and not intended to diagnose or treat medical conditions.

Dr. Donnie Wilson struggled for decades to solve her numerous health issues and heal her body. But with focused determination, she healed herself. And in doing so, she discovered the Dr. Donnie stress recovery protocol. On this show, you're going to hear from doctors, nutritionists and Experts along with Dr. Donnie, who will give practical advice and wisdom to help heal your body. This is how humans heal.

Hi and welcome to how humans heal. I'm Dr. Donni Wilson and today I'm really excited to have this conversation with my friend Tricia Nelson. She is an emotional eating expert, which means that she's written a best selling book and has done all kinds of speaking, including on TEDx and in the media. And she also has her own heal your hunger show where she helps people break the patterns of emotional eating. Thank you so much for joining me today, Tricia.

Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

It's such an important topic. And I know you've also been inspired by your own story of solving emotional eating. So maybe let's start there. Like, how did you do it? How did you break this pattern for yourself? And what did that look like?

Absolutely. Well, it's, it goes way back in terms of my emotional eating. I think I was emotional eater from very young age. I mean, I can, I can remember being so excited about food. So like, I love to eat. So I like to eat, I like to cook, I like to serve food, other people, you know, it was just a big highlight for me. And I never, like when I, I had a sister that, and I was overweight, like in, as a teen. I started to put on weight as an adolescent and, and hated it. I hated being overweight. And by age, you know, 21 or so, I was 50 pounds overweight. And that was really tough for me. I'm five, six. I, I definitely could see.

And I had a sister that came home one day and announced that she was an emotional eater. And I just thought that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. So I thought it was dumb and I thought, I'm not, I'm definitely not an emotional eater. I just like food. So that was my response to that. But you can't unhear it once you hear it. And what I started to do, Donnie's, is like, observe my habits around food. And I realized, you know, I'm not that normal around food. Like it's, it's very obvious that, you know, I eat differently than my Friends, like we'd go out to like a Denny's or something like that and they would order a sandwich and it would come with fries. So they'd eat their sandwich and pick up their fries. Well, I would eat my fries and pick up my sandwich. I'd be like, you know, and I'd look around, I'd be like, how can you leave French fries on your plate for goodness sake? That's the best part. And so that's really, you know, where I started to see that, you know, or somebody would have like a hot fudge sundae and they'd eat part of it and then they'd push it aside and be like, oh, I'm full. And I think, what does fall have to do with it? So. So I realized that maybe it's not just that I like food. Like maybe there's a little bit more here. And then, you know, I, I began to be a binger. So I would eat a lot of food in one sitting, not intending to. Like, I get chips and ice cream and cookies for a Friday night, you know, watching, you know, a binge a bowl TV show or something. And, and I would binge and on the food and then I'd feel really, really full and, and I, I'd hate myself. Like, I'd be like, oh my God, what did you just do? And why did you just do that? Like you feel awful. So this is kind of how it was for me. Fast forward, answer your question. I started doing different things to try to deal with this problem once I realized I had a problem. And you know, it ranged everything from diets to exercise programs to pills and potions and lotions and, and eventually 12 step programs, self help books, therapy. I went to an eating disorders therapist twice a week for a whole year. So I was really, you know, covering all the basis of how to deal with this thing, like on an external diet way, an internal psych, logical way. But honestly, it didn't really make a dent in the problem. And so what happened for me is I was very blessed at one point to feel, to feel so discouraged by my quest that I kind of thought, you know, I can't diet anymore because I just go up and down. Like I lose all this weight, I look great in my clothes, and then like a second later I'm back up the scale. And so I just thought, I can't diet anymore. And that was a turning point for me because, you know, if I'm not going to diet, I was still wanting to do something. And that's when I was very blessed to meet somebody who showed me how to deal with the emotional eating piece because that, what I wasn't ignorant of diet, it's like, or of, of what is a healthy nutritional plan. Like, you eat vegetables, you eat organic vegetables, you eat good proteins and fats and low, low burning, like slow burning carbs. Like, that's all pretty much like, everybody knows that. But how do you do that? And that's to me, what the emotional piece was that was missing is how do you follow through and what you know. And so I got help with that. And then of course, I then began helping other people. Then it evolved into heal your hunger. And the step by step process that I developed to help others heal. And I've been doing that for several years now. And I'm very, I'm very grateful. You know, my weight is stabilized. You know, I help other people lose weight without ever making weight loss the goal.

That's amazing. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for sharing that. And there's so much in what you just shared that I want to go back to and point out and clarify. Like, one thing is you started by even saying how you, you know, when your sister said something about emotional eating. I mean, at first we kind of like probably if you are, if a person's almost like if you find yourself a little defensive or protective around that, is that a sign that it might be an issue? Or what are. How does a person know that this might be something going on for them? Because sometimes it's right in front of us, but we don't realize it.

Right. It's true. And emotional eating sounds, it's like not the sexiest of terms. So. So somebody might have resistance to calling themselves an emotional eater, which is totally understandable. And I actually have a quiz that I suggest people take, and it's emotional eating quiz where you find out if you're an emotional eater or a food addict or somewhere in between. And that's really, that speaks to the spectrum of emotional eating. So we're not all in the same place in our relationship with food. Like, everybody's got a different relationship with food. And it evolves and it changes and it's a relationship. It's like a lifelong relationship. You can't get away from it. We all have relationships of food. But in this spectrum of emotional eating, you know, some people have a lot of control and very few consequences. They're on the low end of the spectrum. Okay, so somebody who goes on a cruise, let's say, and they eat a lot of, you know, bread and cheese and drink the wine because it's all prepaid for, you know, and you go through the dessert buffet line and, you know, they put on £5 during the cruise. They come home and they're like, my pants don't fit the way they were fitting. I'm gonna. I'm gonna cut out sweets and jog, you know, an extra 10 miles for the next couple weeks. Like to. Extra 10 miles a week. And. And within, you know, a couple weeks to a month, those five pounds are off. So that's somebody with a good amount of control, right? To course. Correct. And very few consequences. £5. Your jeans are snug. Not that big a deal. So that's somebody on the low end of the spectrum. The high end of the spectrum is really food addiction. And that's certainly where I was in that. I would have these big binges, so I would lose control. Like, I would. I would eat way more than I intended on many occasions. And then the consequences. When you do that long enough, the consequences add up. Like, your body starts talking back to you. You have aches and pains, you have joint pain, you have inflammation, you have issues in your gut. Right? So many people that you help are suffering from their food choices and food amounts. Right. That they're eating. And it, you know, our bodies can only take it for so long before they start talking back to us. High cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, prediabetes. I mean, hypertension, high high blood pressure. It's like the list goes on and on. So. So that's somebody with, you know, mounting consequences and very little control. So that's on the higher end of the spectrum. And to me, emotional eating and food addiction, these are just terms. Like, I say, don't worry about the terms. We gotta call it something. But the point is, we're on a spectrum of not feeling great about our relationship with food, feeling out of control more often than we'd like, and also having results we don't like, like our pants not fitting. I mean, I used to have five different sizes of pants in my closet because I was on that yo, yo, roller coaster, roller coaster ride. And I never knew what size I was going to be, you know, so I had old. I was old holding out hope for those skinny jeans, but I was often not there. So this is kind of what the. The journey looks like. And it's. It's a frustrating one, especially when you are most of the time dieting. Like, like emotional eaters are, like, on the higher end of that spectrum. You Know, they're usually dieting like it's life is not a picnic. They're usually in diet mode. They've certainly got the training from diets of deprivation, right? You know, going off, going, going on the diet, and everybody around them shakes their head and says, you know, like, I don't see a whole lot of change going on here. Like, it's, it's one thing after another. So it's, it's a frustrating journey, you know. And the good news is there's another way it does. You don't have to diet in order to reach your goals.

And I think that sounds like one of the most common symptoms or the way you might identify this for yourself is feeling frustrated about your relationship with food, as you called it, which I think is a really. Because this relationship with food is so important. As you mentioned, as humans, we have to eat. Like, that's not. We have to, we survive by eating. So it's not like we can just decide not to eat. I mean, sometimes it gets to that point and that's a whole nother side of this would be under eating, right? And it can be some of the same symptoms, right? It starts to show up in different ways in our house, if we're under eating. So it's like, how do we. Between under eating and overeating? How do we get to this optimal relationship with food and way of feeding ourselves? That's the foods our bodies need in the way our body can use it so that we can feel good. And it's, it's, it can be, you know, it's not something we learn from a young age. So we often, we learn different things, right? Like, how much of this do you find, starts from childhood patterns of eating there?

Most of the time? I would say almost often. I mean, I mean, almost all the time. Once in a while, somebody will start having these patterns in their 40s, right? As their bodies are changing with menopause, but perimenopause. But most of the time, if somebody's a chronic dieter, a chronic, like weight loss, you know, loser and gainer, just, it's a struggle for them. Lifelong. It's. It starts at a very young age. And I was just talking to my clients about this, you know, on a group call, I just said, you know, food at one time saved our lives. Like at one time, you know, I had sexual abuse as a kid. Like, I, you know, things were not all rosy, you know, in my childhood. I mean, it wasn't a bad childhood, but it, but there were problems for sure. And so my line of defense, the only line of defense I had was food. You know, maybe fantasy, maybe a few other things, but escape. But tv, of course. But. But mostly it was food. Because when you're a kid and you're in pain and there's dysfunction in your family or abuse, you know, you have to do something to kill that pain.

Pain.

And you're not going to score drugs at five years old, you know, so usually, you know, you reach for food because it's acceptable and it works. I mean, sugar and carbs worked at a, you know, at a time in my life when I needed to kill the pain I was in, when I needed something to make me feel good, because I didn't feel good. And so you're so right on. Like, it starts at a young age. And what once saved my life at some point as an adult started backfiring on me and ruining my life. Like, it made me depressed, it made me feel bad about myself, it made me embarrassed. I had shame around my body size, you know, and my lack of control. So it turns on you. And then the health, the health problems, of course. So it, you know, it, it starts at a young age. It served us at one time. So I always tell people, like, like, be gentle with yourself because this was a coping strategy. Like, this is how you got through. You know, this is how you didn't jump off a bridge when things were going really wrong in your life. Like, this is how you got through. It's just that it's not service servicing us anymore.

And I find that a lot of times it is that learning compassion for ourselves, that, that, that learning how to be gentle in our inner conversations, that actually shifts the pattern. Right. Like, like you're saying it doesn't help to be hard on yourself to resumption past.

We have to learn gentle with ourselves.

Tell us more about that.

Yeah, well, it's. Again, it's like we were trying to get by. Like, let's, let's be like, gentle. Like, first of all, we're so hard on ourselves. And I will say that is a trait in my, in my work. I have something, it's in my book and in my courses that I have something called the Anatomy of the Emotional Eater. And this is 24 personality traits that make up the emotional eater's personality. Because it's not about the food, right? And you can't just fix your diet and be happy. Like, you're not going to stay on that plan if you don't go deeper. So these personality traits have nothing to do with food, but they do have to do with why we end up eating. And I'll give you a good example of that. And then, you know, get back to your question. But one of the top traits of the emotional eater is people pleasing. So this is one of the anatomy of the emotional eater traits. And the reason why that does have something to do with food is we typically, again back from our childhood, if we didn't get a strong sense of ourselves or self esteem, we're looking outside ourselves for validation. Like we'll like, if I bust my butt on this project at work, am I going to get kudos? Are people going to recognize me? Am I going to get a raise? Right? So we get in this pattern of overdoing, right? Which is another trait of, of overeaters is we overdo. And so we don't put boundaries on our time because we're people pleasing. We want people to be happy with the job we're doing or we're the ones that are staying up late baking the brownies for the soccer team, you know, the next day or whatever. So when we do this overdoing and people pleasing, you know, nobody's ever as pleased as we plan on them being just truth, right? Like nobody's, some people don't even notice. And, and then we're resentful. We're kind of like, hey, I did all this work and I barely got a thank you. So not only we burned out because we just exhausted ourselves, right? Tabbed out our adrenals trying to like be, be superwoman and get recognition, but then we're also super resentful. And that is like the perfect storm for what I like to call the I deserve it binge. Like, screw them. They're not going to recognize me. I'm going to get favorite goodies and go home and reward myself. So that's an example of how the trait of people pleasing ends up in a binge. And so it's not the binge we need to chase after a solution for, we need to chase after a solution for people pleasing because that is so at the root of so much of our eating, you know, that and other things. So another thing is being super hard on ourselves, like you were mentioning. It's one of the, one of the anatomy of the emotional eater traits is that we are so self critical, like so self critical, like relentless on ourselves, you know, and, and this is something that needs to be addressed because you can't hate yourself into doing the right thing. Like it just doesn't work. And so that internal conversation like you were talking about of being self compassionate, of being sweet to ourselves, like, this is really more than our relationship with food that we're looking to heal. We're looking to heal a relationship with ourselves, right? And that internal conversation and just end self care. Like, self care is such an important part of the healing journey and healing our relationship with food. Because, you know, we can't be an overdoer and not overeat. Like, overdoing leads to overeating. So if we're gonna eat less, we have to deal with the overdoing. We have to start putting boundaries on our time. We have to let somebody else do the extra credit project or bake the brownies for the soccer team. We have to start saying no, which is not an easy thing for us to do. But it has to happen. It's like, we don't have an eating problem. We have a living problem. Let's address the living problem, and it will directly affect our eating. That's why you can lose weight without dieting if you focus on the deeper problem, which is all the stress, right? Coming back to your work, the stress that leads to stress eating. Like, we cannot, you know, people go on diets and diets don't work because you, you change your way of eating. But if you don't change your way of living, you still have that same amount of stress that requires that amount of food, right? So if you want less, eat less food and be happy about it. I mean, we all know how to starve ourselves, but eat less food and not need more than that. You have to change your stress level. You cannot be superwoman and burning candle, the candle, both ends and not expect to be eating at the end of the night trying to, like, catch up.

Are you ready to discover your unique stress type? We're all affected by stress, but why fight it when you can master it? Take my free online stress type quiz today and conquer your burnout. We'll measure your energy, sleep, mood, focus, and body to determine how your body is built to deal with stress. Then we'll work together to take precise action to help you get out of stress mode and become resilient to it. It's time to master your health. Let's go now. It's such a great point. I mean, I'm definitely doing fine, like in my work when I'm helping people to restore healthy adrenal function, right? Like, if, if a person has high or low cortisol or high or low adrenaline, or for that matter, the neurotransmitters if serotonin is depleted, then it's like. And those are the effects of stress. Right. Stress causes these disruptions in our stress hormones and our neurotransmitters. And that's this perfect setup for stress eating and emotional eating. Because we're, we're not going to feel good and we're going to, like you said, you explained so well, we're going to reach for something. And it might be for, sometimes it's reaching for alcohol, sometimes it's reaching for some other substance or activity, but a lot of times it's reaching for food and specifically like something carb or sugar heavy. And so then we're taught in our societies, oh, we just need to go for a diet. Right. And this is where now the term diet is like, I think it's so misused. Right. Like, like you said, like, I love when you said, one of your turning points in this was you said, I'm not going to diet anymore because you realize that the diet itself was what was perpetuating the cycle.

Yeah.

As you've explained over and over again, it's like the more we just chase after the diet where it's just going to land us right back where we started again, 100%.

Yeah.

So it's like, how do we, even though we've been brainwashed to think we're supposed to go on a diet to lose weight, how do we. And people, even, I find, will be very afraid to even set that aside. Right. If I set aside the diet, does that mean I'm going to gain weight more? How do you help people navigate that?

So, you know, so much of what we have to do is we have to really get rid of that idea of the diet culture deprivation, you know, eating less by hook or by crook because it won't last. 90% of all diets fail. And it's like, wouldn't it be nice if just a day at a time we pivoted, you know, and started focusing on self care instead of self control or self deprivation, you know, self care. And I, I teach something called the six self care success secrets, which are meditation, prayer, reading, spiritual literature, writing, talking, and walking. And at first I just, I don't even want people to do hard exercise because when you come from diet culture, you exercise for weight loss, you exercise for calorie burn. It's hard to get it out of your head that I'm going to burn so many calories when I'm exercising. And you know, I find that walking is one of those in between things. You're exercising, but you're being gentle on your body and you're not in that drive to lose weight. And so I think it's just really important that we realize that self care, like, again, this is part of making peace with ourselves, is that we have more balance in our lives where we're starting our day with some kind of morning routine that can reduce our stress. You know, I'm a daily meditator because the benefits are amazing. You know, it's like I lower my stress. I put. I like to call it Donnie, putting money in my spiritual bank account. So I make deposits in the morning with like, spiritual readings, meditation, prayer, walking, you know, just something that can fit. And you don't have to be religious to do this. It's just filling your cup, you know, in an, In a. With nourish, like spiritual nourishment. If it's walking in nature, it's like fill your cup first thing in the morning, you know, so that. Or fill your bank account if it were, you know, so later in the day as the stress piles up, you can make, you know, withdrawals, right? You. You're not on empty, you can make withdrawals. And, and because normally that's when we reach for chocolate, you know, and, and caffeine and other things is when we're depleted late in the day, we all get that slump, you know, no matter what. It's like you've added stress, you know, hour after hour throughout the day. And when I used to do those things, I now, you know, because I've put money in my spiritual bank account, I can take, I can, I'm in the block. Like, I can take some withdrawals to recharge. I do like meditation in the afternoon as well, short meditation so that I can recharge. And, and then I don't need the food for that. But that's all part of self care. Like, that's managing our stress. Like, I just traveled for like 10 days and I was, I went to three different cities and I was really tired afterwards. I thought, you know what? That probably wasn't the best choice. Like, I'm a little too. It's taking me several days to, to restore. And I'm like, you know what? That wasn't good self care. Like, that was too much. I'm 56 years old. Like, that's probably. I need to kind of like, do things differently next time. So, like, I've noted that, right? I'm not superwoman, and I don't want to use food to fuel me or drinks or whatever. So I'm going to have to change how I'm living again, focus on the living problem, not the eating problem, in order to heal.

I love that it's. Well, first of all, I love the use of self care. I also use the term, the acronym for care and I use it as C for clean eating, A for adequately, R for recovery activities, which are some of these activities you've just been mentioning. And E for exercise or movement. And it's, it is, it's so to me, I agree with you. It's so fundamental that when we can. And it takes practice and in fact I think really that our human existence is all about practicing our self care. Right. We have to, like you just used as an example, we have to put ourselves into experiences and be the observer and the incompassionate loving one to say, hey, I think I pushed myself a little too hard. Next time I plan travel, I'm going to do it slightly differently so that I can take better care of myself and make sure I'm getting the food I need when I need it and the sleep and the recovery activities so that I can get. Because it's not about doing nothing. Right?

It's not, we're not going to turn.

Off and avoid everything in our life. No, it's how do we do it in, in living our life.

Amen. Yeah, yeah. And it's like, you know, that's why the quick fix of diets is so alluring because we're like, oh, that's too much self care. That's too much work, you know. Well, 40 years of dieting is a lot of work too. Like we don't think about that. We're just focused on the diet in the moment. But we have sort of amnesia around all the other diets we've done and all the quick fixes that didn't fix anything. Right. So the, you know, the tortoise way of doing this, you know, and which is adopting self care habits, having community. Right. Community is very important for being able to make these changes that are kind of counterculture. Like slowing down and taking care of yourself is not exactly, you know, the, our cultural mantra. And so being around a community that is doing that is super important. But these are, you know, this is new for us. This is totally new for us. And, but it, but it's, it's, it's not a quick fix but it actually does fix things, you know, a day at a time. When we, like you said, it takes practice and we accumulate, you know, over time, accumulate days of doing this, our bodies will totally love us for it.

That's the cool thing, is when people start to really feel the difference and feel better and they're like, I can do this. It's working. And that's.

Yeah.

And then you get this momentum. But I want to come back to something you just mentioned related to community and that. What do you recommend for people when. When say, the people in their life are not understanding or onboard or especially say with holidays or events or times humans tend to over consume. What can people do to help navigate those situations?

It's hard. It's hard. You know, it does make people uncomfortable. If you're trying to eat clean and. And you say no to desserts. Right. Especially on Bessie's pie, let's say, or a special whatever, fondue, who cares.

Wedding. Yeah. So I literally, I just had a group call with clients and I literally said, you know, if you say no, first of all, no, thank you is your friend at holidays. No, thank you. Without explanation. Like, you do not have to explain yourself. I'm on a diet or I'm this new plan, or I just, you know, I just, I'm on this regimen. Like, just. You do not have to explain. You do not owe anybody expl. An explanation. No, thank you is enough. Like, no, thank you. Or I like to say, no, thank you, I'm good.

Because it's like, like, that's just all it needs to be said. I'm good. I am good. Right? So. So I just say, no, I'm good, thank you, or whatever.

Why? Sometimes people worry or they're like, are you okay? Or yeah, it's like, no, I'm good conversation.

Yeah, I've had enough. It's so simple. But if, you know, once in a while you get somebody who's just not satisfied when they'll thank you. Right? And they push. They're kind of like, oh, come on. They cajole and push. And I just finished saying this to my clients. Like, that's their stuff. That is not your responsibility. If they are uncomfortable with your saying no, it's their stuff that's making them push. Like they want you to eat so they feel okay eating right. That is not your job to take care of their feelings. Or they slaved making that piece of doesn't matter. They can deal with it. They can serve it to somebody else. It is not your job to eat pie for them, you know, so that they're happy and feel like they're. They're worth something, you know, and so much, especially as Emotionally, there's so much of the time we are taking extra responsibility or we're. We're taking responsibility for people's feelings. That's not ours to take. It's just not ours to take. We need boundaries. Like, it's not. We don't have to take care of people's feelings, you know, and when we're uncomfortable saying no, because feelings will come up when we say no. We can just sit through them. It lasts like maybe 30 seconds of people looking you and prodding you or whatever. Just don't think, you know, good to smile. Compliment them. It looks so good. Oh, my gosh. You must have worked so hard on. That looks amazing. Thank you. I'm good. I've had enough. And then let that be it, you know, but if you compliment them, it gets them off of your case a little bit faster too.

It's so good.

And I'm.

And I know that you're soon offering a quit sugar challenge. Tell us more about that. Like how, like, how is this helping people? What are you going to be doing in this challenge?

Yeah, so this is something I do once in a while because sugar was such a problem for me, you know, I was sugar and carbs. And of course, carbs metabolizes sugar in our bodies. So it was really. It was sugar when you all. When it comes down to it. And so sugar and flour, you know, carby foods. And so it helped me so much, Donnie, when I learned about all the places sugar hides in our foods, because I had quit sugar, but then I'd always gone back to it, you know, and then it'd be like, oh, how do I end up here again? I was doing so good. Well, part of the problem is that there are hidden sugars in so many of our foods. The manufacturers are doing it on purpose. They're literally, you know, calling sugar by different names. There's 80 plus names for sugar, so they're using different names for sugar. They're putting like five different kinds of sugar in the products because they have different names so you don't catch it. I mean, they're super sneaky and sneaky.

Sugar, it's like, oh, it's in the ketchup, it's in the salad dressing, it's in the bag.

Totally.

You know?

Yeah. So this is.

It's only when you look closely and you know all the different words that you even realize, oh, my gosh, I'm getting all this sugar. I didn't even realize.

Yeah. And so it's like you can self sabotage and not Even realize why. So this is literally five days of learning how to read the labels, how to, how to spot the other names for sugar. And then of course, we talk about like, yummy sugar substitutes like stevia, monk fruit, things that I find are God's gift to emotional eaters. Because I, because I love sweet. So I make great, like, you know, pumpkin pancakes. I make great, great foods, you know, that don't have any sugar in them but still are sweet and yummy. And so I give people recipes. We do, you know, we do sweet swaps. So, so we have like a lot of different days of sweet this and sweet swaps, you know, and sweet seduction. We talk about.

Sweet temptation. So emotional eating is definitely one of the classes where we talk about self sabotage. Sweet sabotage, that's what it is. So we talk about self sabotage on one of the days because that does get people into so much trouble. And, and so we go deeper than just learning how to quit sugar, because most people have quit sugar. Knowing how to read the labels is super important. But equally important is dealing with our emotional connection to sugar. Because you can say you want to quit sugar, but when sugar has been keeping you propped up for so long, when it's your major reward system, right? When it's the thing you think about for the whole afternoon until you get off of work so you can go get the thing you want to buy and go home and eat, there is an emotional connection as well to sugar. So we, we have morning mindset calls each day. So I address that mindset shift that people make. Because you can say, I want to quit sugar and then never show up because you're like, but I, how do I do that? I don't know how to live without it. I show you how to live without it. How you little. And again, part of that is the sweet swaps. Knowing that there are other ways to get your sweet that's not addictive. And I think people don't realize how addictive sugar is. So if you do end up eating it, either consciously or unconsciously because it's hidden in your food, you know, you've just blown it. And with all intentions of eating clean, you know, so there's a lot to cover. We cover it all. We do it in community. We have, we just have a lot of fun. We have prizes each day for the people to show up and play full out. There's a whole workbook that comes with it. It's just really, really sweet. So, yeah, I, I, if anybody has a sense that, you know, come January 1st they're going to need some support. This starts at the beginning of the year and it's a great thing to do.

Well, definitely share a link so everybody can go check it out and sign up to join you. Because that sounds especially like, I mean, just a great place to start. I find that with my patients, one of the best places to start that I always guide them is in their blood sugar balancing and this sugar addiction. Because if we're on this sugar roller coaster where like you're saying, sugar is so addictive and so we, we keep having it raises our blood sugar, then it dips and then we want more of it and we're on this roller coaster all day. And the sooner we can get off of that sugar roller coaster, the sooner we're going to be able to solve our health issues. And so I think it's a really brilliant place to start. So I'm so glad that you offer that. And one of the things I want to come back to is what I love is in all of your work, you are honoring the love of food still. And that food can taste good. Because I think that a lot of times with someone who's been in the diet culture and dealing with emotional and stress eating, there's this thinking that, oh, I can't just eat stuff that doesn't taste good or tastes like cardboard or, you know, or am I, how am I supposed to not love food? And I think what you're saying is you don't have to not love food. You can still love food and you can still eat food that tastes good, but it doesn't have to be taking control of your life.

Yeah, absolutely. No, I still love food. I enjoy food. I just do it in a way that I don't get triggered or I'm not in self sabotage because I'm eating hidden sugars that are making me crave. Because sugar is so addictive that if it is in your food, you don't know it, you're going to end up craving, eating sweet things, you know, or sugary things. And it's, it can take you down the road you don't want to go down, you know, even with the best of intentions.

Yes, absolutely true. And I, you're reminding me because in my path also in my personal journey, I've, I've worked through some of these things and it's so great listening to you because I'm like, oh, yeah, I remember when I had that realization or when I made that shift for myself and how much of a difference it made for me. And my relationship with food over time. And so I'm really, it's so, it's wonderful because I can, I can see how much you're helping people and how much of a difference this can make for someone. Not just in there, even in, in, just related to weight, body weight. Of course it can, it can definitely help with body weight, you know, if that's a concern for someone. But it can make a huge difference in all different health issues from anxiety and depression to autoimmunity to digestive issues to even chronic infections. And one of the things I work with is chronic HPV for women. All of these things benefit from.

Finding a loving way to feed ourselves. And so I really want to acknowledge and honor you for the work you do and how, how amazing that is for people.

Thank you so much. I appreciate that. It is so true. Like I will say about the, you know, what might come up for somebody is I don't want to deprive myself, you know, and it's like you, like you just mentioned all these different things that come from eating foods that don't support our health. You know, I always say to people, let's do a reframe on deprivation. Like, what are you really depriving yourself of? Like chronic fatigue, you know, inflammation, prediabetes, low energy. Right. Depression, anxiety. Like, I think I would like to deprive myself of those things.

Yeah. So it is these, these shifts and it's like we have to put it out in front of us and really see what's really the truth and then, and then shift our perspective and start, start living and practicing a different way of, of relating to our, our food and our, and like you said, it's a, it's really our, our daily routine in general and so powerful. Oh my gosh. It's so wonderful to talk with you today. Thank you so much for joining me, Trisha. And thank you to share about your 5 day quit sugar challenge and for people to get even more benefit from your, your wisdom.

Thank you. It's been great to be here. I love you. I love your message and how you support people. And I'm excited to have you on the heal your hunger show next week.

I'm excited.

I can't. Thank you. Take care.

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