The Hidden Causes of Emotional Eating and How to Overcome Them

Hi everybody, I'm Dr. Sanda Moldovan, periodontist and nutritionist. Welcome to the Holistic Dentistry Podcast, the show that gives you the tips and tools to detoxify your mouth for a healthier body as we explore together the root cause of disease. Remember, you're not healthy until your mouth is healthy, so take care of it in the most natural way. Hi everyone, welcome to another episode on The Holistic Dentistry Show. I'm very excited to talk to Tricia Nelson today, who is an emotional eating expert and TEDx speaker whose talk has garnered over 2 million views on YouTube. She is the author of the number one bestselling book, Heal Your Hunger: 7 Simple Steps to End Emotional Eating Now. You also have a podcast, Tricia, the Heal Your Hunger Show. And you yourself— I am, by the way, welcome to the show.

Well, thanks for having me. Happy to be here.

Yeah, I'm excited to talk about overeating and what are the solutions for it, because, you know, I've been there, especially in moments of stress. You know, I tend to grab a bag of chips and go ahead and eat it. In the dental world, when we have people that are overeating, And overeating, let's say a lot of processed foods, that creates a lot of inflammation. And we see it. We see an increase in periodontal disease and increase in cavities, especially when people are binging on sugary foods. So my goal with this episode is really to have you explain a little bit, well, how can people beat this? Because a lot of people think there's no hope. It's just, they have to, it's just who they are and they have to continue like this. And I'm hoping you can shed some light on this topic.

Absolutely. I was in that hopeless place one time, too, so I get that, but there's definitely a solution.

Yeah, so let's talk about that. I mean, you lost 50 pounds by identifying and healing your underlying cause of why you were overeating. So tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah, so as far back as I can remember, I was definitely an overeater and a binge eater. Like, I just loved sugar and processed carbs and popcorn and, you know, baked goods and, and all this kind of thing. And so, and I thought that was the end of it. Like, I'm like, I like to, I just like food, you know? And, but I, I did have a weight issue from, from pretty early on in my life. And I remember one day my sister came home and she announced that she was an emotional eater. And I thought, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. So I didn't relate to it at all. You know, I'm like, I just like food. Like, that's all there is to it. But then when you hear something, it's hard to unhear it, you know? And I started to observe my behaviors and like, I'd be hanging out with my girlfriends and we'd go to like a Denny's type place or whatever. I was from the Northeast, so it was Friendly's back there. But they'd like, they'd have a sandwich and it would come with fries and they'd eat their sandwich and pick up their fries. And I'd look at them like they were strange, you know, cuz I'm like, I wanna eat the fries and maybe I'll get around to the sandwich, you know, because the French fries were the best part. And so I started to observe that I was a little bit different than some of my friends. And if I took the lid off of a pint of ice cream, I never put the lid back on. Like I ate the whole pint. So I had definitely overeating tendencies. And it, it took time for me to realize that there was some emotional motivations there that were totally not conscious. You know, we don't think I'm gonna eat this and it's gonna take care of my emotional self. I mean, it's like you say, we stress, we know about stress eating, but we don't really think, oh, it's emotional. But I did see, especially when I tried to diet and I would put the weight back on time and time again, like I would lose weight and gain it back. And I was on this yo-yo dieting cycle. And that's really when I started to say, you know, there's gotta be something better because I just do it over and over. I'd like on this treadmill and it's like, I know I don't get anywhere. Like I, I'm dieting like all the time. I'm a chronic dieter and nothing changes. And I had about 5 different pairs of pant, like sizes of pants in my closet cuz I never knew what size I was gonna be cuz I was always going up and down the scale. And I was embarrassed about my binge eating, which typically happened when nobody was around, like at night, uh, in front of the TV where I'd plan to eat just a little bit, right? Like some of the chips, not all of the chips, or some of the cookies, not all the cookies, but I just kept going. And then I was horrified. I'm like, oh my God. I'd look at like the remains. I'd be like, I ate the whole thing. And so it was really—

you feel bad about it, you, you know, like, shame.

Oh my God. And I thought I was like the worst person in the world. And in my TEDx talk, I talk about like throwing out the remains. Like, like, I was so stuffed, I'd feel so sick, and I'd throw out the rest. If there's anything left, I'd throw it out. Me, like, never eating this again, that's disgusting. And then I'd fall asleep like on the couch or something, you know, late night TV and I'd fall asleep. And then a couple hours later I'd have a little bit more room in my tummy and I'd go looking for the cook— I'd be like dumpster diving for the cookies in my own house. And, and then I, I was like, I am the worst person in the world. Like nobody's ever done this. And then I did a TEDx talk where I talk about it, you know, and turns out lots of people have done that. It's crazy. So that isolation and that feeling like you're the worst person in the world, you're the only one who has done this thing that just compounds. Doesn't challenge the problem and it makes it even worse where you just are, are stuck on in the cycle because you're like shaming yourself, shaming yourself, you know? And if you have weight on your body, your body shaming yourself. Like I just was, I had this roll in my tummy that I would scrunch up in my hands and I'd wanna cut it off because it was just like this fat, you know? And so thank God I didn't try that, but I just, I hated like the excess weight that I carried. And so Anyway, fast forward, I tried lots of diets. I tried lots of things and nothing worked for me for any real length of time. And what happened for me is I did— I met somebody who, who talked about it not being about the food. Like he would say, it's not about the food and it's not even about the weight. In fact, he said overweight is a symptom of overeating and overeating is a symptom of what's eating you. And yeah, and so I, I heard that and it, it, it hit me in my heart. Like I knew it was true. Like I knew there was like deeper motivation for why I was eating. I was already in therapy. I was going to eating disorders therapy for like twice a week for a year. So it's not like I needed more therapy. I needed to really identify like my relationship. I had to address and heal my relationship with food and the motivators and and they weren't so mysterious as I thought they were. And so that's how I got help, and I was able to keep the weight off, and it's been decades now, and I just— it's turned into my passion for helping people. Actually, the man who mentored me, we worked together to help people for years. And then about 8 years ago, I founded Heal Your Hunger, which is an online way of helping people to a whole program and modules and group meetings on Zoom and coaching and that kind of thing. But it's a really beautiful step-by-step process to heal causes and to just have a healthier relationship with food. So wherever somebody is, whether they're like an all-out binge eater, sugar addict, bulimic, whatever it is somebody's doing, like their aberrant behaviors with food, doesn't really matter. Like, it's— and it sometimes transmutes itself into different ways of dealing with food or obesity or whatever. But, you know, when we really start— you know, when we get off the diet track and stop trying to say, should I be keto, should I be intermittent fasting, or should I do this or that, and start really having that deep conversation, which does have a lot to do with stress, you know, and the way we're living our life, then we can begin to feel more peaceful around food. We're not compelled to eat or compelled to overeat.

Makes sense. So this program that you— do you go through a process of discovery? Do you find the emotions are very deeply linked, or is it some from childhood that pops up? Or when does this emotional eating really set in? Is it at a young age typically, or it can set in later on?

It can be all over the map, but typically it is younger. For somebody who's chronically dieting, like they have been on the roller coaster ride forever. And it takes its toll, you know, up and down the scale will take its toll on our bodies, definitely on our teeth, you know, as well. And people are typically overeating, like you said, on processed foods and sugars. It's not salad we're binging on, you know, or craving.

Yeah, it's never— it's never vegetable or protein even.

No, no, no.

Exactly.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it's the crappy foods that destroy our bodies fastest. And so, but the thing is, you know, for most people it has been a lifelong struggle, and that's typically the kind of people I help who have been on that ride. But sometimes it's when menopause, you know, perimenopause sets in, you know, and hormones are, are acting wild, they can act up there and then. But my experience is that there's definitely In our childhood, we definitely set up the pattern, meaning food becomes a way of coping with our feelings and with things that are happening. Like if we do have trauma in our past, if we had a dysfunctional home or there's alcoholism or abuse of some kind, you know, it's e— kid, you don't have a lot of options. Like you don't, like, where do you go? Typically you don't talk to your Parents, you keep it a secret and then like you just reach for what's available. And when you're young, that's food. Like it's pretty much garbage food. It's not like you can go score drugs, you know, at a super young age. So, so people are using food to just take the edge off, to, to just make themselves feel better. And for those who don't relate to the term emotional eating, the simplest way of describing it is you eat to change your mood or to feel better. Like you just eat to feel better. Like, you know, it has nothing to do with your real hunger, your physical hunger. It's an emotional hunger. You just want to feel better and food, it works. Like the crazy thing is it does work. Like it temporarily, it like kills the pain. It softens the edges of life. When life feels hard, it does comfort us. And so it's an easy pattern to slip into. And, and everybody does it, like everybody does it now and then. Okay. But for those who do it often, and then they start to have physical ramifications, emotional ramifications, and it's like, it's a habit that's stuck to them and they can't course correct. Like I have a quiz on my website, which helps people understand where they are on the spectrum of emotional eating. Cause I. Be like, we all do it. We all have a, like, we all can get comfort from food, you know? So it's like, where are you on the spectrum? On the low end is emotional eating, kind of just now and then. The high end is food addiction, where it is, and it's, and it's an addictive habit. Like, you're doing it even when you don't want to, right? You, you can't stop yourself. Or even though your doctor tells you you're gonna be diabetic if you keep it up, or you need to cut out like your gut, you got autoimmune issues, you've got to cut out gluten, but you keep eating pizza. You know, it's like, it's like you do it to your detriment, even though you know better. And that's the hardest thing. It's like we say to ourselves, I know better. Why did, why did I do that? I know better. You know, and people listening to your show, they're, they're health conscious, right? They're health conscious. They're clued in. And it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you're a health coach or doctor or whatever. It's no respecter of position or race or income. Like, we do it in spite of knowing better. Most people who, who have this, like, they're more in the addictive phase, they've read so many books trying to fix themselves, they could write one themselves, you know? And does it matter? No, because it's not head knowledge that's going to change us, even though it's sexy. It's like, let me read this next book, like, this book has the answer. But most diets out there, they all basically say the same thing, like, eat healthy proteins, and fats and, you know, slow metabolizing carbs and less processed, the better. And it doesn't matter what we know. It's when push comes to shove, when we're stressed out, when we have that monster growling inside, that's like, feed me, feed me, then, then we eat anyway. And so that's to me where we have to go is what's creating, like, what's feeding that monster? Like, where's that compulsion to eat and spite of knowing better come from. And that's really where I live, is helping people change how they're living so that that monster gets tamed. And then nowadays they're doing it through medication. But my— I didn't use medication. My experience is it can be done. It's not a medication deficit that you actually can do it.

It's not an Ozempic deficit, huh?

It is not. It is not, you know, and it's not to say those are bad things, but I know from my personal experience, that's what I have to go on. And the experience of I've helped, you know, I've been blessed to have helped over like 1,000 people heal their relationship with food. So I know it can be done in a natural way. But it's, you know, it's not a quick fix. Like, you have to make changes. You know, it's just like having healthy teeth, like, and gums. You do have to change to change the way you're doing things. And so I just teach people to work instead of working hard on their diet, because we've all done that. We pivot and we work hard on our life. Like, we, we start looking at our, our emotional life, our stress, you know, how we're caring for ourselves or not. Because that's, to me, that's the crux of the problem. It's very much a lack of self-care issue. It's like we burn the candle at both ends. We're so busy. We're on the go all the time. Like, we have no relationship with ourselves. Ourselves. We're not taking care of ourselves, and it shows up in how we eat. We're eating on the go, grabbing things that are not healthy for us, eating late at night in front of the television because we're exhausted, or we're trying to do intermittent fasting, and then when our window opens up, we just can't stop. It's like there's a lot around how we're living that needs to be addressed. And that's really what I help people do, because that'll absolutely directly impact how people eat and what their cravings are.

Is there more to emotional eating than eating too much and eating for emotional reasons?

Yeah. What I really help people do, and in my book, I talk about the anatomy. I call it the anatomy of the emotional eater. And this is basically 24 personality traits that make up the emotional eater's personality. That has nothing to do with food. It's a great question because it's like, oh, somebody broke up with me, I'm going to eat Ben Jerry's. But it's so much deeper than that. And my experience is, and I've been doing this work for over 30 years, is that there's really a personality profile of people who chronically struggle with food and weight. And again, Ozempic doesn't address this. Like, I'll give you an example, like the top trait of an emotional eater, stress eater, is people pleasing. And we are like, yeah. And we're like doing everything for everybody. We're like always saying yes to the extra project or the extra whatever obligation. And we take it on because we want to be liked. We want to be liked. We want to be validated. And it comes at a very high price. So we're not good with boundaries on our time. We're not, again, we're not good at taking care of ourselves. We think self-care is selfish. So we're like, sure, I'll do it. And sure, I'll bake the brownies for the soccer team, even though I have to be up till midnight doing it. Sure, I'll take that extra project at work. And the problem is that— and we don't ask for help. We're terrible at asking for help because we kind of have this martyr complex. And so anyway, what does that have to do with food? Well, the problem is when we do that, we're exhausted, spent. Our adrenals are spent. And we have no time in our schedule for ourselves. And then what happens is that not only are we spent, we're super resentful because we're like, nobody's helping. Like, I'm doing all of it, even though we volunteered for it. I'm doing all of it and poor me. And then we like, nobody even appreciates us. Like, I'm doing all this and I barely get a thank you. Like, people take me for granted again, cuz I volunteered, but that's details, you know. And so, so basically, we're pissed off. And between being exhausted all the time, having no time for ourselves, and then having this kind of like seething cauldron of resentment inside of us that we're trying to keep down, which food is really good for keeping that resentment at bay so we don't notice it. But this is how we end up having the I deserve it binge, like, screw them, I'm going to reward myself, right? So it's an example, Dr. Sanda Moldovan, of how It's like got nothing to do with food. And yet it's how we're living. That's driving our need to be up at night eating popcorn. And yet we don't make that connection. We're just looking for the next, the next fix. And we're not doing anything about our life and the problem with diets. And the reason why 98% of all diets fail is because we are not, we're not given any tools when we have a diet, we're given no tools for how to change the real issues. Like, we have to start living differently. We're just running from diet to diet or medication to medication. And the truth is, if we don't go deeper and deal with that, it'll come out somewhere else. Like, you can lose weight, but it's not going to make you happy like you think it will, and you will go back up the scale, guaranteed.

Yeah, well, that's what happens with a lot of the Ozempic patients. The moment they stop the Ozempic medication, the scale goes right back up because they haven't dealt with the root of the per— the root cause.

Yeah, nothing has changed. It's another quick fix, and I understand it's, it's very seductive. I mean, I've been fat and I've been thin's better, so I, I understand it intimately, but I still have to like keep beating the drum of you've got to change. Like, you got to change how you relate with food. Food cannot be your lover and your best friend and your stress reliever, boredom fix. It's like you have to let food just be nourishment and not your everything. And you have to have new tools for dealing with stress, new tools for dealing with sadness, you know, new tools for dealing with loneliness. Because we just— it's always food. Food's the go-to. And that's how we set up this really unhealthy habit.

Is that something that people learn in your program, the tools to deal with these other things?

100%. Like, my clients are learning— like, they're learning to relate with food totally different. They stop snacking, they stop grazing. I don't give people a diet, but I do recommend 3 meals a day with nothing in between. So your body has time to start digesting, and so you can start knowing what the hell you're feeling, right? Because we're so accustomed to putting something in our mouth the minute we feel uncomfortable, the minute something goes awry in our life, it's like, what could I eat? And so we're not really— we're not adept at just being, like, being. So I teach people meditation, which is really hard for people. One another trait of the anatomy of the emotional eater is having a racing mind. Like, we're not just overeaters, we're overthinkers, and our mind is going all the time, right? And that's why carbs are so good, because they give us that little serotonin boost or relaxer. The problem is though, again, nothing's been fixed. So I teach people how to calm their mind, how to settle down, how to like write out their feelings so it's not stuck inside of them driving 'em nuts. So again, it's, they're new tools and they're, I didn't make them up. It's not rocket science, but my experience is it's really hard in our fast-paced world to, to, to meditate. Like it's hard to meditate. It's hard to take time to process emotions in a healthy way. But I do all my, all my, like everybody in my program, we have groups, like, so we do everything in groups. We have private coaching as well, but the groups are so good because people support each other in changing their habits and their hard habits. You know, to me, having an addictive habit with food is like the hardest because you have to eat. Like alcohol, you can put the plug in the jug and you're good to go. Not that it's easy. Yeah. I'm just saying you can abstain completely. Whereas with food, you can't, like, you have to eat. So it's trickier, which means you have to get better at these tools. So we do it in, in community. And it's hard too when you have this problem because people look at us and are like, just eat less and exercise more. What's the big deal? But for some of us, you know, again, I recommend people take that quiz because when you take that quiz and you're, you're on the higher end of the spectrum, you'll know you can't just eat less and exercise more if you're in the food addiction kind of. And that's just a word. But, but the fact is, when you're on the higher end of that spectrum, you'll get a personalized score if you take the quiz. And the higher end of the spectrum, you can't just eat less and exercise more and you can't moderate. People are always like, just take just 'One cookie.' No, I didn't, didn't ever eat one cookie. I ate the whole sleeve. And then I was looking for Doritos because you have to have salty with your sweet. Just turned into this big mess. So, but the point is we're around people who are normal with food and they're giving us advice or they've never been fat. It's hard to take advice from a skinny mini when you're obese. It's kind of like, how would you know? So it's really important to be around people who understand the problem, have been, right, have been in our shoes and have overcome it. And that's a special, like, that's kind of the secret sauce is having a formula, like a very specific step-by-step process. So my clients go through a very specific process and it's not nebulous, like do mindful eating or intuitive eating. I mean, intuitive eating, to be honest, I always intuited I should eat. Like, I'm like, I intuitively think I should eat the ice cream, you know? So don't start from me.

It's the thing is, how do people know, right? People are going to say, well, I'm hungry all the time. That's why I'm snacking and grazing all day because I'm just hungry. So how do people differentiate between emotional eating and physical hunger?

Well, the 3 meals a day is really helpful because if you're— and people are fasting or skipping meals, you're all over the place and you can't decipher. It's hard. It's hard to know the difference. But if you get on a regular schedule of eating, like eating 3 meals and not snacking in between, which is harder than it sounds. It sounds like, oh yeah, that's how my mom used to feed me. It was kind of simple. But it's not easy because we're used to snacking and just we see food and we eat it. Right.

And so it's food everywhere. We live in a society. Food every day.

But if you confine it to 3 meals and you have space, like 4 or 5 hours between each meal, and you have some hunger, then you start to like be able to consider what's going on. And, and I will to this day, sometimes I'm hungry, I'm like, I'm so hungry. And then I have a little conversation with myself. I'm like, really? Like, are you really hungry? Like, you had a healthy breakfast. It's 10:00 AM. You ate your breakfast at 7. You're going to eat lunch at 12. Like, are you really starving the way you're convincing yourself you are? And I have to reason with myself. No, I ate a healthy meal. I'm probably not starving and I probably can wait an hour and a half, 2 hours. But if I didn't have the regularity of real meals that I was making and I was all over the map because I was starving or doing this, that, the other different mass machinations around food. I would be erratically eating and not, you know, where the real hunger is physically. So I just recommend that regularity of eating so that you can start to tune in with yourself. And it does take getting conscious. When we're used to, again, that habit of just eating all the time because something looks good, we have to start really questioning and being in the curiosity of, is it really physical? I'm eating really healthy meals 3 times a day, probably not physical. And then I, it, what's going on? And honestly, if I have to do my taxes or make a really hard phone call, all of a sudden I'm hungry. You know, it's like all of a sudden I'm thinking I need to eat, but it's not, it's just fear. Like I'm afraid, I'm uncomfortable. So it's just, but it's like that takes, that's a new language, a new language of asking ourselves, what am I really hungry for? That takes time. It takes kind of getting to know yourself and you have to have other tools to be able to do that, you know, and have a place for your emotions so that the emotions aren't driving the cravings.

Yeah. I mean, why do we crave sweets and carb-rich foods, you know, when, when it's a stressful situation?

Yeah, I, I certainly always did. And, and my experience is they work, right? They work temporarily. They, they kind of take the pain away. They soften the edges of hard things. And also we have to acknowledge sugar is physically addictive, like it is physically addictive. So if you eat sugar at all, it's, you know, chances are if you are sensitive to it, like the sugar is craving more sugar and processed carbs, right? Metabolizes sugar in our body. So that's sugar too. We don't think of it. If it's bread, we don't think of it as sugar, but it's metabolizing as sugar in our body. Bloodstream. So it's really important that we know and really acknowledge that sugar is physically addictive. And sometimes it's easier to not eat it at all than to try to eat a little bit of it. In my personal experience as a sugar addict, a self-diagnosed sugar addict, so sometimes it's just so much easier for me to not eat it and use substitutes like stevia or monk fruit. Just, I like sweet. I still have a sweet tooth. It's just that I don't use sugar because it will grab a hold of me and I'll be looking for more of it.

Yes, absolutely. Because of the physical properties that it has to make you crave more. And that's what the problem is with some of the food in this country. I find we put way too much sugar in the food. And so many of the foods have hidden sugar, right? So it's automatically because I think the food industry wants us to be addicted to food.

100%. You know, my partner's from the Netherlands, and when he came over to the US years ago, he's like running around trying to find normal bread. He's like, the bread is like cake. He's like, they put sugar in regular, like, bread. It's disgusting. They don't do that in the Netherlands, you know? So it's, it's, it is. We're so used to everything being sweet that it doesn't, somehow it doesn't taste right if it doesn't have sugar in it, which is a very, very sad situation.

It is. So not only like we have to deal with the emotional part of things with you can help us with, but now, you know, we have to start reading the label to know exactly what we're taking. Yeah.

Yeah. I actually do something twice, twice a month called— I mean, twice a year called the Quit Sugar Challenge. And, and that I do teach people how to read labels and how to like really sidestep the trap of all the manufacturers putting sugar and stuff because there's like 80+ names for sugar. Like it's— they're like hiding it. They're like calling it by other names. They're putting 4 different kinds of sugar in even healthy foods, thinking like— and that way they can pack more sugar in if they just call it different things. It's really, really, really stealthy.

It's, it's, it is like some of the health— they call health bars or nutritional bars, you know, and you look at it, it's like the same sugar amount as a candy bar. So it's like, why is it called that? So it's just the marketing. So it's really, we have to be really educated. We have to follow you on one of these sugar challenges. That sounds great. It's all totally in line with holistic dentistry because eating a healthful diet that's low in sugar is so beneficial for oral health.

Absolutely.

Process of, you know, people, let's say, go through your program, they get healthier. What is one of their biggest causes of self-sabotage.

Yeah, self-sabotage is tough. It's like, I think we all know about it, and, and especially people who do struggle with overeating, especially. And I was doing so well, like, I was doing so well until— like, I hear that all the time. And oh my God, if I heard— if I had a dollar for every time people were like, in the pandemic, they're like, I was doing so well until the pandemic hit, then I couldn't go to my gym. Then my schedule was off. I was stockpiling food. You know, this was so bad. You know, but to me it's really because people don't have a way. Like if you just take away, think about diets, you take away all your favorite foods, all that, which to me was like the ooey gooey chewy foods. You take that away and off the table, then you have no way. When food is your coping mechanism, like that's how you cope. And we learned that when we were young and didn't have a lot of options. Then when life strikes, when stress strikes, when hard times come and they do come, right? Death happens or moving from state to state or, you know, whatever, lose a job, it's going to happen. And if you don't have a strong foundation of how to be like processing your emotions in a healthy way, which doesn't— it's not that hard. It's just unfamiliar with people who have never really had the right tools. But when you have the right tools, then you can sidestep the trap. But if you don't have those right tools and you take food away, which is your primary tool, then when, you know, trouble comes, you're going right back to it because it's what you know, it's what's familiar, it's what works temporarily. And, and you, you absolutely have to replace that food, that excess food, all the ooey-gooey chewy foods. You have to find and have a toolkit of better tools, tools that really work, you know, and I teach people meditation, prayer, like reading spiritual literature. I call it putting money in your spiritual bank account, like having a morning routine where you get still and quiet and centered, you know, which again, it's just not the way we're wired. We're wired to just jump outta bed, react to stress, pick up the phone, watch the news, the negative news. And we're not taking time to like find our inner resource. Like just really put money in your spiritual bank account that you can spend throughout the day. If you don't put that money in first thing in the morning, you're in the red all day long, reaching for coffee and sugar to keep you going. So to me, it's, it's really the fact that we don't have the tools and the sabotage comes when we are like, I have to, like, I have to do something. And the food is our go-to and we always justify it with, oh, I'm just gonna have one. I'm just going to have one, right? So when you need it, then you justify having it. Just going to have one. I'll get back on track tomorrow. This doesn't matter. You know, I mean, we have these little lies that we tell ourselves, which are self-sabotaging thoughts. And it does, it takes us right down the rabbit hole.

Like, what are the most common emotions that cause emotional eating?

So many emotions, right? We have, As humans, we go through a lot of different emotions. So what I've done is I have kind of simplified it into 3 primary emotions that drive emotional eating. And I call it the PEP test so people can check in with themselves and say, is it this? Is it this? Is that— so the PEP test, PEP is an acronym, P-E-P, and the first P stands for painkiller. So to me, the emotion is kind of the umbrella emotion is just pain. I mean, that's not— is that an emotion? I don't know. It's painful emotions, meaning it's— and really it's just uncomfortable emotions. But like I said, something happens, you get rejected, you lose a job, right? You get a bill you weren't expecting. These are emotions that are, that feel painful in the moment and we don't want to feel them. So we eat to kill the pain. It's literally an anesthetic, the sugar and the carbs, back to those. Go-to for, you know, those go-to foods, they do kill the pain temporarily, where we're numb, we're just numbed out. And so that's the first thing. The second, my experience, the E in PEP stands for escape. And what we're escaping from, in my experience, because as overeaters, we're overthinkers, we're trying to escape honestly, from our negative talk, like negative self-talk, scary self-talk. Like, so I— it's the umbrella, uh, emotion is fear. Okay. Like we awfulize, we think of the worst case scenario. Like, I'm gonna be— like, I lost my job, I'm gonna be homeless. Like, I'm gonna be homeless, I'm gonna be on the street, I can't feed my kids, you know. So we go down into this tailspin of negative emotions and we typically eat just to escape our emotions. Like, we just don't want to be inside our heads. So I would definitely binge foods. I'd sit in front of the TV and I would check out. I'd just be like, like, just leave me alone for a little while. Plus we have a lot of responsibility, typically overly responsible. We're taking on other people's responsibilities because we're people pleasers and caretakers. But anyway, we wanna escape our own brain cuz our brains are extremely busy. So, yeah. Right. So that's the E in escape. And then the P, the last P in the PEP, I mean, the E escape is, um, it's painkiller, escape, and then punishment. And, um, which is sort of counterintuitive because we don't think of food as a punishment. We think of it as a reward, but you know, when we go overboard and we stuff ourselves and we feel terrible and then our pants don't fit, it's like, That's not exactly a reward. Like we're actually doing that to ourselves actively. It's like, what's going on there? You know, in my experiences, we're not just overeaters, but we're overfeelers. And my experience is we tend to feel guilty really easily and beat ourselves up. So overeaters are typically so hard on themselves. Like, why did I do that? Why did I say that? I should have done it this way. Super perfectionistic. I can't do anything right, you know, and we just, we have this really negative talk and like beat ourselves up with food. Like we're not just beating ourselves up with our negative self-talk, but we follow it with unhealthy decisions that make us feel bad. And then it's like, oh, okay. Like I just did that to myself. But it's really, it's again, we don't say I'm going to eat the whole pint of ice cream to punish them, punish myself. It's like, oh, I love this. Ice cream. But when we look at our behavior, it begs the question, why would I do that to myself? And then we have to just do some digging. And it's just, we're just not used to doing that. We're not used to looking beyond the food. The food and the weight, they're symptoms. We have to go deeper. We have to get to the root causes. And it's uncomfortable emotions that typically we're just unconscious to. But if you start to be in conversation, ask yourself these questions when you're with people who are in, like, doing this deeper work where they're asking the right questions. It's like a new language. You learn the language and you learn, like, oh, yeah, I'm feeling bad. I just didn't know it before because I just ate. I was just all about the chocolate.

Yeah, that's true. And I know we have some people that are listening to this thing. Oh, my God, this resonates with me. Am I an emotional eater? What if I am? What do I do? So what are the 3 things that you recommend a person to do to end emotional eating?

Well, I definitely would recommend taking the quiz on my website. It's free. It takes like 3 minutes to take the quiz. My website's healyourhunger.com. Take the quiz because that'll be a good first step to determine where you are on the spectrum. Definitely. Another thing is you know, take a good honest look at how you're living. Like, are you stressed out and running from appointment all the time without any time for yourself to the point where you don't even have time for healthy eating? Like you're just grabbing things on the go. Like we have to make changes. We cannot be doing, doing, doing without having breakdown, you know, breakdown in our health, mentally, physically, you know, emotionally. So so definitely taking a look at our stress level and making some changes, which might just be like getting some help, like having some other people, like delegate, delegate some tasks in your family. Stop trying to do it like alone, like get some support or hire somebody to do part of the chores in your house, you know, but definitely it's a small price if you consider the cost of stress and being stressed out. I mean, putting the overeating aside, we can't live in a high state of stress without our bodies breaking down. So it's a small price to enlist help with your life, to actually be able to delegate some things. Um, so that's really important. And then I would also say that, um, you know, getting support— if people don't want to get help with their food issue because they're They're, they think it's silly. They're like, oh my God, like how pathetic am I that I need to hire somebody to help me eat healthy? You know? Mm-hmm. And so especially when we have emotional eating, we're so judgmental of ourselves. Like, oh, there's something wrong with me. No, it's like the hardest of all addictive habits. So it stands to reason you're gonna need help with it, especially if you've been dealing like with it, battling it for 10+ years. Like chances are you're gonna need some support. We have no issues hiring a trainer when we go to the gym, knowing it'll help us stay accountable and we'll do the hard workout when somebody's standing over us, like supporting us, cheering us on. But when it comes to food, oh no, I got it. I got it. I'm good. I'll figure it out. It doesn't happen. It just doesn't happen.

Dr. Sanda Moldovanovan: After the 20F diet, exactly. They're still bouncing back. It's like a yo-yo. Uh, they're still overweight. It's like, at what point, you know, let's say you try 3 or 4 diets, maybe it's time to actually, uh, work with someone to help deal with the issues at the root cause. For sure. Yeah. So, Tricia, this was so enlightening. Thank you very much. We're going to put the links down below in our show notes for your emotional eating free quiz at healyourhunger.com. You also have a book on Amazon for those who want to learn more about some of the things that some of the tools for emotional eating. And we're going to put your Instagram tag for people that want to follow you on Instagram and look out for that challenge that you mentioned.

Yeah.

You know, get rid of sugar challenge. Any last comment before we close?

Well, I would just say, you know, to people, like, you deserve to feel healthy and happy and good in your body. Like, you don't have to struggle and you don't have to diet. Like, you don't have to struggle. Like, my experience is we have to pivot from trying to fix the food problem to starting to live differently, you know, with support. And it makes all the difference. And the food problem takes care of itself. It's not like we have to put all this hard work and effort into it, which anybody who's been on a dieting roller coaster ride has been doing. And it's exhausting because it's not— it's not really fixing anything. And so then we just give up, you know, and it doesn't have to be that way.

Yes, it doesn't. So if for those of you out there who think you might have an emotional eating issue, take the quiz and follow Tricia Nelson. She has amazing information. And with that, uh, thank you everyone for joining us in today's show. Join us next week for another great episode. Thank you so much for joining me this week. Please make sure you check out the show notes for any links mentioned in the show. If you'd like today's show, please invite your friends to listen as well. That would mean a lot to me. Do you have a question you'd like me to answer? Message me on Instagram @DrSandaMoldovan. This is Dr. Sanda Moldovan, and remember, your mouth is the gateway to your health, so take care of it in the most natural and best way possible.