Heal Your Hunger with Tricia Nelson LIVE on Thrive Time with Eric Edmeades

Sam. Foreign. Hey, hello, everybody. It's Eric Edmeads, back with another episode of thrivetime. I'm so very excited to be here with you, as I always am. And today we're going to be talking about something that is absolutely very core to who I am. As many of you will know, my entire mission around creating WildFit has been to help people radically and completely change their relationships with food. And so today's episode is going to be talking a lot about exactly that. How to cope with hunger while you're during the pandemic, how you're dealing with food during the lockdown, how to make sure you can end up being healthier at the end of this than less healthy. And so I'm really, really excited that today we're going to be talking with Tricia Nelson. And so we're going to get started in just a. Foreign. So here we are with thrivetime, and our guest today is Trisha Nelson, who has just been doing incredible work in the space of helping people cope with their hunger in a normal world, and that has never become more important than it is today. She's written a number of powerful books and been helping people for a long time to really master this issue. And now more than ever, this has become incredibly important as the science is getting more and more clear. We're beginning to see, as we've talked about on this show many times before, that COVID 19 may not be nearly as dangerous as it is, except for the fact that there's a lot of people dealing with a variety of metabolic issues and health issues and underlying what they call lifestyle issues. And of course, many of those things are related to food. And so today I am so happy to be inviting Trisha Nelson to the show. Tricia, thank you so so much for coming and being on the show with us today. I really appreciate you being here.

Thanks so much for having me. It's really a pleasure to be here.

Thank you very much. So, you know, listen, let's, let's talk. So I don't know how much, you know about what we do out in the world and my company, Wildfit, and that sort of stuff, but we are definitely on the same side fighting a very similar foe and with really big missions in the world. And it seems like you've really focused heavily on food psychology, which frankly to me is an unaddressed art by most of the world. One of our favorite expressions at WildFit is that nobody has ever failed a diet, ever, but that diets have consistently failed them. And it seems to me that looking at the work that you've done, you must have a sort of similar thought to that.

Absolutely. And I love the work that you do, and I'm totally on board. So my experience is I was 50 pounds overweight, and I struggled with emotional eating. And so the diets I tried never worked for me because I was an emotional eater. And so even though I knew what to eat, I knew it was healthy. I couldn't follow through with what I knew because I had this emotional draw to food. And it wasn't until I addressed that that I really was able to get to the bottom of my weight problem and live in a thin body finally.

You know, you and I have such a similar journey. I didn't quite have £50 to lose. I believe I lost about 35. But what I had to lose on top of losing 35 pounds was I had lifelong allergies that I'd been fighting with. I had digestive challenges. I mean, the way I often put it to people is that I was so sick that I didn't even know I was sick. You know, like it had been happening for so long that I didn't even register it as painful anymore. It was more my parents that saw me sniffling all the time and, you know, scratching at my throat and all that stuff that finally made me go see doctors all the time. But, you know, I. What blew my mind was that in all the visits I ever had with doctors, with all the consultations that I'd had and all that kind of stuff, what really blew my mind was finding out that nutrition is not nutrition nor food psychology are required in medical education. In other words, doctors pour their heart and soul into getting this incredible education because they want to help people. And yet the education system is set up to not have them study food. I bet you. I'm sure you've bumped into that a fair bit. What are your thoughts on that? Talk to me about that.

Yeah, well, it's very tragically sad, of course, and that they really debunk a lot of what we're learning about foods. They're just sort of behind the times, unfortunately. And I think now people are catching up and functional medicine is becoming a thing. And so people are starting to really understand that we have a very, very intimate connection between what we put in our bodies and what the effects are, what our symptoms are. And I say to people, what you eat and how much you eat directly impacts, if not causes, whatever symptoms you have in your health. You know, and so that's why, you know, Diet is so, so vital in not only preventing problems, but also healing problems.

Yeah, no question about it. Let's get to some nitty gritty because here's, here's the funny thing. I was just on this big live broadcast and I had a couple hundred people on it, but it was one of the live ones where I can see all them, you know, through zoom. And what I found during that was that. What I found during that was that the. There were two groups of people. There was the group of people who clearly could tell that they were getting fatter. And by fatter, what I mean is, is they were putting on weight, they were losing muscle mass, they were drifting. And then there was another group of people and they seem to be using this time, you know, kind of like almost in the movies when somebody gets sent to prison and they're just doing push ups all the time and they're like. And there are some that are using the lockdown like that. Tell me something. In your case and when you're dealing with clients, what do you, how do you inspire somebody to be, you know, the latter, to be somebody who's using the lockdown to improve their condition?

Yeah, well, I think initially, I mean, anybody who struggles with food and weight in my experience is probably an emotional eater. And by emotional eater, I mean that they are using food beyond their nutritional need. You know, and that was me. In fact, I was really a food addict. So I use food really in an abusive way. So anybody, I think, who does struggle with food and weight, they are anesthetizing emotions with food. And so they're probably in that category of gaining weight during this because emotions are so high. I mean, there's fear everywhere on tv. We've got really scary news. Our whole lives are disrupted. I don't know if we're ever going to go back to the way things were in terms of our sense of stuff, safety and security. And so that is causing people who tend to eat over their emotions to really dive into the food and have a lot of struggles with being quarantined with a stockpile of food in the refrigerator. So to me, it's a matter of where a person is in their journey with food before this all happened. And that's what you're going to see once they get quarantined. If they're already fit, if they're already putting their health first, they're going to do more of that when they're at home. And if they're struggling to begin with, you know, this is just going to really exacerbate that.

Yeah, I can see that. I was really shocked to find, you know, back when the panic shopping was going on and everybody thought the food supply was coming to an end, and they were rushed off to the grocery stores to empty the shelves. And I saw it happening in waves. You know, we first saw it happen in Italy, and then I heard from my friends in countries around Eastern Europe that it was happening there, and then it was happening in the uk and I was getting pictures from them all over the place, and then it started happening here. And so I went to the grocery store and I thought, this can't be right. And I get there and Tricia, they were sold out of frozen pizza and ice cream and they were sold out of chocolate. But you know what was all over the place? Fresh meat. There was tons of produce and vegetables. Like, it blew my mind. You must have seen some similar things going on.

I did. I mean, I was secretly happy that the things I wanted to go get were still there. It's like nobody cares about the unsweetened almond milk, clearly, you know, so, you.

Know, it's funny, I had this same reaction. It's like, on one level, I'm like, oh, man, am I ever glad all these people are lined up for the junk. And so I just walk in, go get the stuff I want and walk out. But there's another part of me really that was, like, worried, you know, deeply disappointed. Like, you know, one of the things I noticed early on, I really started paying attention to this early on during the discussion of what was going on is in Italy, the early numbers were indicating that there was a, you know, that it looked like we thought this whole thing was about age. But then more and more, it seemed to be correlating to disease. And what bothered me at that point is the observation that the flu tends to kill at both ends of the spectrum. It kills the very young and the very old, but Covid like targets at age. And so even then I started wondering to what degree underlying health. And now it's really coming out. So all these people that are rushing out and buying this sugar laden processed stuff are. Look, Trish, I can only say it like this. Here's how it is for me, and I really want your thoughts on this is that, look, the CDC and the WHO and all these people are working very hard to make everybody safe. They're talking to us. They're convincing us to stay at home and do our social distancing, wash our hands, wear the masks, do all the stuff. Why are none of them asking us to eat properly. Why are none of them doing that? That must be infuriating to you. Why do you think that is? Why are we not getting that kind of advice out of the agencies that we would expect to be getting it from?

On the top of the list should be, don't eat sugar if you want to live longer, don't eat sugar, and definitely eat your vegetables. I will say, I think there is some awareness because at least the words immune system are coming up more, Immunity is coming up more, and it's like driving it home, like, you better boost your immunity. And so at least people are sort of waking up to the idea that we have an immune system and we can treat our immune system with supplements and healthy eating. So I think that message is starting to eke through a little bit. Maybe not from the government agencies, but at least from online. And so I just tell my clients, if there's no better time right now then right now to be eating healthy, because it's literally. I mean, it was always a matter of life and death. You and I know that you can shorten your life if you don't eat properly, but now it's like you can really shorten your life if you don't eat properly. And I think the numbers are there, too. The less healthy people are in areas of the country where people aren't really hip to healthy lifestyle. Their rates of death are higher as well.

Yeah. All right, so here we are, family or, you know, just. Even. Even just a person at home. And because here's one thing, when you said earlier, you think that people very much like, however they were before is how they're going to be right now. You know, like, if they were. If they were kind of fundamentally healthy, then, then maybe they're going to head in that direction. And if they weren't so much, they're going to that direction. I'm not as optimistic as you about that. I think the way it works, like, is like this people, many of the people who are fundamentally healthy are sliding. They're sliding because their routines are broken. They're sliding because their emotions are high. They're sliding because their stress is up. And so where they might have been more circumspect, for example, with the relationship with ice cream, suddenly like, yeah, but we're on lockdown. And plus, you know, when this whole thing started, everybody thought it might be a week or two. So what's a week or two of eating that way? You know? And I think that we will have seen some slide among the healthy. And then of course I think we'll see dramatic slide among the unhealthy because they will have all the same stresses and same fears and same emotions that will drive them back to even more emotional eating than they might have before. Not to mention, if they weren't really interested in fresh produce before, now they're really not going to be because they're going to want foods that last. And of course, you know, corn flakes last forever. So what I would love to know is let's take that person, let's take that person who was kind of healthy. You know, they were eating fairly well, they were conscious, they were looking at the ingredients from time to time, they were avoiding sugar where possible. But they're now falling victim. They're falling victim to their emotions, to their stress levels. They pick up the phone and they call you or they come to your social media and they go, tricia, I don't know what to do. I got this bowl of ice cream in front of me and I'm pretty sure I'm going to eat it. What do you say to them?

Well, and I do, I totally get what you're saying. I mean, I'm talking to friends who used to pat me on the back and say, that's really wonderful that you help people with emotional eating. Not my problem. And now they're like, tricia, I think I'm an emotional eater. So people are at least starting to get hip to the idea of what emotional eating is because a whole lot more people are doing it. And I do have friends who really fit your description. I just meant earlier. They're still exercising, you know what I mean? The exercise routine hasn't totally gone out the window. It's just their struggles definitely are there and more real than they were before. And I mean I think that comfort eating is what people are doing because of the emotions running high, you know, and it's hard to find comfort right now. It just is. And I don't think there's anything more comforting than a bowl of cereal or bread or ice cream or chips because you know, it's raising our serotonin levels for one thing. It's calming down our nerves and it is reminding us of some kind of safety that we might have once had growing up. And so people are definitely doing their fair share of comfort. So what I say to people, you know, really first of all is, you know, don't call me with a bowl of ice cream in front of you. Don't buy the friggin ice cream like if it's in your house, you're going to eat it. Like, you are going to eat it, you know, because it's there and you're staring at it and you've got nowhere to go. So, you know, what we bring into our house is going to be more important than ever, because if it's sitting there, it's going to call to you, you know, at your weak moments. So that's to me, defense number one. But I did just talk to a friend again, who's normally not an emotional leader, but he's kind of.