Heal Your Hunger with Tricia Nelson

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Welcome to the JJ Virgin Lifestyle show with celebrity nutrition expert, fitness hall of famer, and four time New York Times bestselling author, JJ Virgin. JJ is a warrior mom whose knowledge and expertise have helped change hundreds of thousands of lives. With over 3.5 million podcast downloads and appearances on Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, the Today Show, Rachael Ray, Larry King Live.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. This show is about you, not about me. I want to help you find practical, real world ways to dial in your health and mindset so you can finally lose that weight and feel strong and energized. Stop settling for less than your personal best. It's time to find out how to look and feel better than ever. And I'll be right here with you the whole way. Welcome to today's podcast. So this came up because I had someone asking about this very topic in one of my private Facebook groups. So I was fortunate to be spending time with Trisha Nelson and I said, oh my gosh, I need to put you on the podcast like immediately. So let me tell you a little bit about Trisha. You'll hear this whole story when we start to chat. You'll know what I'm talking about. So Tricia is a, an emotional eating expert. She is the author of the number one bestselling book, Heal Your Hunger 7 Simple Steps to end emotional eating. Now she is also the host of the popular podcast the heal your hunger show. She has been on NBC, cbs, ktla, Fox, Discovery, Health, and she is a highly regarded speaker and coach. And what makes her so darn good, I think is because she's got her own hero's journey. She spent 30 years researching the hidden causes of addictive personalities after she lost 50 pounds by identifying and healing the underlying causes of her emotional eating. And I always love that. To me, like, you are so much better at what you do when you've experienced it firsthand and gone through that. So that is why I'm super excited to share Tricia Nelson with you today and talk about how to heal your hunger and end emotional eating. And I just want to give you a little heads up. Of course we have amazing show notes. We always do. And we also have a link to Tricia's quiz where you will find out if you are an emotional eater or a food Addict. So you can grab all of that@jjvirgin.com forward/, heal your hunger. Trisha Nelson, welcome to the show. I'm so glad you're here with me today.

I am so happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Well, you know, we were just together, and I had someone posting on my Facebook page, and for the listeners, I'll tell you what I saw. It was in my challenge that I'm doing, my free challenge to pull the seven most likely food intolerances out of your diet. And a woman was. Wrote a little post, and I'm just going to paraphrase it, but it was basically, you know, I'm supposed to go to a party. I don't fit into any of my clothes. So I'm sitting in the dark eating crackers, and, you know, help. What do I do? And I'm like going, trisha. I'm like, call Trisha.

I know that woman.

I know you do.

I know many versions of her, and I have been. I have been her.

Well, and that's why you're so darn good at what you do. So let's start with that. Let's start with where you were. What was your journey with emotional eating and how did it. How'd you get here?

Yeah, Well, I did. I started really early on. I was totally obsessed with food. I love to eat. I love to cook food. I love to serve it. I love to eat it. Everything. Food I loved. And, you know, for so long, jj, I thought it was just a love of mine, you know? And so when my family was going out to dinner, I'd have heart palpitations all day, getting excited about it. And, you know, any special outing we'd have that I knew I could eat a dessert. I mean, it was just really a big highlight for me. And. And I didn't really think there's a whole lot wrong with it. But what I didn't like and wasn't too happy about is the fact that I was fat. Okay? So I grew up with a weight problem. I was very. You know, people would call me roly poly or pudgy or whatever. And my mom wanted me to. She wanted to buy these clothes, this clothing line called Chubettesque. If you can even imagine what. Can you even imagine what terrible branding that is?

I guess that's why we don't know about it anymore. It's ye failed.

I'm like, mom, I have to draw the line at that clothing line. So basically it was, you know, I hated being fat. I hated this big roll on my tummy that I was scrunched up. And I just imagined these terrible things like cutting it off or, or joining the army so they'd force me to go through boot camp or getting some disease where I'd automatically lose weight and wouldn't have to try. So these crazy outlandish ideas because I hated being fat. And that's really where I started to search for answers and weight loss solutions. And I did pills and, and lotions and therapy and 12 step programs and self help books. I mean, you name it, I tried it. And nothing I tried worked for any length of time. And I really got to a place where I felt hopeless. I felt like, well, I'm a goner. I mean, I'm going to spend my entire life going up and down the scale, which was my pattern. I was like a yo yo dieter. And what happened was I found a solution. And that was I was basically shown how to face and heal the underlying causes of my drive to eat. And this is what really, you know, turned the corner, helped me turn the corner is that I finally addressed emotional eating and that, you know, if I'm not emotionally eating, I'm not, you know, stuffing myself with ooey gooey chewy foods and I'm not, you know, eating at all times of the night. And that's what really changed everything for me. And it just began this whole new journey of healing that's been going on for close to 30 years now. And by the grace of God, I've been in a thin body ever since I was 50 pounds overweight at one time.

But now I can't, I can't imagine you that way at all.

I know, thank goodness.

Yeah, it just, it's crazy. So you've definitely can heal it. That's the good news. And you know, I look at, so there's emotional eaters and you know where I was like telling you this the other day and I'm going, I'm just going to tell her to put the crackers down. Which, you know, and you know, there's food addicts, like how do you know what, like whether this is your issue.

Yeah, well, I think that it's. First of all, I do have a quiz which I totally recommend to people.

Which literally will be giving this out for sure. So just everybody knows. Why don't you talk a little bit about the quiz. It's jjvirgin.com forward/ Heal your hunger. I was going to tell everyone at the end that they get it, but this out of the bag.

I want to tell them about it because this will actually help them identify like where they are in the spectrum. Because it's basically a spectrum, whether you're an emotional eater or a food addict or somewhere in between. I mean, you know, jj, I feel like everybody's an emotional eater to some degree. I mean, I think we're just wired. I think God made us to like food and to have an emotional attachment to food. So, you know, we are, we have subsist. But. But some people take it too far. And so it's a spectrum and it's just a matter of how far somebody goes with it. On the high end of the spectrum is food addiction. So yes, if they take the quiz, they'll get a personalized score to recognize where they are on that spectrum. And really then they know what to do about it. And so, uh, it's really important to, for people to realize that what, what they're looking for is consequences to their eating. So some people are naturally skinny. They've got the skinny gene and they don't get fat. But they're, they're emotional eaters. Well, they, it may bother them and it may not. But some people, you know, and for some. Do some, many people come to me who have like five pounds to lose and they're more upset, more upset about the £5. And somebody is about £100. So it's a very personalized thing, you know, and gets to somebody. Some people just are very annoyed by the fact that they're thinking about food 24, 7. You know, if they're at work, they know exactly what items are in the vending machine. So it's an obsession. But for other people there are major consequences. And if they have a weight issue, obviously you've covered a lot of that. You know what that is. I mean, the heart disease, diabetes, you know, just legs chafing. I mean all the different encumbrances of carrying around extra weight. So. But for some people who don't have a lot of weight to lose, it is just the fact that they are obsessed. They're thinking about food 24, 7. They may spend a lot of time at the gym to try to offset their bingeing. So there are many ways that one's eating behavior can affect their lives. And chances are if somebody is really driven to eat, like they have that compulsion and that craving to overeat and it drives them to the kitchen, even though it's not mealtime, chances are it's emotionally driven. And so I'd say that most people who are Chronically struggling with food and weight are emotional eaters, at least if not outright food addicts.

You talked a lot about emotional eating, but emotional eating, I mean, and then actual physical hunger. How do you like, how do you.

Know the difference what I tell people? And for one thing they, they are so similar. Like I myself get, get, you know, spoofed sometimes by, you know, feeling like I, I'm really hungry, but I'm not. It's emotional hunger. And one of the things that can help people to really det. Which is, which is if they have a regular eating schedule. For instance, I recommend three meals a day and not eating in between so that people can not as a diet but really as a way of getting more in touch with what their emotions are and whether those are driving their hunger. And so for instance, if I've eaten breakfast at 7:00am you know, I'm going to be pretty hungry by 12. But if it's only, you know, 9:00 clock in the morning and I'm just like talking myself into eating a pastry or something in the, you know, in the workroom, it's at the work, I'm not, I don't work in an office, but let's go work in an office.

And you don't need pastries.

You know, I was kind of, it was sort of a hypothetical that I was using myself for. But, but anyway, the point is if I'm myself into eating at all and it's nine o' clock in the morning because I'm on a schedule of eating, I can, I can talk to myself and say now Trisha, you're not really hungry, you had breakfast two hours ago. And it helps me like sort of realize that this is emotional hunger. And this, what I teach people is that you have to get in touch with, you know, what's going on inside. And oftentimes if I have a phone call to make, I'm nervous about or some project that's big and luminous, you know, I mean it's a big project that I don't want to do. I mean, I'm going to start, you know, thinking maybe it's time to eat. And I teach people that you have to really get in touch with that and see, hey, fear can mask itself as hunger in a, you know, very, very easily. And so it's really, you know, I think people who are emotional eaters have such a knee jerk reaction to emotions of any kind. It could be happy emotions, not just negative emotions. And they're just in that pattern of eating and that's what we have to stop. And sometimes a regular schedule of eating can help you sort of realize in between meals, hey, these are just feelings. It's not real hunger.

All right, this is huge. All right, this is huge. So there's one thing is that you can you have setting regular meal times. What, what are some other tactics? And I know you have your book heal your Hunger that has seven simple steps to end emotional eating now, but give, give us a couple other things that someone listening right now who's kind of tortured, right. Can start putting into place to start building a framework to help them get through this.

What I really want people to do is start their day getting centered, okay. Because this is so much of the time we are reacting to stress in our lives with eating, you know, and, and just brings down your, your stress level. It kicks up your serotonin. I mean, we're so used to using food to medicate stress. And what I tell people is you have to start your day getting centered because and especially emotional eaters are very often, we tend to be people pleasers. We tend to be reacting to life instead of responding to life, you know, from outside stimuli is how we're kind of being directed. And so if somebody's spending time in the morning, it could be 10 minutes, it could be half an hour, it could be meditation, could be prayer, could be writing in your journal. If you're doing these things, one or some of these things, you're starting to get centered. And what's happening is, I mean it's, it's something you develop, obviously, but you have to get in touch with who you are and what you know, what you think about things, how you feel about things. And you also have to start asking important questions. Where can I carve away stress from my life? And so these are things, they aren't immediate, but these are things that I recommend people do is start addressing that stress. Because it's a major, if not the source, the number one source of emotional eating. So I think that's really important. And if somebody is in the moment having a craving or feeling like I've just got to eat, step away, take a time out, go for a 10 minute walk and start asking yourself these questions, what's really going on? Because it's vital to look at that. Cravings don't just happen in my experience. They're, you know, 90% caused by emotions or they're physical. You know, if you have sugar in your body, your body's craving more sugar, obviously, but it goes deeper than that. Generally it's an emotional craving as well. And that's what you have to take a look at.

So let's talk about diets, because we know that the failure rate of diets is just ridiculous out there. Why do you think that is?

Why did 98% of all diets fail? My, my feeling, my experience, my experience with working with hundreds of clients is that people are addressing, you know, they're trying to deal with the symptom and not the real problem. You know, overweight is a symptom of overeating, and overeating is a symptom of what's eating me. And so it's really vital that I start taking a look at that. And it's so seductive to think if I go on a diet, I'm just going to take care of this problem once and for all. And everything, you know, person with weight to lose dreams about being thin. I know I did. And it's like, if only I were thin, I'd be happy. Well, most people have been on a diet have had the experience of losing the weight and then realizing, oh, my God, I do not, you know, I do not feel happy. And this has not fixed every problem in my life. And it's such an illusion that it will. And so it's just so important that people realize that the weight is really covering up and so many emotions. And when I lost weight, I mean, I had the experience of losing about 40 pounds and having that depression set in. I mean, first, when you're losing weight, you know, it's very exciting. People are making comments, you look so great. You're buying new clothes. I mean, I was wearing like three new outfits a day. I was so crazed. And, and, and that's great for a while. And what that, what that losing weight does is it replaces the, the overeating. And so you get this, you get a high from it, but that high wears off. And after a while, people stop commenting and you' or just, they're not new anymore. And then, and then you're left with the emotions. And what's happened is all those emotions that were stuffed down with so many years of overeating come bubbling to the surface. And before you know it is, what happened for me is I got depressed. And this is a while back when, you know, depression, they weren't popping Prozacs like candy, you know, and, and I just didn't know what was wrong with me. And what I didn't realize, it was all, all that I had buried with food was all of a sudden in my face and I Didn't have the tools to deal with it. And so of course went right back to. And that to me is why 98% of all diets fail is people do not have the tools in place to be able to handle being thin and not having their cover up, which is food and fat.

So I always think that the first thing you have to do is know your starting point. So I love that you've put together a quiz to help people figure out if this is their issue. So will you like walk us through this again? And by the way, if you're listening, you can get this@jjvirgin.com Heal your hunger. It'll all be in the show notes too. But like walk us through what they're going to learn through taking the quiz.

So when you take the quiz, which is basically, are you an emotional eater or a food addict? That's what you're going to find out. And it could be one or the other or it could be in the middle.

And what's the difference?

The difference is consequences. So if you have any ability to pull back, you know, you've gained five pounds, you're like, oh, I don't like how my pants are fitting. I think I'm going to scale back. And you have the ability to scale back. You may be an emotional eater, but you're probably not a food addict because you have the ability to scale back. You have some level of control and self monitoring. Whereas a food addict is somebody that once they start to eat or overeat or eat the ooey gooey chewy foods, they cannot stop and it turns into this very ugly, violent binge, okay. Where they might even go out in the middle of the night. They might even risk their lives, be driving to, you know, a drive through in a unsafe part of town or an all night, you know, restaurant or shopping center, whatever, literally to get their fix. And I've done this and, and it's just, it's bad News bears. It lasts all night and it could last for weeks, if not years. Somebody could be doing well for a while and then they, they eat one thing off of their diet or after off of their plan and they could be all the way, you know, going to the races and for, for who knows how long. So it's really, it's in the ability to pull back and have some, some level of control and it's also the consequences. Does it affect your job? Does it affect your relationship? You know, does it affect your health? You know, how bad and severe are the consequences?

All right.

Perfect.

So, everyone, I want to encourage you to take this test, because then, you know, knowing the information, then I know you have a process to be able to guide them through how to heal it. And I think that's the key thing, because it, you know, feels like for a lot of people, and I know just coaching so many people in weight loss over the last 30 years is you end up feeling like you're in prison. It's just. It's. It's like a bad hobby that you can never get away from. And it's always on you and your thoughts. And so if we can help them break free.

Yay.

So let's go over to you for a minute. What is one thing you do every day, Tricia, that you feel like makes a big difference in your life?

I would say meditation. You know, And I am like the world's worst meditator. Just gonna say, all right, so it's not like I levitate or chant or do anything like that, but. But I have a practice of sitting down and shutting up for about 20 minutes in the morning. And. And I basically do that twice a day. I do it before breakfast, I do it before dinner, and I always tell people, I. I could swear that anybody who does it before dinner is gonna calories less for dinner if they meditate before dinner.

And.

And even if somebody doesn't feel like they can meditate, you could just go to your bedroom and lie down for 10 minutes before dinner just to stop that spin from the day. But that's what has made. You know, I do many other things, jj, But I will say that practice, you know, everybody kind of knows meditation is a good thing, but for some reason, I've been, you know, thankfully been doing that for close to 30 years. And it's. It. It's, you know, I couldn't live without it. It's like oxygen for me.

Excellent. Yeah, we hear that one. That's. That's one of the most popular comments is meditation. So. And we're all big fans of my girlfriend Emily Fletcher, here with her Zeba meditation. So shout out to her, too. And I just want to thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with everybody. And again, I'm going to make that reminder. Take the quiz, go to JJ virgin.com and sure. Now, after the break, I'm going to be answering a listener's question, so stay with me.

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Welcome back. This is the time where I answer a listener's question. And today's question is one that I got recently when I was giving a talk, and I was talking about the virgin diet and food intolerance. And this. This is one that I can almost guarantee. It's like every time I give a talk, I see the hand coming up in the audience. I'm like, I know what this person's going to ask. And sure enough, the question was, jj, I know you want me to pull out gluten and dairy and soy and corn and eggs and peanuts and sugar and artificial sweeteners. Okay, okay, okay. I can totally do six of those. So if I pull out all six, can I keep in the cheese? That was a heavy sigh if you couldn't hear it. Here's what I've seen about food intolerances is that those foods that you crave are the very foods that are hurting you. In fact, that is a sign of a hidden food intolerance. And the best way for you to visualize this is to think of yourself sitting on seven tacks. How does your butt feel sitting on those seven tacks? Not so bueno, right? So you get up and you say, okay, I'm going to take six tacks away, and I'll just sit down on one of them. It'll be fine. No, I mean, come on. You listen to that. You go, oh, come on, jj. That's ridiculous. Well, that's what it is when you don't pull out one of those foods. Now, we take you through this challenge in my free challenge@jjvirgin.com forward slash challenge. We'll put that in the show notes, and we have you pull out seven foods. And here's what I've learned. It's like, it's probably not all seven foods, but it's the food that you don't want to give up. That's always got the issue to it. And that's why I wanted to include this question in with the emotional or food addict part, because I think we really need to uncover if you've got an emotional issue around food. And then also when you go through the Virgin diet, you can see, am I addicted to a food because of a hidden food intolerance? And that can help break you through free of that. Because the ultimate goal here, and you heard it in the interview today as well, is to not be imprisoned by food, to not think that your hobby is dieting. That is not a hobby. It's to really go through the healing process. So if you've got an emotional eating issue, if you've got a food addiction issue, let's figure out if it's food addiction, if it's a food intolerance. But take that quiz that Trisha so graciously provided. Take the quiz, figure out what's going on with you so that you can heal that and go out there and live that big life, not burdened by thinking about what you're going to be.

Eating all the time.

Right? Got bigger, better things to be doing. Okay, this is the gratitude portion of the show. Every week, I highlight a review of the week. Just so you know, like, I read all of these and so does my team, and they make our week. And today's is from S. Susan Burlingame says, great stuff, five stars, excellent books and great lifestyle podcasts. JJ's Virgins, JJ Virgin's philosophy of health, fitness, and nutrition is spoton. Thank you, Susan. And thank you for all of you who've left these reviews. I really, really appreciate it. I know when people are out there going, what should I listen to that they look and these things matter. So if you've been listening and you go, gosh, I love this show. First of all, thank you, thank you, thank you. And second of all, could I just like, kind of beg, plead, and ask graciously and gratefully for you to leave a review? It helps a bunch. Thank you so much and I will see you next week.

Bye.

Bye.

Hello, listeners. This is Anne Bogle, author, blogger, and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week, I tag all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately. And I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading Next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment. Whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything, you'll learn something about yourself as a reader, and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read, with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast, and Visit our website whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com to find out more.