Healing Our Eating

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Hey, it's JJ Virgin. And welcome to the JJ Virgin Lifestyle show where I talk nutrition, exercise, mindset and lifestyle with some of the coolest people in the world. Plus plus I give you tips that you can put into fast action to up level your health so you can.

Go out there and live the big.

Life you're meant to live. Now, today's show is about something that I have not addressed yet. And it is so important because when I look at food and nutrition specifically, you know, there's a lot of information on the how out there and a lot of really great information on the how out there. And I've been bringing that to you, but not a lot on the why. And, and if you don't have the Y dialed in, if that's getting in the way, it's going to stop you cold. So I brought in my buddy Emily Rosen to talk about the psychology of eating and it is a fantastic conversation. I'm super excited to share it with you and also to share a little bit of some of my own issues that I have actually never discussed. So let me tell you a little bit about Emily. She's the CEO of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating where she oversees business development, strategies, marketing and public relations, student affairs and program development, like tons of stuff. She has an extensive background in nutritional science, counseling, mind body practices, the culinary arts, business management and marketing. Honestly, I've known Emily for years now. She always amazes me. She spearheaded the institute into an international organization that reaches millions of people each month. Now before she was doing this, she was a director and administrator for weight loss camps and programs serving teens and adults. She had a private practice practice. She was an executive chef at several retreat centers as well. I mean, wow, very cool. But what really makes it different and she'll talk about this is the fact that she had a decade long eating disorder. And that's what really was the spark for her to get into this and why she is so good at working with people because she knows it intimately. Now the other thing she loves to do is write poetry and make art. So I am super excited to share my buddy Emily with you. So let's do it. Emily Rosen, welcome to the show. I am super excited to have you here with me today.

It's so good to be here with you, jj.

This is a topic I haven't talked about yet on the show, and it's a big one because so many people have issues around the whys of eating. And so I want to before I'm going to share a little bit about me here, this that you probably don't know, But I want to know first how you got interested in the psychology of eating and nutrition. Where did this all start?

Yeah, I feel like for so many of my colleagues who are in the health and nutrition space, it was really just born out of my own challenges. I struggled very intensely with an eating disorder for over a decade and wanted to figure out what was wrong, wanted to figure out how to heal myself. And that led me to study new food, nutrition, nutritional science. And I did experience some relief through those strategies, but I still wasn't able to get where I wanted to go. And I knew there was something missing. And it was the psychology piece. It was really understanding my mindset, my beliefs, what was driving my behaviors. And that led me eventually to study eating psychology, which is the integrated approach that we now teach. But really, it was just because I wanted to heal myself. And so many of the people around me, as I started to kind of share more openly about my journey, I found they had struggled in a similar way.

Yes. And no one really talks about it. I mean, I was in high school. I wasn't a full blown anorexic, but I was definitely heading that way until my dance teacher kind of grabbed me and helped me. And then binge eating in college and even on after that. And you're right, there just weren't any resources because it wasn't like you need to hospitalize me. It just was just not. It was not a good approach. I didn't know where to go with it. But it seems like now one of the big roles here is stress. Absolutely, yes. So let's talk about that. Why stress is so important here and what role it's playing.

Well, I think it's become more of a popular topic, which I'm really happy about, which is like the effect of stress on our digestion, our assimilation, our calorie burning. But one of the things I don't hear mentioned enough is that stress is any real or imagined danger and the body's response to it. So that means that you could actually be in a dangerous situation where someone's Running after you with a knife, or you could be in a chair by yourself imagining that same scenario. And you can create that stress chemistry in your body. So what I see was so, so people is they're in a state of fear, anxiety about the future, they're stressing about the past, they're judging themselves, they're self attacking. All of that is actually considered a physiologic stressor. And what happens is when we're in a stress state is we lose our ability to digest our food, we reduce our calorie burning capacity, we signal the body to store weight and not build muscle. And our fears and our stresses about food and about the body actually land up creating the very fears that we have, which is that if I take a bite of that, I won't be able to stop. If I eat that, I'm going to gain 10 pounds. So what happens is these self induced stressors from the thoughts that we're thinking create a very real effect in physiology and that we actually have control over. I'm sure you hear this all the time. People are like, well my life's really busy, I can't control that, my job's stressful. And maybe we can't always control the external stressors, but we always have control over the internal ones and the dialogue that we're saying to ourselves and how it affects us.

Well, when my son was in the hospital, I mean this was all a complete test of could I handle the stress? You know, and it really becomes your interpretation, your perception and what you do to manage it. So what do you do about stressful eating?

Sure. So there's a couple things you can do. I mean, first I think it's an awareness of the thoughts that we have going on in our heads all the time. A lot of us aren't even aware of our internal dialogue. And I've heard you talk about, you know, when your son was in the hospital, kind of the mindset you had to have, like how fierce you had to be with yourself to move through such intense tragedy and actually be able to function day to day. And it's the same thing day in and day out. So there's definitely work that we have to do around replacing that internal dialogue, which takes practice and it takes intention. And then there's some just really basic fundamental things we can do day in and day out. So the first thing I like to tell everybody, because it's very simple and it's completely free, is that taking 6 to 10 long, slow, deep breaths before any meal that you eat will trick the body, even if you just had a really crappy day, into the stress response, such that you will better digest, assimilate, and calorie burn that meal. Now, it's not the sexiest of techniques, and I can't imagine why everybody's not doing it, but so many of us just sit down, we rush through our meal, we don't pay attention. And we now know scientifically that awareness and presence of a meal can affect 40 to 60% of your digestive capacity of that meal.

That is crazy. That's crazy.

It should be headline news. I mean, and I'm sure you see this. I mean, I know people, I live in Boulder, Colorado, which is like the utopia for healthy people. But we see how people, all the time, they're eating everything right, but their nutritional profile is horrible. And you're like, this makes no sense. You're eating amazing foods. You're taking good care of your body. But what's happening is they're not present, they're not aware, they're never relaxed. They hate their body. And all of their dietary strategies are coming from a place of shaming, of judgment. And we will limit the effectiveness. We will actually physically limit our ability to assimilate the nutrients from that meal. And if we are freaked out and not paying attention, which, as far as I'm concerned, should be headline news.

Yeah. That's incredible. I mean, just incredible. 40 to 60%. Well, that is the first time I've ever heard take six to ten breaths. So why are people not doing it? Because they haven't heard it.

Okay.

Okay.

And I do it. I mean, and even, like, I tell people, like, you're in traffic and you're stressed out, like, just do it. Every time you're doing that, you're switching your body, your chemistry. You're just switching the chemistry of your body. And it's so easy on some level, and it's so quick, you know, and.

People, the big thing. And I love that you're bringing this all up, because one of the things I've been fighting for years is this whole idea of, like, calorie counting. And it's all ultimately about the biochemistry, about your hormones. And so really, what's going on here is just a hormonal reaction. It's biochemical. And so if you are looking at this beating yourself up, feeling stressed. Yes. You. You can take that broccoli and wild salmon and store it as fat. You know, it's like, you can, and you can. I see it all the time, Emily. I'll see who have this perfect diet with elevated blood sugar. I'm like, it's stress. This is all stress that you're doing here. So another one that I never hear talked about. And I will give you just a little segue into this As I was a personal trainer for, gosh, a long time, 15 years and actually 20. And when I was really at the height of it, I would go from client house to client house to client house all day long. And I'd start at 5:30 in the morning. And so I got used to having a cooler in the back of the car and eating on the run and literally dashboard dining as fast as I could. And it's been a very difficult habit to break of speed eating. So let's talk about eating speed, Because I see I just did it yesterday, by the way. I sat down to lunch with someone and I looked at him like going, what the hell? How come I'm done? You know, he's still got half a salad. And I'm like plowed through mine, you know, Totally well.

And I can relate, you know, because I think one of the reasons that I just love you Is because we're both like, we're fast paced, you know, we like to get things done. So this is not an easy one. And I feel like what people don't understand about this Is how much it affects so many different factors. So speed eating just inherently in and of itself stresses out the body. Because we have to remember that biology has not caught up to modern day culture. Our body goes like, why the heck would you be eating fast? You must be in danger. So you immediately put yourself in a stress response if you're eating really rapidly. The other piece that happens is that the brain takes a while to tell whether or not you're full. And all the time I work with clients who go, like, I don't understand. I ate everything as I was supposed to. And I'm like trying to figure out what's going on for them. And what's actually going on is they ate it so fast that 10 minutes later the food's gone, but their brain is still hungry. Because it takes a while for the brain to register what just happened. And so then they land up eating more food and then feeling overfull 45 minutes later. The body needs time. It just does. There's no way around this. There's no pill to shortcut it. There's no strategy.

But there's a great strategy. I heard from Brian wansink. He said, eat, be the last person to finish the meal. And eat with slow eaters and then be the slowest one. And I'm like, oh, that's good.

Totally. And we regulate each other's metabolism. Like, the people that we're around affect us, you know, so if you're in a high stress environment, everybody's speed eating. Like, yeah, of course it's gonna affect you. So. And it doesn't have to be every single meal, but like, if you could make your last meal of the day a relaxed one, where you actually don't have the television on and don't have 30 people screaming at you and you actually just are present and relaxed can make such a difference. And for so many people, that end of the meal day is like how they unwind from their day, but they kind of shovel it in. And then that sets them up for a pattern of night eating because then they eat too much because the brain didn't register what happened. And then they feel guilty about it, so they just eat more because they're.

Like, whatever, they blown the day.

And it just becomes this like, really kind of tragic self, like, you know, repeating process. And all we just need is a little bit more presence, a little bit more awareness, and just slowing down a little bit. So there's a lot of, like, techniques. I've seen people set timers and all of that stuff, but I'm like, just try and enjoy it. Actually try and chew it. I mean, you know, this like, carbohydrate digestion begins in the mouth. So many people I work with who are bloated, they don't have like a digestion issue. They didn't chew their food. So of course they're bloated. Like, the body's going, are you crazy? You just gave me a loaf of bread. Like, how am I supposed to deal with this?

It's like my.

I have a little doggy who's adorable and so cute. And she. Anyway, she hadn't. She had an eating, little eating issue. I had to do an intervention and take her back from my ex husband because she weighed 10 pounds and she's supposed to weigh five to six. But I would watch her e and I'm like, you didn't even chew that dog. Like, no one's taking your food away from you. It's amazing. And they did that great study where they showed that people who chewed it was like 40, 40 times per bite. I'm like, who the hell is doing that? Anyway, it's like they immediately lost weight. And I'm like, well, that's because they just spent their Entire time chewing. But let's talk overeating, because you just kind of threw that out there a little bit. I have to jump in on that. So what's your. What's your approach to overeating?

Yeah, I feel like the most common strategy offered to people who overeat is you gotta use more willpower. And we know that this is not gonna work long term. Right. Like every day, you can't just will yourself not to eat. So this relates to the slow eating piece. A lot of times people overeat because what's going on is they're freaked out about eating in the first place. And when we're eating, we are always seeking an experience aside from the actual taste of food. So whether we're conscious of that or not, a lot of us have associations with food from our past, from our childhood. We have experiences that we remember. When we eat food, we might feel more relaxed, we might feel more grounded, we might feel comforted. And what happens is that when we're not present to that food, there's something called cephalic phase digestion, which is the head phase of digestion, which actually speaks to what I had mentioned earlier, which is that head phase of digestion really is attributed to 40 to 60% of your digestive capacity. And what that also includes is pleasure, aroma, taste, satisfaction. All of those actually factor in. And so a lot of people who overeat, it's just because they need more to get the sensation that they're looking for. Now, there's a whole range of emotional reasons, and honestly, in 20 minutes, we could never possibly get into it. Some people overeat because of emotional reasons or challenges they might be facing in their home life or their work life. And all of those different factors. And a lot of times with that, we actually can't change it. With behavior modification, we have to actually address the challenge at the root cause. So there's so many different factors that contribute to it. But I just really encourage people to get aware of the conversation they're having in their head before they sit down to eat any particular food. Because if you think, I shouldn't be eating this, it's not good for me, or if I shouldn't be eating this, I'm not going to be able to stop eating it. You're already in stress chemistry. You're not going to get the pleasure that you're looking for. And you're going to land up eating way more than you want to just because of biology.

I love all of this because it's so different than anything that's out there. And I know that a lot of this is what you teach over at the Internet Institute for the Psychology of Eating. So can you tell us all a little bit about what you guys do over there and what the opportunities are for anyone listening over there?

Absolutely. So, you know, we're really committed to getting out, you know, information for people about how to work with their relationship with food, really from the inside out. Because I think that, you know, there's so many amazing people like yourself, like, you purvey tremendous nutritional information to people and we really want to address like, okay, so you've been given this amazing information. How do you make sure you do it in the ways that you know that you want to be doing it to really optimize your health? So we train coaches. We have a certification training, it's an eating psychology coach certification training that trains people how to work with others who struggle with overeating or binge eating or weight loss or digestion and mood and immunity. And then we have programs for the public about transforming your relationship with food and, you know, just tons of free content to really help people who struggle in this way.

And on that website, which is psychologyofeating.com can you find a certified coach?

Yeah. So we have a directory of coaches. You can reach out to us at info. You can tell us what's going on for you. We can match you with our graduates. And it's a different way to look at kind of your food story and how you can really break free.

It's so important because again, the how is out there. And for so many people, it's not the how, it's the why. They're stuck. So I want to just emphasize to everybody, it's psychologyofeating.com you've got a ton of great resources there, so jump on over there. Psychologyofeating.com and Emily, thank you so much for joining me today. Just fantastic as I knew it would be. Now after the break, I'm going to be answering a listener's question, so stick with me.

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I love this time of the show. It's when I get to answer a listener's question. And today's comes from Tara.

Hi, jj. My name is Tara. I just want to say how much I love your books. I've read the Sugar Impact Diet and the Virgin Diet. I think it's really helped me. I've been slimming down just a couple one or two pounds a month, but consistently for like, five or six months now. So I think everything is going great. The only question I have is that my skin has not cleared up. And so I wonder a couple of things. My first thought was maybe as I've been losing a couple pounds a month, it's kind of like a detoxification process in my body and it's causing me to break out. But maybe more likely it's still something I'm eating. And I kind of realized, well, I haven't completely given up dairy. When I do reintroduce dairy here and there, I don't notice any symptoms, But I do realize I've been having butter. So I've given up everything, yogurt and milk and everything else, but there's still butter. I cook with butter occasionally, but I do put butter just a little, maybe teaspoon or half teaspoon in my bulletproof coffee every morning. I'm wondering, if I'm not that sensitive to dairy, which I believe I'm not, could I still have acne associated with dairy, even though I'm not really seeing any other symptoms associated with dairy? So could that butter in my morning coffee be causing me to break out?

Okay, I admit I listened to this one. I went, okay, this is a slam dunk. Here's the deal, Tara. Just because you're not having weight issues with the food doesn't mean you're not sensitive to it. So there are a variety of different ways you can show an intolerance to a food. Energy is one gas and bloating is one. Skin problems are one joint pain. There's, again, a variety of different things. And so acne is such a clear one. With dairy, however, what you're really reacting to in a food is the protein in the food. And so butter has very, very, very little protein. But, you know, it has no protein ghee, because it's clarified butter. So all you need to do to be able to enjoy your bulletproof coffee is switch from from butter to ghee, and you can find great grass fed ghee at the supermarket and also on Amazon. So just switch on over to grass fed ghee and then you won't have the problem. I would be very surprised to hear that grass fed ghee is causing any issues for you. But there is enough. There's a little bit of protein and butter so I would be careful. I would definitely switch off of that and move on over to ghee instead. There you go. I keep a bunch of it at home. Grass fed Ghee. It's beautiful bright yellow color. You can use it for all sorts of things. It's especially great on some lightly steamed broccoli. All right now if you'd like to submit a question, just go to jjvirgin.com ask and you can leave a voicemail for me. I love hearing from you. And one more way I'd love to hear from you. I would so appreciate it if you could jump on Stitcher or itunes and leave a review for me. It helps a bunch and be sure to subscribe and share the show with your friends. This is JJ Virgin signing off and reminding me you that you are worthy. Dare to live a life that matters.

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