You're Not Broken: A Psychologist's Guide to Stopping Emotional Eating

Hello everybody. I have got— I'm Sandra Roycroft-Davis, as you will hopefully know because you're mostly from the SlimPod programme, and I've got Dr. Tara Porter with me this evening. And it's such a great pleasure because I met Tara at the 10th anniversary of our book publishers, and we we both had big things in common, both Sunday Times bestsellers, and also the fact that we were very much into the whole disordered eating and psychology of eating. And Tara has been a clinical psychologist with the NHS for 28 years, but is now for not doing that and writing books instead, because your latest book is storming it as well. So Tara, I'm just going to hand over to you because people are fed up with hearing from me. And so a very warm welcome and thank you so much for joining us. It's one of the most popular chats we've done, so it's really wonderful.

Oh, it's great to come here and talk to you again, Sandra, because we had a sort of frantic 5 minutes where at the, the event where we met, didn't we? And where we were, where I'd looked at your book and I'd realized that it was all the same stuff that you were writing to your SlimPod community that I was also talking about all the time in my clinics in the NHS with people with eating disorders, with bulimia, with disordered eating. And we realized that we, in some ways, we were coming at it from a, from from different sides, but it's the same coin. It's the different sides of the same coin that the, the, the starvation, the overeating, we— they're all about getting people into a middle point, a balance point with their, with their eating. And we were, we had such a big Venn diagram overlap of the stuff that we were interested in, the psychological theories that we were interested in. So I'm really pleased to come and have a longer chat with you today about all of that.

Absolutely, absolutely. So let's, let's kick off then with the whole disorder, the relationship between eating disorders and, and disordered eating or overeating, the whole concept, because you're an expert on all of that. So, and I know that our audience would love some clarity on all of that.

Well, I think that what, what, you know, when I read your book, what really struck me was that, you know, a lot of people who struggle with overeating are struggling with overeating for the same reasons as a lot of the people I see who've got anorexia are suffering with their anorexia, that they're using food as an emotional crutch, or in anorexia way, depriving themselves of food as an emotional crutch, and that food gets very tied in our childhoods into emotions. And, and sometimes we don't grow out of that, and then people struggle with their eating. So that's, you know, that's a really obvious way where the emotions can really play. We, it's, we have, the world is difficult, life is fast-paced, there's a lot of pressure on us all the time, and we get used to, as if we've been kids, we've been comforted with sugar or treat foods, we can sometimes get into that way of eating. People with anorexia then have quite a disordered relationship with that where they then deprive themselves of that. It can be quite self-punishing to do that, and it starts a pattern of behaviour that can go on for a long time. I also think that, you know, eating disorders And overeating are both driven by societal factors. They're driven by, you know, what you call in your book, factory food, you know, selling us a certain type of food.

Fake food.

Fake food. Yeah, fake food that we get sold, we get marketed to us. And then we get sold diets to solve that problem. Yeah. And then we everywhere we go, we see the glorification of thin, that, you know, thinness is really celebrated. And I sometimes, when I look through those sort of Sunday magazines that we get with the newspapers, and you see it all there just played out in, in one magazine where you see, you know, there's pages of, you know, cream-laden food and high-fat food and sugary food, and then there's some latest fad diet, you know, like 3 pages later, and then there's some pictures of very, very thin celebrities or models. And, you know, what is that doing to our heads? It's like completely messing with our heads. It's like we've been gaslit into having a distorted relationship with food, you know. Eat this really high-fat, high-sugar food, then diet, and then wear these clothes. I mean, it's just nonsense. And what I see with a lot of my— I work a lot with children and adolescents— is that that relationship can start really young when girls go through puberty. So when girls go through puberty, they're often taken away from a kind of very slim body to a more curvaceous body, and they see everywhere in society the thin bodies being celebrated, and suddenly they feel awkward and it's difficult. They've got boobs. They see people see them differently. You know, they might get catcalled in the street. They have to deal with their periods. That's not a pleasant thing. And they really want the simplicity of being thinner and that being, you know, the way people get approval. Oh, you've lost weight. It's, you know, it's meant to be a compliment, you know. And so it starts then, and the girls sometimes get into habits. They get into habits of dieting. It can happen in, you know, it can happen in sort of small community settings like a school where what we see is, you know, when I see girls of 13, 14, 15, 16, they've started skipping breakfast, their parents notice they skip breakfast, and then perhaps they go to school, and then in the culture of the school is that girls don't eat lunch, and so they don't eat lunch. And then they get to 3 or 4 o'clock, and they've tried to override their body all day, and suddenly their body goes, "What? What's going on here? I'm absolutely starving," and they eat, you know, a packet of crisps or several packets of crisps or a packet of biscuits or some chips or something. And then they feel this horrible shame because they've, they've, they've made a decision at the beginning of the day not to eat anything. Um, and perhaps they try and get rid of that by overexercising or worse, by vomiting. Sometimes they hurt themselves. Um, and then the pattern starts again the next day. Um, and some girls, don't do that and they get into a real starvation cycle. But that is, you know, it's a mental illness when they do that. You know, they're absolutely an obsession and it's, you know, very, very dangerous and it affects girls in long-term ways. I mean, I always feel really sad, Sandra, when I'm sitting with a sort of 15 or 16-year-old and they're facing their GCSEs and they're facing their GCSEs starving most days. And, you know, and they're competing with the boys. Yeah. And I just think lots of the boys aren't doing this, you know, and all that. They're sitting there, GCSE starving and then overeating and then feeling terrible about themselves, trying to purge, you know, and it's just such a terrible pattern. And so how we get back to a normality about food, a balance about food and neutrality about food. You often talk about neutrality. Yeah, I do.

Absolutely talk about a neutral relationship with food, absolutely. But you'll be resonating with so many people watching, listening, and watching, because it's being streamed to Facebook as well. Because this, because you see them at that age, and then I see it at the 50, 60 age where it's just become this cycle and habit. Well, 40 to 60 actually, or even 70. And then, and it's a desperate cycle because it's the whole shame, the guilt, you know, that whole cognitive loop that just keeps on going. And that's what we do, is to change all that.

Yes.

You know, that's what the SlimPod Programme does, unravels all that. But sometimes it's been going on for 60 years.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And so much shame and so much hiding food or hiding eating or feeling shameful about eating and disconnection from the body. I expect you see that a lot too, Sandra, where people try and ignore their hunger or feel guilty or feel like their, their body is, is wrong in some way. So yeah, we see, I see all of that right at the start and Yeah, and I try and work with parents to support them on setting kids off in healthy ways of— I mean, I call it psychologically healthy eating. So that's what I— what my big thing is, you know, my big thing is like psychologically healthy eating is being able to balance. I've got this, this is from another psychologist called Coursman, but it's about balancing your intuition, what you fancy to eat, and your nutrition, what you need to eat, what your body needs to run and trying to get those two. And he talks about having a rowing boat and that intuition is one oar where you're, you've got to have your intuition. Because if you ignore your intuition, you overeat that food later, basically. And your nutrition is you need to have, you know, proteins and carbs and all those sorts of things. And you need to have the right number of vitamins and you need to have the right amount of food in a day to run your body and run your mind and to keep your energy levels up and all of that sort of thing. So he has that kind of idea of a rowing boat, that if you use just one, or if you just use your intuition, you may end up overeating, for example. But if you just eat your nutrition— like a lot of the young people I see will say, "Well, carbs are bad for you, and fat is bad for you, and sugar is bad for you, and all this stuff is bad for you," and they're not eating anything, you know. It's like they're just eating vegetables, and that's terrible. It's terrible. You just feel dreadful.

And that's, that's, I suppose, the disordered going into an eating disorder, isn't it? Is that, is that the way you see that going? Kind of.

Yeah. I don't see a sort of much of a distinction between disordered eating and eating disorders. In fact, when I worked in the NHS, they were trying to set up this disordered eating service and we were an eating disorder service and none of the experts could decide where the line went. It just seemed like a false a false line, really, you know, it's really difficult to distinguish. But I guess when he talks about rowing boat, I often think that the rowing boat with the intuition and the nutrition, and then you add the emotion, and that's like the rudder on the back or the motor on the back, because the emotional eating can really set that, that, that boat off in the wrong direction. You know, when you start getting your emotions involved, because so much Absolutely. Eating happens when we're tired, when we're stressed. And that's linked to childhood patterns as well. You know, it's linked to a natural preference in the human for, for, you know, the first milk, the first food we're given is breast milk, and that's high sugar and high fat. And then it carries on through, through life as a sort of natural preference for that. And it can be used as a reward. And we get into ideas about good foods and bad foods, which, oh gosh, I sometimes get that from young people. They've had it at school that this food is good and this food is bad.

Yeah, absolutely. It, that is it. It then goes into the categorization and, and goes on forever. Well, for a long, long time. And then diets become the temporary solution because they're not the long-term solution. Solution. Um, and, and that makes everything even worse. So yes, it is, uh, it's a real vicious cycle, isn't it? Now, yeah, on, on the perfectionism stuff, talk a little bit about perfectionism because we will have a lot of people who, you know, who have this, all this thing going on.

Yeah, well, I mean, perfectionism I'm just gonna say it's linked to very many mental health conditions. I mean, it's almost the mechanism by lots of the ways mental health conditions run. So anorexia, we've mentioned, but obviously also Obsessional Compulsive Disorder, anxiety, depression, it's linked to suicidality, it's linked to self-harm. So we think of perfection as a good thing. Oh, we want to be perfect, we want to be the best we can be. But actually, it's an incredibly toxic thing. When people try for perfection, because perfection doesn't really exist in humans or even in machines— machines break down, there isn't really a perfection, a perfect— and then we end up missing the mark, feeling shameful. And what do we do with that feeling of shame? Sometimes we might overeat, you know, sometimes we might hurt ourselves. Some people, you know, perfectionism linked to obsessive-compulsive disorder, so they check things, you know. So that kind of idea that perfectionism is a good thing. But we'll go back to our magazines. I'm, I'm, I'm old style, you know, I'm not so much on the internet. But you know, the magazines, you know, they just sold us perfection, didn't they? But the internet is even worse. You know, we upload onto Instagram our best photos, and, and then we compare that to— we compare other people's best to what we know is our worst bit. So, you know, I get girls coming into clinic and they will say, You know, they'll say, "I'm so much bigger." You know, they're not, but they're so much bigger than their friends, and then they get out a photo and they show me, and the friend is standing at a particular angle on a particular lighting, and they're comparing that to seeing themselves, you know, sitting and sort of squeezing their thighs when they're on the toilet or something, or, you know, or looking at themselves naked or looking at their— you know, when your bra cuts into you in a particular way and you get that little fold of skin and adipose tissue and muscle and all that sort of stuff. You know, I'm not going to say fat, it's— we get a little, you know, fold there. And so they compare this idea of perfect that's been staged and lit and and, uh, the, the— their friend is standing in a particular way with their kind of shoulders forward and their hips to the side. I've learned that's the Instagram stand. And then they, and they think that they're not perfect, you know. So this constant feeling of not enoughness that we just see— I just see so much in my clinical practice. Nearly everybody I see who has a mental health problem doesn't feel good enough. And a lot often they don't feel pretty enough, they don't feel slim enough. That's two things I often see, and it gives them a sort of sense of shame and that they're somehow, they should, you know, perhaps hide that or— and, you know, with diets, what we see is people have this idea, I have to, I am on this diet, I'm on whatever it is, the high protein diet, and I've got to eat this protein. And then they have a breadstick, and because it's not perfect, it creates this thing called the what the hell effect.

So yes, yes, that's in my book too.

Yes, Paula V. and Herman. Yes, exactly. We've got the same things in our books.

Because that is absolutely, absolutely a thing.

Yeah. So, you know, I don't know if all your, your listeners have read your book, but you know, this, this research shows it took some people who were dieting and it took people who weren't dieting and it gave them either a small snack, snack or a big snack, and then it watched what people did afterwards, how much food they ate. And the dieters who'd had a big snack, so, you know, presumably were quite full, went on to eat to excess. You know, they ate way past satiety, so they ate much more than they actually needed and way past being full. Whereas people who had had a small snack who weren't dieters just ate more later, and the people who were— had a big snack, who weren't dieters, ate less later. And that's a kind of normal way. That's being in touch with your body. But the dieting, the aiming for this sort of perfect diet that you should have— I should be eating this, I should be eating that— it just backfires because we're not perfect. We're human. And that's much more fun. But it's hard on food. It's really, really hard. And so I see it all the time. I shouldn't have that. That's a bad I've had this and then it's bad. You know, it's really a terrible thing.

Yeah. No, I mean, I see it all the time. And it is— it's an interesting one because does that come from— I suppose only an individual would know whether that comes from childhood or whether it comes from dieting or whether one leads to the other. And I suppose it's any combination, isn't it?

Yeah. And, you know, and always in mental health, when we're unpicking things, it's not— it's never one thing really, is it? You know, I mean, often dieting comes about because of your childhood. You know, people start dieting because they feel shame in childhood. That's perhaps shamed about their eating, shamed about their body size. They, they, they come to dieting because they want to cope with difficult feelings that they've got left from their childhood, or, you know, all these sorts of different things. So they're all interlaced, really. But I think dieting has a huge impact on the what the hell effect, you know, because that is all that comes from your basic biology that we need a certain amount of food every day to function. And if you haven't had it and you're starving, then you tend to eat more because your body wants to prepare for the famine that you're— that it thinks you're in, you know, it is reacting in a very sort of evolutionary way.

Now I just need to tell everybody that's listening and watching that in 5 to 10 minutes, probably 10 minutes because we haven't covered everything off yet, we are going to be— Tara is going to be answering questions, and if you want to ask a question, then just ask it, put a Q in front of it please in the chat box, because I know sometimes there's chatting going on in the top— in the chat box, and it just makes it easier to differentiate what is a question. So if you have any questions for Tara, then you can ask them in around 10 minutes. So yes, so the— now the Getting to the, to the big, to the big one, the biggie for me, because this was me and, and sometimes still is. The whole book actually set this off again from childhood, and that is the whole good enough bit, you know. And I thought I had got rid of that, and then when I was asked to write a book, it set it all off again. That will it be good enough enough, and what is good enough. And, you know, and that really, that really was the big thing that held me back for about 5 years from, from writing a book, despite multiple publishers asking me to do it. And so, and, and that is, it's a big fear. It, it creates fear of failure hugely. But talk to us a little bit about that, because I know that that will be a thing for so many people listening. What— how does that all kind of combine?

Yeah, I'm really interested in this concept of good enough. My next— my latest book is called— is about— it's a parenting book. So, you know, I've seen a lot of young people who in their teens, in their early 20s, and adults who don't feel good enough and got mental health problems. And I wanted to sort of unpick that and take it back to Childhood and think about how we raise the next generation so that this sort of pervasive not enoughness is, is, um, what can we do differently? What can we do differently as parents, as society, to help, um, young people feel better for themselves? And I, I'm, and I've written a whole book about it, so it's difficult to summarize in a few minutes, but, um, I guess what, one of the things that, you know, was related to what we're talking about here is how standards of perfectionism in parents, you know, the standards and expectations that we inflict upon our kids and get in the way of— you know, can create a sense of kids not feeling good enough, you know. So parents' own perfectionism can play out in their children in lots of different ways, because when you're trying to be a perfect parent, you know, it's often quite an anxiety-provoking situation. You're trying to, you know, for example, let's take feeding, for example, you know, when you're trying to I share some anecdotes from my own experiences as a mother feeding my son and, you know, and creating this sort of perfect weaning environment for him where he had Annabelle Carmel was all the rage in those days when I was doing it. And I was so smug when he got to about 1 year that he was eating this range of vegetables and purees that I'd all, you know, hand-cooked and all this sort of thing. And, you know, and then his own individual nature came out and he'd decided he didn't like vegetables and barely ate another one for 15 years, you know. And luckily, I was sort of saved from trying to be perfectionistic by, by talking to lots of young people and seeing how it played out lots of ways, ways that, you know, years later. And so I realized that what I had to do is I had to be in a relationship with him, and this was who he was. But perfectionism, when we're aiming for perfect, it takes us away from that relationship, you know, it takes us away from synchronicity. In the literature, in the sort of psychological literature about how to raise children with healthy relationship with food, it's called responsive feeding. So it's like seeing what your kid likes, being responsive to that, being responsive to their fullness, being responsive to their, their set, their, when they're satisfied, when they've had enough, and, and not, and, and, and, but being responsive and not imposing a standards you never, you know, you're not allowed to sweets, that sweets are shameful, or that— or feeding them too many sweets as a way of, you know, comforting their emotions, which is another way that it can go wrong. So, so I— yeah, so I really—

something that might actually help this, because it's a great question, and I normally— I wait for questions for another few minutes, but, but one has just come in and it is just it's exactly what I see so often, nearly every day of the week actually. How do you get over this when you are 66 and your mother still makes you feel this way?

Oh, I'm so sorry that your mother still makes you feel this way. I mean, it's so toxic, isn't it? It's so toxic, and, and it's really about finding— oh gosh, I mean, that's I think that you've articulated it and that you've noticed is half the battle, you know. And so, you know, we could use lots of different therapeutic ways to do that. I mean, one, one really good therapeutic way is to write your mother a letter. Not— and not write it like you're going to send it, but you don't have to send it because it might break your relationship with your mother if you do send it. But get it all out. Journaling can be a really powerful way of processing those feelings about what you want to say. And you will probably discover— you probably know a lot already in your own head, but you'll probably discover a whole lot of other feelings and how it's played out. And just— and then write the letter, then look at it a few days later and see what you think. And you've probably got a few edits to make to it. And just— and you know, you can choose, you can tear it up, you can burn it, you can think about how you want to respond in the future. But you know, it's never too late to change. I love working with older people, and when they come into, you know, I see them and they're interested in being different, it's never too late to change. And, you know, whether you take a kind of more assertive stance with your mum— I mean, she's— your mum isn't signing up for change. And if she— if you're 66, your mum's going to be, what, 86? Yeah, yeah. You know, um, it's difficult to change, and it's impossible to change somebody who doesn't want to change, if, you know. But you can have a different relationship to it. You can say, I don't want you to talk about to me about that stuff anymore. You've made me feel rubbish about it for, you know, my whole life, and I don't want to talk to you about it. I'm not interested in your point of view. And that is, that is valid, I think. So I'm sorry.

This happened to me, um, and the way I dealt with it at the time was, uh, was because I learned that this was about her.

This—

yes, not about me. So bouncing it me. I now call it my F-off shield, but my mum died a few years ago, so I don't have to do that anymore. But, but yeah, it's— it is— it is actually, for me, it was about bouncing it back and saying, right, what is it about you that, that makes you want to treat me this way? And so you're actually putting that at her door and deflecting it from from, from— and, and if you can do that consistently, it really does, it really does put up a buffer, I found.

Yeah, I mean, and there's lots of different ways that can play out, you know. Sometimes people, you know, your mum might see her body reflected in your body. So sometimes, you know, we have the same relate— the same bodies as our parents, and, you know, that we've got, why don't know, knobbly knees, or we hold our weight on our stomach heavier legs or whatever it is. And so she might be giving you the hate that she has for herself, and that's what we call a projection, you know, in psychology. But she also, you know, I'm not going to— this is a bit less— and that might be sort of unconscious. She might not realize she's doing this. But the other thing that it also might be is, you know, some parents feel like their child's body is a representation of their success as a parent. And this is, you know, this is what I've written this, you know, Good Enough book for, because it's about sort of separating your child's outcome is not your success, or otherwise it's not your medal or certificate. They are their own life. And, you know, and trying to separate that. I'm not sure you're going to get your mum to see that that way when, if she's, you know, when you're, you're 66. But, you know, I would like to give you permission as a therapist to have a different relationship with that, or her talking about that, and how you can separate off loving your mum and the good things she does and the wonderful ways she is, I hope, and then this bit of her where she feels like she has to be critical. And maybe she's being critical of herself, or maybe she thinks, you know, that your, your weight—

yeah, sometimes even asking what that— what's that about, isn't it? Yeah, you know, and then you can— it just helps you to unlock things. We'll go on to another question. So how do we focus— it's similar, it's related— how do we focus on overcoming this not enoughness when this has been established since early childhood?

Yeah, I mean, again, you know, um, I think You know, I wrote a couple of years ago, I wrote a journaling book and it's really for young women, but I had 3 tenets in it which I think are also relevant here. And it's about self-knowledge and it's about self-reflection and then it's about making how you want to change. And so self-knowledge is about, you know, so for example, when I just recommended about writing the letter, it's about getting it all out there. You know, what do you remember from your childhood about that happened that you or through your life that impacted on you, and then reflecting on it. How do I feel about that? What do I want to do about it? How has it impacted on other parts of my life? And just sitting with that, you know, and, you know, in psychology we often use something called a cognitive quad where we think about the relationship between thoughts and feelings and behavior and your physiology. And in eating, they're all tied up. So, you know, when we have a the thought that we're not good enough, we might go on a diet, which is a behavior. The thought that we're not good enough makes us feel, you know, anxious and shame, but, you know, going on a diet makes you feel tired and obsessed and horrible, does horrible things to your head. And then the physiology there, you know, when you go on a diet, you end up, you know, like I say, tired and it has an impact. It makes you want to eat more because you've not got enough food inside you. So all of those sorts of things. So that's the sort of self-reflection piece where you try and understand. You've got the self-knowledge. This is what happened to me. Then you reflect. And then the change, the growth, you know, that has to come from— the trouble with growth is it's tied into the idea of perfection. And what we try and do when we try and grow, when we try and change, is we say, right, I am going to be— from now on, I'm going to always react to my mother like this. And I'm not going to eat cake anymore, and I'm going to do X and Y. So we set these ourselves, these exacting, impossible standards that we're never going to meet. So I think change has to be— it has to be gentle, it has to be compassionate, it has to be realistic, you know, and it has to fit into your life. You know, I often, you know, I often look right when people go into change. There was one in the paper the other day, and I was talking about it with a friend of mine where they, you know, it was a sort of, they changed, they'd been on this program, blah, blah, blah, but you know, they were doing it as a journalist, I think, and they must have spent about 4 hours a day into their change program. Well, that isn't realistic for most of us. Most of us are leaving home early, we've got to get a train, we've got to get the kids to school, or we've got to take care of our aged parents or whatever we're doing. What's realistic? What's a realistic amount of change that you can make? And that comes from the kind of self, the self-knowledge, the self-reflection, and the compassion, the compassion for yourself. I think, you know, us middle-aged women were so good at showing compassion to absolutely everybody but not ourselves.

Absolutely. And that, that kind of hopefully answers— well, goes some way to answer another question here. They're coming in thick and fast. Um, I'm a carer for my mum who tells me she doesn't like me and I'm not as good as my sister. Is there a way to continue without the constant stress of being told I'm not good enough for my whole life? I mean, you've covered a lot of that.

Yeah, I mean, that, I mean, that is really— I just think, I don't know how to explain your mum's behaviour other than she's mentally unwell, you know, which isn't an excuse, but 'You know, I wonder if your mum's got early onset— she's got dementia. I don't know how old your mum is.' I, you know, that is such a toxic thing to do to anybody. 'I don't know how you're caring for her. You're a better person than me.' And how you go away every day— maybe what you should do every day is write a rant to yourself of how you feel after that, then tear it up and, and do something Give yourself— I mean, I know in your book, Sandra, you talk about how to treat people, you know, how you treat yourself emotionally. And I'm giving myself a little hug here, you know, as I say this, people on Facebook will see that, but oh, bless you, Sandra.

Thank you. Very quietly. She did.

She sneezes very quietly. You know, or giving yourself something lovely, which isn't, you know, sugary and high fat. Or, you know, how you give yourself that treat, how you get that out. And I really, I really feel for you. That's a horrible, horrible situation to be in.

I had a similar situation, and my mum had dementia, and we were caring for her on and off with my, with my sister, and I literally had to, you know, detach myself totally because I was treated very differently to the way the rest of the family were treated. And I just— it was like I said already, it's this mental, like, right, that's her problem.

The F off shield.

Yes, the F off shield. It's got to be that. If you've got to do it, if you've got to be the carer, which we were, and my sister was, you know, we just— you have to do it, and then— but it is a question of how you can make, you know, how you can actually make it easier for yourself and how you have to land it at their door, and this is not about me, this is about their condition or the things that are going on in their heads, and it's really hard, really hard. It took me years to master.

Yeah, I think that's a brilliant one. I'm gonna write that down, the F-off shield. I'm gonna borrow that and use that with some of my patients. But I would also say, like, to that lady, I would say, you know, that I want you to have a compassion blanket as well as an F-off shield, because I want you to imagine that it's— that somebody's treating, you know, somebody you love like that. You're— I don't know, your partner, your children, your best friend, friend. And then after you see your mom, to treat you like— for you to treat you like you would somebody else. And it's so hard to do, and we just, we don't make enough time and energy for it, but it's so important. But I just think your mom, I don't know whether she's meant in well, whether she was, you know, abused as a child, or, you know, what's happened to her to make her so resentful. Um, I mean, I think the generation you know, two generations ago, perhaps born at the start of, you know, during the war, you know, there's a lot of deprivation at that time. It's difficult times, and, and women of that perhaps didn't have as many opportunities as we've been fortunate to have. And, you know, and I think that sometimes the older generation can be a bit resentful of that, really, that, you know, um, so I don't know what's going on for your mum, but I really can't tell you.

As you said earlier, so much of it can projection. It's, it's what we're thinking about ourselves and we are projecting it on children.

Yeah, I mean, I'm only hypothesizing because I've, you know, the sort of things what I've worked with clients about, what's come up, you know, what the things that have come up, the sort of things. And this is the sort of thing, the resentment from the older generation or the, you know, the projection or the wanting the sort of feeling that they're you, that you represent them in some way. It can be all sorts of things.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Now, um, there's one question here that is fascinating: how can I have biscuits in the house and eat one and not the packet?

Yeah, I mean, it's really difficult, isn't it? And I think when you're first starting out on that journey, and I don't know, I think one of the really difficult things, and, and Sandra was and I've talked a little bit about the Slimming Pod community, and, you know, and I'm a 50-something woman myself, and I think one of the really important things is if, you know, if you've got teenagers or children, if you're younger, and you've got a partner in the house, you also want to have those foods available. You don't want to be saying they are bad foods, but when you're starting out with, like, what I couldn't talk about is the move from restriction to restraint. Yeah. And that's a move that we don't— I think we don't talk about enough, you know. So the diet is the restriction, and that means, oh, you're not allowed anything. But restraint is different. And in my book, I talk about how to bring up kids with this sort of sense of restraint. You know, we're not trying to bring up kids to offer them a 24-hour buffet service. You know, I see so many parents who get caught into cooking 3 separate meals for the 3 different kids who don't want to eat the same food, and I don't think we should be doing that because some restraint and some, you know, just getting along with it should be part of it. And when you first start that, I think that could be really tricky, and it could be helped to have a sort of some sort of boundary there. So like, you know, if you buy those Biscoff biscuits, for example, they come in packs of 2, and just having to, you know, having a little pack and saying, these are my 2 biscuits for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. That can really start the thing of saying, I, I, this is how many biscuits I eat, this is all I'm going to eat. You know, it can help you to do that and get into that habit of it being normal again. I don't know, you might have different advice, Sandra, but—

Well, yes, I don't have different advice, but, um, the, the SlimPod, uh, program and the SlimPod itself is very much designed to help you to lose the desire because it shifts the whole dopamine system. Now, if, of course, if there's biscuits in the house then, and you have a deeper relationship with, with, with chocolate or the biscuits because possibly, you know, they formed a different association like love or reward or whatever in your head, then that can be trickier because that's then emotion rather than a habit. But I think if— it's also about asking yourself What is— what's the limiting— what's the self-limiting belief behind this? What is it? Why do I need that biscuit? That it's, you know, if it's deeper than, than just— if it's an emotional connection, then that is something that you can look at. But yeah, there's, there's lots of ways around these things. Yeah, you either go, you either go deeper or you or you start—

yeah, you can do both, in fact, you know, because— yeah, and you can think about, you know, it psychologically, about, you know, about what your goal is, you know, about when you want to change something. Maybe that's something you want to change. And, and saying, you know, I'm hypothesizing, but, you know, I want to have biscuits in the house, I want to be able to offer I give people biscuits when they come. My teenage sons eat more biscuits than you think humanly possible. Um, but I don't want to eat them and I am going to make that commitment that I'm only going to have a certain amount a day whilst the SlimPod is also reducing the desire. So it could be both, couldn't it? And then it's—

absolutely.

Yeah. And then it's also about the sort of self-knowledge about why that's— we know that you know, biscuits are high sugar.

I could tackle it in a number of ways.

Tackle it in a number of ways, yeah. And psychological tricks, you know, setting rules, you know, setting us kind of like, um, you know, doing it for somebody else. Like, I want to be able to have biscuits in the house for other people, so therefore I'm going to do this, um, I'm going to practice this.

We've got a system called the Seinfeld strategy. Have you heard that? The— of that is okay. So it's a piece of paper in boxes on the fridge or wherever, and you, you tick off every day that you've, that you've reached your goal, that you've done your win. And one, and that could be used here as well.

Exactly, yeah.

You know, and then psychologically you don't want to break the chain, so you carry on. So yeah, that could be done too. Anyway, moving on to another question. I was widowed 3 years ago. Since then I have found comfort from grief in food. How do I overcome the need for seeking comfort in food when I'm alone? Because with friends and family I'm not as bad, but I can't be with somebody all the time. Yes, that's, um, it's, it is, it, that's exactly what's happening, isn't it? It's, it is seeking in food for its loneliness, I think.

So it goes back to that sort of emotional eating, doesn't it, what we were talking about earlier. But also, I wonder if you've had a chance to grieve. I'm sorry for your loss. And 3 years, you know, if you've been married a long time, is, you know, a very short time to, you know. So I think there's 2 stages, you know, for classically there's 5 stages of grief, but just for the sake of this, I'm just going to say, you know, there's the grieving stage where you want to talk, you feel lots of different emotions, you want to— you might feel anger, you might feel despair, you might feel— obviously feel loss, sadness, anxiety, all of those sorts of things. And whether you get a chance to talk about those, to really have a friend who will listen— I mean, I know when people are feeling grief, they often don't want to impose on other people. They think they should be, they should be, they should be perfect with their grief, you know, they should be over it by now, they should be not wanting to talk about it. And trying to make sure that your emotional needs are met elsewhere, you know, in terms of talking about your husband or talking about how you're feeling or taking care of yourself in whatever ways. And then the comfort. I think also we've got to think about, like, how you move forward, you know, what you want the rest of your life to be. And I think one of the things when I see people in therapy that they often tell me that, that is important is having that sort of sense of hope and having a kind of idea that they're going to get better. And I guess what, you know, having that in your head about what better might look like, where you're trying to get to, not a sort of perfect thing of better, you know, because obviously you're living a different life without your partner, but a kind of, okay, well, this is what I want it to look like. This is how I am here in 3 years, but 3 years is quite soon after a loss. In another 3 years, I want to be— this is where I want to be. And that might be that you want to be able to walk 2 miles a day, or you might be able to want— you might want to be able to go for a running race with your grandchildren, or you might be able to take up a new sport where you can meet people, or, you know, is social. So trying to get that kind of sense of, yes, I— this has been hard, and this is what I've done, done to it, and this is what I'm going to do in the future. But comfort is such an interesting word, isn't it? Because it's that kind of hug word, isn't it? Comfort. We touch. Yeah. And how you give yourself comfort is, is really important. You know, comfort can can be making yourself, you know, in London, I'm in London, it's boiling hot. I don't know how, I know around the country it's different temperatures. I talked to a friend in Leeds.

Boiling hot.

It's absolutely unbearable, at least for us over here. But, you know, having a sparkling water with some ice in it and a slice of orange, it could be really comforting. It's saying I'm important rather than just getting myself a cut glass of tap water. You know, things can be comforting. And like treating yourself with compassion and treating yourself with kindness without having to be, you know, chocolate or sweets and stuff like that.

Absolutely. So I've got 3 more questions left. If we can have no more now because we're getting to the end. Now there is another question that's very similar and it It is very sad actually. I lost a baby at 22 weeks. Bless you. Due to him having Edwards syndrome, I've blamed myself ever since and have doubled my weight and now have rheumatoid arthritis. I blame myself for this too. How do I deal with this? Self-compassion is needed, absolutely. And I don't have your name. It's so sad. I would love to— when I do these Facebook book lives, I get the names of people, and I just— at this moment, I would just love to say your name. But, um, yeah, it's— it very much is a— that's a difficult one.

It's really difficult, and it's really— and again, I, I wonder whether you've really had a chance to grieve your loss. I mean, um, it's terrible to lose a parent. It's awful, awful. To lose a partner, but we all know that, you know, losing a child, it goes against—

I've just been given, it's Dawn.

Oh, hello Dawn. I really encourage you to share, you know, what I'm hearing is shame. What I'm hearing is shame. And shame can really breed with secrecy. You know, when we feel it, shame is kind of different from embarrassment because it's all over us. We just feel it. We feel like we're a bad person. It's not just that we feel a bit embarrassed about one part of ourselves. We just feel this horrible feeling of shame. And that's what I'm hearing, that you're blaming yourself. And we could start— I don't know enough about Edward's syndrome, but I'm sure that you're not to blame for your—

Absolutely not to blame, because it is a condition and you can't blame yourself.

No, you can't blame yourself.

But you've— I'm sure, Dawn, that you've been told that so many times, but—

Yes, I'm sure you have been told, but I wonder—

It's not easy, is it, when it's in here?

Yeah, it's not easy when it's in here. I wonder again if— If the— well, I think, you know, if when you've suffered the loss of a child, you know, counseling would be a really good— absolutely— response to that. And, and to be able to share all your darkest kind of blame, kind of secrets to, to somebody else, and probably things you don't even feel capable of telling your nearest and dearest because you feel so bad about yourself. I also think that, you know, I said to an earlier caller about the writing the letter and getting it all out, but I think it could be really cathartic for you to write the blame letter and then to write the other letter, the letter that your best friend would write you, or the letter that you know in your heart is true, that you are not responsible for this. And then to show yourself the compassion that you've been through the, you know, possibly the worst thing anyone could ever face in life, to lose a child. And that, you know, how completely understandable that you would want comfort. I mean, for all the callers today, but really, that, that's the sort of peak of it, isn't it? That you would want, want the comfort.

And I'm guessing there's a lot of comfort eating going on because of the weight doubling. But Dawn, even therapy, I mean, we've got somebody, if you email customer services at thinkingsimmer.com, we can put you in touch with somebody who would also help you, so.

And there's some really good books about grief. I don't know how many of those you've read, but there's a good, app. It's run by Julia Samuel about grief. I would encourage you to join bereavement charities for the loss of babies, you know, just to start to share, because when you share, you get that sense of connection. You won't feel so alone, you won't feel so shamed, you know. So I'm sorry, so sorry for your loss.

Absolutely. How— I've got two questions that are very similar, so we can answer them both at once. Um, and they're the last two now. Uh, how do you stop feeling you have the right to reward yourself with comfort food after a hard day's work? And how do I stop using food when I'm happy, sad, angry, um, or happy, sad, or angry? Um, so yes, it's all, all wrapped up in, um, how do you stop feeling? And that's one of the things actually that you're— that this, this was all about, the whole feelings thing.

Yeah, I don't think it's about stopping feeling. It's about, you know, when we, when we— I mean, it's so instinctive when you're a parent to, to, to cheer children up with sweets and chocolates, and, you know, even when you know better, you know. Yeah.

Um, how my chocolate habit started when I was rewarded with with chocolate.

Yeah. And so it's not surprising. And you know, like if we, if we all went away now and we turned on the television and we saw a woman with a big tub of ice cream and a spoon and she was eating out of it, you'd think, oh, she's split up with her boyfriend. You know, that's what you'd think. Because we're sold this idea that food is the answer to emotions. And really, that isn't the answer to emotions, you know, The answer to emotions is, well, it's lots of different things. You know, often it's connection, which I was just talking about with the last caller. It's about sharing our emotions. Sometimes that's not possible. You know, like the lady said, you can't have people there all the time. It's about processing your emotions. It's not— it's about not being scared of your emotions so much. I'm feeling sad, I'm feeling lonely. That's this will pass. This will pass. We often in therapeutic work, I talk about, you know, the emotion wave and how are you going to surf that wave. You know, you— if you, if you stand still, you're just going to knock you down, but you've got to surf over it. Okay, so what helps you when you get back from work? Is it making yourself some other— some something, some other way of, you know, of it?

Yeah. Or even You know, it is comfort food after a hard day's work. Sometimes people can change that to something different, you know.

Exactly.

I used to have a glass of wine and now I have a fake gin and tonic because it wasn't the alcohol, it was just the taste, you know, it was just having this reward thing going on in my head.

Exactly. And you know, and I said that about the sparkling water, you know, if you you can treat yourself in a way that's a treat. You know, when you get the wine glasses out, it already feels like a treat. You're not drinking it out of a mug, are you? The old chipped mug. It's a sort of treat, you know. Sitting, sitting in the garden for 5 minutes, if you're lucky to have a garden, or, or making that a time that you connect to your best friend, you know, starting a WhatsApp group of what, of, of connection at 6 o'clock, of, you know, the old wine o'clock can be a good way of doing it. You know, there's lots of different ways. Putting on music and dancing around your kitchen can be a really good way of doing it, kind of going to the opposite. I don't like— when emotions, you know, and they're not the problem in themselves. They can be a problem if they're extreme, they last too long, that's when we call it a mental health problem. But like the feeling of emotion is part of life, you know, and acknowledging that and saying, okay, I feel like this you know, and then, I mean, it's a sort of psychological, um, cliché, but you know, once we were all children, what would you want for that child in you at that moment when you're feeling like that? You're coming in from work, you're tired, you're hungry, you've had a bad day and somebody's yelled at you and the traffic was terrible. What would you want from them? Would you— what would you want for them, for yourself? For what you want 'Would you want a hug? Would you want to rest?' Would you, you know, so it's trying to think about it like that and trying to— absolutely, and trying to find a different way.

Yeah, it really, really is. And in fact, I just had a thought. There's lots of help in my book.

Yes, there is. There's lots of help in your book. Here's one I prepared earlier.

I love that. There is lots of help for you on how to deal with that in my book.

There is, there is, there is lots of books.

Because that's what the book's all about.

It is, it is, yes, it is. There's lots of help about that. Um, and trying to—

and Tara, we're gonna, um, some wrap up now, um, but can you please just give the titles of the two of your books so that, um, people because, because it is applicable even though, you know, they are for parents. It's the Good Enough one is great.

Well, my first book was called You Don't Understand Me, and it's for teenage girls and young women. And there's a whole chapter about food and eating, weight and shape in there, where I just talk about the same sort of stuff that's in Sandra's book. So if you've already got that, but you know, it might be good purchase for your daughter if she's struggling, or, you know, your niece or whoever. But it's about— it's the subtitle is A Young Woman's Guide to Life. So it's also got about love and about school and about families and everything in it. So that was my first book. And then I wrote a journal book to accompany that. And my latest book is called Good Enough: A Framework for Modern Parenting. And in there, I have 3 tenets about good enough parenting. And one of them is It's about, about, so it's about feeling good enough, it's about firm and kind, and it's about having a, being in a relationship with your child. And there's a chapter also in the childhood section about feeding your child in a way which hopefully breeds connection, helps them celebrate with food, enjoy food, but doesn't give them hang-ups about not eating this food or having to eat this food or their weight and shape.

Amazing, amazing. Look, thank you very much. We've done, we've covered so much and it's been fabulous. Thank you.

So lovely to talk to your Slimpodders and, you know, carry on the good fight and, you know, hear about the really difficult things that they're struggling with.

Yeah, I know, and they will all be saying thank you at the moment. It's just that we can't see them. So, but thank you so much. It's been, it's, it's been such a lovely chat. Yes, see you, Sandra, and we'll do another one.

Yes, let's.

Thank you. Bye-bye-bye-bye, everyone.