Just As Well, The Women's Health Podcast - How to Break Out of Negative Eating Patterns

Episode Date: July 16, 2020

If there’s been one common thread weaving through your episode request messages over the past couple of months, it’s that many of you want our experts’ guidance on breaking out of unhealthy eati...ng patterns. Just a few examples: Lauren wanted to learn strategies with which to curb her snacking, Hannah wanted to know what will stop her snacking on junk food, while Leila wants help disrupting her emotional eating reflex. At the other end of the spectrum, plenty more of you wanted advice on how you can avoid slipping back into restrictive habits around food. This week, Roisín is joined by Dr Laurel Mellin, associate clinical professor at the University of California San Francisco and founder of neuroscience-based, habit-change system Emotional Brain Training - alongside Renee McGregor, leading sports and eating disorders dietician. They discuss how the surprisingly simple principles of neurophysiology can help anyone manage emotional eating issues, food and feelings-based ways to temper sugar cravings - and what to do if the stress of the pandemic is tipping you toward restrictive eating habits.  Dr Laurel Mellin is author of The Stress Eating Solution, find out more about Emotional Brain Training. Renee McGregor is author of Training Food and co-host of the Train Brave podcast, join her on Instagram @r_mcgregor Join Roisín Dervish-O'Kane on Instagram: @roisin.dervishokane Topics  Why so many people have been struggling with negative eating patterns recently What is neurophysiology and how can it help disrupt negative eating patterns? A brain training technique to try if you're concerned about your overeating An energy-sustaining healthy eating schedule  Sweet tooth in overdrive? Why you might not be eating enough If you'r struggling with disordered eating right now, check out the UK's Eating Disorders Charity BEAT for information and support: beateatingdisorders.org.uk Like what you’re hearing? Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, and remember to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, so you’ll never miss an episode. Got a goal in mind? Shoot us a message on Instagram putting ‘Going for Goal’ at the start of your message and our experts could be helping you achieve your health and wellness ambition in an upcoming episode.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:01:28 Paramount Plus. Hey everyone, you are listening to Going for Goal, the weekly women's health podcast. My name is Rochene. I'm a senior editor on women's health, and this is your weekly chance to plug in, be inspired, and get expert advice on how to achieve the health and wellness goals that matter most to you. Now, if there's been one common thread weaving through your episode request messages over the past couple of months, it would be that you guys really want our experts' help with breaking out of the world. of unhealthy eating patterns.
Starting point is 00:02:01 Some examples, very much not all of them. Lauren wants to learn how to curb her snacking. Hannah wants tips that will stop her snacking specifically on junk food. Layla wants to help with disrupting this emotional eating reflex. And Katie Genevieve want strategies that will help her from overeating in general. That's one end of the spectrum. At the other, plenty more of you want tips on how you can stop falling back into restrictive habits around food when you're feeling the pressure of the pandemic.
Starting point is 00:02:30 Whatever the negative eating pattern you're looking to shake off right now, I hope you'll find some answers and some relief in this conversation. At the end of June, I was joined by Dr. Laurel Mellon, a health psychologist, associate, clinical professor of family medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and founder of emotional brain training, a system which she'll explain all about later on. Also joined by Renee McGregor,
Starting point is 00:02:58 who is a leading sports and eating disorders dietitian with over 20 years experience. Long-time listeners might remember her from our first episode, which looked at the goal of how to lose weight healthily without crash dieting. In the conversation that follows, we covered everything from simple ways to eradicate that evening sugar craving to strategies for how you can break up with stress eating for good. Let's have a listen. Renee McGregor and Dr. Laurel Mellon, welcome to Going for Goal. Thank you for having us. What a pleasure.
Starting point is 00:03:29 Oh, it's brilliant to have you on. So this week we are talking about the topic of how to break out of negative eating patterns, which I think is super pertinent. We're recording this at the end of June. And in the UK, we've been in lockdown, as many other places in the world have been. And I think with all that disruption, there's people have really noticed differences to their eating habits. Lots of people have been in touch with us to talk about. how this is really getting them down and they really want advice on how they can stop overeating,
Starting point is 00:04:02 how they can stop kind of emotional stress eating or how they can be careful that they don't slip into an unhealthy binge and restrict cycle. So that's been a background. That's why we're doing the episode. But before we get into all that, you two both come at this topic from very, very interesting vantage points. Starting with Laurel, can you explain how you became to be such an expert in this field. It started with myself. I think when you're talking about something that's really painful and frustrating, if you have your own personal experience, it's going to inspire you. And I first started having an overeating problem at the age of 11 when I was bullied and I ended up going for sugar. And it led to me being a nutritionist and a faculty member in the School of Medicine at
Starting point is 00:04:47 UCSF. And I could find that nutrition actually added to your stress if you were stressed eating with sugar or whatever, but it wasn't the root cause of the problem. So I went on from nutrition to health psychology and to neuroscience because what I found was that when we actually balanced out the brain chemically and electrically, that people stopped overeating. And when I first discovered this, it was long before the neuroscience has been done. So I was completely committed for life to finding out what was the root cause of all the overeating. Of course, in the process, I solved my own problem, but I also created a national movement and even international movement to get into the emotional brain because that's the seat of the overeating. So it was actually
Starting point is 00:05:35 very personal and also very scientific because that's my background. I'm at a school of medicine. I want to look at what does show me the science. It took me how many years, almost 40 years, to get that one clean. But the science is really clear now about overeating and it's such good news. Oh, it's such an interesting journey and I can't wait to get stuck into the details or the science and the sec. But Renee McGregor, this is your return to the Going for Goal podcast. Yes, I can't believe you have me back on again. No, well, Renee was on our first episode, which was all about kind of healthy weight loss and sustainable, sensible weight loss. But Renee, for people that haven't listened to that weight loss episode, definitely, by the way, do go back and listen if you haven't because it's brilliant.
Starting point is 00:06:23 But for people that haven't and they're not familiar with you, can you tell them kind of how you became to be doing what you do? Yeah, sure. I mean, I started life as a doing biochemistry and then I moved into clinical dietetics. And I worked in clinical dietetics for about, I don't know, seven, eight years. And then I actually ended up working in sports nutrition. And when I was a clinical dietitian, my speciality was working in mainly adolescent eating disorders, but obviously saw a range throughout my career in the clinical field. And then as I moved into sport, it became very, very clear to me that there was such a big overlap between personality types and kind of extreme behaviours, particularly around sort of exercise and food. And, you know, I was seeing more and more similar traits to what I'd seen in adolescent units
Starting point is 00:07:26 and kind of the places I'd worked in with eaters, people with straight eating disorders within the sports world. And I suppose that has become my specialist area in that I work mainly with individuals who are very active. So it doesn't have to be like professional athletes or elite level athletes, but they are those individuals that are very active, take their fitness or their sport very seriously, but actually have ended up developing a dysfunctional relationship with both food and training in the mix of it. And I guess through that, like, you know, I've done extra study in things like neuroscience and mental health and psychology to kind of really understand the full cycle of what goes on because it's never about food and exercise, you see. It's always about what's going on internally, deep rooted.
Starting point is 00:08:19 And so it's about helping people to understand their behaviour and where it comes from and what the purpose of that behaviour is and then helping them to get a much better relationship with food and exercise. So kind of question to both of you. Thanks those intros. What do you think? Obviously, we've been at a time, Laurel, you're dialing in from the US. So the experience there I know has been different, but still pretty intense.
Starting point is 00:08:45 But what do you think about the way that our lives had changed? over the past three months. What about that do you think may have impacted people and could have led them to kind of fall into these negative eating patterns? Well, you know what's interesting is if you really look at food and eat exactly what Renee was saying is there is a root cause. And I will say that it makes me sad to say this, that the root cause is very simple and the root cause is stress in the brain. And the more stress you have in the brain, I want you to imagine that you have this thinking brain,
Starting point is 00:09:23 which is what is sort of the executive function of, you know, I'm conscious about what I should eat or what I'm doing. But the real powerhouse that has to do with all these excesses, including overeating, under eating, stress eating, is the emotional brain or the unconscious mind. And when that unconscious mind is flooded with stress, the way it's been, and really preventive from the natural ways of releasing stress
Starting point is 00:09:48 that are not based on neuroscience, but are just based on getting out and exercising, connecting with people, being in a free environment, when you're really not able to get those natural pleasures. There's more stress in the brain. I'm going to be a little complicated here, but it's really important for your listeners to know this science. And that is in your beautiful emotional brain
Starting point is 00:10:10 that's right in the unconscious mind, the emotional circuits, in that brain cause you to do everything you do. Essentially, everything we do is controlled by the emotional brain. And when those circuits start being stressed out, it's not that what we do, but the fact is that we're going to do something to get relief because there are chemical changes in the brain
Starting point is 00:10:37 that make us essentially like a sitting duck because we are going to be hungry, we are going to crave sugary fatty foods. We're going to tend to be lethargic, be depressed, and gaining weight. And so the solution is not to go in a million different directions. It's, from my perspective anyway, if you try to change your behavior without changing those emotional circuits and they're really easy to control, what happens is you get success in the short term, but you don't take the opportunity to actually learn how to shut off
Starting point is 00:11:09 the stress in your emotional brain. so you either have short-term changes with weight and eating, or in fact you just switch from, you know, food to drinking to over-exercise, to all of these excesses are caused by the brain in stress. And that's why we use emotional brain training. It's very simple. It works for regardless of your age or gender or anything else. It's just really simple.
Starting point is 00:11:32 It's just how the emotional brain works. You can actually shut off that stress in a couple of minutes. It's a collaborative effort with neuroscientists, neuroplasticity experts, neurophysiologists, because it's really, when the old way of thinking about how we lived, it was psychology versus biology, but versus, you know, is it a medical problem? Is it a behavioral problem? Is a psychological problem? In the emotional brain, it puts all of them together. Renee, what's your take of why this moment can be, could maybe tip people into these negative eating patterns? For me, what I've noticed through the lockdown,
Starting point is 00:12:10 is that the number of people reaching out for support to me has been huge. And I think for me, what the biggest, the biggest kind of cause of that was the heightened anxiety. So we went into lockdown, literally overnight in the UK. And there was so much uncertainty and so much anxiety. And, you know, a lot of individuals who have a difficult. relationship with food, they don't have the ability to manage their emotions. So very similar to what, you know, to what Lawrence has been saying is that they, they often deny those difficult emotions, often because they've never been taught how to deal with them properly. And so, you know, when you've never learned how to be curious about the emotions, you do sometimes jump to
Starting point is 00:13:09 coping mechanisms that help you to defend yourself from those emotions. So, you know, like, Victor Frankel is one of the most amazing psychologists out there in his kind of, his process and approach around providing yourself with space around your thoughts so that you can then respond appropriately is kind of, you know, really important in this, in this time, in the sense that, you know, a lot of people were coming to me saying, I feel anxious, I feel stressed, I feel you know, I feel scared, I feel uncertain. And the thing is when you, when you use that language with yourself, when you say I feel something, you automatically become that. You know, you fully and utterly become that emotion. And yet we are not our emotions, you know, emotions are a barometer
Starting point is 00:13:57 telling us that something's going on for us, but we're not those emotions. And so when I'm working with individuals, I'm asking them to be a bit more compassionate towards themselves. And I'm asking them to say, okay, instead of saying, I am feeling anxious, I'll do it in the way that you say, I am noticing that I feel anxious so that you are separating yourself from that emotion. And then you can start to explore that emotion. Like, what is that about? And, like, where has that come from? What I've noticed is that there's, There's two camps. There's individuals that are really needing comfort at this time.
Starting point is 00:14:38 And so maybe they are looking towards food to try and have that comfort. And then there are the individuals, the ones I generally tend to work with who are so incredibly anxious and don't want to experience that anxiety, that they want to numb it and they numb it by restricting their intake because that helps them to temporarily stop them from experiencing, you know, those difficult feelings. So big question, big question to both of you. But I think, Laurel, let's start with you. How do people do it?
Starting point is 00:15:12 What's the first step? The first step is to appreciate that you have had times in your life where you felt in complete control of food and everything else. And even though in your mind, you said, well, life is going well right now, this is why. Under the hood, if you pop the head of your inner life into your body, it means that your brain is at a state of connection that we call brain state one. So I want first for everyone to know that there's nothing wrong with you.
Starting point is 00:15:41 In this moment, if you were at brain state one, you would not under-eat, overeat, be depressed, be irritable with your spouse or partner. All of those stress-related patterns would go away. Brain state one, and that's called neural integration. There are five levels of stress in the brain, and so what I want you to do is similar to what Renee said. You really need to understand yourself, to see yourself, to love yourself, to be connected to yourself. But the thinking brain has one priority. Instead of analyzing everything and figuring everything out, the essential strategy is to know your stress number. one feeling absolutely great two good three a little stressed four stressed out and five
Starting point is 00:16:29 overwhelmed with stress when you are at five you are going to safety eat or under eat you're going to go to extremes the brain's going to tell you you're going to die if you don't get that food or if you have an eating disorder if you do eat you're going to die so it's a it's about power and survival and safety the drives are overwhelming If you're at 4, you're actually eating for love. And the reason is, in the brain, once you're at Brain State 4, which is definitely stressed, the brain can't emotionally connect with ourselves or others. And because we're mammals, we need love.
Starting point is 00:17:07 So we'll associate food with love and we'll get triggered to overeat. And we'll eat and eat and eat because we're not getting the love from the cookies or the donuts or whatever that is that we need. If you're at 3, you're a little wobbly with stress and you're going to be. be comfort eating. At two, you're going to be pleasure eating. At one, you don't even care about the food. You know whether you're hungry or not. And eating healthy food tastes delicious. So just knowing your brain state and knowing what need you're fulfilling is great. And then what happens is instead of saying, why am I doing this? Why should I eat it? Should I not? And all these thinking brain type things,
Starting point is 00:17:45 if you're in stress, your thinking brain is not going to be doing well. You're going to be ruminating. You're going to be obsessing. All you do is. is check your number and then use the emotional tool for that number. And within two to four minutes, you'll be at one and you'll say, oh, I don't have that appetite anymore. This is just neurophysiology and all the other techniques you use. Like if you go to your nutritionist or if you go to your doctor or you go to your therapist, you'll be able to do whatever they tell you to do and have these insights because you've cleared the stress away. So you're at brain state one. So we see this as emotional brain training is fundamental to all of health care and mental health care and behavioral care,
Starting point is 00:18:27 because when you take care of the stress, you take care of 80% to 90% of the problem. And then you can be rational and you don't have those strong drives. And you say, wow, this is so easy. So you talk about there being like emotional tools, which, so they are useful at whatever brain state to do. Say if I'm at brain state four, so not completely overwhelmed, but pretty much on my way. with stress and I am like habitually reaching for food that I know isn't going to make me feel good. What would be the tool that you recommend me to do to kind of snap out of that?
Starting point is 00:19:03 Actually, it's a cycle tool and it's just exactly what Renee was speaking about, difficult emotions, but in EBT we don't work our way through difficult emotions by being analytical or even mindfully aware because they're really nasty. At brain state three, four, or five, these emotions get really stuck. You get anxiety and depression and overwhelm and irritability. And the emotions really need just to be unpacked. I can demonstrate it if you want how to unpack those feelings. Okay. So you first, your mother probably told you never to complain. That was hogwash. I don't know if that's a British term either, but in the Ameri-Namarka, that's hogwash. Yeah, we know hogwash. And essentially, this is a technique who can use for anything. If you have a fight with your
Starting point is 00:19:50 husband, if you have a procrastination work stall, these are just basic tools that we all need, particularly because the stress is not going away. It's not about getting past COVID or even the revolutions that are going on. The speed of change in our culture, we are going to be stressed out. This is the age of the emotional brain. You need these emotional brain training tools so you can be your best stuff. I'm going to do it right now. The first thing is, all it is is a series of what we call lead-ins, which is your thinking brain says a little phrase, and then you wait for your emotional brain to complete the sentence, the unconscious mind.
Starting point is 00:20:24 So I'm going to first complain, and then I'm going to be angry to blow up a lot of steam, I'm going to feel my feelings. I'm going to find out why I'm eating what I'm, why I'm eating, and I'm just going to shut off that circuit. Okay, this is an emotional circuit. So I'm just going to do what I, you know,
Starting point is 00:20:39 you do it a thousand times. The situation is, so I'm going to complain. Situation is I'm totally and completely out of control. of food. I know I should not eat this stuff and I still keep eating and I tell myself in the morning I'm not going to eat it and then I eat it. So nice complaint, right? Real quick. Then you wait for your emotional brain to organize all of that information and it will tell you what you're most upset about. And then you wait and you say, what I'm most stressed about is, and I wait and listen to my body where you experience your emotional brain. I'm out of control of my food. Okay, great. We've got a topic.
Starting point is 00:21:16 Now we're going to unpack the emotions. First with anger because it clears the stress so that you're thinking smarter. If you're not thinking smart, you're not going to be able to process your emotions well. So I feel angry that I'm out of control of food. I can't stand it that I'm out of control of food. And if you stay in anger a little bit like that, it will naturally unpack itself with sadness. I feel sad that I'm out of control. And then fear, I feel afraid.
Starting point is 00:21:46 this is universal in the brain, I feel afraid that I will never stop eating and I will make myself sick and I will never get over this and I'll have this the rest of my life. And then your part of it is guilt. It's really where your power is. What could I do differently? I feel guilty that I don't just stop all this overeating, why I keep doing it. And then you wait with your body and your emotional brain, your unconscious mind will unlock a circuit that is the deeper knee, the unconsciously, conscious need for why you're doing what you're doing. And it also unlocks the circuit so that you can change the circuit. So it's not just an insight. It's a change in your biology in that wire. So of course, so be loving to yourself because it's all about love, really. Of course I would
Starting point is 00:22:32 keep on overeating because the message in my brain, the unreasonable expectation is I get my love from eating sweets. Oh my gosh. That rings. true. And once you say that you're just now you're looking at it, you're looking at the food and you say, wait a minute, I cannot get the love I truly need from food. I really can't. You're actually training your brain to break the wire that's causing your overeating and you're stopping the craving in the moment. And then the brain clears and you go up to a brain state one. You say, I can get my love from where am I going to get it? I'm not going to get it at food. I got to get it somewhere else. I can get my love from connecting to the deepest part of myself and loving myself when all the
Starting point is 00:23:19 dopamine comes out. Essentially, the odorphins come out, the oxytocin comes out, and you could care less about the food. Big old neurochemical party up there. And we're all feeling great. That's fascinating. And the way you explain it there, it feeds in so nicely to Renee, your point when you're talking about Victor Frankel and that point about making spaces between your emotions and who you are, I think, Laura, when you were explaining that, it's like you become almost an observer of your emotion.
Starting point is 00:23:49 Renee, I'd love to get some of your tips and tactics as well for how people can break the cycle of these unhealthy and negative eating patterns. This is a simple kind of, I suppose, food trick rather than a psychological trick, but just getting them to redistribute their energy through the day. I say just getting them to. It's actually quite difficult because a lot of them are stuck in this. fear that if they eat during the day, what if they eat during the day and they still feel like they want to eat more in the evening and then they're eating more than they normally do and then that's going to be terrible. So it's about creating the trust and then helping them to see that actually if you eat, you know, regular meals, you balance your blood sugar levels,
Starting point is 00:24:35 you provide your body with nutrition that it requires, then it's less likely to want to binge physiologically. That doesn't take the emotional side of it out, but it does take the physiological aspect. So that's one way I would go down in terms of depending on when somebody comes to me and what they're showing signs of. If someone is the opposite end where they're very restrictive about their eating, then often I would look at what their beliefs are around food and what their beliefs are around exercise and what their beliefs are actually about themselves and also body image because that comes into play a lot. With those individuals, if you can start to get a feel for what their beliefs are, like sometimes it's the food beliefs are really simple. It'll be something like
Starting point is 00:25:24 if I eat carbs, I'll get fat or if I, if I, you know, or the exercise wants to be, I have to, you know, run X miles before I can earn my food. Like these are things I hear in clinic all the time. These are deep set beliefs and and like laurel was saying if you repeat something enough when you when you repeat a belief enough in that subconscious mind you're telling yourself it again and again and again it becomes your truth so then you know it creates that threat that stress so it becomes very difficult to eat the carb because eating the carb starts makes your body feel like you're under threat and then your body's trying to make sense of what to do and it It can feel incredibly frightening.
Starting point is 00:26:10 So one of the first things to do with individuals like that is to help them see that their beliefs and ask them, where have these beliefs come from? And are they assumptions they've made or are they actually factual? Where's the evidence? People beat themselves up so much. And I think the term comfort eating, stress eating, emotional eating are all interchanged quite often. So it can get quite confusing.
Starting point is 00:26:35 because personally, I don't have an issue with sometimes needing food for comfort. You know what's better than the one big thing? Two big things. Exactly. The new iPhone 17 Pro on TELUS's five-year rate plan price lock. Yep, it's the most powerful iPhone ever, plus more peace of mind with your bill over five years. This is big. Get the new iPhone 17 Pro at tellus.com slash iPhone 17 pro on,
Starting point is 00:27:05 liked plans, conditions and exclusions apply. When you talk about redistributing your calories and your energy in a way that will hopefully help you stop going into these unhealthy eating patterns and kind of what does that look like practically? So I think the key thing is making sure that you're trying to eat every three hours. Like that's quite a big, like quite a key sort of aspect because our blood sugars will, you normally will have something to eat and then our blood sugars will start to drop within, you know, within three to four hours.
Starting point is 00:27:37 So trying to keep on top of that is quite important. And also having a real mix of food groups. So, you know, like I always say combine things like carbs and protein or carbs and fat. So that could be things like, you know, you might have porridge and nuts and milk and stuff. And then, you know, a few hours later, a banana and peanut butter. And then you'd have your lunch, which could be something like, I don't know, cuscus and chicken and vegetables. Mid-afternoon you might have some sort of like, I don't know,
Starting point is 00:28:11 maybe a piece of cheese and an apple, you know, and then you'd have your evening meal. And then you may have something like, I know, some Greek yogurt and fruit before you go to bed. But what that does is it kind of, it's spreading out the energy throughout the day, but it's also giving you foods that are going to, you know, maintain your blood sugars
Starting point is 00:28:31 without causing these big ups and downs, which, you know, when you think about when people go into restrictive mode, they basically hardly eat at all day. They'll eat maybe a bit of fruit. They might have some salad, which would just be like leaves and maybe a bit of protein.
Starting point is 00:28:47 And then they'll go into the evening. Of course, their body's hungry and then it's going to crave, you know, sugar because the body likes, the currency the body prefers is carbohydrate. You know, and if you don't give it enough food, if you don't give it the right amount, then it's going to start craving sugar.
Starting point is 00:29:03 I have seen so many times in this lockdown when I've been working with people, when I look at people's food diaries, it's so evident. They say, oh, I just really like, I've got a real sweet tooth. It's like you haven't got a sweet tooth. You just don't give your body enough energy through the day.
Starting point is 00:29:21 And so that's why come the evening, you're really looking for sugar. And I think what's also, I think, really interesting is that, you know, people often use, food from like so if you do have a diet that is very very high in say fruit and vegetables which is great we want that but also if that's not providing your body with enough energy it's a very voluminous diet so it'll make you feel full but you might not be getting the nutrition that you actually need especially if you're very active and so that again then will cause the
Starting point is 00:29:56 body to crave sugar later on because it's not got the density of energy that it actually needs. And it's something I've noticed is when people are using a lot of protein powders in their food. And a lot of those protein powders have got sweetness in them. So again, they provide the density, but they don't always provide the energy that that person might need. And so again, that person might later on will be like, actually, I'm really craving sugar. So I think it's really important to have a really good look at what you're doing and what foods you're choosing and really ask us. am I feeding my body enough for the work that I'm asking my body to do?
Starting point is 00:30:36 Laurel, do you, if that's one thing you want listeners to take away from this conversation, all about how they can break out of negative eating patterns, what would it be? Whatever that eating pattern is, it's not about you, it's about a circuit, an emotional circuit in the brain that was implanted early in life or later during stress. And all you need to do is stop blaming yourself and learn simple, emotional tools, emotional brain training, check in with yourself, trust yourself, and you'll spiral up to a state of connection in which your physiology is balanced, your emotions, and your behavior. And it's also a way out of the trap of thinking you really have a food problem.
Starting point is 00:31:19 It's a stress problem, and the stress separates us from ourselves. When we reconnect with ourselves with these emotional tools, and the most important thing is, If you deal with the root cause of food because it's so primitive and important, what happens is you prevent yourself from going from one problem to the next, stopping overeating, stop starting overworking or getting anxious, use a brain-based way to clear those problems so we can go on and make the world a better place. The world needs us right now to move forward. Brilliant.
Starting point is 00:31:51 Thank you so much, Laurel. Renee, same question to you. I think what I'd say is food is not the problem. you know, food is just the medium by which you're trying to defend yourself probably from the emotion that's difficult for you to handle. But also that we beat ourselves up so much and it's so important to be more compassionate towards yourself. And what I mean by that is not the kind of what we hear all the time, be kind, self-care. I'm talking about be more forgiving. You know, if you do have a bad day of eating or you've had a bad three months of eating, that doesn't set you
Starting point is 00:32:26 up for the next year to be bad of eating. It's, you know, it's a response to a situation that has been incredibly difficult for many of us. So instead of beating yourself up and feeling this need to get it right and to punish yourself and to restrict now, you know, just, just be a bit more forgiving and approach it in a more, I suppose, mindful manner is probably the term I would use, is, you know, look at what you need. And I would always say never, ever cut any food groups out because that's always going to set you up to fail. And I guess they're my main takeaways for you guys.
Starting point is 00:33:06 Oh, that's what a fantastic point to end on. Renee McGregor and Dr. Laurel Mellon, thank you so much for coming and going for goal. Thank you for having me. Yes, thank you. And thank you so much to all of you for listening. I really hope you enjoyed the episode. I really hope you found some of this useful.
Starting point is 00:33:23 And obviously we're then, in this episode, we're talking about negative eating patterns on a certain level. If you really are struggling, please do get help. We're going to stick the contact for eating disorders charity. Beat in the show notes. So remember, if you are struggling, help is at hand. So do reach out. If you have enjoyed this episode, please do rate, review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're looking for help with a health goal you want to achieve,
Starting point is 00:33:50 all you need to do is shoot us a message on Instagram, sticking going to be. for goal and big caps letters at the start so we can't miss it. That's all from me for this week. I'll be back next week with another episode. Until then, have a great week.

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