Just As Well, The Women's Health Podcast - The Science of Stress Snacking + How To Do It Less

Episode Date: February 16, 2021

What can I do to stop mindlessly snacking on food that doesn’t make me feel good? That’s a question many of you have been directing into our inbox. And, really, is it any surprise? It’s been almost a year of pandemic life, where we’re seeking comfort more than ever; and judging by what you’re telling us, often in snacks. Little morsels, consumed mindlessly that, in the end, you don’t even enjoy that much. If you want a little assistance in rewiring your urge to emotionally eat, so it’s more supportive and sustaining for your health - both physical and mentally - we’ve got you. We chat to clinical researcher and co-director of City Dieticians, Dr Nicola Guess, and clinical psychiatrist Dr Chi-Chi Obuaya, to unpick the intricate and very complex relationship between food and feelings. Crucially, we give you tonnes of strategies for how you can think about supporting your mood and energy levels between meals, including dietician-approved ways to nail healthy comfort food and practical tips for identifying when you’re emotionally eating. Join Dr Guess on Twitter: @Dr_Guess Join Dr Obuaya on Twitter: @chichiobuaya  Join Roisin on Instagram: @roisin.dervishokane Join Women’s Health UK on Instagram: @womenshealthuk   Topics - How to stop mindlessly snacking - What to eat to maintain energy between meals - Practical tips to stop emotionally eating - Why we’re consuming our feelings during the pandemic   Like what you’re hearing? We'd love if you could rate and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, as it really helps other people find the show. Also, 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 goal in an upcoming episode. Alternatively, you can email us: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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And really, is it any surprise? It's been almost a year of pandemic life where we're seeking comfort more than ever. And judging by what you're telling us, plus, let's be honest, our own experience, but we'll get into that later, often you're seeking it in snacks. Little morsels consume mindlessly that in the end you don't even really enjoy that much. If you're all good with your snacking habits, more power to you. But if you do want a little assistant in really, rewiring your urge to emotionally eat so it's more supportive and sustaining for your health,

both physical and mental, we've got you. Hello, I'm Roshin-Devichokein and this is Going for Goal, the weekly Women's Health podcast. On this show, we call on top experts to share the tools you need to make good on the health goals that really matter to you and chat to our favourite celebrities and wellness heavyweights about what they do to feel and function at their best. In today's episode, where I chat to clinical researcher and co-director of city dietitians, Dr Nicola Gess, and clinical psychiatrist Dr. Chichi Abwaya. We unpick the intricate and sometimes complex relationship between food and feelings.

And crucially, give you tons of strategies for how you can think about supporting your mood and your energy levels without relying on the crutch of a sugary, salty morsel. If, you know, that's a goal for you right now. Nicola makes a fascinating case for revisiting the way we think about the role of snacks in boosting our energy and offers a dietish and approved way to really nail healthy comfort food. Because, as she says, in these times more than any, it's so important to give yourself a bit of what you fancy. Psychiatrist Chi Chi offers practical tips for identifying when you're emotionally eating and offers suggestions on more effective ways to soothe those feelings, boredom, stress and loneliness

that often drive us to the snack drawer, or in my case, as I'll go into multiple times today, to a massive bar of fruit and nuts. I learn loads from having this conversation and I hope you do too. Dr Chitia Bwyer and Nicola Gess, welcome both of you to going for goal. Thank you for having me. Thank you. How are you both doing? It's great to have you with us.

I'm pretty good. I'm waiting for my vaccine, very hopeful that we'll get our lives back soon and really just trying to be as productive as possible. Sounds like a good strategy. Chew, what about you? Yeah, it's a busy time in my world. Yeah, it's a time where lots of people are struggling. And what's unique about this is that we're also having to face the same challenges our clients are going through.

So there's something quite liberating about that. I think some of the traditional boundaries that are there between a doctor and patient have ebbed away. So I'm really just trying to embrace that. And we're all just trying to support each other. And I think that's something quite powerful. Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's so great to have you both with us today. to talk about the topic of mindless snacking,

which is something that lots of our listeners have got in touch saying that they want some help with sort of sorting out this new habit that they've developed in lockdown. It makes sense. Perhaps they're working from home and the kitchen is right by with the temptation of fully stock cupboards

or they're a parent who is homeschooling and rushed off their feet and struggling to stick to three main meal times. Like whatever the scenario, whether it's stress or bored and or loss, it's very likely that people will be grazing. more than they need to right now. But before we get into it, you both come at this topic from very interesting and complementary vantage points. I love if you could each summarize briefly

how you came to be doing what you're doing. Nicola, let's start with you. How did you become a leading voice in nutrition research? And how did this interest in type two diabetes, especially, develop? Well, that's a very sweet, it's very sweet description. I really came about it because I was a practitioner first and foremost. So I worked in the NHS and I saw patients with type two diabetes. And what led me to research really was just a lack of information that we had that I felt I had to help patients pretty much when I was practicing. It was, well, try and eat less, try and lose weight. And I had patients who were slim for whom that information wouldn't be appropriate. I had patients who really struggled to lose weight. And I thought, well, can we do better than

simply saying eat less and move more. So a lot of my research looks at ways to control type two diabetes that don't rely on a person losing weight to be effective. And I really love the interaction. I still see patients. I love being able to hop between research and seeing patients to really kind of get a holistic view of helping the patient with the best data available. Interesting. Yeah, I imagine that's a really complementary mix. And what about how much does snacking come into what you do? Oh, a ton, especially with diabetes, because obviously you want to keep your blood sugar fairly stable. That's the goal of diabetes management. And there's been a lot of misinformation, actually. So I'm sure today we're going to be talking about, I feel like I'm snacking too much at the moment.

What can I do about it? Whereas historically, what's informed diabetes practice has been, oh my goodness, I need to have a snack to prevent my blood sugar going low. and actually for most patients that's not true at all. There's actually no physiological requirement to snack. So there's kind of two different parts of the equation here. And in general, I would say 80% of my job is finding ways to snack less, not more. Interesting. And we're definitely going to get into those later. Because yeah, snacking is so controversial, isn't it?

We had Tim Spector, Professor Tim Specter on the pod earlier this year. and I know he's, he was very outspoken in saying, no, no, no, no, you don't need to snack. It's the food industry. It's come from this, I mean, I remember when I was a kid and they would sell, I think it was Milky Ways or something. And it was marketed, you know, this chocolate bar, high sugar, terrible product marketed to keep your energies up in the afternoon. Give it to your kids to help them focus at school. So the food industry definitely has played a role in, in putting snacking first and foremost in our minds as something we should be doing. And Chitie, what about you? How did you get into psychiatry and then come to specialise

in topics like eating disorders? So I'm an adult psychiatrist and I see some patients with eating disorders having done some postgraduate work in an eating disorders unit. Like all psychiatrists, I went through medical school and when you've then done your various road. in general medicine and surgery, I specialized within psychiatry. And you get exposure to a number of sub-specialties during your psychiatric training. One of those for me was working in an eating disorders unit. And that was a real privilege because not all psychiatrists get to do that. And fewer still then focus on eating disorders as a consultant.

So I don't work within an eating disorder. disorder service now, but having had that experience, I do within my general adult clinic, so I see people aged 18 plus who mainly have mood and anxiety disorders. I do see some people who have some of the common eating disorders, so conditions like anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. But I do see some overeaters, but patients who have a range of disordered eating patterns. And I think it's really important to mention, I think because of the classification, eating disorders, I think sometimes people forget, you know, how related to things like anxiety and control and stress and depression, eating disorders actually are, that they are legitimate and very serious mental health issues as opposed to just food problems.

Yeah, and going back to the point Nicola made, it was interesting that her background is more in, diabetes and overeating. Psychiatry has tended to focus historically on under-eating, so conditions like anorexia, so low-weight. And my experience is that for historical reasons, services have been commissioned around those conditions. We recognise obesity as a big problem, but we haven't necessarily set up services to deal with overeating as well.

So I guess it's still quite a niche area and it's one that we'd like to develop a bit more. And yeah, we're just treading that path and trying to inform ourselves. But there's also a sensitivity that comes around it because a lot of the messaging these days, and we're talking about snacking, a lot of the messaging is around overeating, of course. and it's trying to navigate the spectrum of disordered eating because the same messages that discourage people from overeating can also make those who have a tendency to under-eat feel very guilty. So we just need to get that bit right.

And I just always approach these conversations with a degree of empathy for people who may be struggling at the other end of whichever end we're talking about. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I would definitely agree with that. And I think the same conversations have infiltrated kind of type 2 diabetes for a long time as well. And there are people who are very, very slim with type 2 diabetes. There are people who are athletic with type 2 diabetes. And so having a dominant conversation, which is about eating less, isn't appropriate for everyone.

It makes people feel excluded. And many people don't want to lose weight. They're happy with their bodies. And there's also a group, and I think you described this really nicely, who feel guilty around these messages. So I try to, within my practice and when I'm giving talks, have a very inclusive way of talking about options for type 2 diabetes management with less of a focus just on weight.

Yeah, absolutely. And bringing it kind of back to, I don't know, almost like the middle ground of people who are struggling with this at the moment. What's the relationship between stress? and that sweet and salty morsel. How do we get from A to B? How do we get from feeling stress to then going and suddenly like raiding the crisp cupboard? When we're thinking about emotional eating on one level,

there can be a degree of impulsivity that occurs. And that can be for a variety of reasons. One of the helpful acronyms that I use to remember emotional eating is blast. So the B stands for boredom. There's just something, I think, at the moment where, as you said, we're in closer proximity to our fridges. And almost out of habit without really being hungry, it just feels natural to wander into the kitchen, to open the fridge,

and to snack on something. And Nicola, you mentioned the power of marketing and the fact that we've become accustomed to this idea of, like a mid-morning snack or a mid-afternoon snack, and that idea that there's just something that keeps you going. And I think when things are available, we sometimes naturally will tend to access them. And likewise, when those things aren't available,

we're able to get on. If we're busy, we just crack on without needing to snack. The L stands for loneliness. So that's another big problem for people at the moment. I think loneliness is quite complex, because we tend to think of loneliness as maybe someone who's very elderly and doesn't have family around them, but it can occur across the ages. For young people, it's a big problem, including those who are out of school.

And even people who may live with other people, but don't have a close emotional connection to them. So again, food is a way of providing a degree of comfort. The A stands for anger. it might be that we feel that we need to turn to something when we're feeling angry with the world, with ourselves, with our partners, our children, and we feel that we need to treat ourselves then and it's a way of providing some sort of self-compassion.

And the link to that is the S, which stands for stressed. And finally, I think a really important one is the T. When we're tired, there's a tendency to go back to that concept of having an energy boost. And if we can get some sugar on board, then particularly going for something very sweet can be quite enticing. Oh, yes. I totally relate to that.

I think the windows almost shifted as well. I think because, and I think it's been a bit like this, almost with alcohol as well. But I think the same things happen with snacking, because we're probably all of those things right now in more degrees than we would be normally, of them at a certain time. It's almost like what's become, like the old walls don't really seem to apply so much. I've got a family-sized bar of dairy milk in my fridge at all times, which is then like

picked off every time I go to the kitchen. And it's kind of like, well, I'm not going to beat myself up over it on account of we're in a pandemic and everyone needs comfort. But then really, is that going to be making me feel happier, more productive, clearer-headed? No. And actually, we understand very little about why we want to eat what we want to eat. And much of the research, you know, this idea that we're addicted to sugar or it gives us an adrenaline boost or whatever it might, endorphin boost, whatever it might be. A lot of this research actually comes from animal studies. We have very little data in humans that's consistent showing why we crave certain foods. There's some work that even suggests protein foods can help us feel better mentally.

because some of the amino acids are involved in neurotransmitters. And I think it's really hard, in addition to the fact that the actual biological research we have isn't that good, it's also really hard to dissociate all of this from our learned behaviours. So all of this is really tough to unpack and kind of makes the stuff we're talking about today really difficult. That's such a good point. It's even in popular culture as well, isn't it? I'm thinking, well, probably the most iconic comfort eating scene is Bridget Jones with her Ben and Jerry's. Or it's Elwood's and Legally Blonde when she gets dumped by her boyfriend, sits and eats chocolate and throws them at the telly. It's so part of how we understand about dealing with it, isn't it?

Oh, for sure. But if you even go back to how we look after our kids and it's almost like eat your vegetables, you know, as kind of a punishment. That's the thing you have to do. And then you can have the valuable thing, which, you know, is this dessert, whatever it might be, the tone of our voices, the language we use to describe foods, I'm sure influences how we perceive those foods and how we desire those foods. That's so interesting. We're giving people all these subtle cues the whole time, aren't we? And we're like sponges, really, aren't we? And especially children.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Just absorbing all of those things from the environment. Very interesting. Okay, so we've talked about the relationship between food and food. feelings and the very kind of, which is quite, by the sounds of it, quite a messy, complicated one. And as I think I've got it right, we don't fully understand why we snack. We've kind of talked about, you know, them being some slightly dodgy messaging from the food industry. We've talked about the like emotional pull. But do we, do we need to be snacking? And if so, what are the, what does a healthy energy boosting snack look like? And how should it fit into a pattern of healthy eating? this one to you, please, Nicola? I mean, so I would just reword, we tend to think about this kind of stuff as energy

giving, and this is, I think, where we get a lot wrong in how we think about what we need and what we don't. For most of us, we have more than enough energy stored within our bodies to keep going for a number of days, even if we don't eat. Now, obviously, I'm not suggesting we do that at all, but the idea that we feel tired at, say, 2, 3pm, because we've run out of energy, Energy in that context meaning calories actually is not true and it's not helpful. Because often what manifests as fatigue isn't a lack of calories, it's a lack of movement or a lack of a break or a lack of fresh air or stress or boredom. And so when you take out the, oh, I need an energy boost from the equation and start thinking about actually, does my body need calories or does it need something else?

else, then you can start thinking about how to work on healthier behaviours. And I think what Chi-Chi said is absolutely right, the boredom thing. One thing I do with my patients, even before the pandemic, and we kind of talk about their diet and what they want to achieve. And typically, everyone has something at two, three o'clock in the afternoon. Everyone does. And I always say, all right, let's go back to that. So three o'clock, you're having whatever they might be having. Why do you have that? Is it hunger? I mean, you feeling it in your tummy that you're ravenous? Do you feel like, oh my goodness, I need to eat? And for most, I would say nine out of ten, it's, yeah, everyone just eats at two, three

o'clock. And so what I find when I ask people, why do you have that? If they think about it, it's not hunger, it's just, well, everyone does that. And so simply noticing that and stopping doing it, because if you know that it's not hunger, if you know that there's no urgency here, you're not going to starve, you know, walk around the block, go and have a chat and a laugh with a colleague, take a mental break. Then it starts, you start thinking about healthier behaviours that have nothing to do with calories. And that could be a useful way of dealing with it. And so important at home as well, where if people are working from home, there is so little incentive to move. Yeah, especially right now when if you walk outside, you're going to slip and fall.

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Listeners can also expect run chats from celebs and athletes. You can find Wellfar on Apple, Spotify, Acast and all major podcast platforms. Now, back to today's episode of Going for Goal. There's so many snacks now kind of purporting to be healthy snacks that are still, like, highly processed, still quite a lot of sugar, quite a lot of fat. If someone is, I think it's quite easy for people to be confused when they think they are making like a healthy swap. Say if someone does need something in the afternoon, they don't have like a weight loss goal.

what kind of things should they be eating to maintain their energy levels and not, you know, hike up their sugar and fat content for the day? Calories in food, unless you're really, really, really genuinely hungry, calories and food aren't going to give you that energy in the way we think it does. Things like caffeine actually will. So, I mean, if someone's flagging or you've got something you want to finish, I mean, gee, a cup of coffee is going to help. But you're absolutely right. There are people who are into the gym so they maybe want to eat something to help them with their fitness goals. There are people who have no concerns whatsoever about their weight. They might want to snack now because they're going to be busy for a couple of hours,

whatever it might be. In those situations, I always just think about the quality of the food. And you're absolutely right. Unprocessed here is the key. And simple things can be nuts or seeds or trail mix. So any nuts or seeds will do. there's tiny differences between them but not much. Mixing them with some dried fruit, if that works.

And that's a good idea because they last. Nuts and seeds you can keep in a drawer for whenever you need it. Yogets are actually a great snack. Most of the population is deficient in things like magnesium, calcium and potassium, which are found in yoghurt. So you're filling a great nutritional need there too. And none of these foods will make your bloodshunds. go up really high and crash however we describe that later on. So that's a good thing.

If you're at home and you've got time to prepare, things like hummus or guacamole, Tzikiki, those kind of dips with some prepared chopped vegetables are an excellent snack to have. And the key in those situations is preparation. Most of us, if we're rushed at work or we're at home and we're bored. If you go to the fridge and you've got a dairy milk there, I'm a dietitian, I would do this. You think, oh, can I be bothered to chop some vegetables? No. Oh, look, there's a dairy milk. So make the healthy choice, the default choice. And that's how we can I think eat healthier, especially at times like this during a pandemic. Yeah. I noticed you did a little airquakes there when you were talking about an energy crash. Why would you?

Why was that? Why was that? Just because, again, I guess because we don't understand a lot of what we're talking about. We use these terms energy crash. And like I said, no one's running out of energy. I mean, if we're 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 kilograms, we've got a bunch of glycogen in the body. That's energy. We all have lots of fat. We all have more than enough. That's energy. So none of us are running out of energy. And the reason I kind of can, counter against the terminology that we use, like, oh my God, I need energy. That's the food industry talking to us, saying, oh, you're tired, you need energy, aka calories, buy our product. And this is not a helpful way to think about it. And for those of us, I mean, I quite like running when I've had a stressful day, nothing gives me more energy than when I've come back from a run, right? And mentally, that's such a healthy thing because it's, it tells you the role of stress, fresh air, it might be on influencing how we feel. And it's a far healthier way to think about being kind to ourselves when we understand what our body needs. And very rarely for most of us is it definitely

have calories at three o'clock in the afternoon. Yeah. Very, very interesting the way we think about energy. So fascinating. Absolutely. Yeah. And Chiti, I loved your explanation earlier, your suggestion there about thinking about like the acronym of blast when it comes to kind of disrupting these emotional eating patterns. How do you have any other strategies for how people can do it? And crucially, how they can think about disrupting emotional eating patterns that perhaps they're unhappy with in a way that's in a way that's kind to themselves. Yeah, I wanted to link it into something that Nicola just raised. I think it's a really, really important point that I don't want us to lose. Generally speaking, for each of those

factors, it's important to have a distraction technique. And Nicola, you also touched on this. So what's fascinating for me is that the thing that comes into our minds is our hunger and the obvious solution is to have something to eat. But of course, that feeling of hunger and the desire to snack on something is often a reflection of something else. So it's interesting that solution is often nothing to. to do with food. I think movement is such an important one. There was a study commissioned a few months

ago in Denmark looking at factors that helped to promote happiness at this very challenging time. And one of the recommendations was to get outside and go for a walk for a minimum of 15 minutes every day. And I'm sure we can all think of times maybe even in the last few days or weeks where we've looked outside, it's been cold, maybe it's been snowing or raining, and you just think I'm not leaving the house today at all. So we can also think of times when our minds are busy and business is one of those interesting things that isn't always a positive and we've had lots of time over the last year to reflect and I think in a really healthy way. But there's something when it comes to hunger about keeping our minds active. So not business for the sake of it, but if our

are active, we're not just thinking, oh my goodness, I'm bored. What do I do to fill that boredom? I go and snack. And I think so often it is that disconnect between the fact that maybe we've already had breakfast, as Nicholas said, we're not energy deficient, but it's just a habit thing that we kind of feel like, well, I haven't munched on something for a while and this is what I need to do to fill the time to fill the boredom. So really interesting point about often the solution is nothing to do with food. But I think in just helping us to develop those healthy habits, because we listen to these things,

I was dressing down some notes as you were talking, Nicola. And it's just these are things we've heard before, but the message just gets lost as time goes on. And so how do we ensure that we can sustain these good habits? And there's a principle called Atomic Habits and a book written by James Clear that I can recommend for people. And he highlights a number of factors that help to reinforce these things.

And he says that habits should be obvious, attractive, easy and satisfying. And so I thought of that example you gave, and I'm guilty as well of this, of when you open my fridge, the chocolates are top right, and it's so easy to grab them. And that is the thing that when you feel you're in a hurry

and you want an instant hit, the chocolates are there. But what can we do to maybe make fruit or nuts the more obvious and attractive thing? Well, a simple answer to that is what's the layout of your fridge? What's the layout of the cupboard where you tend to snack? How do you prime your environment to make the thing that is going to be more around having nuts or chopping up some peppers and having some hummers? How do you make that the more attractive option?

the thing that's going to be easier as well. Because at the moment for a lot of us, the easy thing is reach for the chocolate draw. And I think then the satisfaction comes from the fact that maybe you've spent a bit of time preparing something and then it's easy to reach. And it's just about some fine-tuning. So really small tweaks can make a massive difference.

I love what you were saying there before, Chi. It's like this sense that when, if you are, emotional eating, it's almost like a cue that there's some other things that you need as a human animal that aren't being met. So maybe you don't have enough time outside. Maybe you don't have enough movement. Maybe you're not doing something with your free time that interests you. And yeah, that's so fascinating the way it's almost using that as a cue to maybe look at your your patterns and your lifestyle from like a more holistic vantage point and use that emotional eating to think maybe what are you not getting?

Yeah, and I think in order to do that, we're all creatures of habit, or most of us are creatures of habit, there are some people that thrive in chaos. So I think it's about preparing adequately. So that walk isn't going to happen if you've left it till the time that it's absolutely pouring down.

But if you've primed yourself and said, at some point in this next three hours, I've got to get outside. This is a mandatory. I'm going to go for a walk. It just means that when you have the moment, I think there's a decision point or there are various decision points.

And one of the options often is, let me just want it to the kitchen and see what happens. We know what's going to happen when we want to the kitchen. So what are the other things that we've got in our armoury? And it might be, oh, you know what? One of my things that I do every morning is jump on my bike mid-morning. And then you find that by the time you've done that and you've gone for a 10 minute bike ride,

you're not thinking about the kitchen anymore. You're getting back to your work or whatever else you were going to be doing. So I think preparation is really key in this respect. Because if we're not prepared, then it's easy to go down the obvious route, which isn't the one that leaves us satisfied a lot of the time in the long run. Absolutely. It's very interesting. it seems like a big theme that's coming through is this we're all seeking comfort right now,

understandably, from a really hard time. But actually, by the sounds of it, the thing that is probably the most, that's going to be the most kind in the long term and the most useful is probably being a little more disciplined, a little more, a little more, I don't know, removing that urge to do the thing that's going to immediately make you feel good and being a bit more a bit more considered. Nicola, would you agree? Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think preparation here is key, and I think all of us have separately said that, because we kind of have to be pragmatic about this. This is the most unreal situation.

I mean, I have a tiny London flat. So, I mean, I'm lucky enough to live in London. If we don't have the pandemic, just by running my errands and living my daily life, I've probably walked 10,000 steps. That hasn't happened at any time really since March or April last year. So unless I am prepared and, disciplined, I'll effectively spend a year sitting on my couch. And so early on I did kind of make a

decision, right, I have to go out in the morning and walk and then I need to do some other exercise in the afternoon. And actually, I found if I don't do that, my back starts to ache. I get unpleasant side effects from sitting around. And so that has been a deliberate kind of, I guess, disciplined decision that I've made. On the other hand, I do think that we have to be a bit kinder, pragmatic and almost do mitigation, so damage limitation. So an example of this would be, I've got super into junk food during the pandemic, especially around November, December time when it got dark. But by eating plant-based junk food, and by this, I mean, and I'll describe what I eat, it will be like corn mince, then I'll mix it with guacamole that I make, loads of black beans,

taco, chopped tomatoes, etc. Now, as I'm breaking that down, you're thinking, hey, tomatoes, avocado, this isn't terrible. And it's not. It's actually, the individual components are pretty good. And I put some cheese on top. But it is still, when I put it on my plate, big fat tacos. But by making a decision to use corn instead of beef, I'm getting lots of fibre, it's pretty filling because it's high in protein and fibre.

So I can kind of fill that emotional need I have because it's cold and miserable outside. and we're still waiting for the vaccine with, you know, that kind of comfort that comes with it, but there's damage limitation. And I think those kind of pragmatic switches where it's like, oh, God, I'm bored. I'm just going to eat this anyway because it's comforting to me. I'm not having a cold salad. Don't be ridiculous. But you're actually putting some goodness into your body is a really good way of dealing with this. So this has been a big part of my clinical practice. I would say over the past nine months, it's, okay, let's do it. the least worst way of managing comfort eating during this pandemic because we're all going to do it.

Yeah. I love it. It's like meeting your needs and your cravings halfway. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I really like that. Yeah, but also important to emphasize we're going to get this wrong as well. I'm far from perfect in this area. And I think we shouldn't beat ourselves up when we get it wrong. It's more about what are the things that we could do better. And I think most of us could probably do better, but rather than just feeling guilty and feeling that what Nicola is saying is just something out of reach, what are the small things I could do that will just mean that this week compared to the week just gone, I can make a few inroads and how do I make it fun? And then it just builds.

So the idea here isn't to make anyone feel bad about themselves. It's really just to be creative. And that's one of the other things that I think is a real opportunity. At a time of great difficulty, we've got to keep our minds engaged and also be creative and deal with boredom in a very general sense. So food is something that we can actually embrace as an opportunity for creativity rather than something to be feared. I really like Jiji's point there about not beating yourself up.

And I think this goes, whether it's food intake, whether it's exercise, whether it's how productive we are. And this idea that we're all going to be, you know, great every day, doing loads of work or whatever it might be, it's just not realistic. This is a really hard time for everyone. So a big message I have for my patients is if today doesn't go great or this week doesn't, start again next week and just do the best you can.

I think that pretty much sums it up, doesn't it? That's a perfect place to end. Dr. Chichiabwai, Nicola Gess, thank you so much for coming on Going for Gold. A pleasure. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. You've been listening to Clinical Researcher and Co-Director of City Dietitians, Dr. Nicola Gess, and clinical psychiatrist Dr. Chichie Obwyer, interviewed by me, Women's Health Senior Editor, Roshin Devichet, on the Going for Girl podcast. I will say that after this, I've not removed the giant bar of fruit and nut

from my fridge and it's still being picked at. But on two days now, I have enjoyed assembling myself a little snack plate with some spinach and tomatoes and some pickles, a bit of cheese. Balance, right? As ever, if you want to comment on anything that we've raised in this episode, get in touch. All the details of how are in the show notes. Got a different goal in mind and want to know how to achieve it. Let us know and we could be helping you get there in an upcoming episode.

That's all from going for goal this week. We'll be back next Tuesday.