The Hilary Silver Podcast - How To Stop Emotional Eating

Episode Date: May 8, 2024

Episode 6: How To Stop Emotional Eating Introduction Hello, Listeners! Welcome back to this week’s episode of The Hilary Silver Podcast. Join me as I dive into the world of emotional eating, where I share both my personal journey and family history with food along with my professional insights. Today, we're exploring how our relationships with food are deeply intertwined with our emotions, shaped by everything from family dynamics to societal pressures. We'll uncover practical strategies for aligning your eating habits with my signature self-centered approach that emphasizes true self-love, steering clear of temporary fixes through food. Get ready to reclaim control and foster a genuine connection with yourSELF.   Episode Highlights: Understanding the distinction between eating for fuel and emotional eating. Insights into the misuse of food as a response to emotional needs. Hilary's personal journey and professional experiences related to food and body image. Practical advice on how to confront and change emotional eating behaviors. Episode Breakdown: [00:00] - Introduction to emotional eating. [03:00] - Personal stories and the impact of family habits on eating behaviors. [10:00] - The role of medications like Ozempic in managing weight and why they’re only temporary fixes. [20:00] - Strategies for recognizing and altering emotional eating patterns. [30:00] - The "five-minute meditation" tool for dealing with cravings. [40:00] - Closing thoughts and takeaways on self-awareness and food.   Listener Takeaways: Awareness is Key: Recognizing when you are eating to fill emotional voids rather than physical hunger is the first step to change. Strategies for Change: Techniques such as the "five-minute meditation" can help pause and reconsider our choices before succumbing to cravings. Empowerment Through Education: Understanding the psychological triggers that lead to emotional eating can empower us to make healthier decisions. Embrace the Self-Centered Approach: Learn to navigate your emotional landscape without resorting to food, alcohol, or shopping as coping mechanisms. This episode underscores Hilary's signature message: caring for yourSELF is the cornerstone of wellness. By staying true to yourSELF and loving yourSELF, you can make choices that genuinely nourish both your body and soul, leading to lasting happiness and health.   Resources The 5 Minute Pre-Meal Ritual   Disclaimer: The Hilary Silver Podcast The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speaker’s own and do not represent the views, thoughts, and opinions of anyone else. The material and information presented here is for general information purposes only.  Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by the host. The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. The content here should not be taken as medical or psychiatric advice. The content here is for informational purposes only, and because each person is so unique, please consult your healthcare professional for any medical or psychiatric questions. Contact information: [e-mail]

I'm going to make this very black and white. Anytime that we are eating when we don't need to fuel or eating something that is not fueling, we are not eating for use purposes. We are misusing. Chocolate cake has zero nutritional value. So if you're eating chocolate cake, we all misuse food then, don't we? Hi, it's Hillary. Welcome to the Hillary Silver podcast. Okay, everyone, today's topic is emotional eating and what Ozempic and the other medications like that and weight loss surgeries

are not going to be able to do for you. And why it's so important to be talking about it right now is because, well, everybody knows what Ozempic is and everybody knows somebody who's on it or is in, is on it themselves, or is curious about it, thinking about it. And everybody has an opinion about it, it seems. And what's happening now is that people are starting to come off of it. And oh, no, what's going to happen? We don't really know. It's not been out there long enough for us to even know what's going to happen. And so why it's really important to have this conversation about emotional eating is because when we come off of the medications, we, we are left with ourselves. There's no net safety net after that. Like it's up to us and

what are we going to do about it? And so before we, so I want you to know, I'm going to leave you with a whole new entire framework for thinking about emotional eating and how to manage that and what to do about it and all a lot of good stuff today. But before we do, I want to start with my background because this topic is actually very near and dear to me. And so I want to share a little bit of a personal story and then some of my professional backgrounds so that you understand where I'm coming from when I'm talking about this. So I grew up in a very food focused family. My like, we were the family who came back for seconds and thirds and left nothing on our plate and everything was about food and we were going on vacation and what are we going to eat and all of that. And I wasn't necessarily an overweight child, but I was round. I was definitely round.

And my dad was somebody who struggled with food issues and weight issues his entire life. And in fact, I remember lots of times the three of us, my mom and my brother and I would say things to my dad like, stop, don't eat that. Don't you want to be here for us? You know, when we're older, or don't you love us? Like, I know a lot of people who have alcoholism in their family will say things like they chose alcohol over us and things like that. So that for us, it was food. And, and my dad, after a lifetime of mistreating himself and mistreating his body and eating like shit and not taking care of himself and not

exercising. He died when he was 67 years old. That's pretty young these days. And I was actually five months pregnant with my second child when he died. And by the time he died, he was in a scooter. He had neuropathy. He couldn't walk very well. He had type two diabetes. He had already had multiple surgeries, like angioplasty after angioplasty after, you know, triple bypass, like he was just a mess. And so this topic really is important to me because I I've come to realize that, and I want you all to know that your DNA is not your destiny. And I remember certain points in time during my childhood, looking at my dad and observing him through child eyes, but almost with more mature wisdom than I should have had as a child thinking, ew, like, why is he doing that? I don't want to do that. That's not

going to be me. And making decisions, subconscious decisions, but decisions that I wasn't want to do that. That's not going to be me. And making decisions, subconscious decisions, but decisions that I wasn't going to be that way. It doesn't mean that I didn't still struggle because I have up and down with food issues, body image issues. And even I'm going to go so far as to share this. When I was growing up, my only childhood bully was my mom's best friend, believe it or not. We were the round, unathletic family. They were the tall, skinny, athletic family. And she had said a few things to me that still stick. I'm 51 now.

And I was in maybe second grade when I went away to sleep away camp. And of course, that sleep away camp, the food is crap. So I came home and I got off the bus. And I remember her saying to me, hell, you look great. Have you lost weight? And I remember thinking I needed to lose weight. I wasn't really aware that I needed to lose weight. I knew that I knew who I was and what I was. And I knew I was different than her daughter, who was my friend,

who was skinny and athletic, but I didn't really think about that. I needed to lose weight. So in goes the planted seed. And then another moment, I remember we were at the pool, you know, when you're, I don't know, those of you who have kids, you know, your kids are hungry after swimming. And I hadn't eaten lunch. I hadn't eaten and I was hungry and my mom was playing tennis. And so she was in charge of watching us. And I went over and I said, Hey, I'm hungry. I haven't eaten.

And she says, well, God forbid you miss a meal is what she said to me. And at the time, I just remember looking down and I even remember my bathing suit, like looking down and seeing my belly and my, my bathing suit, like what I was wearing is red and purple striped bathing suit and thinking, I hate you. You know, I just remember thinking that about her, um, for saying such a thing to me. Well, now we joke in my family, God forbid you do this, this or this. It's like, now it's a funny joke for us. But at the time it was devastating.

And these types of messages we've talked about in other episodes, implicit messages, things that aren't saying you're fat, you're a fatty, you should lose weight, but God forbid you miss a meal is an implied message, an implicit message about who I am. So, yeah, over the years, I've had my own issues with food and body image, as a lot of women do and even men, too. But that's my story. That's enough. That's all you need to know about that to understand where I'm coming from. But yeah, I decided that DNA is not my destiny and that,

yeah, I can't change the fact that I'm five foot one. That is part of my DNA and our DNA that we really can't change. However, it is up to me to decide how I'm going to live my life and what my choices are going to be and my lifestyle. And I think right now I'm probably in the best shape I've ever been in because I understand how to take care of myself in a way that I've never understood before, what it actually takes and what it looks like. And I have this space in my life to do that. My kids are older now, and I'm not in that baby season of their life. So now I want to share my clinical background because I have a lens that we're going to look through today to

understand this issue in a new way. When I was training to be a therapist, the first kind of certification you can get really is an addictions counseling certification. Anybody can get it with the training. You don't have to have your master's degree. So I got it and I let go of it as soon as I didn't need it anymore. And I was fully licensed as a therapist, but I learned a lot about pharmacology and I did learn a lot about addictions. And I believe that food is a drug of choice for many of us. I personally can go out to dinner and leave my wine and, you know, in my glass. I have no problem leaving wine in my glass. A lot of people are like, well, you're going to leave that wine in your glass. Like, yep, I could care less, but I'm one of those people that will rarely leave food on my plate. That is just me. And

maybe you can relate, you know, maybe, you know, somebody who is like that, maybe you're like that. Anybody who's on Ozempic right now or has been on it is more like me in that way, I'm guessing. So what I learned from the addictions space is that there's a spectrum of addiction. And while it's meant for cocaine or heroin or alcohol or any other drug like that, it can be, and I have been applying this concept to food as well. So what that looks like is on one side of the spectrum is use. Do you sometimes use pot? Yeah. Do you sometimes use alcohol? Yeah. That's a glass of wine at night with dinner. It's, you know, maybe you take an edible, maybe you go to a concert, you're having

a good time, whatever. That's use. All the way to the other end of the spectrum is abuse. And this is, I can't live without it. I need to wake up in the morning and drink just to feel normal. And then after I feel normal, now I start continue drinking. I'm going to continue drinking so that I can get a buzz. And that's the extreme. That's when you start developing a tolerance when you're no longer drinking and getting high or getting high with the same amount of the substance. You need it just to feel normal and then you start going on and on to catch your buzz. That's abuse on the other end. And it's extreme. Some of us have seen that. What's going on then is use on one end, misuse around the middle of the spectrum, and abuse at the other end. So where does food fall in line? Because we all use food. We need

it to survive. So where food falls in here, if you think about it technically from an animal perspective, we are animals, we are bodies, we are engines, we need food to fuel us. So when we are fueling our bodies in the morning and we're having our breakfast, okay, we are giving our body the necessary calories and nutrition that we need to function.

Anytime that we're actually, I'm going to make this very black and white. Anytime that we are eating when we don't need to fuel or eating something that is not fueling. We are not eating for use purposes. We are misusing. I'm making this very stripped down black and white simple to make it easily understandable. Almost to the extreme, just for the sake of making the point and making it really clear. Chocolate cake has zero nutritional value. So if you're eating chocolate cake, you're misusing food technically, technically. Now, food is something that we love to have in our lives. It enriches our lives, enhances our lives. It brings us pleasure. I'm using chocolate cake as an example because I freaking love chocolate cake. I'm never going to pass on the chocolate cake, but it does nothing for my body nutritionally. Okay. So if we think about it that way,

it's going to help us understand where we might be going sideways. We all misuse food then, don't we? We do. We all overeat sometimes. We all eat for pleasure. We eat junk food. We eat crap. We eat more than we need to. It's okay. I'm not saying that it's a bad thing to be misusing food. It's only a problem, everybody, when it's a problem. So if you're going to indulge, do it. Enjoy it. Don't feel guilty about it, bad about it, beat yourself up about it. If you're doing that, unless, well, I still don't want you to beat yourself up about it. I want you to help yourself.

But unless you're doing it to the degree where it becomes a problem. Okay, so when we're talking about behaviors, maladaptive behaviors is a technical term we can use where we are engaging in a behavior that is not good for us. It's only a problem when it's interfering with our activities of daily living, when it's getting in the way of our goals, when it's getting in the way of living our best life, of being the person we want to be. If you are most comfortable at a certain weight and you're not at that weight, then your misuse is getting in your way of living how you want to live. I'm not going to tell you what that is. You decide what that is. But we all have a certain standard or we have things that are important to us or goals we want to achieve or ways we just want to even look. I want to look a certain way. I feel like I look better when I'm at a certain weight. And so when I go beyond that, I'm not comfortable.

And so then my misuse needs to be reined in and I need to be more thoughtful about it. On the other, on the very extreme, of course, is abuse. This is where my father was. This is where most people are who are at the place where they are needing to be using the weight loss medication. I personally don't want to say, well, I do. I have an opinion about it. My opinion is I don't give a fuck.

If people want to take Ozempic, take Ozempic. If you want to do it, do it. I'm not going to take a hard stance on that because I'm not going to judge anyone for doing whatever it is that they feel like they need to do to help themselves live their best life. Where I do have an opinion is if you're relying on these things to do the work for you, you're in trouble because at some point you will come off the medication and then what? That's where it gets like you'll have spent all that money and gone through all of that just for nothing to gain it back. No, this is where personal responsibility comes in. When I was doing therapy in my clinical practice for nine of the 15 years, I had a professional relationship with a bariatric

surgeon in town. He was one of the best of the best. And he would send me all of his patients who were going to have the surgery so that I could do the psyche valve and make sure that they were mentally and emotionally healthy enough to do the surgery. And even though I might decline somebody, they would always find another way around it to get the surgery. So it was almost like just kind of a hoop to jump through, but I still took that seriously. And I gave them the spiel almost that I'm giving you guys today. And a lot of these people would come back to me after the surgery and they would have had a dramatic external transformation, 100 pounds, 200 pounds lost. I almost didn't sometimes recognize them. It was that crazy of a transformation externally, but they came back to me because they would say, Hillary, I still walk into a room and feel like the fat girl in the room.

And so what we're talking about is identity. One of my other clients, a bariatric patient, lost about 200 pounds. He was a really big man. And after he lost the 200 pounds, he just switched to drinking, and he ended up in rehab for an alcohol problem. He was drinking Jack Daniels because he just switched from one outlet to another, and this is also very common for people who've had the weight loss surgery, switching from one avoidance technique to another. So that's again, why it's so powerful to make sure that you're doing your part, use the meds. If you need them, I'm not going to judge you for that.

Have the surgery. If you need it, I'm not going to judge you for that. Have the surgery if you need it. I'm not going to judge you for that. No one should judge you for that. Don't judge yourself for that, but do your part too. You have to do your part too. You just sustained. And this is where the yo-yo comes in. We have to think about ourselves differently, not just rely on the medications or the surgery to be our safety net. We have to hold ourselves responsible for that. It's okay to have the assist, take the assist, but also do your part. Also do your part because there's like tremendous personal growth value in that in itself. But like sometimes these patients would, would have to go back and have a second surgery. That's crazy. Have this, the, the, the stump, the sleeve, the bariatric sleeve surgery. And then it, it fails because you can't stop eating anyway.

And now you have to go in and have your stomach stapled. You know, that's the, like the layman's term for it. Like, no, come on. So what we're talking about is understanding our choices. This is where your DNA is not your destiny. And you don't say, Hey, I came from a family of food eating and second helpings and third helpings and focusing on food. And that's just the way it is for me. Or my family is just overweight. We're just an overweight family, generations of it. that we want something different for ourselves and learn what it means to operate in the world and how to operate in the world with a new identity. And that's what I wanted for myself.

And if that is something you want for you, then let's get into what that looks like. So how this happens, I'm going to talk to you now about our inner world and what I have, what I call cognitive enabling. This is the thinking that we do that allows us to make the choices that we make, right? We think that we all know what enabling is. Enabling is when you have somebody in your life and you don't call them out on something and it allows them to continue doing what they do. Well, we do that for ourselves. And the cognitive part is the thinking, right? Cognition is thinking. So cognitive enabling is the thinking that we're doing that allows us to make the choices that we make and allows us to perpetuate behaviors that maybe aren't so good for us.

So in the end, it's actually cognitive disabling if you want to think about it that way. And an example of this is, oh, I'm running late. Shit. I'm just going to have to go out for lunch today and go through the drive-thru. Or you're driving home from work and you think, man, what a shitty ass day. I deserve to go through the drive-thru. Or yay me. I kicked ass today. I deserve this cake I'm gonna use cake as an example again because I love cake or you know what that's what we do it's actually not just for food like we we cognitive enable ourselves for all kinds of things I should I get to drive fast today because I'm running late. I'm extra special, so I get to do

this kind of a thing instead of that kind of a thing. So it's really what we're doing is we're, it's victim mentality, basically. Poor me, I'm such a victim to my own self that I just get to do this thing, or I just have to do this thing. Or poor me, I'm such a victim to my boss or my job or my partner or my family or my kids or my life or my business. We have poor me thinking all the time if we don't hear it. And the poor me thinking allows us to behave in certain ways, to yell at people, to mistreat people, to food, to any vice, gambling, shopping, avoiding in any way. So I want you to be thinking about what am I thinking about? What am I saying to myself that allows me to make the choices that I'm making. So that's partly why we do this behavior. Another reason that we do this

is because we are either running from the pain of something we don't want to feel or we're running to a pleasure of something that we do want to feel. Meaning a lot of us, maybe it's just America, maybe not. I don't really know so much. I'm not an expert in other cultures, so I'll just kind of talk about us. we like to numb out. We really don't like to feel our bad feelings. It is uncomfortable to feel lonely or sad or depressed or frustrated or confused or to feel apprehensive. It doesn't feel good to feel those feelings. So we eat or drink. Today's focus is eating, obviously, but again, apply it to whatever your specialty is, your drug of choice.

So I'm lonely at night. I'm just going to get my ice cream out and watch Netflix. I don't want to feel my lonely. I'm going to binge on Netflix and be entertained and eat. So we numb out and we turn away from our feelings because we don't want to feel them. It's uncomfortable. Or, and or, it's not one or the other. A lot of times it's both. Or we want to eat because it feels good. Chocolate can release dopamine. The feel-good pleasure chemicals in our brain get a high. I know I do. I like shopping too. I might go shopping and buy myself something because it feels good. I like the new thing that I got, but these things are temporary. These running to

pleasure, the high is temporary. So I want to teach you this and and you may know this already, but I want to give you this language. I want it to be a quick thinking solution for you. The difference between instant gratification and delayed gratification. Instant gratification is, I'm going to eat this and feel better right now. Oh, I don't like the way I'm feeling. Eat something. In fact, one of my clients years ago found out that her dad had cancer and she said, Hillary, I heard myself say, eat something. Oh my God, my dad has cancer. Eat something. She's heard herself say that, which is so great. What kind of awareness is that? So instant gratification to not feel the shitty feeling you don't want to feel, or to get a quick fix high so that you can feel better or feel good, that's temporary. Because when that feeling wears off, and it doesn't usually last long, when that wears off, what's left is disappointment in self, maybe. Self-loathing. God damn it, I ate it again. I did it again. I know

better. Why did I do that? I have no discipline. Damn it. I suck. It's replaced with that. The high you crash from. You feel shitty after it. It doesn't last. So instant gratification doesn't last. It feels good for the moment. It's fleeting. It's replaced with long-term, not feeling very good about yourself, but also maybe physically, maybe you eat too much. You make yourself sick. Maybe you spend too much and you're in debt. You drink too much. Now you have a drinking problem. Okay. Delayed gratification is more mature. It is actually developmentally more mature to be able to do. And that is saying, I really want to eat that cake, but I know how good that's going to taste,

but I'm going to just wait. I'm going to wait. And in five minutes, if I still want to eat that, I will. And maybe the feeling passes, the loneliness passes. You can learn to, we'll talk about this in a second more, but soothe yourself, comfort yourself in a healthy way. And you don't feel the need or the pull or the urge or the trigger to eat. And you hang on just for a few minutes and it passes. And then you can say, wow, I didn't do that. Or wow, I did that. I waited and I still did it, but I did it thoughtfully, intentionally, mindfully, carefully. I'm going to do this and not feel bad about myself. I'm not doing it mindlessly on autopilot in a triggered, activated state. I'm doing it intentionally.

I'm going to eat this cake and I'm not just going to eat it to numb out. I'm going to eat it and enjoy it. And I'm not going to beat myself up for it. Or I'm not going to eat it at all. And I'm going to let that feeling pass or whatever, realize I don't need it because the delayed gratification of that is actually feel so much better. And that is lasting. You will be proud of yourself the rest of the day and maybe into the next day. So the last thing that I want to talk about is the how, so how we can do this another,

like another tool for you. So when I, when I left my therapy practice, I started running my coaching company from home. I started working from home. I wasn't, I wasn't at the office all the time. And I would find myself wandering into the kitchen, looking for something to do in the kitchen, in the refrigerator or the pantry, but not looking for something to eat, but looking for something to do. Because I was in between projects or in between appointments or in between meetings, and I had not enough time to really do something productive, but too much time to just sit there. So I would get up and find myself in the kitchen, eating, eating. When I wasn't hungry, eating because I needed a break,

eating because I was, you know, needing to step away and take a breath. So how many of you have done that before? You're eating, you find yourself in the break room because you just need to step away from your desk for a minute, but you're not hungry. You're looking for something to eat because you want something to do. Do you see how that's misuse? So when we're eating for comfort, when we're eating to comfort ourselves from a lonely feeling, a bored feeling, a restless feeling, an anxious feeling, we're not eating for fuel. And that's when we start to go sideways.

This is when we sabotage our weight goals, our fitness goals, our health goals, and all those things. What I've learned is I need to just get up from my desk and go for a walk. And I have a dog now. She's five, so it's been five years. I walk around the block. I take her for a walk. I take her for more walks than she needs

because I do it for me. And she just gets the benefit of it. So I'm, I have to recognize for myself when I'm, what is it that I'm really needing? Because it's not food. So that's what I'm, that this is the final tool that I'm going to leave you with, which is the five minute meditation. And it's not a real meditation necessarily. It's more just a five-minute pause. But it's a meditation because I'm asking you to have a conversation with yourself. So if you find yourself in the fridge or in the break room or in the pantry or whatever, you're scavenging around looking for something to eat, before you eat, I want to ask you to do this for yourself

and you'll thank me for it later. Okay. And I'm going to leave this. This is a downloadable that I'm going to leave you in the show notes. So I'm saying that to you now. So I don't forget the five minute meditation is this. You're in the fridge. You're looking and you're looking and you're looking for something to do something to eat. What can I eat? You're in the fridge. You're looking and you're looking and you're looking for something to do, something to eat. What can I eat? You're not hungry. I want you to ask yourself, number one, am I really hungry? Am I physically hungry? Put your hand on your belly. Close your eyes for a minute and ask, like, feel your body. Feel. Are you hungry physically? Is your stomach growling? When was the last time you ate anything? Are you physically hungry? Do you need fuel? Do you need

calories? Do you need calories because it's been a long time since you've eaten and you're starting to bonk? Okay, if the answer is no, I want you to ask yourself this, what am I really hungry for? You're hungry for something, but it might not be food. Do you need a hug? Do you need connection? Do you need a hug? Do you need connection? Do you need to be seen?

Do you need to be appreciated? Did you just have a big win and you need somebody to celebrate with you? Are you feeling lonely? Do you need to reach out to a friend? Are you anxious? Worried? Is something bothering you, weighing on you? Are you feeling dread? What are you feeling for real? Name that feeling. What are you hungry for?

Because then you can actually give yourself what you really need, which isn't a cheese stick, which might be a healthier option. You don't need the chips. You don't need the apple. It's not even like what you're eating. It's that you're eating anything at all. Yes, there are healthier options, but you don't need to put something in your mouth right now. What you really need is a friend, is a hug, is attention, is you need yourself. You're needing to connect with yourself. And this brings it all back to the self-centered message, which is don't betray yourself. Don't abandon yourself in your time of need. You're needing something right now and it is not food. And you need to give yourself

what you really need. You need to give yourself what you really need. And you won't know what that is when you turn away from yourself. When you turn your back on yourself and you won't know what that is when you turn away from yourself. When you turn your back on yourself and you just on autopilot stuff food in your face. It's not good for your mental health, your emotional well-being or your physical health. And so as you or somebody you know might be coming off of these medications, if you've not been on the medications, fine. This is a tool that we all need, whether you have weight issues or not,

because we all misuse food from time to time. And if it is bordering on some kind of a problem for you in any way, even if you're carrying five extra pounds that you don't want to carry, this will help you. This will help you. You don't need to count calories. You don't need to work out extra hard. This is connection to self. This is relationship with self. Feel your feelings. Don't eat them. Don't drink them. Don't shop them. Don't busy them. Don't stuff them. Feel your feelings. They are yours. They are valid. They are real. They may not feel good, but they do pass and they pass quicker when you are actually

tuning into them so you can give yourself what you really need and be productive rather than destructive to yourself. Love yourself. This is how you love yourself. And this is part of how you are self-centered. So I want to remind you, like I said earlier, there is a download that I offer. I'm offering you, I call it the five minute meditation, but it's really, again, not a total meditation. It's more the steps that I want you to ask yourself, the things I want you to be asking yourself to tune in before you eat.

If you have a problem with emotional eating and it's gonna help. And I'll see you next time. Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for joining the conversation today. I hope you learned something new or heard something that inspired you to take action in a new way as your greatest champion and someone who truly cares about your love happiness wealth and success I always want to

encourage you to ask yourself this question how have I contributed you are the only person who can ask this and the only one who can answer it this doesn't just change your life this changes everything Thank you.