Emotional Eating: What if Weight Loss Isn't about the Food? | Tricia Nelson | TEDxWestMonroe
Summary
TLDRThe speaker candidly shares their struggle with emotional eating, revealing how diets failed to bring long-term change. They discovered that addressing the underlying emotional triggers, such as using food as a painkiller, escape, or punishment, was key to overcoming their weight issues. The speaker emphasizes the importance of self-care, stress reduction, and community support in establishing a healthier relationship with food and oneself.
Takeaways
- 🍨 The speaker struggled with emotional eating, using food to cope with emotions, escape from stress, and as a form of self-punishment.
- 🔄 The speaker experienced a cycle of weight loss and regain, highlighting the ineffectiveness of yo-yo dieting and the difficulty of maintaining weight loss.
- 📊 Research indicates that diets often fail in the long term, with participants regaining weight within a year, despite the abundance of diet books available.
- 🧘 The key to overcoming emotional eating involves developing healthier coping mechanisms, such as addressing the underlying emotions and stressors rather than relying on food.
- 🤔 The acronym 'PEP' stands for Painkiller, Escape, and Punishment, which helps identify the reasons behind emotional eating and create a connection between emotions and eating habits.
- 🏋️♀️ Stress management through self-care practices like meditation and journaling can lead to emotional balance, reduced cravings, and better energy levels.
- 🙅♀️ Learning to say 'no' and avoiding people-pleasing behaviors can help reduce stress and the tendency to overeat as a coping mechanism.
- 👥 The importance of community support for emotional eaters is emphasized, as it can increase weight loss results and provide comfort and accountability.
- 👗 The speaker's personal journey illustrates how changing perspectives on food, managing stress, and seeking support can lead to a healthier relationship with food and oneself.
- 🔑 The speaker suggests that the solution to emotional eating is not a magic diet but a change in lifestyle and mindset, focusing on emotional well-being and self-care.
- 🌟 The message concludes with the belief that everyone can achieve a peaceful and self-caring relationship with food by looking beyond the food for answers.
Q & A
What is the main struggle the speaker describes in the script?
-The speaker describes the struggle with emotional eating, binge eating, and the cycle of weight gain and loss, as well as the feelings of guilt and shame associated with these behaviors.
What is the acronym 'PEP' and how is it related to the speaker's experience?
-PEP stands for Painkiller, Escape, and Punishment. It is related to the speaker's experience as it represents the three main reasons they used food to cope with life: to numb painful emotions (Painkiller), to escape from stress (Escape), and as a form of self-punishment (Punishment).
How did the speaker's perspective on unhealthy foods change?
-The speaker's perspective changed from focusing on the negative effects of unhealthy foods to understanding what those foods were doing for them, such as providing temporary relief from pain, escape, or punishment.
What role does stress play in the speaker's eating habits?
-Stress plays a significant role in the speaker's eating habits by increasing cortisol levels, which in turn increases appetite and causes the body to store fat. High stress levels also led the speaker to overeat as a coping mechanism.
Outlines
🍦 Struggling with Emotional Overeating
The speaker describes a personal battle with emotional overeating, recounting a binge episode that left them feeling sick and disgusted. They express a cycle of guilt and shame, and a history of unsuccessful dieting attempts. The speaker also reflects on their weight struggles from a young age, including feelings of self-loathing and extreme measures they considered to lose weight. They hint at discovering a solution that wasn't a 'magic diet' but rather an understanding of the emotional triggers behind their eating habits.
🧘 Addressing Emotional Eating with PEP
The speaker introduces the concept of PEP (Painkiller, Escape, Punishment) to explain the emotional reasons behind overeating. They discuss how they used food to numb pain, escape stress, and punish themselves for perceived failures. The speaker emphasizes the importance of recognizing these emotional triggers and suggests that understanding the 'why' behind eating can help break the cycle of emotional eating. They also touch on the role of stress in overeating and the need for self-care practices to achieve emotional balance.
👫 Finding Support and Balance in Overcoming Emotional Eating
In the final paragraph, the speaker highlights the importance of community support in overcoming emotional eating. They argue that the societal acceptance of overindulgence makes it difficult to change eating habits without support. The speaker shares a personal story of a woman named Sarah who, with the help of a supportive community, was able to address her dependence on sugar and other stimulants, leading to a significant reduction in stress and anxiety. The speaker concludes by encouraging viewers to take steps towards a peaceful and self-caring relationship with food, which includes understanding emotional triggers, managing stress, and seeking community support.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Emotional Eating
💡Binge Eating
💡Self-Sabotage
💡Yo-Yo Dieting
💡PEP
💡Cortisol
💡Self-Care
💡People Pleaser
💡Group Support
💡Stress Management
💡Accountability
Highlights
The struggle with emotional eating and its impact on physical and emotional health.
The ineffectiveness of diets and the high rate of weight regain after dieting.
The importance of understanding the emotional reasons behind overeating.
The acronym P-E-P as a tool to identify the emotional triggers for overeating.
The role of stress in emotional eating and its impact on weight loss.
The benefits of self-care practices in reducing stress and emotional eating.
The negative effects of people-pleasing on emotional health and eating habits.
The necessity of community support for overcoming emotional eating habits.
The story of Sarah, who overcame her dependence on sugar and other stimulants.
The transformation in Sarah's life after learning to process her emotions and stress.
The importance of addressing emotional needs to achieve a peaceful relationship with food.
The practical steps provided for managing emotional eating, including the PEP test.
Transcripts
[Music]
[Applause]
i reached my spoon down into the pint of
praline pecan
it's the perfect last bite
gooey caramel swirling around creamy
vanilla ice cream with two delicious
maple pecans that will add just the
right amount of crunch
but i can't enjoy this bite
you see i've not only eaten the entire
container of ice cream
but i've also devoured a full bag of
popcorn
half a package of cookies and 26
hershey's kisses
i feel completely sick
disgusted i sweep up the remains and i
throw them in the trash vowing never to
eat that kind of crap again
i collapse on the couch
after a few hours
the cookies in the trash call to me
trisha
and i answer
in a trance i stumble over the trash can
find the cookies
and polish them off
once again
my insatiable hunger
drives me
to new depths of shame
what's wrong with me
why can't i stop
i'm such a loser
at age 20 i was 50 pounds overweight
i hated my fat i had a roll of fat on my
tummy that i would scrunch up in my
hands and imagine cutting it off like
you cut fat off the side of a steak
i sometimes wished i'd contract a
disease where i'd automatically lose
weight without having to diet
i even considered joining the army so
i'd be forced to exercise at boot camp
i hated to exercise
i was a yo-yo dieter up 30 down 20 up 10
and as a result i had several sizes of
pants in my closet because i never knew
what size i'd be
my skinny jeans collected a lot of dust
as i wild away years
looking for the the hidden solution to
overcoming my weight loss problems
i found that solution
i found that key
and it wasn't through a magic diet
in fact dozens of studies show
that diets generally have a dismal
success rate
a recent study in the british medical
journal
follows 22
000
adults on one of 14 popular diets
they found
that within one year
participants regained all the weight
they had lost
yet if you do a search on amazon right
now for diet books you'll get roughly 50
000 results
this was my experience
no matter what diet i tried
of course i'd start out strong i'm doing
it
looking good feeling good pants getting
looser
but then after a couple weeks
things started to get hard
i mean really hard
and at some point the tension in my gut
would become so unbearable that i would
just break down and binge
and i always put the weight back on
again
and then some
so the million dollar question is
why did it get so hard
my experience
is that when i would diet
all the feelings i had stuffed with
excess food would come to the surface
and i didn't have the tools i needed to
deal with them
that's what kept me stuck in a cycle of
self-sabotage
eating was how i coped with life
if i wanted to lose weight and keep it
off i had to develop healthier means of
coping
this changed everything for me
when i adopted healthy ways of
addressing my emotions and stress
my weight stabilized and my relationship
with food became so much more peaceful
i'm excited to share
three of these key ways with you
the first key was a change in my
perspective instead of focusing on what
unhealthy foods were doing to me i
started to address instead what they
were doing for me
pep is an acronym
p-e-p the first p stands for painkiller
my painkiller of choice
praline pecan ice cream of course
so after indulging in any form of sugar
fat and starch my favorite three food
groups i'd feel
nothing
i was unconsciously using food to
anesthetize
uncomfortable emotions
but my eating ultimately brought on more
pain
the e stands for escape
because when life got a little bit too
intense either from
family stress financial fear or just
overall feelings of anxiety curling up
with my favorite foods in front of the
tv always took me to a far away place
at least momentarily
and the third p in pep
punishment which seems counterintuitive
i know because yummy foods
seemed to be a reward
but i was hardly rewarding myself when
i'd overeat and end up feeling sick
yet i did this over and over again
you see i was not only an overeater but
i was also an over feeler
i felt guilty about everything
and i was also super hard on myself when
i'd make a mistake
so when cookies start calling my name i
ask myself what's really going on am i
trying to
perhaps numb painful emotions
am i looking to escape from something
that's overwhelming
or perhaps am i trying to punish myself
for something i've said or done that i
feel bad about
this is an easy way to begin making the
connection between my eating and my
emotions
the second key to finding balance
is
reducing stress
so in my experience both personally and
professionally
overeaters tend to be overdoers i was
always on the go
always putting everyone else's needs
first never slowing down long enough to
catch my breath or eat a healthy meal
stress plays a role in elevated cortisol
levels and cortisol increases appetite
and causes our bodies to store fat
instead of burn it
so for me an important and crucial piece
of the weight loss puzzle was self-care
when i began to integrate self-care
practices into my life i had more
emotional balance
and i had more energy and i no longer
craved
coffee and chocolate for stamina so some
of the traits that works best for me
that i do every day are meditation and
journaling
but you may be thinking hey lady i don't
have time for self-care i'm a busy
professional with a job three kids and a
neurotic dog
think again when we take time for
ourselves we actually increase our
capacity to give to others
and we're also better equipped to handle
life's challenges without turning to
food
so another key element of self-care
was changing ingrained habits that
caused my stress
so in my work i've observed several
traits of emotional eaters that tend to
be most common and i refer to these
traits as the anatomy of the emotional
eater
the achilles heel for most including
myself
is people pleasing
so i lacked self-esteem and i chased the
atta girls that made me feel worthwhile
and as a people pleaser i said yes to
everything
sure i'll chair the committee happy to
host the party and of course i'll do
your job and mine and jerry's job
no problem
i don't know about your experience but
any time that i really knocked myself
out to try to please somebody
they were never as pleased as i planned
on them being
so i was not only burned out but i was
also kind of resentful
and this was the perfect storm for
justifying yet another
i deserve it binge
changing this habit
by learning how to say no when there's
too much on my plate
so to speak
really helped reduce my stress and my
feelings of hunger
now the last key
in overcoming my emotional eating
super important
get support from a community of other
emotional eaters
research shows that group support
increases weight loss results and it
makes sense right i mean temptations to
eat unhealthy foods are everywhere think
tv commercials checkout lines at the
supermarket
and parties
so
overindulging is a socially acceptable
past time that's difficult to curb
without support
plus
i gotta tell you
there's nothing more comforting
than connecting with those
that really know the shame and
humiliation
of behaviors like digging binge foods
out of the garbage
so
you might be thinking
isn't it silly to need help with
something as basic and seemingly easy to
control is what i put in my mouth
not so fast
the truth is emotional eating is one of
the hardest
of the addictive habits to break
why because we have to eat
what we're up against is a really akin
to taking a
growling tiger out of the cage
trying to
pass the nice kitty
and then somehow get it back inside the
cage without getting mauled
not so easy unless you have the right
kind of support
sarah is a mom
wife and award-winning producer
who is tired of her dependence on sugar
turns out she was numbing her feelings
with more than just
food things like nicorax gum or evening
glass of wine and overworking
sarah would often work straight through
breakfast and lunch and pay for it with
a late night binge
she never gave herself time to just
chill
sarah was at the end of her rope when
she reached out for help
so within weeks of learning new ways of
processing her emotions and addressing
her feelings
and her stress
sarah was not only off all the
stimulants that had kept her propped up
but she was also feeling so much less
anxious
sarah was coming home to herself
her daughters noticed a difference and
even asked how they could adopt these
same practices for themselves
you can develop the same sense of peace
start by taking the pep test
and really ask yourself what's going on
when you find yourself taking yet
another trip to the kitchen
is it for
perhaps a painkiller an escape
or are you feeling bad about something
and is it a form of punishment
next
manage your stress by implementing
self-care habits that can help you feel
more centered
and also take a look at things like
people pleasing that may be causing you
more stress
and finally nourish your soul through
connection and community with other
emotional eaters that can help you stay
accountable and stay on track with your
goals
these simple steps while having nothing
to do with food can make a real impact
on your food choices and your ability to
reach a weight that works best for you
i'll leave you with this
i believe we can all enjoy a
relationship with food and with
ourselves that is both peaceful and
self-caring
it starts
with looking beyond the food for answers
thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
Посмотреть больше похожих видео
I failed to lose weight for 10 years. Here's what I learned.
What ACTUALLY Works To Stop Binge Eating | 8 things you NEED to do.
How to move from disordered eating to a healthy relationship with food.
INDICE CARICO GLICEMICO CALORIE DEFICIT CALORICO, COSA FUNZIONA?
how to get out of a slump: tips to find motivation & get your life back together
HOW I LOST 50KG'S
5.0 / 5 (0 votes)