Episode 114: Emotional Eating (Solo Episode)
In this episode we sit down with... your host, Katelyn Parsons.
Katelyn Parsons is a Certified Intuitive Eating + Body Image Coach, Speaker, and host of the weekly podcast, Body Truth.
After years of struggling with bulimia and disordered eating, she not only found recovery but recognized a crucial missing link in the wellness industry- empowerment + individual sustainability around health. This inspired her entrepreneurial journey and life mission to shift the conversation toward healing our relationship with food and body.
For the past 4 years, Katelyn has helped countless creative leaders transform their relationship with food and body image through an integrative, evidence-based process so that they can move through each day feeling more present, empowered, and comfortable in their skin, without worrying about what to eat.
You’ll also find Katelyn snuggled up with her cat or strolling the beach in sunny San Diego with her husband and their pup Winnie.
In this conversation I talk about:
The cultural messaging around emotional eating
Debunking emotional eating myths
Defining complex restrictions and their connection to your healing journey
Practical advice and exercises to get compassionately curious around your relationship with food from an emotional perspective
Connect with me...
IG: @katelyn.parsons
Website: katelynparsons.com
Resources I mention in this episode…
Ready to heal your relationship with food + body?
Grab your FREE Binge Eating Solution Sheet
Get weekly email support from me to help you heal your relationship with food + body image
TRANSCRIPTION Episode 114: Emotional Eating (Solo Episode)
Katelyn:
Hey, welcome back to the show. I'm your host, Katelyn Parsons, just you and me today I am in my closet, recording this podcast episode. That's where I record most of my solo episodes. My cat Georgia is sleeping next to me, I am feeling so great.
Today I have to tell you a funny story before I get into this episode, a little manifestation story, which just always lights me up when things like this happened to me. And I'm, I'm sure they happen to you also.
But I realized that my license was expired, actually on my birthday because it expired on my birthday, my driver's license. So I went online, got a renewal for my license. And I realized that the address on my license was actually two apartments down from where I live currently. And I thought, Well, I'm not gonna go through the hassle of changing my address now because we are preparing to move at some point this year. And that just seems like a big friggin hassle.
So luckily, I know my neighbor, he's a great guy, I just went ahead and renewed my license with the previous address, gave him a heads up afterwards, hey, the new updated license is coming. This was a couple of weeks ago, I probably was driving with an expired license, I'm sorry.
Anyways, I was on a walk this morning, just listening to some really inspirational speakers on a podcast. It was beautiful outside with Winnie my pup and just feeling so good. And I thought oh, I need to check in with my neighbor, to see if he picked up the mail recently.
And if my license was there, so there's probably about there's 20 units in our cozy little apartment complex. And there's probably about 40 or 50 people that live here. Now, I know that you know this, anybody could have been in the complex at 10. In the morning, most of the people who live and work here are also entrepreneurs or professionals who work from home. So there's constantly people coming and going.
So I just said in my mind, I hope I see Jordan when I walked through the gate, because that's who I need to ask about my ID. What do you know, five minutes later walk through the gate. Jordan is coming through the back gate. Nobody else is in the courtyard at all.
So I cracked up on I of course said hey, do you mind checking your mail and told him the story which he thought was pretty cool, check the mail, my license was here, told him to go buy a lottery ticket because my energy was really good today, which we all kind of laughed about, even though it's kind of serious.
But anyways, it's just a fun story that I wanted to share with you about being in the flow and just trusting and knowing that things will happen when you want them to happen.
And I want to do an entire podcast around this. I am not a manifestation expert. In the least however, I have gotten tons of coaching around this I have really created a personal practice around what this means for me in my life. And so it's it has become a part of my life. And I love exploring this with clients that I work with and whatnot.
So I wanted to share with you because I think that is a really fun, powerful story of how our thoughts and our beliefs and our intentions can move mountains create things in the world power of just belief in general. So anyways, we are not talking about manifestation.
Today we are talking about emotional eating.
And this is a topic that has really been present for me in the past couple months really I mean it's it's something that comes up often just from a cultural perspective, but really a lot of questions around this in workshops that I've been leading and clients that I've been coaching and just questions kind of buzzing around in our community.
So I want to just dig right in and debunk some of the emotional eating myths that we have been taught and offer some practical advice for you and questions to ask yourself around your own relationship with food from an emotional perspective.
So contrary to what we have been led to believe in our culture, emotional eating is not Too bad. Emotional Eating is not bad food is emotional. And emotional eating is also not your lack of willpower.
And where I think this gets so confusing in our culture is we have created so many intense emotions around foods, so many of the guilt ridden and shameful emotions around food, which are don't make anybody feel good.
How many times do you walk to the grocery store and look at products that say, guilt free or reduced guilt or have another another association with an emotion labeled on the food item that immediately challenged us to challenges you to think well, does that mean I should be feeling guilty if I eat the thing that is not this perfect example of this is like guilt free chocolate. I know, I can't remember what brand is doing this right now.
And I don't necessarily want to say what brand it is, I'm glad I don't remember. But this is a great example of creating a distinction between something that is being positioned as the better option because it's less guilt, and immediately creating this fear that if you're not eating this, the alternative, you should be feeling guilty about.
So I want to just shine a light on this from a cultural perspective, because the fact that you might be thinking that emotional eating is bad, and that you are bad, and having shame and guilt around how you are navigating food is not your fault. This is something that has been really programmed into us by way of what we are, subconsciously and consciously exposed to in our culture.
And this shows up in so many different ways this is passed down through generations of what we're taught within our families that we really don't question or challenge or have deeper conversations around this is this is through media that we're exposed to this is through, honestly books that we read movies that we watch, things that we listen to it, it's a part of diet culture, and it really is so insidious.
And so I'm not saying this to create a feeling of just disempowerment, or, like you can't do something about this, I'm merely bringing this into the conversation today to let you know that the exposure and the diet culture that we're all swimming in is pretty rampant, and it is why we have to constantly question and challenge and really look at things a little bit more critically.
So in terms of food, being emotional food is attached to so many things food is a way to celebrate food is a way to nourish ourselves food as a way to connect with others.
Food can be used as a way to soothe there are so many different reasons why food is used and why food is used from an emotional standpoint that we can see passed down from a really large called cultural context and historic context as well too.
So keeping that in mind can be really valuable as you begin to navigate emotional eating now, where I want to speak into this today a little bit more directly, is some of the confusion that we are getting around food and emotions and the label of being an emotional eater without challenging complex restriction.
Now, if you've been in this community, you know, this is my M. O.
I think that it is so difficult to dig into our relationship with ourselves including our relationship with our bodies and our relationship with food. If we are not actively healing, complex restrictions, so complex restriction being how we are restricting food physically, mentally, emotionally, and also the restriction We are placing ourselves in life in terms of expressing our emotions or taking care of ourselves in deeper ways, such as setting boundaries or resting so many different things.
If you'd like a single guide for this, definitely grab my binge eating solution sheet. I break down the four complex restriction areas to look at very directly in one single sheet, so that that'll give you a little bit more context if you are interested in exploring that more.
But where this relates to emotional eating, is when we're not actively healing, complex restriction. And we are feeling emotions because we are emotional human beings we are, we're always feeling emotions and feelings are always coming up. That can often be confused with physical hunger.
I will give you a client example around this that happened about a year ago that I absolutely loved hearing and supporting around this, it just it was so clear to me, and this is something that I had have experience so many times in my own personal life. But this was just a really clear example that I was able to support this client with.
So this is a client, who was very high up and her career really busy. We were working on supporting her personal binge eating and her relationship with food and her body and herself. And so she came to me one session and she said, Katelyn, I'm so frustrated. I feel like I can't, I can't get a handle on this emotional eating. And I don't really know why I am eating emotionally.
And so we talked about it more than I said, Well, let's take a moment to just really look at your day. And when you noticed this emotional eating happened. happening, what happened before that, and so really getting curious together.
So here's what, here's what we discovered. She mentioned that she had woken up and headed to a bar class right away, not eating breakfast before coming home, hopping in the shower before heading off to work, grabbed a cup of coffee, and something like an apple or something really tiny for breakfast after a bar class. And then headed into work had back-to-back meetings all day long, super stressful meetings, by the way. And then got out of the meetings around two o'clock, I think 132 o'clock, and immediately went to her favorite Chinese place, got all of the Chinese food that she had labeled, just bad in her mind and guilty and things that we were working around as well too.
But just the things that she was, did not feel safe grabbing on a day-to-day basis. So you can see why this kind of feeds into the emotions. So then she came home, she ate it. And she felt so ashamed and really uncomfortable afterward.
And in her mind, when we started looking at the situation, she thought that she was feeling stressed from these meetings. And that she was using food to cope with the stress and numb out from the stress because she came home and just kind of picked up a book and started reading a book while she was eating all the Chinese food. And afterwards realized, oh God, like I don't feel good. I didn't even really want to pay attention to the food that I was eating. And now I don't feel good emotionally or physically and I essentially emotionally ate.
So if, if you're able to, I want you to pause this podcast, and just consider what you're picking up on this before I give you how we moved forward. So go ahead and pause. Okay, and if you have pause, go ahead and come back.
And I'm curious to see what you picked up from this scenario where you feel like you would support somebody if they were coming to you with this example. And this is this is just an opportunity to really zoom out and play detective get really curious compassionately, and this is an exercise that you can do for yourself as well too.
So here's what my client and I discovered as we went through this process, of course, she thought that this that emotional eating was the problem because there were really heavy emotions attached to it. her eating when she actually chose to eat in the day. But what we also realized is that, yes, she knew she was walking into a really stressful day, really overwhelming day. And there was some restriction happening at the same time simultaneously to that. So she, she just did a self-evaluation, very compassionate self-evaluation and realized, if I could go back and do that day, again, what I know for the next time is, I would start the day a little bit differently, maybe I would do a bar class, maybe I wouldn't, but I would pause and consider what I need in that moment, if this is something that is going to support the rest of my day, or if I need something a little bit more grounding and nourishing for me eating more in the morning, so actually having having a breakfast.
And if that meant maybe cutting the class in half, or revising the way that she was starting her morning to be able to eat more in the morning, but the point is, eating more in the morning really healing that physical restriction around food that she wasn't even aware of at the time. And then looking at her calendar, seeing Okay, what does my day look like back to back meetings all day, really proactively nourishing herself with some snacks, and even a lunch?
If that was possible, just depending on the day, this will look different for everybody. So really being able to take a snack to work and say, Okay, well, I know I'm not going to be able to maybe step out and have a full lunch. So how can I just make sure I'm nourishing my body physically, even if I know I'm not physically hungry, because what she also recognized and this is true for so many people is that when she's in the groove with work, her hunger signals aren't, aren't very strong, because she's so invested in the work that she's doing and the decisions that she's making and the problems that she's listening to and solving and all of these things totally normal.
That's not, that does not mean that we don't need to nourish ourselves and support our bodies with food. That's an opportunity to proactively nourish ourselves, we call this intuitive eating nourishment as self care.
So snacking, if possible, bring a snack into the meeting, pausing for lunch, if that's possible, even and then ultimately, after the meeting, pausing, taking a breath, to acknowledge the feelings that were coming up really naming them, really looking at the thoughts happening in her mind that were creating the feelings that she was experiencing, taking an opportunity to possibly reframe the thoughts if necessary, and really deciding how to move forward more powerfully.
So maybe she did decide to go to the Chinese restaurant. But if there was, if there was nourishment happening before, physically, mentally and emotionally, especially from a physical standpoint, your body is not going to react from that primal hunger standpoint, accompanied with that emotional hunger standpoint, the two can coexist. So when you're, when you're nourishing your body, at least from a physical standpoint, that's not to say that you won't feel the need to eat when you're not hungry, because the emotions are happening. But it gives, it gives you much more of an opportunity to decide how you want to take care of yourself from nourishing your own emotions.
So healing, that physical restriction, really making sure you're eating food, you're eating enough food, you're eating enough variety of food throughout the day. And then also the emotional restriction that is coming up as well to really taking a moment throughout your day to acknowledge, okay, how am I feeling? What do I need? I'll, I'll share an exercise around this in just a moment.
But those are the two pieces that are so nuanced, but also are not really brought into the cultural conversation around emotional eating. It is it's almost impossible to look at true emotional eating in a deeper way. If we are not healing the physical restriction if we're if we are constantly putting ourself in that primal hunger state, which is a biological reaction to Our body not receiving the adequate amount of energy and nutrients that it needs. Ie when my client went to the Chinese restaurant, she didn't have enough food she had, she was actually in an energy deficit because she had really worked her body that morning at a bar class and then not had enough energy to compensate for that on top of all the mental energy that she was expending.
So she really was in that in that primal hunger state, from a pretty severe level. And at that point, your body is screaming for food and is screaming for any kind of food. And so that accompanied with the emotional standpoint, in terms of our relationship with food is really a recipe to feel that frustration and confusion and guilt and shame around eating, ie emotional eating.
So once again, the remedy for this is really beginning to heal the physical restriction and really making sure that you're giving yourself enough food, enough energy throughout the day, consistently, that you're not, you're not engaging in that complex restriction.
And then really looking at the emotions from a different perspective as well to one more thing before I move on to an exercise that I want to give you around this is practicing self-compassion. And curiosity is a theme that I express a lot in this podcast community and something that is certainly relevant and essential for navigating emotional eating.
So really, in that moment, acknowledging I am not a bad person, this happened and I am still a worthy, good, trusting human being, I am still deserving, I am still valuable this, me choosing food in this manner, or me discovering that I ate this way does not mean anything about me as a person really committing to being in partnership with yourself from that perspective, when if and when you find yourself in this emotional eating, just standpoints that come up, or just little what am I trying to say like examples that come up around that?
Just really rooting in your sovereignty in that moment? And then from that compassionate lens, really getting curious, just like I did with my client around, okay, now that this happened, what, what do we know? Like, what, what contributed to this happening?
And also, what do we need to remind ourselves right now that I do get to eat as much as I want, I do get to eat, what, what I want when I want, and I have a right to access the food that I need for myself or that I want for myself, because I am a human being and also what is contributing to my relationship with food right now from that really curious standpoint.
Okay, little check in that I want to offer you and I believe that I first heard this, from the book eating in the light of the moon. I think that is the title, I am not 100% Sure. And in this moment, I can't remember the author of this book. It's one of my favorite books that I highly recommend in terms of just our relationship with ourselves, particularly our relationship with food. So here's the check in that you can do for yourself, as you are going through your day.
And from an evaluation standpoint, as it relates to emotional eating, when this has happened.
Number one really asking do I feel nutritionally satisfied? Again, looking at this complex restriction and overcoming the complex restriction? Did I eat enough? Did I enjoy my food? Do I feel nutritionally satisfied?
Number two, do I feel heard, understood, and accepted? Do I feel heard, understood and accepted?
Number 3 am I able to express my feelings? Do I feel safe expressing my feelings? And number four, did I get enough sleep or rest? Sleep is essential for being in a really nourishing partnership with our hunger and our form and our fullness hormones. Sleep is really the IS is really responsible for nourishing our two hunger and fullness hormones leptin.
So if we're not getting adequate, adequate, adequate sleep from a quantity and quality standpoint, that is definitely going to have A significant reflection on just how we are experiencing hunger and fullness throughout the day. It's certainly not the only way.
But it has. It has a really a really profound effect on it as well as just time of the month in general. If if you're a woman and you have a period or menstrual cycle, being in the ebb and flow of our cycles, and our hormones and all of the emotions that we experience throughout the day to this is why it is so nuanced. This is why there are so many pieces of the puzzle to look at as it relates to emotional eating, and, and really getting curious if you are labeling yourself as an emotional eater.
I'm so curious if you are with me today, and you identify as an emotional eater, what's coming up for you right now?
First of all, where did you first begin to form that identity about yourself? And how has that label making you feel right now when you say that about yourself, what emotions come up for you. And I want to invite you to really look at this label a little bit a little bit more closely. Because, as you probably know, for me saying our thoughts create our feelings, and our feelings create our beliefs about ourselves.
And so, if we are thinking and labeling ourselves as emotional eaters, that's going to create some feelings around that. And we also have the opportunity to change those thoughts to change that label to begin shifting that identity.
So just getting curious for yourself, what that means to you. And also, how we can begin looking at emotional eating a little bit more, a little bit differently, is there an opportunity to really begin getting curious about some of the areas that you might be restricting, generally speaking with in your day, this will look different every day.
So we can look at this on average. And we can also look at this a little bit more specifically, in the moment as well, too. I can, I can totally speak for myself around this there are on average most days now.
I'm so grateful you guys, I never thought that I would get to this place ever being a self identified binge eater. For most of my life, like 30 years of my life, I never thought that I would get to this place.
But on average, most days, I would say that I've got a great relationship with food. And I do express food, express food from an emotional standpoint, and I feel great about it, I never feel generally speaking, I don't often feel like food is, is the only tool for the emotions that I am experiencing good, bad or indifferent. It's one component of that.
And that being said, there are definitely times where I choose to use food for my emotions, whether it's self soothing, whether it's celebration, whether it's connection, whether it's reward, whether it's something else, but it's just one of many tools in my toolkit right now.
And also, here's the most profound part of my relationship with food now that I hope to inspire you around and let you know, it's totally possible for you.
But I don't make it mean anything about me, at this time in my life in this in this part in this chapter of my relationship with food, if I do find myself mindlessly eating out a part of my day and noticing some intense emotions coming up.
But at that point as well, too. I can say with 100% certainty that that does not mean anything about myself as a person, what I'm doing right what I'm doing wrong, my values, my beliefs, my ability to contribute to meaningful work, to have amazing connections and in my life, to be able to move forward in my life.
It's really when this happens now it's an opportunity to really practice what I'm sharing with you today and pausing and getting compassionately curious to really look at that a little bit more closely and move on from it really let go of it and not attached to that moment and see what I can discover in that moment of curiosity and move forward.
I know that most of you have a beautiful growth-oriented mindset and it's one of the reasons why I love you so much and why you know you are really committed to healing and just creating a powerful relationship with yourself and meaningful work and the world and the is a great way to lean into and activate that growth mindset really just in these moments of emotional eating, eating emotionally, just kind of tying that all together, getting compassionately curious, how am I feeling? What do I need? What happened before this experience this emotional eating experience? What was my sleep? Like? What was my relationship with food like today? What would I do differently moving forward? How can I let it go and move on, move on, I want to go over some ways that we many of us use food in regards to our emotions.
This is actually taken from the intuitive eating workbook, which I highly recommend, as a supplement to support that you're getting whether it's with a coach or a counselor, or if you're not invested with somebody right now. And you just want to start digging into really healing on your own and your own at your own pace. The intuitive eating workbook is a really great resource. So this is what they have to say that I thought was so brilliant, and so true.
Anxiety, using food to calm yourself boredom, eating as something to do bribery, quote, finish the project, then I can have a treat, unquote, celebration food accompanying most events, emptiness, eating from a lack of spiritual meaning or connection, excitement, using food as something fun, feeling lonely or unloved. using food as a friend, feeling frustration, anger or rage, eating as a release, loosening the reins, using food as an outlet for control or perfection, mild depression, so interesting carbohydrates increase serotonin, self soothing, eating to comfort or console when you're upset procrastination, quote, I'll do the task. After I eat something unquote, reward I just accomplished x. Now I deserve why food unquote, stress using food for relief.
That is a snapshot of the list around how we use food to support and accompany emotions in our life. There's much more than just this list. But I'm curious what comes up for you when I read that to you? Where do you find yourself using food, to support your emotions, and to also just take a moment to acknowledge what thoughts you're having around that right now.
Now, what is so powerful as you're moving forward in your relationship with food, and just how you are experiencing food, emotionally, is really deciding that food is one of many tools that you get to use for your emotional health for your emotional well being. Where it becomes really frustrating and problematic and confusing and emotional, is when we put all of our eggs in one basket and use food as the only tool to self soothe.
And if that is where you're at right now. There is no shame in that at all. There are many different points in life where that's going to feel like the only tool that's appropriate, the only tool that is available. And that is just fine. That does not mean anything about you. That does not mean that it's going to be that way forever. That does not mean that you're doing it wrong.
But where I really want to expand this and inspire and encourage you is to really get curious around what other tools can you bring in to support these emotions that are happening right now. So yes, it's both and it's sometimes using food for anxiety and journaling or going to therapy or taking medication or going for a walk.
It's using food to celebrate and having a dance party, calling your friend to speak your truth and celebrate with them. Just throwing your arms up and having your own private dance party, maybe planning a trip or something like that, but it's both and I could go down the list for all of those things.
So like I just mentioned one more time it gets tricky when we are really using food as the sole tool to accompany these emotions. But we're experiencing or situations. And where we really want to strive is to bring in more tools that we can choose from in those moments and really use our own self trust as a guide to acknowledge what we need in that moment how we're feeling, and what we need. You guys, there's so much more that I could say about this topic.
Like I said earlier, this is highly nuanced. This is really individual. There are many different layers and complexities to all of this, but I hope at least for today, this gave you a different perspective and is inspiring you to just compassionately reevaluate your relationship with food and your emotions and how they can.
How can they exist together on their own and what they look like right now. Like I mentioned before, we'll link the binge eating solution sheet in the show notes that will give you a little bit more context for the complex restriction that I had mentioned.
I love you, I am cheering you on. I am so grateful to be in this conversation with you today, and I'll see you next week. Bye.
