Well, hello there and welcome to episode four hundred and twenty six of the Love Your Life Show. I’m so excited you’re here because I have some great news for you. You are not the problem. You are not broken. You know how you start. Maybe with a plan or you want to do something and you don’t do it, and then you think you’re broken. You have a discipline problem or you have a willpower problem. What if it’s not that? What if you’re not the problem? In this episode, I specifically look at emotional eating and help you with a shift that will change everything for you. Thank you for tuning in. I’m Susie Pettit, your certified life relationship and weight loss coach, and I am so excited for this episode. Let’s go.

Voiceover: Hi, this is the Love Your Life show with Susie Pettit, certified life and wellness coach. Join Susie as she helps you with your wellness and mindset so you can live a life you love. Let’s go Warriors.

Okay, warrior, I was serious. I have the best news. What if you don’t have a willpower problem and you don’t need to be more disciplined? What I’m going to help you understand today about your eating and food will help you stop beating yourself up so you can actually make the progress you want to make. By the end of this episode of the Love Your Life Show, you will have a shift in how you think about emotional eating and your willpower that’s going to help you feel more confident, more in control, and be better able to make the changes you want to make. So this isn’t about just talking you into seeing things in some fairy land. It’s actually about getting you the progress you want. I cannot wait for you, for you, and for us. I’ve done this work in my life. This is a great episode for you. If you’ve ever found yourself thinking, I know what it takes. You know, like we know what healthy eating is. I just don’t feel like I have it in me at this stage of my life to do it. Maybe we have too many demands, too many other things going on. This is just one more thing. Screw it. Or you’re thinking like, I have enough else going on to keep my house together, dealing with my parents, my husband, my kids. Perimenopause. Not this too like it feels heavy to take on your eating. Okay, this episode is for you. It’s also for you if you simply if you feel like you have energy but you’re just confused, you’re like, I know what I want to do. And then I go and I find myself with my hand in my bag, a bag of chips, not just a bag. Okay. I want you to listen really closely to the difference I’m talking about, because it will make all the difference to you if you get it. Because changing your eating habits isn’t actually one more thing you have to do. What if changing the way you cope with how you’re feeling actually gives you less to do that, you’ll feel lighter. This is what I’m talking about today. Okay. In the past, the way we usually go about new ways of eating and stopping, maybe impulsive eating or starting a new exercise or health plan actually does add stress. I’m with you in this. It. It is one more thing to do instead of making us feel better. And so what happens? I’ll tell you what happens. We swing between the all or nothing. Maybe on Sunday we have this plan and we’re all like, okay, Monday when you wake up, you’re going to track your food, get your exercise, blah, blah. We’re all revved up and we’re like, you can do this. And then by Thursday, we’re on the couch, hand in the bag. The food we bought at the fridge is rotting in the refrigerator. And we’re just like, what the heck happened? Or maybe you don’t even get to Thursday. You’ve been in your plan before it even starts. It’s Monday and you get to your first meal and it just seems too hard, too much, too stressful. Like stop it. Screw this. And so we, we swing from that, like, I’m going to do it all to the other end of the pendulum where it’s the Phuket plan. Oh my gosh. Beep the effort plan. Back to eating or moving how we did. It. And then we think, what were the problem? We beat ourselves up. We say things like, I fell off the wagon. I need to get back on track. I have no willpower. Gosh, why don’t I try harder? What’s wrong with me? Today we’re stopping that nonsense. We’re done with that. I am here with the best news. There is a completely different way to look at this, which is actually grounded in science and reality versus capitalism and all. All the sexist stuff keeping us stuck, thinking you’re the problem. We are. We are well served, thinking we’re the problem, and then we’re in this crappy feeling state. So if you feel like you’ve been doing that long enough and you want something different, keep listening. The point of today’s episode is to get you to start thinking about your emotional eating, or your impulsive eating or drinking differently, and that you are not lacking discipline or willpower or doing something wrong. In fact, you’re being super smart and protective of yourself that you’re simply using food as a coping strategy. That’s that’s it. You’re using it. You’re eating instead of feeling. And this is great news because coping strategies can be changed. That’s what I really want you to see, that what is behind emotional eating an emotion. It’s a coping strategy. That’s why we call it emotional eating. We don’t call it eating when you’re hungry. We call it emotional eating because at some level, we recognize that that’s what we’re doing. We’re eating our emotions instead of feeling them. When we eat and we’re not hungry, we are eating to deal with a feeling boredom, loneliness, stress, disappointment. I’ve eaten after all those. And when we start to see it this way, it actually becomes much lighter in our head. It’s not us as the problem. This is just a skill set to grow. The fix is pretty easy. When we were younger, we weren’t taught emotional regulating techniques or enough of them. Eating is a really easy and effective one. Really like super easy and like super impactful. Maybe we’re disappointed because we didn’t initiate that conversation we’ve been meaning to have, or we’re worried because our kid has been quieter than usual or overwhelmed or exhausted. Like all these things that we feel disconnected from our husband and what have we been taught to do instead of feeling whatever we’re feeling? Like, what are our coping techniques? What literally like if you think about it, like, what are what are six options? You have to feel that feeling. You’re feeling disconnected from your husband. What are six things you can do that aren’t fight, flight, freeze, or fixed? Uh, hello. Probably don’t have all these things to choose from. What do we do? We eat. We use eating to feel our feelings. That’s it. It doesn’t have to be bigger or more dramatic than this. When we take out the drama and the negative way we’re thinking about ourselves, we empower ourselves. Instead of thinking that what’s behind our emotional eating is some sort of moral failing. Instead of thinking I stink, I have no willpower. If I could just try harder, I’d be able to do this. We actually have some leverage and have a path forward. I have never seen this to be the case that the person needs more willpower or more discipline. Seriously, I have never seen that to be the case. It is more this person needs more skill set building. And I know if you’re listening to this podcast, you are not lacking amazingness. Truly, you want to do differently. You just haven’t had your attention on the right target. You’ve been beating yourself up thinking you’re the problem and you’re not the problem. And today I’m really bringing this insight to you. If you have been emotionally eating for longer than two days, you’re not the problem. It’s not your personal failing. You are not some broken human. You are a human who has found a really effective way to cope with uncomfortable feelings. Food is a really effective coping strategy. Instead of feeling whatever we’re feeling, we eat. Eating is amazing at distracting us from what we’re feeling. Seriously, think of some of those examples I gave. Like if I’m thinking the thought, oh, I’m worried because my kid is more quiet than usual and I take a bite of a brownie. My brain immediately starts to think about the brownie. It’s like brownie, soft, sweet, maybe warm, delicious. My brain is thinking about that and I’m like, wait, what was going on with my son? No, no. Brownie. Back to the brownie. Literally, there’s there’s, like, so many other things pulling your brain’s attention at that point that you have pushed all the feeling about your son down in your body with food. It’s a direct distraction when you think about it. It’s pretty ingenious of us. Super smart. It is. Food is a great way to manage our feelings. If it helped get rid of our feelings, it doesn’t. But it is a great distraction. Right. Add to that food another reason why it’s such a good distraction. I guess I should just highlight is that what we’re usually eating when we eat off of our, you know, sort of healthy plan or eat when we’re not hungry. The foods we’re usually eating are usually highly addictive, like things with white, white sugar or white flour, which is super stimulating to our brain. And drinking fits in here too. If you are not so much of an impulsive eater, but you find yourself, you’re like, okay, I’m not going to drink tonight. And then you find yourself pouring that glass before you even think about it. Alcohol literally numbs our emotional receptors. It is one of the greatest, quickest coping techniques. It’s not good for us long term, which I’ll get into, but you are super smart in using it. And so what we first want to do is look at this without the self judgment and blame. Because the more in control, the more we see this for what it is, the more in control we become of our actions, the more supportive of ourselves we can be. Instead of this like, oh my God, I’m to blame. We’re like, oh my gosh, that’s actually quite smart. And now that I know better, I can do better. Okay. Instead of this like beating ourselves up for it, it’s super smart. It’s like, like, oh, wow. I never intentionally learned how to regulate or process my emotions. So instead, I’m eating well. Huh. That’s interesting. Very interesting. Instead of like, I shouldn’t be doing this, I’m broken. It’s like, oh no, this is just showing a skill set I’m lacking. Okay, that pause and reflecting and supporting yourself is so helpful. If you’re a student in the love of your life school, go to the resource section and print up the list of coping strategies, or look at some of the trainings. From October twenty twenty six. We got into all of this. I’m sorry. September twenty twenty six. Try some of those. This is the warrior move. Break the automatic coping. Notice what we’re inclined to do. It gives us so much leverage when we understand what we’re using for food for. And I want to be really clear that the goal here is, is not to never eat again when you’re not hungry. No, that is not the goal. I just ate when I wasn’t hungry this weekend. The goal is to become intentional instead of reactive slash automatic. Like this weekend I had an ice cream cone with my son. I was not hungry. I knew I wasn’t hungry, but it was intentional. It was deliberate, I chose it, I enjoyed it, I felt as good about myself and my choices afterwards as I did before. That’s very different than eating because you’re trying not to feel something and then feeling out of control or disappointed in yourself afterwards. All right. Beep beep beep. Come back to me if you’re folding laundry or you’re driving or something. This is super important. If we are using eating as a coping strategy to distract ourselves instead of feeling the feeling, it doesn’t actually take care of the feeling. It kicks the can down the road and actually doubles the trouble. Which brings me to the second really important point in this episode. The first part, emotional eating, is a coping technique. It is something you are doing to support yourself instead of feeling the feeling we don’t know any better. It’s just a signal that you don’t have enough coping strategy skills that are helpful for you, which is good news because once you know that it can direct your learning. The second big thing I really want you to understand is that when we are thinking we are the problem, it is very convenient for certain broken aspects of our society. When we wear ourselves down thinking, emotional eating is our personal failing, and we distract ourselves from taking deliberate action on the actual things we have agency over. It helps the systems continue to run and it continues to wear us down. I’ll link a podcast interview that I did ages ago with a woman empowerment coach and body confidence coach, Susan Hyatt, where we spoke of how convenient it is for Society that us women spend so much time in our head worried about our weight and our eating, worried more about our thigh gap than our wage gap, or the gap in the mental load around the house, or the connection in our relationships or any other adult thing that when we focus on it and support ourselves in feeling the uncomfortable feeling, we can actually influence and change. This is why I’m so passionate about helping women with this, because when we are eating to shove down our when we’re eating as a coping technique, we’re actually doubling the trouble onto ourselves. And we don’t frigging need that. We don’t need that, say like, because if we have other tools, we can, we can do, we can process the emotion and move forward. We all have real reasons to be stressed about what’s happening in our house, what’s happening in our life, what’s happening, whatever. And when we deal with that stress by eating, now we have stress because we’re stressed about the thing. And we also have stress because we’re not taking care of our body in the way we want to. Maybe we have real stress because our blood tests come back bad, or we have real stress because on top of the other stress, now our bodies ache. Do you see how emotional eating as a coping strategy just kicks the can down the road? It gives us more of a need for a coping strategy. I’m not sharing this with you to overwhelm you, rather to inspire you to shift how you think about your emotional eating, and then to feel so inspired. Because if you just use a different coping strategy out of the out of the gate, you have less uncomfortable emotion to push down. How great is that? You get to. This is a great sign to build out your coping strategy. Seriously. The goal here is to choose coping strategies that. We don’t need more coping strategies to recover from. Can you sort of see this? How emotionally eating or drinking as a coping strategy creates another thing for us to think about and feel like crud about it adds heaviness to us versus this thinking like, oh, this is one more thing to do. It’s like, no, no, no, this is one thing to take away so we feel better. Instead of adding negativity to negativity, instead of needing another coping strategy for our coping strategy, all we have to do is learn more coping strategies that are helpful. I tell you, my impulsive emotional eating never solved a damn long term thing. Short term, I would feel happy. The food in my mouth was super effective in distracting me. But not only did it not solve the initial thing, I was an emotional reaction. You know, I had an emotion about I would add on there. Me feeling upset about myself. So I think you get this. So this is what I’m trying to get about this episode. The fix is quite simple. First, stop telling yourself the lie that you are broken and need more discipline or willpower. My dear wonderful listener, you are not broken. Second. Simply commit to learning more coping strategies. Emotional eating works in the short term. It does distract you. And there are so many other coping strategies that I have learned and that I teach that don’t do this double negative. They will support you. That will help you with the emotion, but don’t add something else for you to deal with down the road. You have far too much on your plate to do that with yourself, and I didn’t even intend to have that pun with the plate. Okay. Which is why thinking about this in the way that I’m introducing in this episode, isn’t one more thing for you to do or add to your load. Rather, when you approach your care in this way, you will feel lighter and more in control. I’ve done it, I do it, and it is the difference between feeling heavy and exhausted and loved and supported. between me, feeling like. Overwhelmed and ick. Oh, one more thing to do. And me feeling much more emotionally adult like. And I want this. So much for you. When you can learn to support yourself and your feelings, the better you will feel, the better your life will feel. You will feel more alive and more like you can take action on the things you really want to take action for. This is solvable. My sweetheart. Doable. You get your energy back when you make these two shifts I talk about, you pay attention to the things that matter to you. It’s so wonderful. All right, I’m going to. I’m going to wrap it up there. And seriously, if anything today interested or excited you or you had a little nip and you’re not a student in the love of your life school, please join in this next month. We are working on emotional eating this next month, and I will give you the support and accountability to make it so that when you turn the calendar page on November. You could literally have very different eating habits and you could feel very differently about yourself, have a whole different toolbox. That’s what coaching does for you. If you don’t want to be in the group setting, then set make an individual meeting with me. Okay. What would that feel like to get to the end of a day, a week, a month and think, yay me! Oh my gosh. Looking back at this month, I’m so proud of how I cared for myself. I’m so proud of the learning I did. I’m so excited about how I’m taking care of myself. That is all possible when you have a professional to help you do it. You are not the problem. You don’t need more shame. If you want to feel better, faster, you get a coach. I would love to be that coach for you. Big love for you today, my dear, wonderful, amazing warrior. You matter so much to me.