In this episode, we explore stress eating – a type of emotional eating – from the perspective of eating psychology.
But first, for those unfamiliar with the term ‘eating psychology,’ a quick definition: eating psychology is the study of our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs about food and body. It’s a positive and transformational approach that views our eating challenges as an opportunity to learn and grow.
Stress eating has a huge psychological component to it. Whether we’re conscious of it or not, our daily stresses can be a HUGE driver behind emotional eating.
But the key is understanding that it’s not really our circumstances that drive us to emotional eating. It’s the negative and anxious thoughts we have about those circumstances that often cause us to turn to food.
Reaching for junk foods – frequently carbohydrate-rich foods like chips, cookies, and candies – is a quick and effective way to quickly relieve stress. The only problem is that the “feel good” feeling doesn’t last, and we can gain weight or develop health issues over the long term.
Most of us know this, and we feel guilty and ashamed for what we perceive as “giving in” or being weak around food. And here’s the clincher: shame will often lead us to feel we must be punished for being “bad.” Ironically, an exceedingly common way of self-punishing is with food: eating more “bad” food to punish ourselves for being “bad” with food to begin with.
Kind of crazy, right?!
If you can relate, then tune in to hear Marc work with guest coaching client Denise on how to “graduate” from the self-punishment cycle behind emotional eating.
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Ready to call a ceasefire in your battle with eating, and find peace and freedom with food? Learn more about our newest program, The Emotional Eating Breakthrough, set to release in early 2023! https://learn.psychologyofeating.com/
Interested in becoming a certified coach in eating psychology? Then tune in to hear Marc talk about our Mind Body Eating Coach Certification Training, and download a copy of our School Catalog: https://psychologyofeating.com/info-kit/ Learn our powerful, cutting-edge approach, and discover how you can create a unique career helping others find peace and freedom with food.
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#stresseating #emotionaleating #weight #selfpunishment #dieting #relationshipwithfood #wellnessjourney #intuitiveeating #psychologyofeating #marcdavid
In the weight loss world, the concept of a weight “set point” is pretty common. Meaning, our bodies seem to have an intrinsic natural weight that can be different for each of us.
For many of us, that natural “set point” isn’t what we think it should be. We want a lower set point weight than we have, so we’ll often fight the body and make Herculean efforts to lose weight.
And while you’ll find lots of resources out there on how to change your set point, in this episode we explore weight set point from the perspective of eating psychology.
One of the key teachings of eating psychology is that our challenges with food and body are a great teacher. They’re not here to torment us or drive us crazy, they’re here to show us where our deepest personal growth lies.
So in this episode of “In Session,” you’ll hear Marc work with 62-year old Joanne, who has lost and gained about 15 pounds over the last 30 years. She has a clear idea of what her weight set point “should” be, it’s just that her body doesn’t seem to agree.
Every time she puts herself on a diet, Joanne loses weight. It seems like her “set point” has adjusted – until she starts to eat more pleasurable foods, when she gains the 15 pounds right back.
For Joanne, life just seems like it would be a whole lot easier – and she would be so much happier – if she could simply learn how to reset her weight set point.
But is changing her weight set point truly going to lead to happiness and fulfillment with this one precious, beautiful life she’s been given?
Tune in to find out!
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Learn more about us at The Institute for the Psychology of Eating: https://psychologyofeating.com/
Interested in becoming a certified coach in eating psychology? Then tune in to hear Marc talk about our Mind Body Eating Coach Certification Training, and download a copy of our School Catalog: https://psychologyofeating.com/info-kit/ Learn our powerful, cutting-edge approach, and discover how you can create a unique career helping others find peace and freedom with food.
Follow us on social:
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Psychologyofeating
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IPEfanpage
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eatingpsychology/
- Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/eatingpsych
#weight #bodyimage #midlife #dieting #relationshipwithfood #happiness #fulfillment #selflove #selfacceptance #eatingpsychology #psychologyofeating #marcdavid
In this episode, we meet 53-year old Lydia, who has been dieting for 40 years. As an adolescent, Lydia developed anxiety about how her body was developing, as is often common for girls and boys at that age. Aerobics was becoming hugely popular at that time in the 1980s, diet culture was booming, and Lydia embraced it all with the hopes that she could shapeshift into the lean, long-legged body type she hoped for.
Fast forward all these years later, Lydia is fed up with dieting. But she doesn’t know a life without it. She can’t imagine who she would be, or what her relationship with food would feel like.
All Lydia knows are the “boom and bust” cycles of dieting that define her life. When she loses weight, she feels confident in her clothes, but there’s also a constant fear lurking in the back of her mind that she’s going to regain the weight. And when she does gain it back, Lydia feels like a total failure.
As Lydia shares with Marc, she believes she’d be happy if she could only learn to eat and live like a thin person. But is there really such a thing as thinking like a thin person? And if there is, does it make them happier?
As this episode demonstrates, chronic dieting is not only a way of life – it’s a mindset. And while it usually doesn’t give us the results we’re looking for, it can become so hard to know what to do – and who to be – instead. Because dieting and body image challenges nearly always reflect our own self rejection, part of the solution is learning to accept ourselves and our bodies as they are right now, something that many of us worry means giving up our weight loss goals.
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Learn more about us at The Institute for the Psychology of Eating: https://psychologyofeating.com/
Interested in becoming a certified coach in eating psychology? Then tune in to hear Marc talk about our Mind Body Eating Coach Certification Training, and download a copy of our School Catalog: https://psychologyofeating.com/info-kit/ Learn our powerful, cutting-edge approach, and discover how you can create a unique career helping others find peace and freedom with food.
Follow us on social:
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Psychologyofeating
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IPEfanpage
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eatingpsychology/
- Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/eatingpsych
#weightloss #dieting #bodyimage #weightlossjourney #foodfreedom #dietculture #sloweating #intuitiveeating #mindfuleating #embodiment #selfacceptance #marcdavid #psychologyofeating
Ahvanya, 27, from Goa, India, has one wish when it comes to food and body: to never engage in negative self-talk again. Meaning, she would always trust herself with food, and she would never again judge her appearance. She would simply feel good about herself and feel confident all the time.
But is it realistic to think we can somehow stop the negative internal chatter, all those voices that tell us we should be different or better?
And if we could, would this finally allow us to be in perpetual bliss and balance when it comes to issues around emotional eating, body confidence, and weight?
As Marc explores with Ahvanya, it’s natural to see our negative self-talk as a problem. We can feel powerless and paralyzed by the difficult emotions they cause us to feel.
But when we try to deny our thoughts, we’re ironically swapping out one type of perfectionism (“my diet and body must be perfect”) for another (“my thoughts are unacceptable and I’m unwilling to allow them”). And this sets us up for feeling like a failure yet again, just in a different way.
So what do we do in a world where we’ve been taught to be perfect, inside and out?
Find out in this episode, where we explore the unrealistic expectations we often put on ourselves when it comes to our thoughts and feelings about food, body, and life.
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Learn more about us at The Institute for the Psychology of Eating: https://psychologyofeating.com/
Interested in becoming a certified coach in eating psychology? Then tune in to hear Marc talk about our Mind Body Eating Coach Certification Training, and download a copy of our School Catalog: https://psychologyofeating.com/info-kit/ Learn our powerful, cutting-edge approach, and discover how you can create a unique career helping others find peace and freedom with food.
Follow us on social:
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Psychologyofeating
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IPEfanpage
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eatingpsychology/
- Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/eatingpsych
#negativeselftalk #perfectionism #bodyimagehealing #foodfreedom #nourishnotpunish #antidiet #emotionaleating #mindfuleating #selfworth #selfacceptance #embodiment #marcdavid #psychologyofeating
Good health is the foundation for every other wonderful thing we could want in life: relationships, career, wealth, happiness, and so much more.
But striving for good health, like anything else, can be taken to its extreme.
One of the manifestations of this is orthorexia, a type of eating challenge hyper-focused on making only the very healthiest of food choices. On paper that can seem like a good thing, but orthorexia has a real dark side.
People suffering from orthorexia eventually find themselves severely bound by the strict food rules they’ve created for themselves about what, when, and how much to eat. And this can feel a lot like prison, except it’s a food prison existing only in one’s mind.
In this episode, you’ll meet 29-year old Rachel, who is overcoming orthorexia – but still has a lot of questions about how to quiet the voices in her mind that drive her to follow certain food rules, or feel really guilty when she fails to meet them. Rachel is exhausted from feeling so bound up by all the rules she follows, and wants to find more freedom with food.
As Marc David explores with Rachel, orthorexia can present as the desire to eat healthy, but the fuel that perpetuates the disorder is often rooted in body dysmorphia.
When we make the connection between orthorexia and body image/weight, we get to the real truth behind our vigilance with healthy food choices. From there, we can start to implement the key practices that will help us get out of our mental prison, and into a much more natural and intuitive relationship with food.
Whether you have orthorexia, or simply overdo the food rules and restrictions, be sure to tune into this revelatory episode!
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Learn more about us at The Institute for the Psychology of Eating: https://psychologyofeating.com/
Interested in becoming a certified coach in eating psychology? Then tune in to hear Marc talk about our Mind Body Eating Coach Certification Training, and download a copy of our School Catalog: https://psychologyofeating.com/info-kit/ Learn our powerful, cutting-edge approach, and discover how you can create a unique career helping others find peace and freedom with food.
Follow us on social:
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Psychologyofeating
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IPEfanpage
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eatingpsychology/
- Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/eatingpsych
#orthorexia #foodrules #bodyimage #disorderedeating #weight #healthyating #mindfuleating #intuitiveeatng #selflovjourney #foodfreedom #mindbodynutrition #psychologyofeating #marcdavid #relationshipwithfood
In this episode, Marc David coaches single mom, Eva, on her challenges with emotional eating.
The eldest of 8 siblings, Eva has felt alone since childhood. Her mother was a hard-working single mom herself who was hardly ever at home, so Eva often stepped in to help raise her seven younger brothers. To ease her overwhelm and loneliness, she began comforting herself with food, especially with breads and sweets – a habit she’s continued into adulthood.
Now many years later, Eva still feels many of the same emotions she did as a kid. Whether it’s raising her autistic kids, dealing with the stress of single motherhood, or simply getting thrown off track by everyday challenges, life can just feel like too much, too often. When she’s having a bad day, Eva reverts to her familiar pattern of binging on her favorite foods … a habit that is especially concerning given her bariatric surgery back in 2015.
As Marc explores, we all have many different voices living inside of us at once – some of which are often in conflict with each other. When it comes to emotional eating, there’s typically an inner child who learned early on how to cope using food. To unwind emotional eating, we need to evoke our adult self who can overcome the desire for instant gratification from food. As we do that, we can develop practices that help us shift emotional eating, including celebrating our small and big successes, and learning to stop punishing ourselves when we slip up.
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Learn more about us at The Institute for the Psychology of Eating: https://psychologyofeating.com/
Interested in becoming a certified coach in eating psychology? Then tune in to hear Marc talk about our Mind Body Eating Coach Certification Training, and download a copy of our School Catalog: https://psychologyofeating.com/info-kit/ Learn our powerful, cutting-edge approach, and discover how you can create a unique career helping others find peace and freedom with food.
Follow us on social:
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Psychologyofeating
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IPEfanpage
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eatingpsychology/
- Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/eatingpsych
#eatingpsychology #emotionaleating #bariatricsurgery #weightlossjourney #bingeeating #bread #sweets #instantgratification #mindfuleating #stressreduction #mindbodynutrition #reparenting #psychologyofeating #marcdavid
Noelle, 58, recently lost her mother after a three year journey being her primary caregiver. During that time, Noelle started binge eating to deal with her emotions and ended up gaining about 30 pounds. Heartbroken over her mother, Noelle is beginning to realize the impact of her grief on her patterns with food, and would like to somehow let go of the unwanted eating habits she developed over the past few years.
As you’ll hear in this episode of The Psychology of Eating Podcast, Noelle’s response to the unrelenting grief she’s been experiencing is very common. So many of us turn to food when we’ve experienced loss. While it’s normal and natural to regulate our emotions with food, we know it’s ultimately not the healthiest response.
As this session highlights, part of the solution to what we might call “grief eating” is having empathy and compassion for ourselves. As Marc shares – when we bring self-love to the table, we take the first step to unwinding our eating challenges.
So be sure to tune into this moving episode where we take a special look at the relationship between food, grief, and life.
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Learn more about us at The Institute for the Psychology of Eating: https://psychologyofeating.com/
Interested in becoming a certified coach in eating psychology? Then tune in to hear Marc talk about our Mind Body Eating Coach Certification Training, and download a copy of our School Catalog: https://psychologyofeating.com/info-kit/ Learn our powerful, cutting-edge approach, and discover how you can create a unique career helping others find peace and freedom with food.
Follow us on social:
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Psychologyofeating
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IPEfanpage
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eatingpsychology/
- Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/eatingpsych
#weight #bingeeating #grief #eatingpsychology #mindbodynutrition #weightlossjourney #foodsensitivities #foodcravings #emotionaleating #selflovejourney #relationshipwithfood #psychologyofeating #marcdavid
Tiffany, 52, would like to lose about 5 kilos. For many years, she’s worried about what to eat, and believes that if she could only learn to “think like a thin person,” she could stop focusing so much on food. And that would in turn help her to lose weight.
Tiffany also holds a variety of other beliefs around food and body, such as what her ideal weight should be, that weight loss should be effortless, that she should never overeat, and many more. And she’s not alone: all of us hold beliefs about our health, bodies, and our patterns with food.
But as Marc David teaches, many of the beliefs we hold end up getting in the way of achieving the goals we hold so dear.
Here’s the thing: it’s natural to focus on food when we’re trying to lose weight.
However, what so many people don’t realize is that nutritional changes alone don’t automatically lead to weight loss.
And that’s because weight challenges arise from the level of our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. In order to create lasting change, we have to do more than tinker with our nutrition – and instead dive into the key mindset issues that hold us back.
So be sure to tune into this fascinating episode, where we take a closer look at the psychology of weight loss, as well as the key nutritional, metabolic, and mind body factors that are influenced by our thoughts and beliefs about food.
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Learn more about us at The Institute for the Psychology of Eating: https://psychologyofeating.com/
Interested in becoming a certified coach in eating psychology? Then tune in to hear Marc talk about our Mind Body Eating Coach Certification Training, and download a copy of our School Catalog: https://psychologyofeating.com/info-kit/ Learn our powerful, cutting-edge approach, and discover how you can create a unique career helping others find peace and freedom with food.
Follow us on social:
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Psychologyofeating
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IPEfanpage
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eatingpsychology/
- Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/eatingpsych
#psychologyofweightloss #weight #bodyimage #eatingpsychology #limitingbeliefs #mindset #selfcontrol #sustainableweightloss #selflove #bodypositivity #bodyconfidence #foodfreedom #marcdavid #psychologyofeating
Amy, 48, would like to be more present in her body but multiple life experiences seem to stand in her way. After having mostly recovered from a frightening journey with multiple sclerosis (MS), Amy may have regained her health, but is realizing that her relationship with her body and sexuality is now calling out for healing at a deeper level.
As you’ll hear, Amy’s story with food and body go way back to childhood, when she had the startling experience of rapid puberty-related changes. One day she had the body of a child, and the next, the body of a woman. She began attracting unwanted attention from men, and could tell that all her family and friends were highly uncomfortable with her body. This imprinted a deep sense of shame and a desire to hide her femininity, which has continued on into adulthood.
One of the key concepts highlighted in this session is that “imprint vulnerability,” something that often occurs during the hormonal shifts of puberty. And as Marc shares, this early imprinted experience can become something that negatively influences the rest of us our life until we identify it, and retrain our brains and bodies to experience life in a different way.
As this episode demonstrates, it’s natural to “zip up” our emotions in the face of traumatic life experiences. But it’s our job to learn how to not zip up, and instead metabolize the deep emotions that surface along the journey of life.
Don’t miss this incredibly powerful episode exploring puberty, sexuality, illness, weight gain, and so much more.
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Learn more about us at The Institute for the Psychology of Eating: https://psychologyofeating.com/
Interested in becoming a certified coach in eating psychology? Then tune in to hear Marc talk about our Mind Body Eating Coach Certification Training, and download a copy of our School Catalog: https://psychologyofeating.com/info-kit/ Learn our powerful, cutting-edge approach, and discover how you can create a unique career helping others find peace and freedom with food.
Follow us on social:
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Psychologyofeating
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IPEfanpage
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eatingpsychology/
- Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/eatingpsych
#sexuality #illness #weight #selfconfidence #bodyimage #healthysexuality #pubertychallenges #healingtrauma #feminineembodiment #multiplesclerosis #selfworth #innerchildhealing #relationshipwithfood #marcdavid #eatingpsychology
Marc works with Lori, 57, who has been dieting for nearly 40 years. She’s exhausted from thinking about food and weight constantly, but still feels attached to losing weight. She believes she’d feel more accomplished once she loses the weight, and that how she feels on the inside would finally match the outside.
Lori has lost weight in the past, and initially feels more confident. But somehow that starts to go away, and she gradually falls back into eating her favorite high-fat foods. And that inevitably brings the weight back. At these times, Lori asks herself what triggers her old behaviors so that she can avoid slipping back into the diet cycle yet again, but comes up short on answers.
As Marc explains, people carry weight for many different reasons, including medical, metabolic, nutritional, food-related, and emotional. But regardless of the root cause, those of us who have focused on weight loss our entire lives have often never experienced their essential self, free from any weight loss goal. As they explore, taking the time to discover what fulfills us and who we are beyond our body’s shape and size is essential to finding the happiness we’re looking for. And it’s also important in our efforts to lose weight, as a negative mindset creates a physiological stress response that can cause us to become weight loss resistant.
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Learn more about us at The Institute for the Psychology of Eating: https://psychologyofeating.com/
Interested in becoming a certified coach in eating psychology? Then tune in to hear Marc talk about our Mind Body Eating Coach Certification Training, and download a copy of our School Catalog: https://psychologyofeating.com/info-kit/ Learn our powerful, cutting-edge approach, and discover how you can create a unique career helping others find peace and freedom with food.
Follow us on social:
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Psychologyofeating
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IPEfanpage
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eatingpsychology/
- Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/eatingpsych
#dieting #antidiet #loseweightnothate #psychologyofeating #eatingpsychology #weight #antidiet #bodyimagehealing #foodfreedom #relationshipwithfood #mindfuleating #selflove
Marc works with 30-year-old Kiersten who would like to let go of the fear and shame she feels around her weight, and feel more confident in her own skin. After being diagnosed with hypothyroidism in high school, Kiersten was placed on thyroid supplementation that helped her lose about 60 pounds – but since then, it’s been an up and down roller coaster.
She’s experienced times where she was able to lose weight, trying things like a keto diet, working with a weight loss coach, and being on a strict exercise regimen. But after experiencing some personal hardships a few years ago, she gained all her weight back. Now the heaviest she’s ever been with about 100 pounds she’d like to lose, Kiersten is wondering where to go from here. Equally, she’s trying to figure out how she can quiet the voice of self-criticism, and see herself and her journey in a kind and loving way – something more important than ever to Kiersten as she seeks to heal the abuse she experienced as a child.
Tune into this powerful and potent episode, where we take a special look at the role of childhood abuse and abandonment, and how that shows up in how we speak to ourselves as adults – regardless of our body’s shape or size.
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Learn more about The Institute for the Psychology of Eating: https://psychologyofeating.com/
Interested in becoming a certified coach in eating psychology? Then tune in to hear Marc talk about our Mind Body Eating Coach Certification Training, and download a copy of our School Catalog: https://psychologyofeating.com/info-kit/ Learn our powerful, cutting-edge approach, and discover how you can create a unique career helping others find peace and freedom with food.
Follow us on social:
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Psychologyofeating
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IPEfanpage
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eatingpsychology/
- Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/eatingpsych
#bodyimage #healingshame #weight #psychologyofeating #eatingpsychology #selfworth #mindfuleating #embodiment #innerchildhealing #hypothyroid #marcdavid #relationshipwithfood #selflove
In this episode, Marc works with 41-year old Lisa who is battling body image challenges. She frequently judges her body, and often compares herself to others. She’d like to lose about 10 pounds, but more than anything she just wants to be free of body judgment. She knows she can find a happier and more peaceful relationship with herself, she just doesn’t quite know how.
As they explore in her coaching session, Lisa learned early on as an 8-year old soccer player. She remembers noticing other girls’ legs, comparing hers to theirs, and wondering if hers were “right.” A lot of life has been lived since then - she’s grown up, been married, gotten divorced, switched careers, and is now in a wonderful new relationship with a man who loves her appearance. But she still finds that old familiar voice of comparison and judgment present at different times.
As you’ll hear, Marc coaches Lisa and the rest of us who are challenged with body image to embrace self-awareness before trying to get to the holy grail of self-acceptance.
Some of what they explore:
✅The role of cultural conditioning around competition and “winning” when it comes to weight and body image
✅ The gift of maturation that arrives around the age of 40 for both women and men, and how the “Queen-in-Training” (or “King-in-Training”) archetypes can help us overcome challenges with body image
✅ Why having a “perfect” weight number in your head is an unhelpful concept
✅ How fear of gaining weight creates a stress response in our body, which in turn makes it harder for the body to lose weight
✅ And much more…
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Learn more about us at The Institute for the Psychology of Eating: https://psychologyofeating.com/
Interested in becoming a certified coach in eating psychology? Then tune in to hear Marc talk about our Mind Body Eating Coach Certification Training, and download a copy of our School Catalog: https://psychologyofeating.com/info-kit/ Learn our powerful, cutting-edge approach, and discover how you can create a unique career helping others find peace and freedom with food.
Follow us on social:
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Psychologyofeating
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IPEfanpage
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eatingpsychology/
- Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/eatingpsych
#bodyimage #weight #selfcomparison #psychologyofeating #eatingpsychology #weightloss #selfjudgment #selfcriticism #selfjudgment #relationshipwithfood #selflovejourney #bodyrespect #dietculture #innerchildhealing #marcdavid #mindbodydnutrition
