Updated: August 11, 2024
Episode 368. Reasons Why We Keep Overeating (And How to Fix It)
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“Calories in, calories out.”“Food is fuel.”“Count points/calories/macros/etc. to lose weight.”
These are weightloss myths the diet industry wants you to believe.
And sure, if you restrict what you eat, you’ll lose some weight. Until you can’t stand it anymore and eat all the things.
Because here’s the truth the diet industry won’t tell you. If you don’t address WHY you overeat, you’ll never lose weight and keep it off.
In today’s episode, Why We Keep Overeating (And How to Fix It), you’ll discover 6 things you’re really hungry for—and none of them is a donut.
If you overeat, there’s probably something missing in your life. There sure as hell was in mine! I struggled a lot, especially as a new mom. And I used food to cope.
To finally lose all my weight, I had to figure out what I really needed. Things like connection, self-compassion, and relaxation.
Tune in today for common reasons you overeat. And simple things you can do to meet those needs without reaching for food. So, like me, you can lose weight and start living your best life.
Transcript
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back everybody. So today I want to talk about reasons why we overeat, and I’ve done a lot of podcasts on this and a lot of times we focus on stopping at enough, like us continuing to eat all the reasons why we might be overeating, why it’s hard to stop eating enough. So there’s lots of podcasts on that, but one topic that I think could be really helpful for everyone that gets kind of to the heart of the matter is understanding that very often when we’re overeating it is because we are really hungry for something else. We don’t realize that so much of our eating stems from a lack of other things in our life. We think we just love the food. We think we’re just addicted, we think we are just out of control. We do so much. The diet industry literally does us a disservice because when you think about ketos and whole thirties and Weight watchers and stuff, there’s this overemphasis that all weight loss is about is calories in, calories out and the type of foods you’re eating.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
I am not sitting here and saying that that stuff’s not important, but here’s what I do know from not only losing a hundred pounds, but from 15 years of experience helping thousands upon thousands of women actually lose weight and change their life. And it’s this no amount of calorie counting, no amount of stripping away foods, no amount of lists that tell you eat this, don’t eat that are ever going to work in your life if other things are missing in your life. Food often is the drug of choice, the solution of choice, the gap, filler of choice that many of us are using over and over and over again. And I think this is really important because inside of my BS weight loss membership, I’m going to tell you how to eat.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Let’s not kid ourselves. You do have to know how to eat to lose weight, but I go further than any of the other programs out there because here’s what I know, you can know how to eat all day long, but if I am telling you to do this and don’t do that and you are missing some key components in your life, eventually your damn breaks, you are going to go back to food because it is solving a fucking problem for you. And I know this from experience when I was losing weight, one of the things, it was astonishing to me that
Speaker 2 (02:58):
The reason why this time it was working is because I was simultaneously figuring out how to fix my fucking life. I stopped trying to lose weight as the way to be like if I just lose weight, I’ll be happy. I was like, I’m not happy, period. And there are a lot of things I’m not fucking happy about in my life, and so while I’m going to try to lose weight, I better be solving some of that. One of the big things was I couldn’t be with myself every day. I was eating and eating and eating because from the time I woke up until the time I went to bed, it was a relentless assault on myself of everything that I should feel guilty about, all of my shortcomings, what I wasn’t doing, what I was failing at, what I should be doing, what I could do better.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
And I’m going to tell all of you, I think most of us live like that. Some of us we’re eating so much we don’t even know we’re doing it anymore. Some of us, we hear it and we just think that’s the way it is. We think we are just lazy. We think we should just feel guilty because I’ll tell you, one of the things I used to feel so guilty about was I hated being a mom. The first year Logan was born, I hated it. I mean, I was miserable, just miserable. Being a mother, it was hard. I wasn’t sleeping. I was the biggest I’d ever been in my life. I thought, what the fuck have I done to myself? I have this baby. I can’t just give him away. And I mean every day, not only did I have constant thoughts about we’re just going to have to get through 18 years of this, I would think things like life’s never going to be the same.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
It’s going to be forever before you have time for you again, I would be thinking about how unfair it was and how terrible it was. Then suddenly the voice would get darker and I would be so disgusted with myself because I didn’t love my child like everybody else did. It felt like everyone, I had very few mom friends and man to look at them. They were just embracing every moment. They thought every ounce of spit up was glorious. They couldn’t wait to change a poopy diaper. Sleepless nights just didn’t seem to bother them at all. And here I was, I would tell myself that I was, something was wrong with me, that I was broken. I shouldn’t think things like that about my child. I must be a bad mother because of it. I spent that first year of his life so miserable. Not only was I know now I was just having normal fucking thoughts, but back then I judged myself.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
And I think a lot of us are walking through life. Not only are we having normal reactions to the bullshit that us women go through, I mean we go through all kinds of stages in our twenties and thirties and early forties. We’re raising kids and we’re damned if we do and we’re damned if we don’t. It’s like if I give my kid a screen, I’m a bad mother. If I spend all my time with them, I’m sitting there feeling like I never get anything from me. We can’t win. And so we finally get past that stage and a lot of us as we’re going through that stage, and if you are a stay-at-Home, mom, I feel your fucking pain. The first few years of my life with Logan, I was his mother caregiver and it kicked my ass royally being dedicated to a child, that being your source of entertainment, the main person you’re talking to all day.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
I mean, I thought I was going to go crazy when he was three and four years old because I knew every fucking word of every Thomas video. I could tell you what was going to happen next, what the little tank engines were fixing to say. You just kind of lose yourself. We finally get our kids grown and now I’m in the stage of life where my hormones are jacked. I’m 49. I’m trying to figure out how do you feel sexy in an aging body? How do you get your mojo up? Because my husband, he eats slowing down and I’ll be honest, I don’t want to slow down in that area, but it is slower, it’s different. I’ve had to figure out how not to feel bad that I don’t want sex when he wants sex, having to navigate all that. Then we move to the stage of life which I’m slowly moving into.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Your parents are getting older, you’re taking care of the people who raised you. And from my client’s experiences, guess what? They’re not always fucking grateful. I told a client the other day, she’s taking care of her mom. She’s like 92. I can’t remember she had dementia or not. I don’t think she does. I think she just isn’t like she used to, but she’s grumpy as fuck all the time and she wants to be independent, and yet she wants her daughter over there all the time. And this lady was like just, she said, I’m just beside myself. She said, I feel like a terrible daughter. I don’t want to spend every minute with my mother, but I also feel like I should. And she’s just going through all this and I just said, look, your mother’s never going to be
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Grateful. She don’t have time to be grateful. She ain’t got many years left. She’s probably fucking paranoid that she ain’t got much time left on this face of the earth. No wonder she wants to spend so much time with you. It’s like us having an expectation that our parents should be bowing to us every moment that we’re taking care of them. It’s just like the same expectation we have of the teenagers. We think teenagers should be bowing down every moment of their teenage life that we provide such an amazing life for them. There’s a hilarious Instagram reel that went around during the holidays where they were talking about how kids say, you never get me anything. And so the dad was walking around and he was gift wrapping toilet paper and the thermostat in the house. He was like gift wrapping the electrical plugs showing, look, bitch, you get a lot from me.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
You may just not be getting the latest Air Jordans. So I say all of this because as women it feels like we’re just going through decade after decade of things are missing in our life, but the one constant that’s never missing that can fill any hole is going to be the food for some of us, and this was me for years and years, I didn’t know, number one, what all was missing from my life. Two, I didn’t know how to necessarily go get it or was afraid to go get it, and three, I had food had always been there as the last man standing. So I used that most of my life to compensate from what was actually missing. I didn’t realize what I was truly hungry for most of my life. So I shared this in my membership a few weeks ago. We did, if you don’t know, every Wednesday I go live with all my members and I teach them a little something to go deeper than anything that we ever do here in the podcast and in this particular class, I was teaching them the things that they need to know about waiting for hunger.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
There are lots of reasons why waiting for hunger for a lot of us doesn’t feel safe, feels like an emergency, scares the shit out of us. We don’t want to, feels unfair. We shouldn’t have to. There’s tons and tons of food rules we’ve been brought up with all of our lives, most of us who are listening to this podcast. You probably went through the period where we were supposed to eat six to seven times a day to keep our metabolism running and just to tell all of you about fucking diets. Isn’t it amazing that for 20 years we basically were told that and now we’re told no, we were wrong. We really want to have a good healthy life and you want to do all the things. You should be fasting. You should only eat once or twice a day. I say that as a tangent just because all of you, every one of them food rules you got running around in your head, every one of them are going to be debunked again.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
The second someone can pay for some research to prove something new so they can write a book around it and then that will take catch on fire and everybody will be doing it. I say that because basically if you listen to this podcast, stick to fucking common sense. It has worked for humans for thousands of years. I promise you in 2024, it’s going to work just fine. If you’re waiting for hungry, if you are stopping at enough and not full, drink your damn water, get you some sleep. Make sure that you also decide what you’re going to eat ahead of time. I want you to decide what you’re going to eat ahead of time so that you don’t have to have a lot of fears around being hungry. You can see that you are going to get fed, especially when you’re hungry. All right, so let’s just talk about, there’s a lot of things that go into making sure you have the ability to wait for hunger, but I really wanted to share this with all the podcast listeners because this is something that doesn’t get taught very often.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
It needs to get taught because if your weight loss program doesn’t teach you how to address what you’re truly hungry for in life, I promise you, you are not going to lose weight. You might lose weight, but you will gain it back. That diet is not teaching you how to get these things, and if you can’t get these things, the second, the thrill of weight loss is gone. The second you hit your goal, you are left with all of this being empty, and if you don’t know how to fill it, then you’re going to fill it with food, I promise you. All right? The first thing is what you could really be hungry for is supportive connection. It is very important to human beings to feel like they are connected, to feel like people, get them to feel understood. It is a primal desire for humans to want someone in their life, if not multiple people in their life, to feel connected to for safety reasons.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
When you were a cave woman or a caveman running around in the bush somewhere, you wanted to know you had a tribe of people because if you didn’t, you were likely to eat, ate by puma. You needed a herd of you, a group of you to be able to stay safe, to be able to get food, to be able to procreate, to do all the things. I know it’s 2024. It isn’t BC times, but I’m going to tell you right now, our brains operate the same as they always have. Your brain is going to want connection, and if you are missing connection in your life, supportive connection, you’re going to eat. You’re not going to want to feel threat. You’re not going to want to feel loneliness. So you have to learn how to do that. Some of you might need to get some therapy so that you can feel understood, you can feel connected.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
But for most of us, we just need a community. We just need people who get us in. Weight loss in particular. I think community is very important. I mean, one of the reasons why so many of you fucking love this podcast is because you’re like, Corinne, when I listen to the podcast, I feel like you get me, you hear me, you talk like me. You’re the first person saying shit that I think nobody else is saying this shit. Doesn’t that feel good? You’re connecting. We crave connection. That is one of the reasons why inside my program community is a huge piece of it. We not only have a main Facebook group, but we have smaller communities that are built around like the 55 plus group, a hundred plus pounds to lose people who just enjoy cooking. We have a whole foodies group. We have lots and lots of smaller groups that people can come together and feel seen and heard and like I’m not the only one.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
I’m not the crazy one that I think I am. So making sure that you have connection and support in your life could be one of the things that you’re eating over. So when you’re eating, you want to be asking, what am I really hungry for in this moment? And what you’re missing, you want to go out into the world and try to get it. I promise y’all. When you get the things that you really need, guess what? You’ve just eliminated a lot of urges. You’re not going to want the cookies and shit when you are filling the truest needs of your life. The next one is stress relief methods. A lot of you don’t know how to de-stress without a cookie, without overeating. If that sounds like you, you’ve got to find other ways to take stress down. I teach a bunch of ’em inside of the membership.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
One of the biggest ways that we tackle as we try to tackle root cause stress. A lot of people, they’ll do yoga, they’ll do some meditation, they’ve got relaxation techniques, and I think that’s a great start. But if you really want to de-stress, you have to look at the areas of your life that are stressing you out, and then you have to get help on figuring out how do we take the stress down in these areas of our life? For some people, they’re stressed out because they have never tried to break their people pleasing tendencies. They’re saying yes to everything. They think they’ll be a bitch if they start saying no. They learning how to say no without people thinking you’re a bitch. Learning how to put you back on your list and really be doing that guilt-free, not feeling selfish. It takes stress out of your life.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
So stress is probably one of the big ones. Another thing that a lot of us are really hungry for is healthy coping habits. A lot of people don’t have healthy coping habits. All of us, we need a way to be either creative, we might need a damn hobby, we may just need to journal, but having some coping habits that allow you to have these stressful times in your life have overwhelming times in your life, or just be going through seasons of your life and knowing there’s a little bit of something that you enjoy that you get to do is everything. One of my big hobbies, and most people are always shocked at this, is binge watching tv. I love shows, so my husband and I are always on the prowl for anything right now. We’re watching Bosch on Amazon Prime. We love all the Chicago, the one Chicago series, fire, PD, and med.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
We like to watch long dramas because we like to get into the characters. We like to talk about the characters as if they’re part of our family. To me, TV watching is a hobby. It also provides connection, but so many people feel guilty about it and I’ve just identified this is going to be my hobby. It’s easy. It’s in my bed. It’s with my favorite person. That right there kills three big things that I love most, ease my bed and my husband. Another thing that you might be hungry for is self-kindness. Learning how to talk to yourself, how to have those micro moments in your life where you are telling yourself nice things instead of judging you. Like really learning how to unwind the negative self-taught can be something that helps you not have to eat all the time. Another thing that you might be hungry for is positive diversions.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
All this means is for a lot of you, when you think you’re hungry, have a list of simple things that you can do to take your mind off of it. So for example, very often when I finish the day, I get done around four 30 in the afternoons and then I’m suddenly starving. I feel like I’m really hungry, but I’m not. I don’t eat my lunch until one 30 or two. I know that at four 30, all that’s happening for me is my adrenaline from the day is dropping, I’m starting to relax and my brain just automatically triggers me. Oh my God, we should eat. It. Doesn’t know how to transition. So for a lot of people, there’s a lot of eating when you’re not hungry. What’s called transitional eating? I don’t know how to go from the day and wait until dinner. A lot of us eat during that time because it’s like we don’t know what to do with ourselves.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
We know we have chores, we have busy work, but we’ve been busy all fucking day and guess what we really want. We usually want a moment to breathe, rest and relaxation. We don’t want to be aggravated. We don’t want to be doing chores. We’ve been touring already, so a lot of people do this transition eating when they’re not hungry. So having a positive diversion could be helpful. I will tell y’all, I play three games every day on my phone. I play Wordle and I text it to my husband and my best friend. I play The Waffle, which is one of my favorites. These are all New York Times games and I play connections by the time I’ve played those. If that right there is a positive diversion, it’s teaching my brain something. If I’m still hot footing and antsy to eat, then a lot of times I will use my Elevate app.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
I have an app called Elevate. It’s got brain games on there. It gets my brain engaged. So I’m not thinking about eating. It also gives my body time to transition. I’m not doing chores, I’m not doing dreaded work, but I’m also allowing myself to settle down and then I’m at a clean slate. And then I can decide, well, do I really want to tidy up my kitchen? Do I want to just sit for a few minutes? Can I just give myself anything else? It’s taken the urgency to eat out of the room. A lot of you might also be hungry for relaxation moments. We talk about this a lot, but most women are not scheduling any kind of relaxation in the day. The only time you relax is when you’re eating. That might be why you are consistently eating. When you aren’t hungry, your brain knows you need a break. Your emotions know you need a break. Your nervous system for fucks your nose, it needs a break, and your body is going to love you enough to figure out how to give you one.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
For a lot of us, it has learned that eating is the only time that you take time for you. It is the only time you relax. And so do not be mad at your body for asking for food. The solution is to start scheduling some time. If you’ve got five minutes to stand around in your pantry and eat Oreos, you got five minutes to if you have to because you got kids or whatever, lock yourself in your closet and take five minutes. Whatever you need to do, women have to start figuring out that it is not a bad thing because you need rest. I recently did a podcast where we talked about it is normal for your body to have highs and lows throughout the day. You are supposed to have time where you aren’t working, producing at a high level, and when you have the expectation you’re supposed to, you are stressing yourself out and you’re working against nature.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
So we have to learn that this you needing time for yourself is not laziness. It is not gluttonous. It is not selfish. It is not wrong. It doesn’t mean that you’re less than. It doesn’t mean that you’re broken. It doesn’t mean any of that bullshit about you. It fucking means you’re human and you’re having a human response. What’s not normal? Never taking breaks, pushing through, grinding all the time and then eating your way through it. That is not normal, but we have to quit normalizing. Being overly stressed and busy and eating. That’s the ultimate habit we have to break if you are going to lose weight. And then the last thing is setting boundaries. For so many of us, what we’re really hungry for is some fucking boundaries. We are going to have to tell some people, no kindly with a genuine heart, we’re going to have to set boundaries with ourself.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
A lot of you need to get your ass to bed at night and stop watching the tv. Corinne would love to binge watch until midnight, one o’clock in the morning, but Corinne also knows she’s got to get up at 5:00 AM most days. And so I have to set a boundary with myself. I don’t care how much TV I want to watch. I’m going to stop watching TV every night around eight 30 because I know I need to be in bed. And also, I’m going to be real honest with what happens to Corrine. I like how I’m talking to myself, just calling myself Corinne. You know what happens to me when I try to binge watch and stay up until nine 30 or 10? I get hungry. I start wanting to eat because my body thinks, why are we up? If you’re going to be up, I’m going to need energy.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
And it starts asking for food. So for a lot of you, you need to set some boundaries. You need to be looking at, oh my God, as much as you would like to stay awake at night, if you’re eating late at night so that you can have the energy to keep watching tv, set a boundary, this is not good for you. So we need to be looking at like maybe I’m really hungry for some work limits. I’m maybe really hungry for asking for more help with my partner. I’m really hungry for needing my kids to pick up some slack. I need to quit feeling bad about having my kids make their own dinner a couple of nights a week, whatever it is. So I hope this was helpful today. I just want y’all to know these are the things we have to fix if we’re ever going to actually lose weight.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
A lot of you, I promise you, you can go out and you can try your noms, you can try your Weight Watchers. If you’re over in the Europe, you can do the, I think it’s called Slimming World. You can run off to keto and run off to Whole 30 and Octavia and all these different things out there. But if at the end of the day you are not addressing the real problems in the room of your brain, your heart and your house, they’re going to be short-lived at best. And I bet if you look back at every time one of those diets ended up not working for you, you could trace it back to it was a hard time of my life. I couldn’t cope without the food. I was really good for a while until I just couldn’t keep doing it. I had no way to relieve my stress other than to eat. I want you to think about that, and if you want to come and join me, I promise you, this is the shit we’re going to work on. And when you work on this, you can lose your weight for the last damn time. So think about joining No bs. We would love to have you talk to you next week. Bye.