All right, welcome back. Today, we are gonna talk about why you eat when you're pissed off, when you're angry, when you're annoyed, when you're frustrated, or when someone has worked over your very last dick nerve. And the first thing that you wanna do is you want to put a Ding Dong right into your mouth.
And this is important because most women don't even realize that this is a form of emotional eating. And if they do realize it's a form of emotional eating, they don't even understand why they do it. It is so frustrating to not know why.
And when you don't know why, you make assumptions, and you make asshole assumptions like, "Well, I must just have a food problem. Well, you know, it's because I lack willpower. Well, you know, I'm trying to lose weight, and this is just because I can't stick to a diet."
That no matter how hard you try, it's never gonna matter because you just can't lose weight. You might even blame your ability to not lose weight, to break diets like they're a habit, on all the past diets that you failed.
I'm telling you right now, if you eat out of anger, annoyance, frustration, whatever it is, none of that shit is the problem.
And I will tell you, if you don't know why this is happening, you're never going to be able to lose your weight. You'll probably even end up gaining more weight because we are always going to be angry, annoyed, or frustrated in our lives.
Your husband is still going to leave the garbage sitting there when you've told him 10 times to take it out. Your kid is going to have bad days and talk to you like an asshole. Your boss is still going to want to send you emails at 4:58 on a Friday wanting you to finish something before Monday.
So whether you are losing weight or not, these things are always going to be happening in your life. And if the only thing you know how to do when you're triggered with anger is to eat, then no diet is ever gonna work for you, especially long-term.
I don't care how many friends lose weight on the latest diet. I don't care if you think it's the thing you should be doing because Jane and Paula are doing it. I don't care if you're miserable as fuck being overweight.
It doesn't even matter if you've got four bajillion whys as to why you wanna lose weight, why it's so important to you.
In the moment when you're upset, if the only way you know how to deal with anger or frustration is by shoving food in your mouth, being upset will win every single time in the moment.
And you know this because it's happened over and over and over again in your life.
Well, I bet you've said, "I know what to do. I just don't do it."
I'm going to tell you, so many people say that, that I have a training, a special training inside my No BS program, because before my members understand their emotional eating, they think knowing and doing just magically happen together.
I'm going to tell you right now, if there is something in between the knowing and the doing, like anger, and you don't have any other way to deal with it other than eating, it won't matter how much you know.
So I want you to listen to this podcast because I think it's going to really help you understand what's actually happening, so you can quit blaming willpower and shit like that and actually get to work on what really needs to be solved here.
So let's start with why you do this. Why you eat when you are pissed, when you are frustrated, when you are angry, and when you are annoyed.
Because once you see it, now we can start doing something about it.
And I promise, nothing is wrong with you and you're not somehow broken. I promise neither one of those things are happening.
Here's what is happening.
You have a learned behavior.
At some point in your life, somebody taught you how to eat when you were upset. And this probably happened a long time ago. It may have been in childhood. It could have been in your teens. Hell, it might have even happened in your 20s.
You could have seen it in your own house. You could have seen it on television. We do not know exactly where we picked it up all the time. But when I give you a few examples, you might identify with some of them.
But just know that if you do that, you picked it up somewhere. We don't always have to know exactly where we picked it up in order to fix it.
But let me give you some examples.
When you were a kid, you probably had big emotions. And at some point, you learned that they weren't okay.
So usually childhood is where this starts, but not always.
Maybe you were a little girl and you had your big emotions, and somewhere along the way, somebody told you that you were dramatic, that you blow everything out of proportion.
I love my mother, but I swear, I can't tell you how many times my mother always told me that I exaggerate everything.
My mother was a single mother and probably tired as fuck. And the last thing that she wanted was a daughter who was having an emotional crisis.
I understand now why my mama said those things. I do not hold it against her. My God, she told me that like a million times.
So a lot of the women that I coach, they heard things like this as a kid.
So let's say you would get upset over something that actually hurt your feelings, and some grownup would look at you and say, "Here she goes again. She's being so dramatic. Quit crying or I'll give you something to cry about."
And when you're a little girl and you hear that, your brain files it away as, "Oh, my feelings are too big. My feelings are bad. These types of feelings are bad. And people get mad about that. And people tell me, 'Ooh, that's wrong.'"
So that's how we interpret it as a child.
And then we'll carry that throughout our entire life without even realizing it.
Sometimes you might have grown up with a parent who drank. And if you did, you probably already know what I'm about to say because you spent your entire childhood—the whole family dynamic operated around their feelings.
You knew the second the car door shut what kind of night everybody was in for.
Nobody in that house was ever allowed to set off your parent. Everybody in the house had one job, and that job was keeping them from blowing up.
And it was your job, even though you were a little kid, to somehow figure out how to take your feelings and deal with them because the adults didn't want to. And there were bad things that would happen if they had to.
So if something upset you, you probably learned to not say a word about it because you knew good and well that you'd either get your ass whooped or that the whole house was gonna pay for it if you showed your emotions, okay?
Now, for some of us, that is not our lived experience, but your house was actually really quiet. Your house wasn't loud at all.
Your house was the kind of house where nobody ever talked about bad days. Everybody just had, you know, a normal day, and you learned that upset feelings aren't really appropriate.
Nobody ever seems to be talking about these things. That somehow you're unlike the others.
And so you decided—you, like, as a child, you figure out how to adapt. That's a very normal thing that happens with children. And everybody around you is always smiling and just passing the potatoes.
So however it went down in your childhood, in your 20s, in your teens, somewhere along the line, you learned that having a feeling and saying it out loud is dangerous.
You might've even been in a marriage at one point where that happened. And now you're out of that marriage, and you're having a hard time even dating because you were in a marriage where talking about your feelings was really bad.
So the only thing that I wanna tell all of you that I hope will—well, one of the things I wanna tell you that will give you some hope is that nobody ever went back and taught you any different.
That's why you are the way you are today.
It's not because you had, you know, like a shit childhood, and if you hadn't had that shit childhood, you wouldn't be the way you are today.
It's not a bad thing or something to be ashamed of or something to judge yourself about.
I like to tell everybody, you just were never taught any different. And until you're taught different, of course this is the way you respond to things because, as of right now, it's the only way you know how.
You've gotten older. You've gotten a job. You've got a house. You've had your own children.
And that little girl, somewhere along the way, who learned to keep her mouth shut about everything that she was feeling, she is still in there.
And she is still telling you, "Hey, this is how we stay safe. Hey, this is what we do when we're angry. Hey, it's not okay to say these things. You need to be a good girl."
So now, when you're 45 years old and you're standing in your own damn kitchen as a grown-ass woman paying her own bills, and you can't even make yourself tell people when you're upset, when it feels scary, when it feels awful, when it feels dangerous, when it feels like you shouldn't, I'm talking to you.
But I want you to have the ability to look at someone and say, "I've asked you 10 times. I need the trash taken out. And I just need to let you know I'm irritated that it's not been done. When do you think you can get this done?"
That one sentence, saying something like that, for you feels more dangerous to you than gaining 20 pounds.
And that is why you shove a Ding Dong in your mouth instead. That is why you sit and do angry eating at the counter and wolf cookies down instead of telling your kids, your partner, or whoever what you're thinking.
That's not weakness. That's not somebody who lacks discipline. That is not someone who can't stick to a diet.
That is a woman doing exactly what she was taught to do to keep herself safe, to fit in, to operate how everybody else was operating.
So in those moments, when you're pissed, your why about why you want to lose weight, it will never stand a chance in a moment like that.
That's why sometimes reminding yourself of your whys in moments like that, it doesn't feel like you can even think about them. They never come to you.
Or even if you do, it's just like your brain just slaps them out of the way. Like, "Why the fuck are we even thinking about that shit?"
Because in that moment, something more important is happening.
You're thinking in that moment, "How do I stay safe in this moment?"
In that moment, losing weight, it's a nice-to-have. It's not an emergency like fear or worry about what somebody might think of you, or of you if you say what you're really thinking.
Your brain is telling you, "If you open your mouth right now, somebody's going to be mad at you. Somebody's not going to love you. There's going to be repercussions."
And your brain is going to pick being loved over a size eight every single time.
So no, this is not a why problem.
This is not a you-don't-want-it-bad-enough problem.
This is not a you-don't-try-hard-enough problem.
This is not like you-don't-know-what-to-eat-or-how-much-to-eat problem.
This is not a cookies-on-the-counter problem.
This right now is, "I don't feel safe when I'm mad, annoyed, or frustrated. I don't know how to talk to people about it. I only know how to eat over it."
So when we stuff our mouths with chips or cookies when we're upset, that's just a version of food noise.
Food noise and emotional eating, they are the same damn thing.
The obsession with food and the constant noise is there because underneath it are some needs going unmet except with food.
Your need in that moment is voicing your opinion, saying what you need, telling people how you feel.
And when you can't do that, that is an unmet need.
And food is sitting there trying to do it.
So when you're mad at your partner and you can't say it, and all of a sudden you cannot stop thinking about what's in the fridge, that is food noise.
And it came because you got upset. It's there to rescue you.
So the food is doing that job for you.
The eating is how you express yourself.
When you can't say, "I'm mad," the food says it for you.
All that stuff churning around inside of you has got to go somewhere. So it goes right into a bag of chips.
And eating something naughty is probably how you get to feel like you've got some kind of control over your life. It's how you get to say, "Fuck you," to the world without one single person having to hear you say it.
You've been agreeable all damn day. You said yes to everything. You took care of everybody. You swallowed about nine different things you wanted to say all day long.
And then that ice cream, sitting in the fridge, guess what? It's the one thing that's yours.
It's the one place nobody else gets a vote.
It is the one place where you can eat and feel like you're finally getting your say in.
That is a woman who's taking back the only piece of her life nobody can touch. And she's doing it with a spoon because it's the only way she knows how.
So there's nothing wrong with you. I want you to hear that.
There's a reasonable explanation for all of this.
Because the food does even another job for you that you don't even know.
And this is the sneakiest one.
You eat, and then you get mad at yourself for eating.
You yell at you.
And being mad at yourself is safe.
Nobody's going to leave you over it. Nobody's going to blow up at you because you're yelling at you. Nobody's giving you the silent treatment for three days when you get to finally express some anger.
So all that anger you are holding for other people finally gets to go somewhere.
And it doesn't cost you a damn thing.
And that somewhere is you.
You set up a situation where you're finally allowed to be furious with someone.
The food keeps you safe from saying it out loud.
And then the food hands you a person to be mad at.
And that person is always going to be you.
So I had a client one time. She told me something I'm never going to forget.
She said, "When I get angry, I eat. Because if I don't eat, I'm going to blow up at my husband."
And that's how she said it. Like eating was the responsible thing to do. Like she was doing everybody a favor.
So we didn't talk about the food at all.
I asked her why she didn't just tell him exactly what was wrong.
I just wanted to know.
And she got really quiet, and she looked at me and said, "Because when I was a kid, it was never safe to talk about anything that upset you."
You see, this is why it's important to have a weight loss coach.
We can ask you questions you don't even think to ask yourself.
She'd been eating over that for years, and nobody, including her, had ever once asked her why she wasn't just saying something to her husband so that we could figure out what was really going on underneath.
Because she was never eating because food was sitting there.
She was eating because it was the only way she knew how to have an angry feeling without anybody getting hurt, including her.
And she wasn't protecting him either.
She was just sitting there protecting herself because, in her mind, if she said out loud that she was mad, then the whole night was going to turn into the kind of night she had growing up.
She had never one time in her life watched two people be mad at each other and still be okay later.
So as far as her brain was concerned, saying, "I'm angry," and blowing up her marriage were exactly the same thing.
So we worked on how she could talk to him about the stuff that upset her in a way that felt safe to her.
She just needed to know how a grown woman says, "This bothered me." How to initiate a conversation with her husband.
She just needed to make the connection of, "Oh, my husband isn't like it was when I was a child, but I'm comparing apples to oranges. It's no wonder I don't feel safe."
And once she understood all of this, she didn't have to eat over her anger and frustrations anymore.
She was able to start articulating them and talking about them and doing something about them.
Eating is how you take care of your emotions in a way that feels safe to you in these moments.
That's all emotional eating is.
You came up with a way to cope, and it worked, and it's still working.
And it's also keeping you miserable. It's also preventing you from your dreams.
Both of those things can be true at the same time.
Now, when I tell a woman she needs to start saying what she feels, her mind immediately goes to the worst possible version of this.
She pictures screaming. She pictures a knockdown, drag-out fight. She pictures saying vile things and everybody getting upset.
She pictures turning into her mother or turning into the very person she spent her whole childhood tiptoeing around.
And she goes, "Oh, hell no. I'm not doing that shit. I don't want to be like that."
And I get it.
Because the only time you ever saw anybody express anger, it was a fucking shit show.
That's the only thing you've ever seen.
So when I say express your anger, your mind immediately plays the tape of what it was like when it wasn't safe, when somebody was losing their mind when you were a child, which leaves you thinking you got two choices: shut up or blow up.
That's it.
And when those are your only two options, of course you're going to go pick shut up.
And the food is what makes shutting up bearable.
Now look, there are a million ways to speak up for what you need, and almost none of them are gonna require you to be an asshole or a bitch about it.
We are not doing any of that.
But today, what I want you to feel is just some relief that you finally know what the real problem is.
If you're eating your anger, you're taking care of yourself. It's just the only way anybody ever showed you how to do it, and now you're ready to do it in a new way.
Now, I wanna warn you, though.
Understanding all of this is the easy part.
You're probably sitting there going like, "Oh my God, this sounds like me. Holy shit. I had that childhood. Oh my God, I do that now. Oh God, I think that if I'm going to voice my opinions, all of a sudden I'm going to be a bitch. I'm going to be selfish. I'm going to ruin everything, and everybody's going to be pissed."
I get it.
So I want you to know that when you do this, the first time you open your mouth, it will feel hard. It will feel weird.
You might even feel like a bitch for even wanting to say something.
And this is what I want to tell you.
It is possible to have other ways to articulate what's going on.
There are other ways to do it.
There are ways to learn how to communicate your feelings that are safe.
There are questions a coach can ask you to help you work through these things so that you can become someone who now speaks instead of eats when they're angry, frustrated, and annoyed.
And that's why I think most women actually need a weight loss coach, because most of you don't need another diet.
Let's be honest.
If you are going to be someone that every time you're angry, you end up needing to eat, there's no diet coming that's going to solve for that.
You'll do diets, and you'll do well on them until the first time your emotions get big.
And if you don't really learn how to deal with your emotions in new ways and understand them, food will always be the solution.
It won't be that you're breaking your diet.
It won't be because you lack willpower.
It will be because you're helping yourself in the moment the only way you know how.
And there, I'm just telling you, there are other ways.
So many ways.
This is the stuff I fix all day, every day.
I think losing weight is about fixing all of this shit.
I want you to think about it.
When you fix things like this, sticking to your diet is a lot easier.
Becoming consistent with all of your habits to lose weight won't be hard because you won't be triggered to eat your face off every time somebody looks at you wrong.
And fuck, you just feel better in life because you finally feel heard and safe.
Heard by you, heard by others, and safe because you start seeing, "It's not as bad as it was when I was a kid. My current reality isn't my last reality."
And this is the kind of work we do inside No BS.
And it's a big part of why my women finally lose weight after 20 and 30 years of not being able to.
So this week, you're only going to do one thing, and it's not that hard.
You're just going to notice.
That's it.
I want you, every time you are eating and you don't think—like, you're wondering, like, "Is this the kind of eating I should be doing, knowing that I would like to lose weight?"—I want you to stop and ask yourself:
"Am I frustrated right now? Am I angry right now? Am I annoyed about something? Am I really wanting to say things to people and I just don't feel safe enough to say them? Is that why I'm eating right now?"
You're probably going to be shocked at how often the answer is yes, and you just didn't even have any idea about it.
And then I want you to ask the one thing that matters:
"Why am I eating instead of saying something?"
And when you listen to your answers, you will hear everything that you're afraid of.
These are the things that you want a coach to help you with.
Because some of it might be true, and you need somebody to help you work through that.
A lot of it's not even the truth.
And you need somebody to help you see that also and know what to do in the moment the next time.
So whatever comes up, it's really good to know.
These are the things that you've got to start seeing.
Otherwise, you will keep starting and quitting diets over and over and over again because that is the exact stuff that stands between you and losing your weight.
And now you can look at these things instead of just eating over them.
I promise all of you, I'm going to talk to that little girl in you right now.
You were never dramatic.
Your emotions were never too big.
You always should have been listened to.
The adults in the room didn't know how.
And I'm going to teach the adult version of you how to do this.
She's going to reparent you. She's going to be there for you.
We're going to fix this for you so that this little girl—you right now—you can finally rest.
You don't have to keep protecting us anymore.
All right, everybody. Have a good week. I'll see you next week.