Today I have a special guest with me. Marc David is going to talk to us about the psychology of eating and cultivating a healthy relationship with food. Early in his career as a nutritionist, he found that just changing the diet wasn’t addressing the real problems.

Unfortunately, there was very little information about the psychology of eating back then. So, he wrote the book he wished he had, created the course he wished he could have taken, and now has students all over the world.

In our talk today, we’ll unravel emotional eating, why it happens, and what to do if it becomes a problem. We’ll touch on:

• Eating to self-soothe
• Undigested experiences
• Mixed messages around pleasure
• Generational stories around food
• Love and connection and using food as a replacement

Marc David, M.A., is the bestselling author of the books, Nourishing Wisdom: A Mind Body Approach to Nutrition and Well-Being and The Slow Down Diet: Eating for Pleasure, Energy, and Weight Loss, a frequent speaker and consultant, and host of the celebrated Psychology of Eating Podcast. Marc is also the Founder of The Institute for the Psychology of Eating, the world’s only health coaching program devoted to teaching the principles of Dynamic Eating Psychology and Mind Body Nutrition. With students in well over 100 countries, the Institute champions an uplifting, inclusive approach to food and body that honors each individual’s unique physiology and psychology, and that sees eating challenges as a doorway to personal growth and self-actualization.

Where you can find Marc:

Instagram: @eatingpsychology

Web: https://psychologyofeating.com/

The Psychology of Eating Podcast: https://psychologyofeating.com/podcast/

Discover your most influential Eating Archetype

>>> Get the FREE 8 Eating Archetypes Self-discovery tool HERE.

Learn more about Mind Body Eating Coach Certification Training by Marc David

>>> Click HERE to download the free info packet.

Interested in working with Jeannie one on one? Schedule a 30-minute Coffee Talk here.

Connect with me on Instagram @joliverwellness and check out the options for my more affordable self-study programs here: https://www.joliverwellness.com/diy-programs

Music credit: Funk’d Up by Reaktor Productions

A Podcast Launch Bestie production

Hey there, and welcome back to the Nutrition Edit podcast.

I'm your host, Jeanie Oliver, and I have a really special guest

Joining me today, Mark David.

Mark.

David is the bestselling author of the book's Nourishing Wisdom, a Mind Body

Approach to Nutrition and Wellbeing, and The Slowdown Diet, eating for

Pleasure, energy, and Weight Loss.

Mark is a frequent speaker and consultant and host of the Celebrated

Psychology of Eating podcast.

Mark is also the founder of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating,

which is the world's only health coaching program devoted to teaching

the principles of dynamic eating psychology and mind body nutrition.

The Institute champions an uplifting, inclusive approach to food and body

that honors each individual's unique physiology and psychology, and that

sees eating challenges as a doorway to personal growth and self-actualization.

I've been following Mark's work for years, and if you've been following

me at all, you know that this approach is very much in alignment with my own.

And I could have talked to Mark for hours about this, but I

learned so much from this episode.

I think you're really gonna enjoy it.

So without further ado, let's jump in.

Hey everyone.

Welcome back to the Nutrition edit.

I'm your host, Jeanie Oliver, and my guest today is Mark David.

Mark is the founder of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating.

And Mark, I'm so excited to have you with us today.

Welcome,

Jeanie.

Thanks so much for having me.

Yeah, thanks

for taking the time to join us.

So tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to found the

Institute and what your journey there

was.

In a nutshell, I have somehow found myself born into a life where I

started out as a nutrition fanatic.

As soon as I started learning that food actually impacted your health.

I was one of those human beings who, when I was born, I was sickly, I was

asthmatic, I was immunocompromised, almost died a couple of times in

infancy, and at some point, I was actually about five years old.

I heard a rumor that fruits and vegetables were good for you.

I was raised in the, late fifties, early sixties, when it was all like

TV dinners and total junk food.

Anyway, my mother changed my diet.

And coincidentally or not, my health change.

So I was off to the races and I began seeing clients for

nutrition in my late teens.

Wow.

And early twenties, I had a practice on Wall Street in New York City.

There wasn't a lot of people.

Really doing that kind of work back then.

And what I soon noticed was, so I was on Wall Street and I had clients

coming in who were Wall Streeters.

They were highly motivated, highly successful, highly educated, and most of

them were having challenges around weight.

And I would tell them what to do and what to eat, and they'd come

back a week or two later and said, I know what you told me to do.

I just couldn't do it.

Mm-hmm.

And I sort of had a revelation.

I realized that it didn't matter how much nutrition knowledge, I knew I needed to

learn eating psychology, so I figured I'd buy a book and there wasn't any, I

figured I'd take a course, there wasn't any, I figured I'd go back to school and

there was maybe a few programs at that time I could learn about eating disorders.

But that was it.

But what about.

Every other human being who doesn't have an eating disorder,

but has a relationship with food.

So eventually I just decided I would eventually write the book that I

wanted to read and create the courts that I wish I could have taken.

So that led to just, a wonderful obsession with eating psychology and

founded the Institute, goodness about over 15, 16, 17 years ago, and trained

professionals from all over the world, programs for the public, and I love it.

It's incredible.

It's an amazing, amazing trajectory.

I had almost the opposite where I, you know, grew up, I guess eating

relatively healthy food, but there were just so many issues around food

and you know, eating emotionally, eating for anesthesia, all of those

things that we all do as humans, right.

but I didn't have a lot of modeling around.

A healthy relationship with food.

There was either too much restriction or compulsive overeating.

I had a grandparent who everything revolved around looks and being thin.

And you know, if you weren't thin and beautiful, well your

self-worth was in the tank, right?

Mm-hmm.

And so it kind of took me a long time to come to a place where I even

understood that food is emotional.

Yes.

You know, food is celebratory and cultural and all of these different things because

you know, as you know, those of us who survived growing up in the eighties

and nineties, everything was supposed to be, you know, high carb, low fat.

It was all about weight loss and being thin, and it was the

age of the, you know, emaciated, supermodel, all of those things.

And so, you know, as a young person, of course, you sort of.

Gravitate towards that.

And that's, those are the messages that you get.

Right?

so the major reason I wanted to have you on today is because food is something

that we as humans are designed to eat.

We have to eat.

Right.

I love how you say in your podcast that we are eaters, that is part of being human.

But oftentimes we don't have that healthy relationship with food and it can cross

over into addictive behavior with foods.

So I really wanna dive into that with you today because I feel

so strongly that this is never, we're not often enough addressed.

You know, we address other addictions with people.

We talk about, you know, substance abuse, and look, at the end of the day, you

can stop doing certain drugs or alcohol.

You can't stop eating.

So talk a little mark about, you know, the difference between

emotional eating and what I would consider an actual food addiction.

Where we sort of cross that line between, using food for occasional

pleasure or maybe even self-soothing into the place where we're, we're

using it to a point that it's detrimental or harmful, to our health.

Mm-hmm.

Well, to me there's a graduated scale, and in my mind I, I think of it all as our

relationship with food, and I think that.

We're all emotional eaters.

Meaning we're all eaters.

We need to eat, and we're all emotional creatures.

We have emotions.

Yes.

And emotional eating in a strange way, begins like the moment you pop out a

mama's womb, because here you are, and maybe you've seen this, maybe you're a

mom, maybe you've been around infants, you have a crying, screaming little

baby, and all of a sudden you give them mama and the bottle or the breast.

And within an instant, that baby goes from crying and screaming and

out of control to relaxed and calm.

So we have the genetic memory, not only from our own life, but from

every generation that comes before us.

We have the genetic memory, feel bad, eat food, feel better.

Yep.

Absolutely.

And the reality is you could have a bad day at work, come

home, have your favorite meal.

And feel great.

You can have a bite of your favorite food and feel great.

You can celebrate a holiday dinner and feel great.

So we bring emotion to the table and obviously it becomes problematic

when I'm turning to food too much too often to regulate my unwanted

emotions, such that it gets in my way.

I feel guilty.

I feel ashamed.

Or my digestion is poor, I get fatigued, or I'm gaining weight.

So, but, but I'm looking all of, at all of it as a continuum of where am

I at in my relationship with food.

I think what happens for people who are extremely attached to food, what I mean

by extremely attached to food, we are turning to food consistently to manage.

Unwanted emotions, right?

Stress, anxiety, fear, tension, anger, upset, grief.

It could be undigested experience from a long time ago.

Mm-hmm.

Like the way my parents raised me, or I was harmed, I was abused, I was hurt,

and a lot of times, Those energies, those emotions live in the system and

they're kind of talking to us and we don't quite know what to do with them.

But if you medicate them with food, they sort of go away temporarily.

So we know, we know that we can medicate just about any experience with food

and it works at least temporarily.

I, I tend to shy away from the term food addiction because, like

you said, I can let go of alcohol.

I can let go of cocaine.

I can let go of drugs, I can let go of a gambling addiction.

You can't let go of food.

So in my mind, you, you cannot necessarily be addicted to that,

which is essential for life, right?

Yeah.

Now you can be addicted to certain substances.

You can, you can have an addiction to caffeine.

You can have an addiction perhaps to sugar, but it's a little more mild.

It's a little more soft compared to a hard drug.

I just shy away from addiction only as it relates to food because when we

hear addiction, when, when, when the mind hears that term, we think bad.

We think junky, and we think the solution is abstinence.

Whereas the solution is really embracing food and having learning to

have a healthy relationship with it.

So to me, we're all on the continuum of being humans who have

emotions, who eat emotional leaders.

And the question is, how's it working for you?

And if it's not working for you, meaning I keep turning to food and,

and there's a good reason for it.

we eat emotionally because it gives us a good result temporarily.

And that's what we know.

And it's usually, usually for most people, a learned behavior in childhood,

kids pretty much quickly figure out.

Oh, if I just have some sugar, if I just have some chips, if I just have some fill

in the blank, I'm going to feel better.

And it's such a great tool that we don't wanna let it go.

Sure.

And as our early ancestors, as humans, we would have.

You know, we have these built in drivers to motivate us to eat.

Yes.

And if we have a high value food available to us, like a fruit or

something, maybe that's high sugar or high in calories like that, your

brain is hardwired to move toward those things to make those choices because

it would've ensured survival, right?

Yeah.

Yes.

One thing that you mentioned is, if there is, trauma or abuse or something in our

childhood, talk a little bit more about that because I would say that in 10

years of my practice I have not seen one client that was struggling with severe

obesity, who had not had some sort of abuse or major trauma in their history.

Yes,

yes.

I've noticed similar and.

Let's think of abuse and or trauma.

we can use those terms interchangeably.

Let's think of trauma as simple definition, undigested experience.

Hmm.

An undigested stressor, meaning, you know, Some guy beeped at me in the

parking lot yesterday and opened up his window and yelled at me, and yeah, you

know, in the moment it was stressful.

And then 30 seconds later I forgot about it.

I metabolized it.

I digested it.

It's gone.

There are certain experience that we human beings have, particularly at young

ages, but it could happen at any age.

We have experiences that we don't know what to do with it.

Somebody yelled a terrible insult at me.

Somebody bullied me, somebody raped me, somebody beat me,

somebody consistently berated me.

So if you're a three, a five year old, a 12 year old, if you're an

18 year old, you don't necessarily know what to do with that.

So we tend to internalize that we hold it somewhere until such time

that we can manage that experience.

We can begin to digest it and make sense of it.

Begin to learn how to face it, confront it, understand

it, and hopefully let it go.

But in the meantime, as we're holding onto that undigested experience, It will

invariably come out as unwanted symptom.

Unwanted symptom could be high blood pressure, it, unwanted symptom, could

be arthritis, it could be asthma.

Unwanted symptom, could be, I eat a lot.

Mm-hmm.

And those unwanted symptoms, they're, they're actually not the problem.

Right.

So if I'm turning to food because I was harmed at a young age, or

I was traumatized at a young age, That's actually a brilliant strategy

of the child's mind because the child doesn't know what to do.

But you know something, if I eat, I feel better.

Yeah.

And then we go into adulthood, unfortunately, using that strategy

because it seems to be the one strategy we know, and whoops, it

has this effect that I don't like, which it's making me gain weight.

But then we think weight is our problem.

So, okay, well what diet do I need to go on?

Mm-hmm.

And why am I such a willpower weakling?

So then we attack ourself.

We think there's something wrong with us, which is why I like to say that

no matter what your unwanted eating habit is, it's always has a brilliant

reason for its existence that's rooted somewhere in my biology and or somewhere

in my internal world, my psychology.

Yeah,

that's beautiful.

I love taking that approach to it, and I often encourage my clients,

like, let's approach this with curiosity instead of judgment.

Because I feel like anytime that we go into that black and white mode of I'm bad,

I have no willpower, I make bad choices, and we're essentially berating ourselves.

We're creating more of the anxiety and stress in our minds and bodies

that's driving us towards needing that.

Form of self soothing in the first

place.

Yes.

And and it's, it oddly becomes its own form of abuse, right?

Yeah.

It becomes its own form.

We don't realize it of self bullying.

Mm-hmm.

It becomes its own form of self-generated stress response, which is the very

thing we're trying to unwind from.

Because the moment I go into judgment, self-judgment, I'm in a stress response.

I'm literally attacking self.

And in that place where I'm attacking self, when we're in a stress response,

when we're in a classic fight or flight response, we don't think with

the higher frontal cortex part of the brain that does wisdom thinking,

that does synthesis kind of thinking, that has global kind of thinking.

When you and I are being chased by a lion, we're instinctive.

Mm-hmm.

And we're gonna make decisions that I think.

This is gonna save my life in the moment.

So we don't make good decisions under stress.

Under stress, our appetite is deregulated, right?

Because when you're running from a line, you don't need an appetite, right?

Okay.

You don't need to get sidetracked, you know, looking for chocolate.

You wanna have all your brain power go into survival.

So what happens is when we're under stress, anxiety, fear, tension.

Because of real stress in life.

You know, my job, my money, my aging parents, whatever it is, um, or if we're

under self-created stress, I hate myself.

I'm no good.

I'm too fat.

I shouldn't have eaten this.

I have no willpower.

We're deregulating our own appetite, and for most people, that means

I'm reaching for more food.

Yeah, exactly.

So true.

It's so true.

And I think the, there's so much shame already there that we carry, be it,

societally put on us or from family, beliefs or experiences that, you know,

the shame just tends to compound, right?

It's getting bigger and it is more self-inflicted.

So on that note, When you talk to people about their inner dialogue,

their self-talk, how do you steer them out of that place of beating

themselves up and blaming themselves?

And I know you mentioned in one of the episodes I was

listening to self-forgiveness.

I think that that's a really important concept that's very difficult for people.

It is.

You know, I think what happens is, We get so inundated by the world

with all the negative messages.

You know, when you and I first started this conversation and, and,

and talking about how so many people are challenged around food in a

strange way, it's not an individual.

Problem.

It's very collective.

Yeah.

It's hard to be born on planet Earth and not come out with a body image

challenge or an eating challenge.

It, it's, it's really hard, especially for women.

So true.

So when I meet a woman, an older woman, a young woman who doesn't have an issue

around food or body, I, I, um, wow.

How'd you do it?

How did that happen for you?

So that's a fair thing.

So all I'm saying is right there when we start to realize that we are

worthy of forgiveness and compassion, because you didn't invent body shame.

You didn't invent because I have body fat or because I ate food.

It's circulating in the world you were born into.

And it's, it's given to us in so many messages, media, social media, movies.

It's ingrained in our minds.

And then it gets into the people that you know.

Mm-hmm.

And our parents are grandparents, are friends, so they're all repeating

the messages that they've heard.

Right.

So those messages land in us.

And what happens is at some point we take on the role of bully.

Yeah, but you don't necessarily bully other people.

You just bully yourself,

right?

Most of the things that we say to ourselves, either out loud or internally,

we would never say to someone else,

ever, ever.

You wouldn't say them to a friend, a loved one, your child.

So it's all about.

Awareness really starting to notice like, oh, I do that.

I have that internal dialogue, so it's worth starting to notice

it and then understanding it.

Understanding, oh, I have that dialogue because guess what?

So many other people have it.

Guess what?

It's hard not to have it.

You can meet people who have just the classic good looks and perfect weight and

perfect shape, and they can still have a, a terrible inner dialogue going on,

and they might be no happier than the person that's trying to lose 50 pounds.

They might enjoy their body less than that person.

So all I'm saying is learning to understand first and foremost that.

This is a collective challenge.

I'm not the only one.

It's it's worthy of my compassion.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

And now because these voices are inside me, I can take responsibility for them.

I can begin to manage them because my mind has picked up on those voices.

I like to think of and, and, and this is from yoga psychology.

the ancient yogis considered the mind as a tool.

It's just a tool.

You learn how to use it better and better and left to its own device.

If you just let the tool do what it does, it tends to repeat itself.

It tends to do the things that it always does, right?

So if I learned at a young age, you're no good, you're too

fat, my mind will take that.

It'll continue to repeat it.

Why?

Because that's what the mind does.

The mind learns through repetition.

How do kids learn how to counter 10?

they keep repeating it.

How do they learn?

You know the alphabet, they keep singing the a, b ABC songs.

Kids love If you give a kid a game when my son was a little infant and

we started playing like the peekaboo thing, he could do that for 20 minutes.

I'm bored after the third time.

Right?

But, but he's learning object constancy.

Cuz when you cover up your face an entrance, think, oh my god.

His face is gone, but then you pull your hands away, the face is still

there, so the infant is learning and it wants to learn it over and

over and over again until it's reinforced so, so we love repetition.

The mind loves repetition, and it's our job to notice, okay, when

is my mind repeating a certain habit or pattern or thought?

That does not serve me right.

Oh, I go into self-attack about food.

I go into shame and judgment about my body.

So now I could start to notice when I do that and awareness comes in

to catch myself in that moment.

And it's a practice.

Yeah, definitely a practice and.

Something that I've run into with clients in the past is that

they're sort of afraid to stop.

That they feel that, well, if I am kind to myself, I'm letting myself off the hook

and then it's gonna be a slippery slope, then I'm really gonna go off the rails.

And you know, obviously I'm encouraging them that no, you're

gonna have the opposite effect.

But I think also there's the component of our nervous system always.

Leaning towards what's familiar.

Right.

So even if something is maybe negative or harmful, it can feel more uncomfortable

often to move out of that space.

Yes, we can get habituated towards that constant state of stress

and anxiety, because in a strange way it's a very stimulating state.

Yeah.

When I'm self self attacking and self rejecting and constantly watching

myself and constantly berating myself, it's, it's a little bit of a rush.

And it's very predictable and I know who that person is in me.

I'm familiar with it, but I don't know who the person is that's forgiving.

I don't know who the person is in me that's compassionate towards myself.

And yeah, we get afraid and that's our job as an adult.

Our job as an adult is to learn how to lean into fears that are actually not

serving us and are not really real.

Like, yeah, be afraid of putting your hand on the hot stove.

Be afraid of getting into an elevator with a stranger.

Be afraid of the lion chasing you, but you don't have to be afraid of body fat.

Yeah, but we're conditioned to fear that.

And I think when you say when, when your clients say, oh, I can't

forgive myself cuz then I'm letting myself off the hook, really what that

leads to is if I let myself off the hook, that means I'm going to eat.

And if I eat, that means I'm gonna get fat.

And if I get fat, that means.

Like nobody's gonna love me, and it's a fate worse than death.

So underneath all of this conversation for many people is this extreme fear

of fat, the fear of weight gain.

And that to me is an indication that we haven't yet learned how to trust my body.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And trust my life.

Yep.

Because the fear is I'm gonna eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and just explode.

Yeah.

And that is a fear worth examining and worth putting our attention to

downsizing because it essentially says, I can't trust myself, I

can't trust my own desires because.

Why would you be afraid of eating and eating and eating and never stopping?

Well, because eating is pleasurable feels good.

You wouldn't eat if it didn't feel good.

You wouldn't be afraid that you would keep eating if you, you

know how pleasurable food is.

So on a certain level, what we're saying when we have that

fear is I fear my own pleasure.

I fear I cannot manage my experience of pleasure.

Hmm.

Yeah,

that's a good point.

Which is an understandable fear because on one level, you

and I have to be taught from a young age how to manage pleasure.

Sure, yeah.

Okay.

You know, if I'm raising kids, yeah, okay.

We're gonna have ice cream every once in a while, but I'm not, but we're not

gonna have a breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Yeah.

So we learn how to manage certain pleasurable experiences.

Some pleasures.

We only do on occasion some pleasures.

Yeah.

Go outside, take a nice walk.

That's pleasurable to me.

Okay.

We can do that every day.

So pleasure requires a certain amount of wisdom and it requires

a certain amount of trust.

Yeah.

I

love that word, trust, and I think it's so

crucial for us to understand that.

We are supposed to have pleasure in our lives.

There's nothing wrong with wanting pleasure and enjoying food.

I think especially as women, there is a lot of, um, at least in our culture,

sort of this puritanical idea, right?

That we aren't creatures that should be seeking pleasure, that everything

in our lives or so should be about, you know, service and hard work

and performance essentially, right?

Mm-hmm.

Um, And I think we're moving away from that mindset.

But at the same time, I think especially, you know, as someone who grew up in

the church, that there was a little bit of a, an unhealthy message there.

Yes.

Right.

Um, that we are not sensual creatures or we shouldn't be.

And that that's somehow, you know, bad or shameful.

Or sinful.

And now that's not always taught.

I think that's bad teaching.

And people understand better now a lot of these concepts, but

that's still taught in so many.

You know, cultures, ideologies.

And so moving away from that I think is, is a really, um, it can be really

challenging cause it can be really

embedded.

Yes.

And, and I think what makes it even more challenging is that we get a

tremendous amount of mixed messages.

So let's say you were growing up in the church and you were getting the message.

Pleasure is bad.

Sexual pleasure is bad.

Pleasure in general is bad, but then guess what?

You're going home and you're watching music videos, and you're watching

young men and young women just dancing all over the place and drinking

and just having a grand old time, and they're hot and they're sexy.

And they're just playing and having fun.

And we get bombarded with messages that, yeah, you just gotta party hard.

Mm-hmm.

And you gotta drink and look at all these delicious desserts.

Look at all this chocolate.

So, so those messages, messages around sugar are hd at you

since you've been a young kid.

They're telling you, eat this, eat this.

But then when you start to diet, what's the first thing you hear?

Well, don't eat sugar.

Well, thank you.

You just programmed me my entire life to want sugar and now

you're telling me not to eat it.

So no wonder people get frustrated.

So we're getting both messages of pleasures bad, but really pleasures good.

And our challenge is to kind of tune out the world.

And start to explore what is my relationship with pleasure?

What is my relationship with food?

What do I want from food?

See, I think what happens for a lot of people is they want one

thing from food to make me skinny.

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Now, that's not enough.

No, that's not enough.

If you want food to just make you skinny, then the message you're

telling yourself is, I need to have the smallest appetite possible.

I need to diet, I need to calorie restrict.

I need to not eat, essentially.

Right.

So the dieting consciousness Yep.

Is telling us you need to learn how to not be an eater.

Yeah.

Whereas we need the opposite message.

Let's all learn how to be an eater and how to be an eater in a way that works.

So say, yeah, you can enjoy food.

Yeah, you can satisfy your appetite.

Yeah, you can maybe even feel healthy and good from the foods you eat.

You can feel energized and you can learn about foods that that help

you, help you find your natural health and your natural weight.

Yes,

and that's a really important piece.

one of the things I say all the time is I usually tell people like, it's

not that you're overeating, you're not eating enough of the right foods.

Because if we're not well-nourished enough and the food that we're

eating isn't nutrient dense and giving our bodies what it needs, why

wouldn't your body say, give me more.

Give me more.

And when we, we can make that shift from like, I just need to

take up less space in this world.

I need to be thinner into the mindset of how can I honor and nourish

my body in the best way possible?

Then all of those signals and neurotransmitters and things that

help us regulate better start to come into line and then we can

start to build that, that self

trust.

Mm-hmm.

It's so true.

It really is true that where born into a world that essentially.

Generally doesn't feed us well.

No, no, it doesn't feed us well.

And you know, humans are very, unlike the animals, animals, animals naturally

feed and they naturally, most of them naturally know what to eat.

And even the animals that need to be taught by their

parents, how and what to eat.

They're taught, and it's very specific and it's very limited, you know, so if you're

a cow, you know you're eating grass.

If you're a koala bear, you know you're eating eucalyptus leaves.

if you're a carnivore, you're, you pretty much know you're

gonna eat anything that moves.

if you're a human.

You learn so many different things.

There's so many different diets.

Just at some point you realize, wow, I could do intermittent fasting.

I could be paleo, I could be vegan, I can be raw food, I could do all

these things and what do I do?

Right?

each expert says their way is the

way.

Yeah.

It's true.

And then we, the collective we were creating a lot of what I

call nutrition refugees people are, are, are just, they're numb.

They don't know what to do, and they're walking around asking

the question, what should I eat?

Wanting the answer to come from out there somewhere.

Mm-hmm.

And eventually, eventually the answer has to come from within.

The answer has to come from you and from me.

So, yeah.

You know, I'm sure you've studied all different kinds of nutrition and you

know, all different kinds of ways to eat, but eventually you, you decided,

okay, here's what I'm going to eat.

And maybe that might change.

Maybe it does change.

Great.

I, I think it's helpful when people can get on board with, we live in a time when

we are essentially nutritional explorers.

You have access to all different ways of eating kinds of foods and kinds of

information, and there's no group of, you know, men and women in white coats, all in

agreement, shaking their heads on here's what every single person should eat.

So there is no perfect diet, but there's the right way to eat for you.

That's not perfect.

Yeah, exactly.

Nothing's perfect.

None of it's perfect.

Life isn't perfect.

Health isn't per, nothing's perfect.

So part of it I think is, is again, getting back to starting to ask the

question like, what do I want from food?

Like really what do I want?

Because then we can start to decide what we're gonna reach for.

Meaning, and, and this is just for me, when I first asked myself that

question, what do I want from food?

In no particular order.

I want food to grant me as much health as possible.

I want food to give me energy.

I want it to make me feel good.

I want food to taste good and give me a good experience.

Yeah, so, okay, so I'm gonna choose my meals based on that, and I'm gonna

probably stay away from certain foods that I think don't gimme that experience.

What happens is if I limit my conversation to, I want food to make me thin, then I'm

speaking to a very small part of myself.

Mm-hmm.

I'm speaking to my personal preference.

Yeah.

I think what happens is for a lot of people, we have a weight loss number.

Like if I hit this number, just be what I was in college or Right.

I'm in heaven.

I just gotta hit that number and we worship that number.

Mm-hmm.

And we make that number the most important too.

Right?

Yeah.

We make it the most important thing.

And when you make that number, the most important thing, it

kind of becomes like a religion.

Yeah.

So true.

You, you follow it very religiously.

You worship it and you order your world around it.

But then what happens is everything else becomes less important.

And when I'm focused on the number on the scale as the most important

thing in my life, well that means that love is no longer the

most important thing in my life.

And intimacy and connection and communication and meaning and purpose.

And all the good stuff.

All the real stuff.

So our weight loss number, it's not make or break, it's not life or death.

It's a preference.

Right.

And if somebody tells me I wanna weigh 25 pounds less, I think great big hug.

You wanna weigh 25 pounds less.

I get it.

That's your preference.

But don't put it on your altar.

Right?

Yeah, absolutely.

Or get so dogmatic about whatever way of eating.

You know, may be the current thing or what worked for you at one point,

because our bodies are dynamic, right?

Yeah.

And we need to be flexible.

but when you talk about, you know, the important things like love and

connection and fulfillment, something that you mentioned in a booklet that

I read from you is You say that food is a profound symbolic substitute.

Yeah.

And I love that.

So speak into that a little bit, because I think that that

is often what's missing, right?

There's these holes that we're trying to fill that aren't necessarily as abundant

in our lives as we need them to be.

Yes.

So talk about that.

Yeah.

Well, humans have core desires, and I believe one of our

core desires in this life is.

Love is to be loved.

That's what every kid wants.

Every kid wants to be loved children.

Little kids wanna know, mommy and daddy love me, they love me.

And then you get a little older and you, you know, you want this person to

love you and that person to love you.

We wanna be loved.

So love, I think it tends to be at the top of the list.

And what happens is love is not always so easily forthcoming to us.

Maybe you got messages that you weren't loved, and maybe somebody left you,

maybe somebody cheated on you, maybe somebody hurt you and, and, and maybe

you're single and you're alone and you haven't had much success in love.

So if I'm not getting the thing that I want most, what the mind does is it

reaches for the closest approximation.

And that's what psychologists will call a symbolic substitute.

If I can't get the real thing love, I'm gonna go for a substitute.

Something that symbolizes that.

And what can symbolize love food?

Right?

Right.

Because food makes you feel good.

Yeah, food is intimate food.

You, you can, you can get your favorite food and sit by yourself

and have an intimate experience.

and it's, one of the closer approximations to love cuz you

feel pleasure in the moment.

The food's not, it's not judging you.

It's not hurting you.

Up until the point when you start feeling guilty for eating it, or you think you're

gaining weight or you do gain weight.

But in the moment, food is being that substitute.

And what happens is that's why it's easy to become so habituated to food.

To turn to food.

Yeah.

Whenever we're feeling down, upset or sad.

So what we're really doing is we're kind of looking for love in the wrong place.

Uh, Jeanie, I can't tell you how many women I've worked with over

the years who have been alone and they're looking for a relationship.

Mm-hmm.

And they haven't dated and fill in the blank 5, 10, 15 years because they

wanna lose weight before they can date.

Yeah.

Thinking I can only find love if I lose.

X amount of weight.

Right.

Or

only be desirable or wanted or lovable if I look a certain way.

Exactly.

And so we stop ourselves from going for the most important thing, love

because we've adopted the false belief that I can only be loved if

the scale tells me I can be loved.

The scale, the little machine is gonna give me permission.

Okay.

You've dropped 13 pounds.

You are now worthy of love.

We're just so insane when we say it out loud.

Right, right, right.

In our mind we, we actually believe it to some degree.

Yes.

Yeah.

So how can people move out of that place, mark, and start to You know,

you talk about awareness and I know that's always the first step, and then

beyond that as people are wanting to create this healthier relationship

with food, wanting to get into that place of being more able to welcome.

And receive love into their lives or, you know, connection.

Maybe that's community connection.

Maybe it's, I don't know, a pet or something first.

I don't know.

Like what are, what do you think are the, first steps that people can

take to start moving out of that?

Like food is love and this is my go-to, even if it's detrimental, because a

lot of the people that I work with, they've gotten to the point where their

health is truly being affected Yeah.

By their eating habits.

Mm-hmm.

And they're now starting to deal with.

Certain medical issues.

So what are your thoughts

there?

I think a great first step is to have a reckoning with ourselves, is to

really look in the mirror in a whole different way and ask the question,

what do I truly want most in life?

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Like, why am I here?

And pick a number.

How old do you wanna live until.

You wanna live till 90.

Okay, great.

Pretend you're 90 years old, you're on your deathbed.

You just lived the most amazing life you could have possibly dreamed of.

Putting weight aside, what was that life like?

Such that it was so worth living?

Yeah.

And who do you wanna be?

What kind of relationships do you want to have?

What kind of gifts do you want to give to the world?

Like what would make life worth living for you other than weight?

Other than weighing a certain amount.

So it's, it's really understanding what's truly most important to me.

And once you got that list in front of you, start to move

towards it very deliberately.

Give as much energy to that list as you give to losing

weight as you give to dieting.

So if there's, yeah.

some kind of creativity that you want to take up.

If you want relationship, if you want intimacy, if you want

more fun, if you want more play.

Okay.

How do I start bringing that into my life?

Because if I don't have the life that I want, food elevates in its importance.

Yeah.

I'll tell you, I had, um, there's a number of clients fit this bill, but.

Little while ago, I had a client who was in her early fifties and she

complained of, chocolate addiction.

She couldn't, couldn't get off chocolate.

She called it a sugar addiction, but then she called it a chocolate addiction and.

No matter what she did, she could maybe not eat sugar and chocolate for a

week, but then boom, it just came out.

And so she felt that once she handled this sugar slash chocolate addiction,

her life is gonna be better because when she eats the sugar and eat

the chocolate, she feels fatigued.

She feels ashamed.

It ruins her life.

She doesn't wanna show up, doesn't wanna do anything hides

in her apartment on her couch.

Okay, so she has identified my problem is sugar and chocolate.

And the more I questioned her and got into her life, I saw that she was a loner.

She had let go of most of her relationships.

Her friends lived far away, and she didn't like her job.

She didn't like her life, and she wasn't doing anything to make

herself interesting in her life.

Interesting.

That was me at one point too.

Yeah.

I said to her, listen, I would be doing malpractice if I told you to take away

sugar and chocolate from your diet.

Why?

Because sugar, you're, you're hooked on sugar and chocolate cuz

it's the best thing you have going.

Sugar and chocolate make you feel good.

If I had your life, I'd be eating more than you would be eating

in terms of sugar and chocolate.

So I said, here's the brilliant reason why she has that unwanted habit, because

it's a substitute for having a good life.

It's a substitute for the sweet life.

So I said to her, you can't give up sugar and you haven't been able to.

And she's tried all these methods.

She's done hypnosis, she's done every diet.

Whatever you can think of, she's done it.

And I said, because you can't, because you need it now if you start

working on the rest of your life.

That's where the action is.

Start creating connections with people.

Start creating relationships.

Start getting out there.

Start doing the things that you say you're interested in, that you say you

wanna do, and you'll notice that sugar is gonna become less and less important.

And that's what ended up happening for her.

So it's not about fighting the sugar and the chocolate habit, it's about

making your life as good as chocolate.

Yeah,

absolutely.

I love that.

Well, I know we have you for a short period of time today and

you've gotta run here shortly, mark.

So I just, first of all, I wanna thank you so much for sharing this.

I just love you have such a wonderful, compassionate approach

to this because that's what we need.

We need more love and compassion in our lives.

You know, we need more of this, you know, connection, with others, with ourselves.

Just more, more love and compassion in every way.

We need this.

So tell people a little.

You know, a bit about where they can find you if they wanna learn more, because I

feel like the work that you do is sort of almost needs to come before the work.

I do, yes.

I do tons of mindset work with people.

I really do try to get them thinking into this, way that we're, discussing.

You know, starting to think about honoring our bodies, taking care

of ourselves, nourishing ourselves, versus just fighting our bodies

constantly and seeing food as the enemy.

but you are the expert in this, and I often refer people to you.

So tell us where people can find you if they wanna do more of this work

around psychology of eating, where

can they go?

Thanks so much for asking Jeanie.

So our website is psychology of eating.com.

Lots of free content there.

We're on YouTube also, just, just, just plug in Psychology of eating.com.

Free content there.

Facebook, same thing.

we have a program for people called the Emotional Eating Breakthrough.

Which is a really powerful program.

Really, really great.

It just came out and it's been super popular, and we have a training program

for professionals to learn how to work with weight and body image and overeating,

and binge eating and emotional eating.

So it's a coach training program.

That's all online.

It's eight months.

It's a powerful program.

So yeah, that's a great point.

It's on my wishlist, right?

Yeah, please.

Yeah.

It's on my wishlist.

And also you have a wonderful podcast.

Hi, yeah.

Psychology of Eating podcast, which I absolutely love.

So dive in there and listen to that.

And everybody, I'll give you all this information in the show notes and

you'll be able to find Mark there.

But thank you so much for joining us today.

This was really awesome.

Any final thoughts that we didn't cover that you'd like to share with

everybody?

Well, I just wanna thank you for being such a great conversationalist

and for doing the work that you do and for just spreading the good word.

And, you know, daring to be different and, and daring to deliver a different

message around food and body and health.

That's just a beautiful thing.

So congrats to you.

Well, thank you.

We need it.

So thank you for your work as well, and, we'll see you next time.

Hopefully.

Happy on next show again.

All right, take care everybody.