Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Ready to lose 40 plus pounds without giving up happy hours, weekend brunches, or date nights. Then it's time to uncover the hidden link between binge eating and toxic relationships. And finally, break free from both. Welcome to the Hungry for Love podcast with Jillian Scott. Y' all ready? Let's go.
[00:00:24] Hey. Hey. Welcome back.
[00:00:26] All right, we are going to talk about the four pillars of permanent weight loss today.
[00:00:30] So I would say that all four of these pillars fall under healing. Either your diet trauma or relationship trauma. And most of us have experienced both. If you're listening to this podcast, you likely have experienced both. And it's not just one off random incidents. It's often prolonged, repetitive, complex trauma that we're experiencing.
[00:00:52] And it does change our physiology. It changes how our body functions. And so even when it's emotional, verbal, or spiritual abuse, it does change our physiology. It doesn't change just how our brains are wired. That is definitely a part of it. It changes our nervous system. It changes the body and our body's ability to rest and digest, to burn fat, to be metabolically healthy.
[00:01:18] And as I've started to research, this is now a one piece that I'm just adding onto what I already teach and deliver.
[00:01:26] So let's get into the four pillars because several of them, I'm sure, are going to sound very familiar. It's gonna be things that I've talked about often. And then I'm gonna bring in this fourth one because I feel like this helps fill in the gaps, at least for some people.
[00:01:43] So, number one first pillar, no more diet rules. This is where we learn how to break the diet rules and we learn to eat like a normal human, without all of the restriction, without all of the deprivation, without worrying about what, when, or how much we can eat. Because often the restriction is what drives the binging. That's why I call it the restrict binge regret pattern. Because we go from these really restrictive diets, whether it's in what you can eat, how much you can eat, when you're allowed to eat. Sometimes it's all three of those combined. And it's like, well, if I can just restrict and deprive and cut out long enough, then I can lose the weight. But what happens is that because we often are doing multiple diets for decades, our bodies and our brains are very scared about diets. Your brain, your nervous system may start to panic anytime you want to start a diet, because it's like, oh, dear God, she's going to starve me again. There's a memory. There is this Stored memory of being hungry, of being hangry, of not having enough.
[00:02:49] And what we found with various studies is that decreasing food does change our psychology. When we withhold how much food we're allowed to have while still trying to function, while still trying to exercise once or twice a day, while still trying to just go about our daily habits, it changes our psychology. It changes our relationship with food. It changes how we see and how we think about food.
[00:03:14] This is the core of what drives food noise. For those of you who may be like me, where I was a chronic dieter, always thinking about what I should and shouldn't be eating, always trying to just low carb harder and exercise more. And sometimes it seemed to work. Sometimes I felt like I could get it under control, but there were so many times when I didn't. Times like when I trained for a marathon, y'. All. I was running my little legs off, but still no change on the scale. And I still felt bloated and puffy and like crap about myself, ultimately.
[00:03:47] And so this is where we really want to understand the impact of our past dieting moving forward. This is why I teach you that there are no diet rules. But we are going to make a plan. Because the flip side of this, if we go to the opposite side, which is often intuitive eating, it's usually, well, you eat whatever you want, whenever you feel like it, however much you want. And the theory here is that eventually the food will lose its power over you.
[00:04:14] But I think what can happen is we just get prone to emotionally eating. We get prone to turning to food for comfort, turning to food to feel better, turning for food to relax, to unwind, to escape a negative emotion or a negative circumstance, to avoid something just as much as it might be to celebrate, to have fun, to enjoy, to bring some pleasure and excitement to your life.
[00:04:37] We have to understand how this plays in. It's not just about, okay, we throw out our diet rules. It's now recognizing, like, most of us know what healthy looks like. We know to put down the bag of Doritos and pick up a bag of baby carrots.
[00:04:52] Like, we know this, we know what is healthy. But so often we override what is healthy for our specific bodies because it's what other people have decided is healthy. And so this is where when you look at something like an autoimmune disease or for some people, gluten is not well tolerated. Dairy, soy, eggs, like, people can have food sensitivities. I remember when my mom was working through an elimination diet and recognizing she had some sensitivities to bell peppers and broccoli, right? There were foods that she ate frequently. And even as I look at it for, for different health reasons, the thought of giving up broccoli and cauliflower, I'm like, ah, I don't want to.
[00:05:34] These are my healthy foods.
[00:05:37] What am I going to eat without them? But like, for the most part we know this, but we need to also allow ourselves access to the quote, forbidden foods. Because research shows, studies show when you give yourself permission, when you give yourself the allowance of it. Binging decreases because I don't need to binge on cake when I can have a piece today and tomorrow and the day after and the day after for the rest of my life. I no longer have that desire, no longer have that need. And so we want to understand the physiological aspects of the dieting and how that has impacted us, our brains, our bodies, the diet trauma. We also want to recognize the emotional desire to turn to food.
[00:06:22] So the first piece is we want to feel like normal eaters. But that also plays into the emotional eating side of things, which is also where our overeating can come from.
[00:06:33] And these two can play together. They play, they go hand in hand. So pillar one is no more diet rules. Pillar two is we stop emotionally eating.
[00:06:41] And this is where I have to just throw in the caveat here. We're going to highly decrease emotional eating because normal eaters, everybody on the planet at some point is probably gonna emotionally eat a little bit. The difference is it's not a screw it now I go off the rails. Now I binge because I blew my diet for today. So whatever, I'll start over tomorrow or I'll start over. It's maybe like Thursday and you're like, yeah, I'll start over Tuesday of next week.
[00:07:09] So it's really. How do we understand how these two things play together again? Because when we reduce the restriction, when there's not such a tight grasp on food and what and how much we can eat and we start to listen to our bodies more for what it truly needs, like hunger wise.
[00:07:25] Now we can decrease the emotional eating without feeling like we have to be perfect. I notice my overeating sometimes when it's just a couple extra bites. Not that a couple bites constitutes an overeat. Right. We don't use this against yourself, but use it as a way to see how it's, oh, you get so in tune with your body. You get so aware of when you're seeking food for pleasure, joy, comfort, or when you're seeking it to escape. And then it's learning how to increase your capacity to feel, Learning how to find the pleasure, joy, the relaxation, the positive things outside of food. And there comes practice. With that there, we just. Sometimes we just need new ideas. Sometimes it's that we are in the habit of eating, but sometimes it's. That is how our brain has learned to create this rapid, reliable, effective sense of relief.
[00:08:15] So there is no shame, there's no judgment. We just want to better understand how these two things work together. And this has been a core of what I have taught over the last five, six years. Understanding how to decrease the restriction, how to create and set up a baseline of healthy habits. Move your body, drink more water, sleeping, really prioritizing the basics and allowing yourself to eat food, that sounds good, but we're going to be intentional, we're going to plan it, we want to think about it or decide it ahead of time. That way it decreases the. I just want it in the moment. I deserve it. Everybody else is eating, it's free. We can reduce some of the emotional eating that we do because our brain is very good at excusing and justifying our desire for to eat.
[00:09:04] And there are like, stages that we walk through depending on what your food rules are as to, like how I walk clients through this, because some feel really good. It's like, it feels so, so good and easy, like this breath of fresh air. To finally be able to go to a restaurant and not feel really restricted on what they can order, or to be able to make food or try new recipes and not feel really restricted on that. And for other clients, they are maybe more like, I was where it felt really scary to eat carbs because for a long time I told myself, I can't eat carbs and lose weight. And so it was like really having to show my brain of, okay, as a kid, I was able to be a healthy kid and eat carbs. Probably too much at times, right? But, like, I. I know that my body knows how to process carbs. I'm going to believe that my body can process carbohydrates. I'm just, I'm going to believe that this is an option. And I started with a really small portion. And I believe it was just once a day, but it was like, I'm going to intentionally eat rather than going through my day as well. How little carbs could I possibly eat today only to end up emotionally eating or binging later that night? It was now intentionally. I'm gonna have one serving of carbs at lunch and I'm just gonna, I'm gonna show my brain that I can eat a piece of bread and not gain a bunch of weight. I can eat a serving of rice and not gain a bunch of weight. Or I can eat a sushi roll with rice on it and not pick off all the rice and not gain a bunch of weight. Like, I had to start really small and really incremental to show that, oh, this actually decreases my cravings. This helps me to function better. This gives me more energy. This helps me to feel more satiated. I actually, I can enjoy my life a little bit more. I can enjoy some food a little bit more because it's not so restrictive. And so I don't need to overeat it when I know that I can have it and usually plan like exception meals once a week. And so it's. If I have, sometimes I'll have a face where it's, I want the same meal over and over, week after week. Because I'm like, I love this. And so I'm going to give it to myself. But I'm also going to put parameters around. I'm gonna eat when I'm hungry and stop when I'm satisfied. And I'm gonna allow myself to have it every single week for as long as that still sounds good. And I go through phases of that. I would say I'm at a point where I'm not in a phase. It's more of like, I can find some things and there may not always be a planned exception meal, but it's like there's this kind of ebb and flow, this natural ease about it, of it fits my life and it fits my lifestyle. I don't have to be afraid of going out to eat or going on vacation or traveling or going to a potluck or going to a party where I don't know what food is going to be served or somebody else is making it. Like, I don't have to worry about any of that.
[00:11:57] This allows me to take this with me wherever I go.
[00:12:01] And I am not counting, weighing, measuring, because it is not just this calories in, calories out approach that is outdated. It's a myth. It does not work. And especially as you hit your 40s and 50s and beyond, you are going to realize there comes a point where you can't eat less and exercise more. Like physically, you can't. You can't exercise more than you're already doing.
[00:12:26] You can't eat less than what you're already eating. And to try to go back to Some of those diets that you were doing before, 500, 800, a thousand calories, maybe those just feel so unattainable. It's like, you can't.
[00:12:39] Part of that is hormonal changes. It's changes in our metabolic system and metabolic pathways that have changed over time that we also need to reset and look at.
[00:12:49] Part of it is the diet trauma.
[00:12:52] And it's like our brains, our bodies, are preventing us from starving it to death.
[00:12:57] That is how it has been hardwired because food is so prevalent, it's so readily available.
[00:13:03] But many of us also have food trauma, not just from dieting, but from money being scarce, food being scarce. Maybe a single parent, or you grew up with a single parent where they didn't cook much, maybe there was food in the house, but you had to learn how to make it at a really young age and you couldn't. There can be so many reasons and so many situations in which food can be not available. It could have been restricted from a parent's diet rules and habits. It's really understanding that there are so many layers and pieces of this puzzle that we want to put together. And so even though there are these pillars, there are aspects that fall within each pillar. Okay, but this becomes the foundation. This becomes the framework.
[00:13:47] No more diet rules.
[00:13:49] We learn how to establish healthy basics, a healthy foundation of healthy habits. Right? Like just this foundation of health, really, looking at that. Not just weight, not just the scale, not just the size.
[00:14:00] We also want to address our emotional eating or binge eating habits and understand that sometimes that is trauma based.
[00:14:08] Sometimes it's based on what we're restricting throughout the day. Sometimes it's due to trauma and traumatic incidents and memories and things that we don't know how to feel or process or we're still working through.
[00:14:21] Sometimes it's just that emotional pattern that we've gotten into. So to decrease the amount of overeating or binge eating that you're doing is huge.
[00:14:29] And we have to learn from it. This is why there's no shame. This is why my goal of this podcast is to talk about all of the shamey things that we often feel so much shame about and start to talk more publicly about it, because more people struggle with this than we realize.
[00:14:45] And when you can see, oh, it's not just me, oh, I'm not alone in this, it's comforting.
[00:14:52] It's comforting to know that and to have that sense of, there is something else that's out there or something else that I can address.
[00:14:59] If we Move on. Pillar three is you have to up level your self concept.
[00:15:04] And this also is really important, not just around food, but in trauma healing. We have to rebuild your self trust, self confidence, self belief. Especially after years of emotionally abusive relationships.
[00:15:20] Years, decades really, of not feeling good enough, not working hard enough, not being smart enough or thin enough or pretty enough or whatever. Enough. Right. We just struggle so much with not feeling like we're enough.
[00:15:34] And that is one of the hallmark signs of narcissistic abuse.
[00:15:38] We really have to understand how shame and self doubt and abandonment, wounds and helplessness all play a role in this. And we start by not just creating a foundation of healthy habits, but a new foundation of self belief and self confidence. That self trust and trust doesn't mean I go out there and I'm perfect or I never make mistakes. Self trust is I've learned how to trust myself in order to learn from mistakes, to learn from failures, to keep moving forward, to keep pursuing, to, to keep trying new things.
[00:16:11] And this is the piece that we have to focus on in order to really heal. So this brings in more of the psychological aspects around trauma and our weight and how it impacts us and really having that self love. Like ultimately a lot of what this comes down to is the self love. Because we are hungry for love. We are starved for love and attention and validation. We are starved for physical touch and having healthy physical touch, feeling like it's safe to be touched by another person, that it's safe to be touched by somebody of the opposite sex.
[00:16:51] Everybody's trauma looks a little different, but this is where we start to bring in healing. And we start with how you think and talk to yourself, your self concept, I see that as your identity.
[00:17:02] We want to transform that because that has been eroded over the years, really deeply eroded. The more that we can feel good in who we are and what we're doing and how we're showing up, the better and the easier we can try new things. We can get back up after falling down. We keep moving forward. We aren't as afraid of success because that's the other challenge here is we have to make it safe to lose the weight. Where there's not this downside of something bad could happen when I lose the weight where we self sabotage and we hold ourselves back.
[00:17:34] So this is where we start to bring in the relationship healing part. And it starts not just healing relationships with other people. It starts by healing your relationship with yourself. That becomes pillar three. And I would say over the last year or two, that's been more of what I've brought in. And then over the last couple months is where I've really started to look even harder at restoring your metabolic health, which is pillar number four.
[00:18:00] You can do the physical work, like you can be eating healthy and working out and have a really good self concept, you can be doing these other aspects. But if your metabolic pathways are blocked, if they are not communicating properly, if your brain and your gut are not communicating properly, then it's going to be really hard to see positive effects of the work that you're putting in.
[00:18:23] This is where we look at things like insulin resistance, autoimmune diseases, often the physical manifestations of trauma on the body, as I've started to research. Now we've got our vagus nerve, right? And our vagus nerve connects our brain with our gut and then there are little receptors on the end and it transmits, it sends information back and forth. But because we've been immunocompromised, like our gut now is not operating properly. It's not functioning, it's not running smoothly the way that it should. It's not communicating properly with the brain, and sometimes it's sending out mixed signals or no signals.
[00:19:02] And this vagus nerve is responsible in your nervous system for the rest and digest part. And so this is what helps with not just digestion, but the fat burning that your body does. And when it's in that state of fight or flight, when it's heightened, this emergency brake slams on. So it shuts down your ability to feel rest, to be able to digest, to burn fat, because it needs to store up as much as it can for winter, because it thinks, oh, shit, there's a famine, maybe there's a world war, something has gone terribly wrong. We need to conserve energy because it wants to keep you alive. Not just your brain, your brain wants that too. But now it is truly in your body, your nervous system, your gut. It wants to keep you alive, so it is going to turn off fat burning because fat will keep you alive.
[00:19:53] So this vagus nerve gets compromised when it's used constantly and when you've been exposed to trauma and traumatic relationships over and over again, especially when you're given the silent treatment or when there's explosive anger or rage. It's like it gets so locked in our bodies, in our subconscious, and it's like you're driving down the road, but instead of using the brake pedals, you're using the emergency brake, okay? That's what often happens. So we're wearing out our emergency brake, but every Time we take our car into the mechanic and we're like, hey, the brakes don't seem to be working. They're checking the brake pads and they're like, your brake pads are fine. No, no, you're good. And then you're like, what the hell? Am I going crazy? What is happening? Something's not right. Something's not working. And it's because internally, your body keeps using the emergency brake.
[00:20:43] The other fascinating part about this is that the vagus nerve here, that if you think about it running gut to brain, when that gets deteriorated, it manifests often as insulin resistance. And so insulin resistance will also degrade the vagus nerve. So now we have body things happening internally, we have trauma that's happening and starting to manifest internally.
[00:21:10] And we don't always have the best ways of healing these internal things that we can't yet see. But you experience the symptoms of it. You might experience symptoms of an autoimmune disease, symptoms of insulin resistance, symptoms of weight gain, belly fat gain, exercising and just trying to eat healthy and feeling like despite your best efforts, you still can't lose weight. And this is why some people where even when we address the food rules, we address the emotional eating, we address their self concept as we're making progress on that. They may be losing some weight, but they're not losing at all. They might lose 10 pounds in six months, but not the 30 pounds that they were really wanting to lose. And I believe this is why is because the metabolic pathways are not there either. They're having a hard time truly feeling peace and calm and ease and regulating their nervous system. Despite all of the tools and techniques, we can't ever really feel safe and calm and grounded. Like, maybe you constantly feel anxious or worried. Maybe there's this constant level of survival mode that you can't ever seem to come out of. It could be that you're still in some type of toxic environment where your nervous system continually gets hijacked by other people. These other situations, it's like you're still in this state where maybe you've divorced, maybe you've separated, but you still have somebody else really emotionally abusive in your life. We want to bring this all together.
[00:22:40] And one of the ways that you can restore metabolic health is through peptides.
[00:22:46] And one of the most common and most talked about right now are GLP1s. I'm going to do another podcast episode on this because I was a little hesitant to look into these because my thought was, if people are using this just as like some type of get Skinny quick fix. They're claiming that there's no food noise or that they don't have this desire for food. So now can we really address the things that are ultimately at the root of this if they're just turning that off? So I was really hesitant to look into it, but then I did. Then I started asking more questions and I got really curious and I started talking to a few people who I knew had been through weight loss struggles, survival mode, nervous system dysregulation, and then we're able to lose some weight and really question what's going on. Tell me more about what you're doing because I want to make sure that if I am advising clients, I want to have the best methods and the best things possible.
[00:23:42] And across the board, microdosing GLPs has been the common thread. As I started looking into them more and studying under a naturopathic doctor, I've also recognized that it does seem to help regulate your nervous system. It can reduce anxiety and overthinking common symptoms of a body trapped in survival mode.
[00:24:06] It's not so much about relying on it to never get hungry, to never have an urge or a craving, it's about using it as a low dose to take the edge off. It allows you to feel more in control of your thoughts, of your emotions, to better use the tools and the tactics and the tips to be able to have some impact.
[00:24:29] We can't just try to lose weight with GLPs and not do any of the lifestyle pieces, not address any emotional eating, not address any trauma. That is going to be a recipe for failure. And I think that's why so many people have been talking about and explained like their experience of being on often high doses, extreme side effects, regaining the weight. And it's because they were relying on it too much for weight loss. They never changed the habits along the way. They never had the time to address those other things. If we look at it though, through this lens of much, much lower dosing, 20 to 25% of a starting dose, it actually makes way more sense to be able to help with the internal healing on top of the anti inflammation markers and properties that it has.
[00:25:19] Being able to help with restoring the gut and GLPs, as I've learned, are just one of many peptides, one of probably a dozen that are reputable and really good at helping your internal body function better.
[00:25:35] That's what we want. We just want to restore the internal systems that our body already has and help them run smoother, help them run more efficiently so for some people, this may be the missing link. We want the foundation of the mindset and the emotional management and expanding our capacity. But we also need to make sure that we are metabolically healthy enough for that to actually work, which is why you maybe can lose some weight and then you get stalled. It's also maybe why you struggle to lose weight.
[00:26:09] Now, not everybody is in this camp.
[00:26:12] And this is the other thing that I'm gonna be fully honest with of, like, I didn't lose my weight that way.
[00:26:17] I was able to do this through mindset and emotional regulation and the tools that I learned. But I also know that there have been times of really high stress, times where my nervous system felt very hard to control, and the weight was up just in terms of loading and water weight. Not that it was fat, but it was pretty annoying, it was pretty frustrating. And it may have only been four or five pounds, but it was enough to where I was like, this is weird what is going on.
[00:26:47] And it's just the way that our bodies are wired to keep us safe, to keep us alive.
[00:26:52] This is why we need all four of them. These become the pillars for permanent weight loss.
[00:26:59] This is how you create a life and a body that you crave.
[00:27:03] But we have to start to look at and address the internal happenings of our gut and our body, not just at the nervous system level or at the brain level. Yes, those are important pieces, and we can't achieve permanent weight loss without them. But we also need to make sure that our body is functioning properly the way that it should, so that when we are putting in some of this work, we are making good food choices, we stop overeating, our body responds properly.
[00:27:30] All right, that is it for today. I'm going to be sharing more and talking more about how do we create better metabolic health, because part of that, especially for women, is weightlifting. It's going to be having strong, lean muscles. So there are a variety of factors that are going to come into play here, as well as the sleep, the water, the things that I've already talked about. But don't underestimate the value and the importance of healthy relationships. Safe relationships, healthy and safe physical touch and feeling loved, loving yourself. Those pieces are so important and so valuable as well.
[00:28:06] So if you would like some help in losing weight and feeling good mentally, having the mental cognition, less brain fog, having the energy in your body reduced inflammation and feeling more in control around food, feeling relaxed and at peace, at ease, not feeling at the mercy of your cravings and your food urges, then I would love to help. The next best step is to schedule a free consultation and on the call we'll talk a little bit more about where you are and what your recent history has been, what your past has looked like with food, dieting, weight loss as well as with relationships and throughout your childhood, what your family of origin was like. We'll talk through all of these pieces and then we'll take a look at where do you want to go and I'm going to help you build out the bridge. And sometimes we'll see more pieces of the bridge as we get started, but for most it comes down to these four pillars. These are the four key pieces and elements that we need and we're going to keep addressing them one by one as they come up so that you can create the long term health, longevity, the life and the body and really not feel so self conscious, not feel like your worth is so wrapped up in the scale or the number on it.
[00:29:25] This is about true mind body healing.
[00:29:29] All right, I hope you all have a fabulous week. Here's to creating the life and body you crave.
[00:29:39] If this episode resonated with you, it's time to break free from destructive cycles around food, alcohol and toxic relationships. Your next step book your free Break the Cycle call where you'll finally see why your binge eating and relationship patterns are so deeply connected and how to break free from both for good.
[00:29:59] You'll walk away with fierce clarity and a game plan to step into a life full of fun, adventure and self love. Grab your spot now at www.bodyycrave.com VTC.
[00:30:14] It's time to break the cycle. I'll show you how.
