Amber Abila from “The Confident Eater” helps people “rewire their brains” to change their habits and desires when it comes to binge eating. She teaches people how to have a healthy relationship with food.
RESOURCES
- Free Gift! Get instant access to Amber’s private guided audio to “Get Through an Urge WITHOUT Eating“
- Buy the book “Brain Over Binge” by Kathryn Hansen on Amazon
- Work with Amber in the “Confident Eater” program
- Follow the “Confident Eater Podcast“
- Visit this “The Confident Eater” on Instagram“
- Visit this “The Confident Eater” on Facebook“
- Free Support Group on Facebook“
- Watch this episode on YouTube
- Listen to this episode on iTunes
TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Intro Snip
01:47 Amber Abila’s earlier challenges with overeating and the mistakes she made along the way
02:20 What happens to your metabolism when you don’t consume enough calories regularly
04:10 What is the psychology of habits?
06:00 When did binge eating become a recognized eating disorder?
06:49 What is the difference between binge eating disorder and bulimia?
08:04 How much of the population struggles with binge eating?
10:35 What are urges and how do they work interact with habits?
12:20 How are the younger generations influenced differently and how can we better understand and help our children?
15:30 How does less family structure, no family dinners, and increase in processed foods affect the habits of the younger generation?
17:05 what is “mindful eating”?
19:12 What is some of the negative programming kids are getting related to desert?
22:48 How do we teach our kids mindful eating experiencing the taste, smell, textures and how it makes you feel?
24:12 How does stress affect our digestion?
26:28 What are some techniques for calming down to control urges?
28:42 What are triggers?
30:01 Instead of avoiding triggers, how can we use them to rewire our brains?
30:35 How avoiding triggers can be unhelpful
33:00 What were some of the influences and books you read to learn these things?
36:20 How to use visualization to get through urges
38:07 What is one of your favorite testimonials from someone you helped?
39:29 How visualizing a specific process of consuming a food you would otherwise binge on helps rewire your brain.
41:37 What is the podcast “Become a Confident Eater” about?
43:10 How can someone contact Amber Abila to schedule a consultation?
44:00 What final thoughts do you have to help the audience?
TRANSCRIPT
no one is broken. You have nothing wrong with you. You’ve just got into some habits. And habits are 100% changeable, no matter how long you’ve had them for or where you’re at with them. Now
You are listening to the Dr. Haley Show, the podcast dedicated to helping you optimize your health. Each episode there will be an interview or a message to help you discover better health. We will be featuring health radicals on the show to bring new ideas to the table, as well as doubling down on key fundamentals to support you living your best life.
Your host is no other than the founder of Haley Nutrition Dr. Michael Haley.
This is the Dr. Haley Show podcast. Today’s guest, Amber Abila, helps people stop binge eating and overeating by rewiring their brains so they can feel normal and in control around any food. Through coaching and psychology, she learned that there was nothing wrong with her, and she just needed some simple brain tools to start making dramatic shifts in her eating habits and life.
She now walks others step by step through her process in her Confident Eater program, as well as her top rated podcast. Become a confident eater. She also has a wonderful YouTube channel and website, theconfidenteater.org, and we’re even going to have a special offer for our listeners today. Amber, I want to thank you for joining me on the Dr. Haley Show podcast
I think this is going to be one of those topics that everyone can relate to. I think we’ve all done our share of overeating at one point in time. How did you get into this? And I guess you had some struggles at some point? Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on. I always joke and say, you know, this wasn’t necessarily my dream career, but I it is my dream career now.
Because I struggled with food for so long myself that I knew when I got out of it I wanted to help other people. And so a little bit about my journey and story. It started, I think, pretty innocently, as most people’s health journey does, where I decided I wanted to lose some weight, I wanted to slim up a bit.
And so I went to the internet and I came across calorie counting and it seemed to make sense. Calories in, calories out. I just needed to eat less, and move a little bit more. And then I would lose weight. And I did. So I started using my fitness pal
religiously tracking each bite of food that I put in my mouth.
But then slowly, over time, it started to become more and more of a obsession that no matter how much weight I lost, I kept wanting to lose more because I thought the more weight I lost, the more worthy I’d be. The more people would love me, the more friends I’d have. And all the things that we know maybe aren’t necessarily true, but we think in the back of our head.
So I continued to religiously count my calories. But then I started to have these binges, and that was because I was severely under eating. At that time, I was usually eating between 1000 and 1200 calories, which is the amount that a two year old toddler needs. That’s a grown adult woman. And unfortunately, that’s like. The advice, though, is eat 1200 calories, but that can often be way too big of a calorie deficit, and that can put our brain into survival mode.
Our brain does not know that we’re just trying to be hot and thin and sexy. Our brain thinks, hey, there must be a famine going around and the food must be disappearing off the face of the earth. So let’s make sure we don’t die and we get as much and as possible. So I thought I was just going crazy around food, and I thought I just needed to cut back my calories more.
So then it went to the other side where it increased the cycling more because then I thought, oh my gosh, I’m having these big binges at night. I gotta eat even less during the day. So I continued to eat less but binge more, and I got really caught in the cycle. So after that was going on for a couple of years, I started learning more about how dieting impacts our brain and again, how restriction is something that’s really hard to fight, and our brain is very smart, and it knows when we’re under eating and it wants to make sure that we get enough food.
So I slowly stopped restricting, but I was still binge eating and I was really confused because everywhere on the internet I saw people saying, you know, if you’re binge eating, you just need to eat more. And I was eating more. And then I thought, well, what’s going on here? And so I started to dive into the psychology of habits and how our brain wants habits.
And what I learned is that it’s very easy for our brain to form habits in any area, but particularly around food, because it starts to think that this is a habit we need to survive. So I learned that my brain was interpreting binge eating as a necessary survival thing, even though I knew logically like I don’t need to eat 5000 calories a day, that’s clearly too much for my body because I had done it so many times, my brain start to think, oh, this is a habit I need.
Yeah, yeah, well, let’s get an understanding of who this podcast is for, because, you know, we’re talking about an eating disorder and there’s a lot of eating disorders. Who is this for and who is it not for? And at what point do people need medical help. Yeah. Great question. So I work with people who are both binge eating and overeating because I found myself often in between this fine line.
So binge eating to be classified as a true binge eating disorder, which is a medically recognized eating disorder, you need to eat a larger amount of food than most people would consider normal, which is like in and of itself very subjective. Within a two hour time frame for, I think like more than three days a week for three months or something like that.
And so
it is quantifiable, but it’s also very subjective. It’s like, well, you know, is three cookies more than most people would consider normal? Or is ten cookies more than most people would consider normal? And binge eating is often done in this way that feel very fast and out of control. I used to feel like I was out of my body, and then I would wake up once all the wrappers were around me and I was just sitting there like, oh no, I did it again.
I felt like I was not present in any way, shape or form when it was happening. But, yes If you were struggling with binge eating, technically it is a recognized eating disorder, but that’s where I myself went to therapy first, and that’s where a lot of people go. And therapy can be helpful for so many things. But unfortunately, in the binge eating world, I think the research is very lacking on binge eating and how to solve it, because it’s only been actually in the last ten years.
Binge eating wasn’t recognized as an eating disorder until 2013. It was put in the DSM five. So because of that, it’s only been around for ten years. If you get any classically
trained therapists before ten years ago, they weren’t even taught about binge eating in school. So
it has a lot more misinformation out there that I think most people, most people realize, and they think a lot of people can get caught in the cycle of, I need to go to therapy, but it’s not really helping.
And that’s where exploring something else like coaching can be helpful. Yeah, I know that, you know, well, years ago I knew people that struggled with the binge and purge and that being a definite, recognized, disorder. And those people would consume so much and then purge it all out and never actually get the nutrition from it, which they’d often have some of the same symptoms as being anorexic, and not consuming enough nutrients, because they were consuming them, but they just weren’t leaving them in their body where they would actually benefit from any of the nutrition.
And that those people, if you’re listening to this, you might need some medical intervention, you might need, you know a doctor visit and some blood measurements and making sure you’re getting your nutrition and then learn how to deal and cope with this. We can also be applying the same things to medication or alcohol use and thinking, well, I binge drink.
Well, you know, we’re not going to, say these things that we talk about today are going to help you, but they might. But some people might actually need, professional counsel. But with that, I think we can all relate to what you described at some point in time, looking in the mirror, thinking, I can do better cutting our calories down, cutting our calories down, and then getting to the point where we just have to eat and
we essentially triggered our self to need to consume all of these calories because our body was crying out for what it was lacking.
I think we can all relate to that. I think we probably all have some degree of that in us. Is that a fair assessment? Do you see that in. Yeah, friends. I mean, yes, like when I came out with, my business and I started talking about this online, it blew me away. How many of my friends said they could relate to me, and we were all struggling with something similar, maybe not the exact same, but struggling with some sort of aspect of our relationship with food.
But none of us talked about it with each other, and that’s one of my main missions that I aim to accomplish today, is really helping people feel less alone in this, because I think there’s a very underserved population of people who, you’re not trying to lose weight anymore. Like, you’re not like, all right, I’m going to diet.
But then you’re also not trying to be super strict because you’ve seen that backfire where, you know, if you try to do just I’m only gonna eat clean. I’m only eat these healthy foods. And then all of a sudden, what happens when you go to the birthday party or you go to the wedding and you want to eat the cake?
You don’t know how to eat the cake because you’ve never interacted with that in a healthy way. So I notice with myself and with my friend too, on how there was like this middle ground of people who, you know, maybe occasionally binge and you have those like crazy times where you had seven cookies and you went a little crazy, but there might have been the other days to where you just felt like, you know, I don’t really feel comfortable going out to eat because I’m nervous that they won’t have the type of food, they don’t have the salad that I want, and I’ll have to eat a burger.
And that kind of makes me anxious. And all of these different aspects of our relationship with food that people don’t really know how to navigate. And we’re only taught the actions of, well, just like eat healthier or, just loosen up your rules a little bit. Just do 80/20. That’s one I hear a lot is 80% healthy, 20% not so healthy, but no one actually knows how to do that.
And no one addresses the mindset around our food. It’s all just like, chew gum around it or, you know, call a friend, take a bubble bath, do 80/20, have some foods in moderation? But everyone’s confused. Well, how do I actually shift my mindset away from all of this diet culture learnings that I’ve learned of all or nothing and into this place of moderation.
And one of the reasons that can be really hard to is because of when our brain forms habit. So going back to this is I started learning a lot about our urges, and our urges are this really strong feeling we get right before we do a habit, usually a habit we don’t want to do. So this is actually similarity between people who are, overeating or binge eating or binge drinking.
You know, of course, like get medical help when there’s a lot of substances involved. But at the end of the day, these urges are the problem because there’s a big difference between people who binge eat and don’t and the people who binge eat have urges and the other people don’t. They just want the desire
to do it.
The people who binge drink, they have urges to binge drink and people who drink casually. They just don’t. They just have one and move on. And so I really learned that it was the urges around these foods that were the problem versus the foods themselves.
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Where do you think that’s coming from? And, you know, educate me from a perspective of how your generation is different than mine.
I’m the baby
boomer generation. And, you know, we have kids, your age and they are being exposed to, you know, different, lifestyle than I was when I grew up. Help me understand how that is affecting you and the urges you have. And you know, how you’re exposed to different triggers and things like that, that I wasn’t so I could understand how I can help my kids.
I mean, I don’t think it’s so much as a generational difference as much as it is. Maybe our understanding of the human brain has evolved because we used to think that by the age of five,
your human brain was formed, and that was just that, that you were just the way you were and however you were raised, you know, good luck, because that’s how you’re going to be the rest of your life.
And what we now know about the brain is that our brain is neural plastic, and it can change at any age, meaning that you can be 90 years old and change a habit overnight. You can do these things that you never thought were possible because our brain is constantly adapting and learning. And this is a survival mechanism too, because if our brain were truly to stay the same after the age of five, we would never be curious and interested in learning more and adapting.
Or if our environment changed around us. We have to change our habits. We have to be flexible and adaptable so it is actually favorable for our brain to know how to change very quickly and adapt to different situations. And so with our knowledge about the brain now and how easily we can actually change it, you know, and I say easily, with the right techniques, it can feel hard to change a habit to like we’ll acknowledge that, especially if you’ve been in these eating habits for ten, 20, 30, 50, 60 years.
It it does take some time and effort. But I think really taking this perspective that our brains can change in whatever habits we have, we’re not stuck in is a different perspective than, sometimes older generations have. We have these sayings like, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, and that’s just not true, is really anyone can change their brain at any age because
we’re made to change, and we’re changing every single moment of every day.
Yeah, I do agree with that. I think we’re also, somewhat programed to think that we can’t. And we do get in that, you know, this is how things are and this is how my brain works. Obviously there’s things we can do to make changes, but I’m still concerned about breaking some of the habits, some of the programing that has been done, for instance, did you go to a private or public school and what did you do for lunches.
I went to public high school. Yeah. And for lunches I usually I luckily lived really close to my high school. So I was able to walk home and get my own lunch. But I know in middle school and stuff, when I went further, I would usually either get school lunch or I’d have to make my lunch for myself because my parents didn’t want to make it.
Well, yeah, but in those, we’re kind of, programed that this is what you eat and this is how much you eat. You know, something that’s more, common today. And I saw one of your podcasts where you had talked about this, and my children have the same situation. I grew up, my parents stayed together, and we had family meals.
And, you know, I kind of learned how to eat from them. There’s a lot more broken, divorced families now. A lot of kids that are, you know, traveling house to house with their luggage, not really having a home. And, you know, they maybe have some input on how to eat at this home and maybe some here. Or maybe they kind of just fend for themselves and are spending some of their own money buying their food.
That’s not how I grew up. My parents taught me how to eat. They taught me about food. They taught me what they thought was healthy. And we didn’t have, you know, sodas and junk food in our house. I kind of feel like that is very different today compared to what kids are being exposed to now.
Yeah. Are you talking about like the increase of processed foods and like the lack of family dinners and structure around that. Absolutely. Yeah. So I think that is definitely a factor in it and definitely something we don’t want to ignore. How I mean the lack of the family dinner alone that’s going to teach us too. Well, what do we do?
We eat in front of the TV as quickly as we can so we can get to soccer practice or, you know, everyone is just doing their own thing. So we’re not really learning then, mindful eating, which is a big skill that I teach, which is so important for our digestion, for our ability to hear a hunger and fullness signals for just so much of our eating.
Because if you think about it, like when we’re watching TV, our it’s really easy for our brain to go and fight or flight mode because there’s like a big drama scene that’s happening. Oh no, what’s happening in our brain turns off our logical, conscious brain when we’re watching TV. That’s why we’re able to watch it. We’re not thinking, oh, these are actors.
This isn’t real. We turned off our conscious brain so we can allow our unconscious brain to have the fun with the drama and the fear and the excitement. And when we’re going through that range of emotions, we’re also trying to eat. We’re not going to be very present with the food, and we’re essentially inducing emotional eating happening in that moment, too.
So I definitely recommend creating a regular meal schedule that is mindful and, really intentional. And that can be part of, okay, if you have kids that sit down for dinner every night. And let’s teach how we communicate over dinner and dinners are a time to connect and bond and enjoy our food, not a time to disconnect and zone out from our body and our life.
And so I think that can be a big part of it. Now, the increase in processed foods, you know, that definitely can be a problem. I think where I specialize more in is the generational dieting effects that especially women have had on their children. So if you look at older generations who grew up with a lot of these stricter diet, luckily things are changing and people are not so much in tune with like Atkins and keto.
And I feel like people are starting to move away from that. But then we have, of course, Ozempic and GLP-1s that are coming into the picture that are a whole new ball game. But
when, let’s say as a daughter or son, you see your mom constantly dieting and she’s constantly either being good and on plan and then maybe the house is filled with healthy foods, and then you see her the next night taking the chips and shoving them in as quickly as possible.
You learn. Then when you see that or hear about that, that, well, chips or something that are bad and off limits. And when I get access to them, I better eat them as quickly as possible. So we’re being modeled secret eating. We’re being modeled all or nothing thinking. And we’re not being modeled. This healthy relationship with food, that’s balance.
Another big thing I see is when people tell their kids, you know, we have to eat all the good foods and be healthy before you get the dessert. That automatically puts dessert on this higher level pedestal of something that’s special, that I don’t get until I have to get all this other boring stuff. So then we learn, oh, this stuff is boring and gross, and this stuff is delicious and good, and that mindset can stay with us.
And so something I teach my clients when we’re learning to, we learning how to eat these foods in moderation is I actually teach them to put dessert on their plate with everything else because of course, like cake and cookies and these desserts, they’re different nutritionally. This is not me saying that these foods are good for us or healthy, or we should be eating them all the time, but they are the same morality wise.
You are not a better or worse person for having a cookie or not. But when we see that, like our mom feel so guilty because oh my gosh, I ate so much last night and I’m not going to wear my swimsuit. I want to go swimming with the kids now because I feel really bad about my body. We learn that we’re a bad person for eating these things, and that’s when the guilt and shame sets in.
And when we feel guilty and shameful, our behavior is based off of that. And so that’s normally where we hide. We eat in secret, we really fast, and then we feel really shitty about ourselves. And we don’t want to do anything positive versus if we get rid of that guilt and shame and say, you know what, I’m allowed to have a cookie.
I’m gonna enjoy it. This food is neutral. I’m not a better or worse person for having it. Then we can just move on. And that actually creates better health outcomes than trying to be perfect with our food and eat clean all the time. How many meals should have, dessert after them? You know, it’s up to the person.
I actually teach something called make trigger food process in my program, where in the beginning for a couple of weeks, I actually have them include dessert at like 1 to 3 meals a day. And that might sound crazy at first, but it just does something really miraculous to our mindset, which is you have a point in time where you get tired of it.
You start to notice, I don’t actually want to eat a cookie right now. That just doesn’t sound great. And when you can notice that your body actually has that wisdom and it will tell you to stop and you aren’t actually addicted to foods and want to eat them forever and ever and ever, you have this insight of, oh my gosh, I can choose.
I’m the one in charge. These cookies aren’t controlling me. I get to decide that I want one, it’s delicious. And then I can move on. Because the truth is, I don’t actually want more than one because when I feel really bad in my body. So we learn that at first. But then over time, like, I still have dessert every day.
Most days I would say it’s not every day, but it kind of depends. Some days that looks like a bigger piece of cake. Some days that’s just one square of chocolate and once we learn to tune back into our body, it has so much wisdom because eating lots of sugar, our body knows that does not have nutrition in it, and our body wants us to be filled with nutrition, too.
So you’ll start to notice that your body does start to crave more of the healthy, nutritious food. If you let go of the diet rules and the good and bad mentality and just let it say, you know what would actually feel best to me right now? Yeah, I’m you know, this is what I’m thinking right now. I’m thinking my poor, deprived kids because they probably haven’t been offered dessert in the last ten years.
It’s just never something I ever thought of. Yeah. And, you know, parenting is such an individual decision for people. And I think some people are so worried about how do I create a healthy relationship with food for my kids? And the truth is, you can do it a million different ways and they can still all end up okay.
But I think, you know, modeling how if I’m gonna choose to have the cake, how do we do it? In a healthy way. Right. So it’s how do we be intentional? How do we teach them to mindfully eat it and slow down and notice the textures and the flavors of it? How do we tell them to tune into their body?
And what do you notice? How are your energy levels? Like an hour after eating this cake and really showing them the impact that the food has on them, and just getting really curious about it of look, the food does different things in their body and how interesting is that? And then they can take that information and use it for themself.
Yeah. I’ll get a little bit nerdy, on what you just said, because a lot of people don’t chew their food and they don’t really experience it. And when you’re chewing your food, you’re actually scientifically releasing enzymes from fruits and vegetables that will help digest the food. And, you know,
the mastication works in all those digestive enzymes and, you know, saliva.
And you’re preparing the food for your stomach, for your microbiome to eventually take over and finish the digestion. A lot of people are missing that, which means they’re missing absorbing a lot of the nutrients from the foods that they consume because they can’t finish digesting. So I think that’s a great point that you just made as far as experiencing your food when you eat it.
Absolutely. And along with that something else I think is fascinating is that when we’re stressed and we have extra levels of cortisol, it increases our blood sugar. And so think about if you are eating a cake in a way that’s really stressed and fast and you’re not slowing down with it, or you’re eating from the TV and you’re just piling it and you’re not chewing it, you’re messing up with your digestion, but then also your blood sugar is going to raise more than it would with just the cake alone, because it’s having to prepare for essentially being run over by a lion.
And so your body’s like, there’s stress. Things are happening when really all we’re doing is eating a piece of cake in front of TV. But our brain does not know that. It just it senses, fear and danger, especially if we are, really nervous around these foods. We have a lot of anxiety around foods that can cause a lot of stress around them while we’re eating them as well, which can also have a big impact on our digestion.
And then, like you mentioned, we’re not chewing it as well. saliva is not breaking it down. And then we have these giant chunks of food entering our stomach, which is really hard for a stomach to digest. I could relate to it, and a lot of people that are listening to this will, understand that Dr. Haley’s been under a little stress lately.
They’re trying to get this aloe vera from our company, and we have been out for four months now. And we have a container that actually gets stuck in customs right now, and we’re trying to get it out and release so we can make it available to our customers. So Dr. Haley has been under a little stress lately, and yes, he’s experienced some of those cortisol levels and a little bit of weight gain and probably binge eating because it’s like, okay, I got to get back to work.
Let me eat something first. You know, there’s a whole weird thing that happens in our minds when it’s kind of like survival and, you know, making the things happen in life, the things you know, you got to get done. And it’s challenging. But really, our brains think of survival as I have to, you know, eat some.
So I was going to mention you know as far as stress eating goes obviously there’s like a million factors that can impact it. And there’s also a million techniques that we can do to soothe ourselves and calm ourselves down. One thing I teach around emotions that I think is pretty unique, that you don’t see a lot of people talking about, is learning to accept how you’re feeling, too.
So, you know, people could say, oh, Dr. Haley, you should, you know, take some more deep breaths and meditate more and maybe, you know, take a day off and like, it’s like, yeah, okay, but what do I do when my shipment is over there? And I got to get it done for the day, and I just got to get back to work.
You know, on those types of days, we’ve got to learn that our emotions are not necessarily a problem. And when we can learn to accept them, then life becomes so much easier. And what that can look like is just saying, you know what? I’m feeling a little stressed today and that’s okay. And I even like to I think stress is a very broad emotion.
I think it’s like, umbrella and motion for how we’re really feeling. So maybe it’s overwhelmed, fearful, anxious. That kind of goes along with fearful. But these more specific emotions, it’s like, you know what? I’m feeling a little anxious today, and that’s okay. I’m feeling a little fearful that this isn’t going to work out. And that’s okay, because then when we accept it, we stop resisting it, and then we can just get through our day being like, I’m okay, that I’m a little stressed, like, I can handle this.
I’m going to survive. I’m going to be okay. And then we don’t feel the need to escape that emotion with food, because if we tell ourselves I’m stressed and I need to figure this out, it’s a problem that I’m stressed right now, then we’re looking for a way to fix it and like, oh, food will make me feel better.
Let’s just have a little snack. But if we just say, you know what? It’s okay. Being stressed is part of being human. At times. Everyone gets stressed and I’m allowed to just sit with this and feel this emotion in my body and move through my day. Then it’s like, I don’t need to do anything to change it. Yeah, it makes sense.
And I kind of do that, you know, I recognize that, you know, I have these urges right now and. Oh, well, it’s just, you know, stress about and that’s what’s happening.
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What are triggers. Great question. So a trigger is anything that I would say activates an old brain pathway or a current brain pathway. So when you feel triggered what’s actually happening is that brain neural network is lighting up.
It’s activating and saying okay here’s what we do. This is our habit pathway. And so we can feel triggered in all sort of areas for all sorts of different things. You know, we can say, oh, I feel triggered when this person said this mean thing to me. Well, maybe that’s because our mom said something similar to us as a kid, and that’s activating that brain pathway of fear and anxiety.
And so that’s why we feel triggered now with food. A lot of the triggers are the times that we’ve over eaten in binge before. So you might feel triggered every time it 5 p.m. and you come home and you open the front door and you see your kids screaming, crying on the floor and dishes in the sink.
And maybe that’s the thing that activates that brain pathway for you. Say, I need a snack before I start dinner, and that’s every time you see, okay, open the front door. I see my house. Now I want food. It can be a certain time. So it’s like maybe every time you see, 2 p.m. on the clock and it’s time for your break for at work.
Then you think, oh, it’s time for a snack because you’ve had a snack every single day at 2 p.m., so your brain feels triggered to go through that brain pathway. Now, triggers are not a bad thing. I actually did a podcast on this recently on my podcast where a lot of people think, okay, if I’m triggered by, you know, stress or I’m triggered when my mom says this thing to me, I should just eliminate that trigger.
I should tell my mom she needs to change herself and stop saying this thing to me, or I need to make sure that I’m never stressed and I get all my ducks in a row, and those things can be helpful. But what we actually need to do is we need to feel triggered and learn to take a different brain pathway, because this is what’s going to rewire our brain.
We don’t want to just hide inside of a cave for the rest of our life and hope we don’t get triggered. And this is what I found for me, was actually the approach in therapy that I found kind of unhelpful, which is okay if you’re triggered by this triggering this, how can we avoid those triggers or just manage them, versus how do we overcome them and make sure that there’s never triggering again, and you’re never have to live in fear and make your life really small so you don’t encounter these things.
So what this might look like, it’s let’s say, you know, your mom is talking about, how she started ozempic and she’s losing all this weight, and that triggers you because then you want to diet and you’re thinking, oh, maybe I should do it. And you feel triggered to, I guess this would be the habit of dieting.
Dieting can be a habit, too. So maybe it’s going down the old brain pathway of dieting. What you’d want to learn is, well, how can I shift my thoughts and mindset when my mom says, oh, I’m dieting and I’m doing, ozempic and it’s great, and you should do it to say, you know what? That’s great. My mom is on her own path and I’m going to stay on my path.
Because then when you learn to think a different way about it, then you’re going to stop feeling triggered. Or another example, let’s say a certain food triggers you, my needs to be Nutella. Any time I had Nutella in the house, I would just go crazy on it, because in the past, any time I had Nutella, I would binge on it.
It was like, you know, sticking the spoon in or for being honest, like sticking my finger in over and over and just eating it out of the jar. And so when I saw Nutella, I felt triggered because my brain was having a memory of how I used to eat this food. So I had to learn, you know, I’m going to today, take an apple and I’m going to eat it with the Nutella, and my brain is going to feel triggered.
It’s going to say, you should binge on this, you should eat more. And I’m going to learn to sit with this emotion and I’m going to feel it through. It’s going to be uncomfortable at first, but when I get out of it, then my brain is learning, oh, we don’t binge on this food anymore. We now have a new relationship to this food and what makes it.
The next time I have Nutella, I’m less triggered to binge. Yeah. That’s interesting. I know a lot of people do have that kind of relationship with certain foods, and you know, this was meant to be used this way. But you know
that chocolate sirup bottle, I just want to pop the cap open and squirt it down my throat, or, you know, the jar of honey, rather than put a teaspoon in my tea, I just want to stick the spoon in there
and eat it off the spoon.
But I like that reprograming saying no, this is what I do with that particular trigger. This is. And then your brain eventually gets used to that. That’s good. Yeah. I’m curious what some of your influences were to help you understand this. Did you have certain books that you read or programs you took online. How did you learn about all of this?
Great question. So one book that was really pivotal for me is a book called Brain over Binge by Catherine Hansen and Catherine Hansen was one of the first people who really identified this idea that our brain forms, habits and urges it around food. She actually took this concept from a book. I think it’s called Rational Recovery that talks about how to overcome these urges around alcohol.
And she applied it to food. And so that was the first book that I read that I was like, oh my gosh, it’s not I don’t just have to get my entire life in a row in order to stop binge eating. I just need to learn how to deal with this one thing, which is how to sit with my urges.
And when I do that, I can literally rewire my brain. So that was a really big influence for me. And I actually did coaching with her. I went through her program, back in I think 2016. So it was a while ago, but it was so helpful for learning these urges. But I still didn’t feel like I had a good grasp on how can I have a healthy relationship with food.
I was still kind of like, all right, but you know, how do I sit down and eat a birthday cake and not panic over it and want to go eat the whole cake again? And so I kind of got a hold
on my urges. I stopped binge eating for a bit, but I was still struggling in my relationship with food, and I was also struggling with this constant idea of I want to lose more weight.
And when we have this constant thought of lose weight, lose weight, lose weight, then there’s this constant feeling in the background of I should restrict, I should cut things out, I should eat less, I should eat less than that can again lead to the binge eating. So for that, I had to do more work on, like making sure I was truly stopping dieting.
And then I had to learn how to eat these foods in moderation. And that was kind of a trial and error process just from the hundreds and hundreds of articles and blogs and podcasts that I listened to of. How do I change my relationship with these foods and eat them in moderation? I also did a weight loss coaching program with a woman named Cookie Rosenblum.
She’s actually retired now, but I ended up working for her as a weight loss coach myself. After I went through her program for a couple of years. And that’s how I really learned the coaching side and the mindset of how our thoughts, feelings and actions are all related and how important it is to look at our thoughts around food.
And then I later got certified in coaching our unconscious brain because a lot of time our unconscious brain has blocks around, it feels unsafe for me to change this habit, that this habit is serving me on some level. And I’m scared to let it go. And a lot of times this can come up with urges. I remember thinking, I literally feel like I’m going to die if I don’t eat right now.
Like that’s how strong my urges felt. And that was because my brain was literally interpreting, if I get rid of this, habit, I might die because it’s connected to food. And so our brains really sensitive to that. So something that I learned to do is really showing my brain that I’m not going to die, that these are just thoughts going through my head that are creating sensations in my body.
I can handle some thoughts, I can handle some sensations. And that also just because we have a thought doesn’t mean it’s true. We can think, I need to eat food right now, but that’s not necessarily true because our body can go a month without food most of the time. So I’m not suggesting that we try to do that, but to show our brain logically, hey, we’re going to be okay.
We’re safe to not eat this food in this moment. And one thing that I’m going to give you for the Shownotes is my guided urge audio that will help listeners get through these urges. So these times are it feels like, feels a little scary to sit with this urge or I’m not sure how to get through it. Instead of just telling you to go, like, drink a glass of water, chew gum, which is not always like the most helpful thing, I’m going to walk you through a visualization process that’s going to show your brain the fast forward button, because a lot of times we think, oh, you know, that cake sound so good, but
we don’t think about how is that
cake going to feel in five minutes from now when it’s done? And I’ve eaten three pieces of it and I feel really shitty in my body and I have no energy for the rest of the day, we can use visualization to fast forward that process and we see, oh, okay, this is what happens if we eat the cake, and what happens if we don’t eat the cake?
And we get to feel really proud of ourself because we’re changing our brain and we’re changing our habits and going into that celebration mode of feeling really proud of ourself, that’s what we want to imagine. Instead. Yeah, that’s one of my favorite, techniques is thinking about how I’ll feel, how is this going to affect my sleep, my energy levels, my focus.
And, you know, it’s really easy for me to say no to coffee after, you know, 8 a.m.. It’s really easy for me to say no to any chocolate throughout the day because it’s going to interfere with my sleep. I’m not going to feel good or it’s going to make me feel jittery. So I like that, and I’ll make sure that there is, that particular link in the show notes in the description on the blog page.
Wherever you’re consuming this content, for sure, we’ll have a link to that. So people can get that, you have a lot of testimonials on your website, on YouTube. Tell me one of your favorites. Yeah. I mean, I think every clients journey is so unique and special and beautiful in its own way. But I have a moment for one of my clients that really sticks out to me on many occasions.
And this is someone who has dieted for her entire life since she was like ten years old, and she’s spent thousands and thousands of dollars on coaching and programs and trying to lose the weight. And when she started working with me, we were really working for the first time on, you know, maybe I’m not saying we can’t try to lose weight, but what if we tried to focus on healing our relationship with food instead what might experience of life be like, that’s different and better?
And so one thing we really worked on conquering with her is her fear of peanut butter and having peanut butter in the house. And I think I have her podcast on both YouTube and my podcast Become a confident eater. This is Ginger’s story, so you can listen to the whole thing there. But she always, every time she had peanut butter in the house, she would eat a third of the jar.
She’s like, I cannot have it in the house without going crazy on it. And for a few reason she had this thought of, well, kind of healthy. So like, she kind of gave herself permission to have more of it, and it felt like she could safely binge on it without, horrible repercussions versus, like, eating cookies or something.
So she had all these thoughts around that. And what we worked through is one really neutralizing the peanut butter Saying It’s not bad. You know, it’s not too high in calories. We can enjoy it. We can have it every day if we want to. But we went through a visualization process one week together where we had her visualize, step by step this process where she imagined herself taking the peanut butter out of the cabinets, taking a spoonful of it, setting it down on her plate with lunch, putting the jar on the lid, putting the peanut butter back in the cabinet, sitting down with it.
Enjoying it. Tasting it. Putting the spoon back in the dishwasher, closing the dishwasher and leaving the kitchen. So notice how specific that was. I didn’t just tell her, you know, practice eating it in moderation and mindfully, because that’s very abstract to our brain. That doesn’t really work so well. But when we can give our brains really specifics and also, as you mentioned, when we’re talking about how the food feels in our body, specifics are really good for that.
Don’t just say, well, I’ll feel really good if I eat in moderation. What does that mean? What does feeling good mean? Because that is like, again, going right over your head. Your brain does not care about that. But if you’re like, you know, when I get to have this teaspoon of peanut butter and put it away, and I leave that kitchen feeling energized and light in my body, and I for the first time, feel proud of myself after a meal that is a little bit more specific.
And so we went to the visualization process, and she came back to me the next week and it was like, oh my gosh, I did it. I took out the tablespoon, I ate it, and then I put it away and I moved on. And she was so proud of herself. And then she worked down to a teaspoon where she’s like, I can just have now a teaspoon of peanut butter.
I feel completely satisfied. I put my spoon in the dishwasher and I move on, and that was just such a monumental moment for her. As someone who really thought that there was just no way I can have peanut butter in my house, I’m just going to binge on it. That’s how I’ve always been to her. Saying I can have a teaspoon of it and move on was just so huge for her and had a big impact on her journey and also made me, you know, really proud of all the work that she did to put in to change her mindset around that.
That’s when I can relate to as well when I was growing up. I love peanut butter. Now I just go right to the nuts and I guess I make my peanut butter in my mouth. Yeah. Tell me about your podcast. Is it is it mostly you or do you have guests on? And what can people expect to learn by tuning into your podcast?
Yeah, thanks for asking. So my podcast Become a Confident eater. I do mainly solo episodes I sometimes do have, special guest that. Come on. I recently had someone who specialized in, how eating disorders form and how they grow up with us and change as we get older. So one was a really interesting one, but I do, do a lot of solo episodes, and I created my podcast because I wanted to have short little tidbits.
My episodes are usually like 10 to 20 minutes because I want you to be able to just pop them in and get a really big insight for your week and learn how to navigate forward. And I’m also creating something right now. I’m sure by the time this episode comes out, it will be on my podcast where I started creating worksheets for every episode so you can actually take action from them.
So I’m creating a podcast worksheet bundle where you can get all of the worksheets that go along with the podcast, so you can really start to take action on them too, because it’s really great when we can listen to them and we can have these tips and insights and these little nugget throughout our week of how to stop binge eating and overeating.
But unless we actually take action and apply them to our life, they sound great in the moment and then we might forget about them as we go on. So I created these worksheets and then of course, in my program I go to the next level, going through my six pillars to stop binge eating and become a confident eater.
And so that’s where we really do the deeper work and go into more step by step format to reprogram our brain to be this normal natural eater. Okay. And if someone wants to get a hold to you and maybe have a consultation, what’s the easiest way to do that? The easiest way is probably just to go to my website.
theconfidenteater.org I do offer free consultation, so if you’ve listened to this episode and you’re like, oh my gosh, this is me, I can totally relate. I would recommend booking that consultation. We can go over your goals together and, really understanding why these eating habits are coming up for you and your plan to get out of them.
I think this discussion has been great. I think I have a few, tips that I can apply to my own life already. I might have to listen to this podcast again and really imprint them in my brain and use them. Is there anything that you wish I had asked that we should have talked about that would be beneficial?
Yeah. You know, I think just this idea that our brains are not broken, that you were not broken. And it’s just a message I really want to get across again. Is that these are just habits, that there’s nothing wrong or shameful about eating more food than our body needs. I think a lot of times we’re taught that the worst things we can do is overeat and gain weight and we live in such a fat phobic society that it makes a lot of pressure on ourselves, of what our body needs to look like for both men and women.
And so I think just understanding that, yes, we might be eating some more food than we need. And I am not a perfect eater either, that it’s okay to sometimes overeat as long as we are mindful of it and we get back up after, we don’t stay stuck in it for days. Beating yourself up, that you don’t need to be a perfect eater to be a healthy eater and have a healthy relationship with food and a healthy life.
But yeah, I just really want to reinforce that like no one is broken. You have nothing wrong with you. You’ve just got into some habits. And habits are 100% changeable, no matter how long you’ve had them for or where you’re at with them. Now that’s a good word. I like that. Amber, I want to thank you so much for joining me today.
This has been great. I think I probably have other things I want to talk about, and it might even make for another podcast. Would you be open to joining me for a future episode? Absolutely. I know sometimes questions come up and, I’m sure you probably have a way for listeners to connect with you. So they could also put in questions to you, and I’d be happy to.
I think I’ll get a lot of questions to my email box from this one. So great. All right. Awesome. Thank you so much, Amber. Thank you so.
I hope you enjoyed that episode today on the Dr. Haley Show. Make sure to hit subscribe on whichever platform you are listening to this. If this episode made you think of someone, go ahead, take a screenshot and share this exact episode with them. You can catch the show notes for this episode on drhaley.com. If you want to geek out with Dr. Michael Haley on other radical health topics.
Be sure to check out his YouTube channel where he posts exclusive video content. All the details are at drhaley.com and we can’t wait to hang out with you on the next episode.
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