Emotional Eating - How to Stop It

If you’re struggling with emotional eating, food noise, or losing weight only to gain it back… this episode is for you.

In this conversation, Host Teresa Baglietto and her guest Shirley Billigmeier break down the real reason weight loss feels so hard—and why it’s not about willpower. It’s about understanding the gut-brain connection, identifying emotional triggers, and learning how to quiet “food noise” so you can finally feel in control.

If you’ve tried diets, calorie counting, or even weight loss medications and still feel stuck, this episode will give you a different perspective—one focused on lasting change, not quick fixes.

Shirley shares how her clients begin seeing results within weeks by addressing the root cause of overeating, not just the symptoms. This is about learning the tools to stop emotional eating, reduce cravings, and keep the weight off for good.

Connect with Shirley Billigmeier:

• Website: https://www.innergetics.com/
• Email: shirley@innergetics.com
• Instagram: @innergeticsmethod
• Book: Grab a copy of Inner Eating on Amazon: https://a.co/d/018IbRWs
• The Rapunzel Project: https://rapunzelproject.org/

Thank you for tuning in! I truly appreciate every one of you, whether you’re here for the first time or have been with me from the start.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Hi everyone, and welcome to the show. You can probably tell that I'm a little bit under the weather. A lot of travel over the past four weeks, and my body just said I've had enough, and wouldn't you know I got sick? But that's okay. I've got a great guest today. And before we get into who she is, do we all agree there are hundreds, if not thousands, of diets out there? They're pretty much available in any flavor to suit anyone's lifestyle. Guess what? Studies show that about 30 to 35% of lost weight is regained within the first year. So why do we struggle to keep the weight off? For some individuals, it could be emotional eating that's contributing to the weight gain. For others, it could be that you've fallen back into the same bad habits that put you on a diet in the first place. Or if you're like me, you're a real foodie and you love the taste of good quality homemade food so much that you may eat more than you should because it tastes so good and you don't know when to turn that valve off. But what if there were a way to lose weight without restricting yourself that eliminates the binging and completely wipes out the food noise? Now, many of us have leaned into GLP1s, myself included, I'm not gonna deny that. And they are another tool for us to use to drop that extra weight. But wouldn't it be nice if you didn't have to rely on some fad diet or spend money on a drug to help you lose weight? Just think about this. Right now, we live in a society that is all about protein. In fact, there's processed food that claims it has protein in it. But the truth is, as a prior bodybuilder, the best protein that you can get is from whole foods. And I mean lean proteins that are going to help you get more defined if you're spending time in the gym and wondering how come I'm not getting any muscle? You need to have a good combination of lean proteins and the right kind of carbohydrates. What if you like to have other things besides protein in the morning? What if you've always craved a really good bowl of cereal, or you want a hearty sandwich at lunch instead of chicken breast, vegetables, and rice? Or maybe you love to make lasagna for dinner and you haven't made it in a really long time because you're trying to avoid the carbohydrates in that pasta. My guest, Shirley Billigmeyer, is a breast cancer survivor and co-founder of the Rapunzel Project. It's a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping patients that are in chemotherapy keep their hair during treatment. She was, along with one of her dear friends, the co-founder of the Rapunzel Project, which allowed women to get access to cold caps during chemotherapy so that you wouldn't lose your hair. Most people lose their hair within just a few treatments. And the cold cap has been proven to allow you to keep your hair while you're going through treatment. Not only did she take that on, but she's a best-selling author of inner eating. She's a weight loss expert specializing in the gut-brain connection. And I can't wait for you to learn more about what that actually means. She's the founder of Energetics, and her therapy goes beyond intuitive eating. She explores the root causes of why we overeat and gives us practical tools in case you're struggling with excess weight. She refers to excess weight as storage. So you'll hear her refer to that throughout our conversation. And if you have food noise like I do, this is the shit that drives you crazy. You've just eaten and you're thinking about what I can have next, or maybe you're bored and you're thinking about what can I eat now when you're not even hungry. If these are things that you're trying to accomplish, dropping storage and eliminating food noise, you're going to want to listen to this. So let's dive in.

SPEAKER_01 5:31

Before you became a body image specialist and an author, you were a teenage girl struggling with your own weight. What did your relationship with food look like at that point in time in your life?

SPEAKER_02 5:48

When I was in junior high, senior high, I was a cheerleader all the way through, five years. And I was never really overweight. I was maybe 10, 15 pounds. But I always thought this just doesn't feel right to me. I just, I thought I need to lose a little. And I could always figure out how to lose it. It was like, okay, I can figure out how to lose it, but now there's this angst in me. And it didn't follow my achievement. I loved school. I loved achieving. I could figure out how to get the A, but then once you got the A and you were done with that course, you moved on. When I would try to figure out this eating, it didn't follow the same rules as the rest of my achievement. It was like, okay, I figure out how to lose a weight, but then I get down there and I go, okay, is it gonna say off? Do I have to eat this? Do I have to eat that? What if I eat too much? Okay, now will the scale go up? Well, now it's gone up a couple pounds, and now it's starting to go the other direction again. And now I got to restrict again. So it was that constant angst that I just thought, gee, if I just didn't have this, I could do just my achievement and move on. And my body would give me energy and the food would give me energy. Why does it create such an angst? That was always my dilemma. So I was always looking for an answer to call me about my size and weight, to call me about my food choices. I love to eat, and I thought, what is it? It just is not making sense to me that this angst should be there. What is that angst? And unbeknownst to me at that time, what I was feeling was my gut brain. And that angst was telling me a lot of information, but I didn't know what it was yet at that point.

SPEAKER_01 7:33

So as time passes, you start a company called Energetics. Tell us how you arrived at starting the business and what it's all about.

SPEAKER_02 7:45

When I had this angst, it followed me to college. My undergraduate and graduate degree were in health and physical education, and it was still there. And when I went on to teaching, I thought, oh my word, I still have this angst, but more important, I saw all my students have this angst. I thought, oh, their whole life is taken over by what they're eating and what they're not eating, and they really dislike their body. I thought that's it. I'm gonna figure this out once and for all. And I thought I would go on and do a PhD, but at that time, way back in the 70s, you couldn't crisscross fields. You had to say in one kind of one lane, right now you can crisscross and you can create your own program. But that was a blessing in disguise. Because had I stayed there, I wouldn't have discovered the answer. Because my mission was to figure out what this angst was all about. Why couldn't I just really enjoy the food and not have any extra storage? Extra storage made no sense to me because that's for a famine and there wasn't one coming that I had heard of. So I thought, that's it. I'm gonna figure this out. So I started doing some research while I was still teaching, and then I heard this word hunger, and I thought, oh, interesting. Hunger. It was never surfacing. This was the time where everybody was telling everybody what to eat and what not to eat and how much you should eat and how much you shouldn't eat. And I thought, okay, it kicked into me that said, there's the answer. That is the answer. I could feel it, I knew it was the answer because I was always connected to my gut brain. So when something made sense to me, it created a real strong calm within. And so I started thinking, okay, I'm gonna start doing my research on hunger. And I started talking to different professors around the United States, around Canada, and inevitably they would say, we know it's the answer. We just don't know how to get people there. How do we really uncover hunger? Because everything back then was bury it, drug it, get rid of it, eat so you're not hungry. And so I started doing my own research. And that's when I went internally and I thought, oh my word, the answers are not out there. And when I was first married, I'd watch my husband and he'd eat and then he'd just walk away. I said, Aren't you thinking about it? Aren't you wondering what you're gonna eat next? Or like the food noise? The food noise. He said, What are you talking about? I just ate, I'm done, I'm going on. I thought that's an interesting concept. You don't think about it. He said, No. He said, Why would I think about it? I'm done. I enjoyed the food and I'm done. And so I thought, okay, there's something there that I don't know. Then, when we had our first child, Kate, I watched her and I breastfed, and she would have all these little signs that she knew I knew when she was hungry. She knew when she was hungry. I thought, how do you know when you're hungry? You're just an infant. I'm an adult. I don't necessarily know exactly when I'm hungry. And so I would observe. And I thought, she not only knows when to start eating, she has a really strong stop. A really strong stop. She'll spit it out, she'll throw it. She didn't care how big I was, she didn't care what degree I had. She didn't care about what nutritional information she knew. And she certainly didn't care about her diet precise.

SPEAKER_01 11:13

And toddlers are probably the best at saying, I don't want anymore. No, thank you. I'm done. And it's the parents, because maybe they've eaten six or seven bites and they're like done. Yes, we know they get distracted by the activities happening around them, but they all are the same. No, thank you. I'm done. No, you surely aren't. You have a full plate of food. You must continue to eat. There's no way you can be done. And that's because we're not done. Exactly. Do we even know when it changes in an adult? Because somewhere along the way, we go from being a toddler and knowing when we're full and we stop eating, to then suddenly there's a time in our life where many of us may not know when to turn off the eating.

SPEAKER_02 12:09

Excellent question. Because when I would do seminars, they would say, Where did my stop go? Where did I lose my stop? And it could have been way back when the mother was breastfeeding, and that's usually the best because nobody knows how much anybody has had. Nobody knows. When there's breastfeeding, you don't know. But when there's a bottle, you do know. And maybe the mother has been told by their physician that the child needs this much. When the mother is feeding the child and you feel this little infant, and all of a sudden they want to turn their little lips, but there's so much milk left. They've got to finish the bottle. So they start pressing on the little lips. How does an infant know when to stop eating? That hunger feel goes away. That's when they want to stop. It's the feeling of nothingness. When that infant feels that tension on the lips, they go, Oh, I wonder if that'll go away if I eat. They've transferred that. And it not only goes away, they get a hug. And a young nine-year-old that I worked with said, Oh, we got comfortable with uncomfortableness because now we've moved past the five and you've become rewarded. The mother gives you a hug. So you get this nice warmth because you overeat.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

Oh, yeah. I know when I was young, if we didn't finish our plate, we couldn't leave the table until everything on our plate was gone, which was absurd when you think about that now. And if you did finish, there was some kind of reward. Oh, you can go to his house and play now, or you can watch TV. And so there's this connection that if I eat everything on my plate, even if I don't like it, I get to do XYZ. And if I don't, then I'm gonna be sitting here all night with the lights off, like mother dearest, because she's not gonna let us do anything. You're so right.

SPEAKER_02 14:15

So now the stop doesn't feel good, right? It feels uncomfortable because it's been associated now. Like I always do a hunger scale, and the audience can do this within themselves on a scale from zero to ten. I say the zero is starving, the ten is stuffed, and in between there's a five, the feeling of balance. The hunger has gone away, and now you don't need to eat anymore. The stop. The stop is the feeling of nothingness, balance. And anybody that does sports, you will feel that balance. You're not tipped to one side or the other. There's your power zone. That's now you can move either one direction or the other direction very well. So on that scale from zero to ten, the zero being starved, ten being stuff, the two, which I call kind of the growling stomach, the stomach is starting to talk with you. And it's saying, I'm ready to digest more food. Then once you eat and that hunger has gone away, that's the five. That's the feeling of nothingness. There's the stop. That's the true stop. But now that stop is difficult because there's pain associated with that stop. Instead of a good feeling, it's pain because you were punished, or you were made to sit there, or you didn't get the extra treat. So then if you eat ate more, now you became rewarded. You were rewarded for eating more food beyond what your body needed. That's how we start with the overeating. It's like my son when he was in fourth grade, he came home one day and he said, This is just crazy. I said, What happened in school? He said, This woman in the lunchroom said to me, if I didn't finish my food, I couldn't go out and play. And he'd never played.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

There it is. It was a time in the world, and maybe parents are still doing it. I don't know, but it's absurd that it's happening because look at the obesity rate, especially in the United States with children.

SPEAKER_02 16:21

Yes, because we've lost that ability to allow them to listen to themselves. And so when I went back to my son and I said, So what did you tell her? He said, I looked at her and said, I'm not hungry anymore. How would you know what my stomach feels like? And that's what, as parents and as I work with young moms, that's what's fun. Because if they have an infant, one of my clients said, All of a sudden, as I'm working through your process, I'm watching my one-year-old stop. And she's going, I'm working like crazy to figure out how to stop. I look at my one-year-old and she has no problem. She's done. And would I ever have believed that I would learn how to eat from my one-year-old?

SPEAKER_01 17:04

What about the taste, the flavor? Sometimes we eat something and it's just so damn good that we can't stop, or maybe we don't want to stop. It's not that we can't. We don't want to because it tastes so good. Yeah, I hear that all the time. I love your questions because I hear this all the time.

SPEAKER_02 17:25

And they say, but it tastes so good, and then you overeat and you don't feel so good. The boundaries of taste are very specific. They're very specific. When you're hungry, you eat. When you're no longer hungry, you stop. Anything beyond when you hear yourself say, it tastes so good, you're looking for more pleasure. That's why we were given four other pleasure senses along with our own thoughts and actions to give us more pleasure. But if we rob taste, we tend to bury the even the desire to have the other four pleasure senses because now it's out of order. And there was a client of mine, he was a CEO, CEO of his company, and he was understanding the two to five, and he was getting that down. He said, But surely, he said, at two o'clock in the afternoon, all I want to do is eat something. He said, and I know I'm not hungry, and I just want to eat. And I said, Okay, let's just imagine that eating didn't exist in that moment. What are you gonna do at two o'clock in the afternoon? And he looked at me and he said, Shirley, I am a CEO of a company. You have just asked me a simple question. I have no idea. I have no answer. I have no answer. I said, exactly. Because once you rob taste, you bury your creative soul to even think that there might be something else. And so I said, let's just imagine that eating doesn't exist. We're at the five, you're not hungry, and so let's start brainstorming. I said, and it might take a while to surface. I said, what could you possibly do at that moment in time? And he said, I suppose I could look out the window or take a walk down the hall, or and all of a sudden things started surfacing. And he said, Wow, he said, I never would have believed that it had buried my ability to even think. I said, when you use it out of order, it covers over your thought process. And so it becomes, I call it eating out of order. And when that happens, it's very difficult to get out of that.

SPEAKER_01 19:33

But you become obsessed. All you're thinking about is food. And I think a lot of us who have really intense jobs have moments like he was describing, where it's almost driven by some kind of emotion. Whether you're flying through the day from one meeting to the next, you probably aren't thinking about food. But when you have that break and all of the intensity catches up with you, I know I do it sometimes. I'm not hungry, but I feel like I need something.

SPEAKER_02 20:04

Yep. The very word you used was need. I just got off the line before I came on to a woman. Was she said, truly, in the morning, I can wait for hunger. It feels strong. She said, in the afternoon, it's like a panic. I need to eat something. And she said, and I might be hungry. And I said, when you feel that rush, that need to eat, there's something mixed in with hunger. And it's the need to get back to yourself, it's the need to calm yourself down. And that's the work. I said, so I'm always saying in the morning, that's what we're trying to match throughout the rest of the day, so that you handle everything in your life with your own thoughts and actions, and we have those four other pleasure senses to handle softening when things are difficult.

SPEAKER_01 20:56

So, what are some of your recommendations when we have those moments of need when we aren't hungry? Is it oral fixation that we're looking for? Is it that reward that I've been working my ass off today and I'm stressed and I have a lot of anxiety and I just shove something in my mouth, that feeling goes away. What is it? What do you do? Pause first, pause, and then just say, wait a minute.

SPEAKER_02 21:25

And then I always say, if eating didn't exist, what am I gonna do? And it's really about pausing and just walking away because and that moment, and I'm always working with that moment. And when I work with my clients, they text me, they email me, or they'll call me because I need to catch them in that moment, because that moment is very powerful. I always tell them it's the magnetism to eating when it's out of order that feels so incredibly strong. Keep replacing it with our own thoughts and actions, and we need to prepare for that time with our own thoughts. Your own thoughts are your most powerful tool to handle that moment. But I say all that, but you're changing the chemistry of your body because now you're using your thoughts instead of a chemical food. So it in the beginning, the trouble is food works too well. Eating out of order works too well. It works, and in a moment, you're calm, you're connected to yourself, and then you go, but why did I need to eat? Now I have the extra storage, now I have the extra food, and now I've destroyed my time when I really wanted to sit down and enjoy it. And I was trying to lose weight.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

Hey, why did I eat that? And the beating up starts.

SPEAKER_02 22:41

Yes. And then it just is constant. So I'm constantly catching that moment because when I work with people, there's never failure because that moment is information to me. I need to know your thoughts. Like the first thought you said, but it tastes so good. There's always something more to it. And I'm always looking for what else is driving your bus. What else is driving you to want to eat out of order when I know for sure, it's like I tell my clients, I know for sure you don't want to eat out of order. I know you know what a two feels like. I know you know what a five feels like. I know you want to get rid of your storage. So something else is driving your bus, and we will always figure it out. That's why I like to get to them as close to that moment as possible because that magnetism is huge. And you're never going to feel as good in the beginning as that food feels because that food is concrete, it's on your lips, it's going down your body, it's going to every cell of your body. But that's what I gradually start removing is the interference eating, the eating out of order.

SPEAKER_01 23:47

God, it sounds like a terrible addiction that we all have. It's just right because when it's two o'clock and you're like, I'm not really hungry, but I need something. I'm gonna go grab some food. That to me is like an addictive behavior. And I bet this guy that you're talking about probably has that feeling regularly around that same time. I've done it myself too. You've eaten dinner, you're not hungry, you sit in front of the TV to disconnect from the reality of work world, and you're sitting there and you're like, I just I need something. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 24:28

That whole description, the number of times I work with people on that very issue, usually I say, Do you have the right to do nothing? Do you have the right to relax? Do you have the right to simply just be with yourself and not have to think? Watch some mindless show. Do you have that right? Because generally, what starts to surface is I need to be doing something. I need to be doing something. So the action of eating, you have to understand what eating is doing for you to know how to get it, the eating that's out of order out of there. Because what is eating? And when I first started developing this, I thought, what is it with this eating? What is it doing for us that is causing all this angst? And so I thought, oh my word, there's so much that it goes on. We get a feeling in our gut, and instead of understanding it and really feeling that feeling, the minute we feel uncomfortable, oh, I need to eat something. It just happens like that. And what does it do? If the eating says, Okay, I'm gonna make you feel pleasant, I'm gonna calm you down, but you need to get back to yourself. You moved over to me, eating is chewing, and the eating, so you eat something, you're back inside yourself, it calms you in an instant, will calm you down in that moment, it does, and it works, it works, it's like a drug, it works really well, it works really well, and then you're just frustrated, and then the beating yourself up starts. And so, what I work with them is having them really understand what that eating is doing for them, and really understanding why that that why they tripped into that detour because it's a neural pathway now, now it becomes a neural pathway. That neural pathway with the man I was describing was very strong at two o'clock in the afternoon, and so we need to prepare for that time and we need to prepare for a belief that is value-based. So generally, I start asking questions so they really own it, it's their decision. Do you want to use your own thoughts and actions in that moment instead of eating? And it's funny because one of my clients said, No, I don't want to give up that tool of eating, it works too well.

SPEAKER_01 26:43

Yeah, I've been in this situation a million times, and I think for me, it's because of how intense my work schedule is, and when that free moment comes, I'm like, I need to go eat. I need to eat something. I I'm sure it's related to you've now stopped. And I love what you just said. Like, you feel like you need to do something, but you don't want to work, you want to take a break, and you're like, I'm not really hungry, but I'm gonna eat something anyway. And we're probably not thinking it's gonna make me feel good, but it's just I need it and I'm gonna go have it.

SPEAKER_02 27:22

What you said in the very, I think it was the second sentence, I need a break. I need to do nothing, I need to take a break. But our break instead of really believing that we have the right to take a break because that's what eating does, it gives us back the right to do what we're not allowing ourselves to do. So, what you don't own, eating will do it for you.

SPEAKER_01 27:45

Interesting. Now, how does this play into the million types of diets out there? You've got mint and fasting, high protein diets, low-carb diets, keto diet, the diet names go on and on. Mediterranean diet. If someone were to practice your techniques, how do food types play into this?

SPEAKER_02 28:15

I get back to total, and this is where I'm different, and they call me a disruptor, and it's just so crazy to me because I thought I'm just going back to the basics here. I go back to total and complete choice of eating because choice is your identity. And if you don't own choice of what sustains your life, you can't be within your life. We need to own what sustains our life, choice. And people say, but what about all the processed foods? What about all what they say you should and shouldn't do? And I said, and they said, What about all the research? And I said, Have you ever noticed that research keeps changing? It does, it changes all the time, and it doesn't mean that the research is wrong, it just means that for that particular group of people, this is how that study came out. Then they study another group of people, and it's gonna come out different because we were born with over 10,000 taste buds unique to each and every one of us within our gut brain. We were given all these tools at birth to know what to eat and how much to eat. So I start with total and complete choice so that they own their choices, so that when they end up losing their weight, it's coming from their choice because whoever owns the choice owns the power. And I want to empower my clients. If I tell them what to eat, now I own it. That's not my mission. My mission is truly to resolve all eating and weight issues.

SPEAKER_01 29:54

And that's mind-bending because when people think of a diet, the first thing that comes to somebody's mind is restriction, volume restriction, types of food restriction. And I've seen people who are like, I'm on a protein diet, and I've actually watched them gain weight because you can eat too much protein and it's excess, they find themselves overeating the protein, and you're gonna gain the weight. So if I choose to eat whatever I want to eat, what does that really mean with your technique? For dinner, let's give dinner an example. What do some of your clients find they struggle with? And what's the plate of food look like now when they think of this with your technique?

SPEAKER_02 30:50

When I start with choice, at first there's like a panic. Yes. Oh my word, if I would eat what I want to eat, I would eat volumes of what I shouldn't eat. Because they've restricted themselves for so long, right? Yep. They've deprived themselves of everything the diet says you can't have. So that deprivation builds up, and that's where sometimes with intuitive eating, unless you have a very detailed process, and that's what I've developed, is a very detailed process because I open up choice, they're gonna they're gonna panic. So I have a process of really guiding them to their body because they need to understand that this is a process to bring them back to their own hunger, to their own choices. But that deprivation is so built up inside of them because they've tried every single diet out there by the time they reach me. And so I understand that. I understand that panic. And so it's more about okay, if the quantities that you normally ate would be two to five, I might start them with a four to a seven, but I start with a few little rules that are sitting before you eat and doing nothing else while you're eating. I need to have that focus, I need that awareness. So even before we don't even talk about what they're wanting to eat or what they're choosing to eat or what that is, I've got to start out with awareness that they're actually starting to eat. So if you're sitting while you're sitting, because if you're standing and eating and walking past the kitchen and grabbing something, that stuff, one person said, that stuff doesn't really count.

SPEAKER_01 32:41

Love that. I really didn't eat it. I did, but I really didn't. It's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 32:48

So I said, guess what? You can't hide from your body, the body will always know the foods in there. So this process is about keeping them honest with themselves. My kind of recording is really recording, it's not a report card, it's an a recording card that they see every eating occasion on that paper. So a nibble matters. That's why, even a nibble of grabbing something, if you're standing and you forgot to sit, there's all kinds of information in there. So it is a very detailed process to start with because I just let them choose what they want. Because if I can get them to sit and do nothing else, they're gonna cut out a lot of food while they were standing or while they were driving. Or so when they start, they really even start with this process losing storage because they're eliminating food that is when they're standing, when they're walking from here there to everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 33:54

So from the refrigerator to the cabinets to the pantry. So are you saying that sitting and having a meal is the correct way to have a meal because there's no distractions? Well, the sitting, even if it's a snack, sit first so you're aware and own the fact that you're eating it.

SPEAKER_02 34:21

And then I have them record that it's just it's a snack. It maybe they move from a four to a five or from a five to a five, that's just a couple bites, but they know that they're eating. That awareness is key. I know I'm putting something in my mouth. That's key because there's so much mindless eating. It also shows when I open up choice, where's that quantity? Where when does the quantity start? There's always a reason. So I'm with them basically 24-7. Because if I'm not there, I said, even because I work with people all over the world, and in the middle of the night, they can text me. I wake up and I go, Oh, I see what happened. Okay, now let's get to the bottom of this. It's it is the sitting, and we've lost that sitting.

SPEAKER_01 35:05

And I find it so I would say we have. I know I grab a snack between calls, and I'm walking from the kitchen back to my home office, and hopefully, have gotten my small snack down before the next call. Yes, yes, that's what I'm talking about. There's no sitting. I know there's people out there listening who are gonna identify with this. When you put something in your mouth and you're on the go, and then when you finally sit and you're calm, you almost don't even remember what you ate. And your body doesn't either, and you're like, I'm starving. You just had a snack. No, but I'm starving now.

SPEAKER_02 35:46

You're absolutely right. That's why my recording system is so key because it shows them how many times and how often they're putting something in their mouth that they weren't even aware of. I had one person, she said, I would have probably 50 nibbles in a day, 60 nibbles in the day. So that's where we're gonna start. That's where we're gonna start. And now we're down to two times of a meal and actually sitting with a couple little snacks. That's it. And the awareness and the beliefs that have surfaced from all of that is what's allowing her to actually get these clear boundaries around her eating, really clear boundaries because that's what we've lost. Now, when you think about the people in France, I always thought they had a country structure that they're starting to lose now, which is really sad because they never ate on the run. They always had their meal, they were sitting, and then they knew that they were gonna have another meal, so their quantities were never large, and people would always not go into a French restaurant because they didn't get quantities, and the French people didn't want quantities. That's why they always said, How can a French person eat what they want and be so slender? And that was always the question. And it's because they had a country structure that it was wrong not to sit. There was it was a country structure, and they knew they were going to eat again and they took the time to do it. And now they're starting to eat on the run a little bit more, and the weight is starting to go up again. It would be good if they got back that country structure, but it's that structure because structure is important, and we need to be aware of when we're starting to eat and when we're stopping. So I have them record their start number when they're sitting, doing nothing else, then before they stand up. They record their stop. So now, once they stand up, they know now they need to use their own thoughts and actions and their pleasure senses to handle their life until they're ready to eat again, and then they sit. So there's a strong start and stop. That's what's missing is our boundaries. But people are always trying to restrict with either a group of foods, a particular food, they need to say that they need to add more, and that whole protein thing, oh my word, because I have so many clients, they can't handle all that protein and they're feeling miserable. I said, listen to your body, your own body has better wisdom than any research out there because all that research is studying different people. You can read the research, you can learn. But bottom line, like I said, in those studies, if I said to you, shrimp is healthy, it has all these nutrients, all that's the protein, but when you eat it, you have a reaction. Who's the final authority? You are. You, yeah. That's where I start. You're the final authority. How you feel. And when you go to a doctor, he always says, How do you feel? How do you really know how you feel unless you're in your body? How do you feel? Because there are nine messages to one from the gut to the head versus the head to the gut. And if we are in our head, not listening, we're cutting out 90% of the information, the little whispers from our body. Then and the trouble is the body will whisper, then it will talk a little louder, and then it will scream at you. So it's important that we really listen to the messages. And so I lay that internal groundwork with total choice connected to hunger because those boundaries are within the gut brain.

SPEAKER_01 39:21

Yeah, talk about what the gut brain is. What is that?

SPEAKER_02 39:25

It's it's interesting because I wrote my book back in '91. Dr. Michael Jensen of the Mayo Clinic wrote my foreword, but it wasn't until the late 90s that Dr. Michael Gershen named the gut brain the enteric brain. It has so many messages, it's got taste buds in it, it's got thoughts, and I can describe it a little bit better. Do you ever hear yourself saying, oh, I just knew, or instinct, or butterflies in my stomach? It's that's all the gut brain. You feel everything. You're live there. There's your identity, there's who you are. That's why that food noise that they're talking about. I need to hear those words. Those are part of you. I need to surface hunger. Hunger means you start eating. I'm not going to bury hunger or remove hunger or remove the food noise. That's all information that's all a part of you. That's all part of your whole wisdom. That's your wisdom. We don't want to bury that. We don't want to drug it. We want to surface it and honor it. And that's why I always say they always want to bury hunger or do whatever they're going to do to it or drug it, whatever. I want to honor it and respect it.

SPEAKER_01 40:39

Let's go back to the gut brain and the food noise more than anything, because you're saying it's a part of people. And I had a period of time in my life where the food noise was grander than any other thought in my brain, and it really took a hold of me. And I've gotten past that. But what about people that are in that today? Or people who don't even understand what food noise is, they may not even have identified that they have food noise. Can you talk a little bit about what food noise is? Sure.

SPEAKER_02 41:11

When they might hear a thought, uh, you just describe it, but it tastes so good. It's any thought that is out, but food noise could be a value-based thought. I really like the taste of this. I'm going to stop eating when I've had enough. That's good food noise. Or I really like the taste of this particular food. That's good food noise.

SPEAKER_01 41:31

Oh, mine were never good. It was like, what can I have now? Yeah. I need something. I want something. I need to eat something. I don't know what I want, but I need to have something.

SPEAKER_02 41:41

That all comes from when I hear those words and when I'm working with someone, I'm always listening to okay, what do you need? What do you want? Because it's always something. See, it's always up the food. The food always solves it, but I get the food off, and now I hear the actual words. The actual food noise that's going on. What do I need? What do I want? Like you said, the break. Okay, I need a break. I was listening for those words when you were talking. I need a break. So the food noise is usually wants or needs that either you haven't given yourself the right to own it, you haven't given yourself the right to really explore it. I would say be curious. What is that noise? What is it saying? What is it saying about you? Because there's a lot of non-value-based beliefs that has to do with the food noise. It might be you need to finish your food or you're bad. That's food noise. You've got to keep eating, or you don't have total choice. And you might hear, I really shouldn't be eating this, but I'm going to eat this. That's food noise. Okay. Do you really have choice of what you really want to eat that feels good to you? Or do you have all these rules? I'm constantly removing the rules from the head.

SPEAKER_01 42:56

Yeah, I bet. Because of all the diets that are out there. You open up a magazine, you watch TV, you're on social media, the ads are out there. There's people who are in great shape. There's people who shame themselves because they don't look like somebody that's on social media. That's a whole different problem. But at the end of the day, there's all this pressure and stress that's created by these outside environments that we start to adopt and carry. And I think interferes in being able to lose weight. I think the basic answer is I'm going on a diet. Oh my God, I'm going to start today. Okay, why am I suddenly craving cheesecrackers, ice cream chips, everything that you've restricted out of your diet is everything that you want. And that's the biggest and toughest hurdle to overcome is having that willpower. So do you talk about willpower with your clients and what do you tell them to do with that?

SPEAKER_02 44:07

When I talk about willpower, it's more about honoring, honoring the feel and be curious why the magnetism is still there. Be curious what messages you are hearing. So it's more about learning and understanding than willpower. But it's also that pause when you know you're not hungry. We need that pause so you can take the time to ask why do I want to eat right now? And the more you start asking questions, because that's what I do formally. Clients because when they get stuck in that, when they get stuck in that feeling of magnetism, it's like their thinking process disappears. And so when I get there, when I start asking questions, we always get to the answer because the answer is always inside that gut brain. I can always get there because everybody owns this. Everybody was an infant at one point in time. That's the beauty of this process. That is very true. So everybody can own this. It's just taking the time to get there, to really understand it, to be curious. Because what we're doing is we're just taking the eating that's out of order, replacing it with your own thoughts and actions and the other pleasure senses, and reclaiming that connection between your gut and your head. So the system keeps working. So that when you feel something in your gut, you go, okay, what's that all about? Am I hungry? No, okay. I'm not going on that detour. I'm not going on the detour to eating. I'm staying put. I'm staying here to be curious. What am I feeling? Why do I need to eat? It's a need. That need, when you start hearing that need, there's something going on. What need have I not addressed within myself? So it's really working at the depth of your own identity. That's the beauty of the process. It's like the weight falls off as a byproduct. That's what people always say. I never tell people what to eat and I never ask them their weight. I just want to know: is the storage going in the right direction? And they can feel it on their clothes. That number, I don't want to know that number. It's not my business. I want to know, are we getting eating back in order? Are you feeling that? Are you feeling the storage dissipate? That's all I'm looking for. So that there's not so we're reconnecting with the source of the issue. And people say, How can I be in my body when I hate my body, when I hate my storage? And I said, that's why I say if you would eat from the two to a five and all the time, would you eat less food? And generally, yes, I would eat less food. If you ate less food, would you lose weight? Yes. So I said, good, can we just put the size and weight now on the shelf and leave it there? Because we're working at the source. Because if you're thinking size and weight and you don't like your size and weight, that's a feeling that you can't do anything about in the moment. A feeling that doesn't feel good. It'll depress you. That's what's depression, a feeling that you can't move out of. If you're thinking size and weight, and you can't move out of it in this instant, and you don't put that thought on the shelf, you're gonna feel like you want to eat.

SPEAKER_01 47:21

Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah, because you're gonna be down and out on yourself. And food, as you've said a couple of times, it makes you feel good.

SPEAKER_02 47:30

Yep. In the moment works like that.

SPEAKER_01 47:33

In the moment, yep. It is an in the moment thing, it's a very quick fix to a deeper issue.

SPEAKER_02 47:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 47:41

What about portion control?

SPEAKER_02 47:43

Ah, whenever, and I want to go back to also that intermittent fasting, portion control, that's all in the head. It's in fact, one of my clients said, because she's about my size, she said, just tell me what you ate, and I or how much you ate. And I said, it may change. So I don't get into portions, I get into feel of my body. What does my body feel like? And it was interesting because one of my clients would she was all taken care of, everything was good, and generally I try to get all this resolved so that they can move on in their own. And then all of a sudden I heard from her again. And I said, What just happened? Where did you lose that real strong connection? You had it. And she said, I was listening to so-and-so talk about how many little bites of food they ate. I said, Where did you start listening to other people tell you how much you should eat? Totally took her off. But that's what you were talking about, the media. How all of a sudden we're so wrapped up into what somebody else is doing and what somebody else is looking that it distorts our own belief within ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 48:47

I think there's days where I'm hungrier and there's days where I'm not as hungry. And it shifts depending on what you're saying is what the body wants that day, because every day is not going to be as demanding. If I am at the gym and the focus is leg day, I know I need more food that day because otherwise, if I put my body into that state of starvation, I'm gonna have food noise all day long. And so when I know today's leg day and you're gonna be hungry as a horse, I make sure to have the healthy breakfast. It's more food, but it shuts all the food noise down. The next day, I might just do cardio and I'm not as hungry. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:34

All of that where you really want to listen because really until you do your exercise, really you don't know if you really go for the hunger scale. And this was an interesting point because it's okay, I got to prepare for hunger because I might be hungrier today. I had a client who would, when she was speaking, she always felt like she had to eat something first in case because she was going to do an hour speech. What if I get hungry during this speech? But she had storage to lose. And I said, Okay, and she loved doing experiments, which was really fun for me because she was a scientist. I said, Okay, you swim laps and you love to swim laps. I said, Let's go there when you're at a three and you're not really hungry yet. And she said, I might not make it. I said, Well, bring somebody with you so you don't drown. So she did, because she loves, she loved to do experiments. So she went there and she was really at a two, but she had some storage to lose. And she came back to me, she said, I'm amazed. I swam all my laps and I was at a two. I said, and you didn't drown. No. And she's she said, I see that if you do have storage, you have energy, but you don't want to prepare that you might get hungry later. You just keep listening because eating is in the moment. And then some people would say, but what if I'm like going to a dinner and I'm really at a two at four and my dinner is until six? I said, Do you think you're really going to starve to death in two hours before you eat? I said, go there and be hungry. I was hearing something that would say, Don't go to a party hungry. I'm going, why wouldn't you go to a party hungry? You're gonna have food there. Of course you want to go there hungry. So it's about really understanding hunger and working with it, really working with your hunger. So when you go and you do all these weights, wait, you don't know how much you're gonna need until your body starts speaking to you. So I always come back to the wisdom of the body before predetermining what you might need.

SPEAKER_01 51:40

You often say the most important question isn't is the food healthy? It's how do I feel? Which we've talked a lot about, but let's talk about healthy food because some of us just naturally migrate towards the healthier food over processed, greasy, fried stuff. If somebody likes to have cheeseburgers every night, is that the right thing to do when you're making a choice and you're trying to get rid of storage?

SPEAKER_02 52:12

First of all, I end up getting rid of the food that's the extra eating. Then what starts to happen is because they really are practicing total and complete choice, what starts to happen is when you have a strawberry, you want a strawberry that tastes like a strawberry. So I end up working from the inside out because I can't control the environment. I can't determine what's going to be out there. If I know I feel better eating this or I feel better eating that, the wisdom of your body will let you know we've lost that confidence in our body. And it's all about choice. And to me, I like real food. And that's just what how it's developed is I like real food. It sounds like that's where you are, but I've got to have people get there from their choice. That's what's key. So, whatever their choice is, I have them choose that and then feel how that felt before, during, and after. And you would be amazed at how easy it is to start determining what feels good. And I remember one client saying, you know what, Shirley, I've been told to eat salads all the time. It was like keeping them away from them. And she said, as I worked through this process, she said, all of a sudden there was this feeling like, I really want a salad. And she thought, I never thought I would ever feel like I really wanted to choose a salad. But that's why I have to leave it with the wisdom of their own body because the body naturally wants food that feels good. The body naturally wants a strawberry that tastes like a strawberry, and the body naturally wants variety. So, with that cheeseburger, I had a client whose eight-year-old son was having a war with his father about peanut butter cups. Those, by the way, so good. I love them too. I love them, they're the best. Chocolate and peanut butter. Yes, so good. And so she said, You've got to work with my husband and my son. They're in the war with these peanut butter cups. I said, He's eight years old. I said, Let's just work with your husband for three days. If you'll just let me have his son for three days, we'll work through this. So we started out because there was literally a war. So I sat down and he knew me. He said, Okay, I'll give you three days, but he's gonna eat peanut butter cups the rest of his life. If he cats those peanut butter cups, that's it's all over. So they said, Okay, I will do this. Because he knew me. He said, Okay, you think you know what you're doing? He bought all the peanut butter cups. They sat down together as parents and told the son, You're in charge of all the peanut butter cups. His little eyes just went, Oh, this will be so fun. And he gathered them all up. He went to bed that night and they were all by his bed because he thought the rules are going to change and he'd better have his stash right there. So the next morning he had peanut butter cups. Lunch, he had peanut butter cups. And of course, the father's going up in dinner time, came around, peanut butter cups. Next morning, peanut butter cups. And he kept these bags with him. They came with him wherever he went. And then at lunch the second day, he was going out to play and he forgot his bag. And the mom said she was really good because she knew what I was doing. She said, Here's your peanut butter cups. He said, Well, just put them in my shelf. I'll be back. Now the separation was starting. That night, still peanut butter cups. The next morning on the third day, the mother said, Okay, here are your peanut butter cups, put them in a bowl. He said, No, I really have cereal this morning. She said, I thought my husband was gonna fall over on the chair when he heard my son say, No, I choose not to have peanut butter cups. But there was so much deprivation built up about those peanut butter cups that it felt like if he was gonna eat them, he was gonna keep eating them. But the wisdom of his own body surfaced and said, Okay, now I've had enough. Now I believe I can choose them.

SPEAKER_01 56:04

So this morning it's cereal, and a couple days I may want another peanut butter cup, but it's been normalized. Yes, because deprivation can lead to severe binging on peanut butter cups or whatever somebody's thing is. So that's pretty incredible. I'm sure the parents were dying. There he is. Oh my god, every single meal, we knew it. But eventually he just didn't care about them as much. Just didn't care.

SPEAKER_02 56:34

Just didn't care. I remember because when I was first teaching, both my friend and I that were teaching together, we loved MM peanuts and we could eat them. And we watched the other gal who would have half a cookie, and we thought, Are you nuts? Eventually, that's exactly what starts to happen is when you feel you shouldn't be eating it. I always say you can't want to should. So I take off the shoulds so you can want a should. I open up choice so I get nutrition at a deeper level.

SPEAKER_01 57:04

It is interesting because when you think of it that way, it probably shifts for some people. What would I have for dinner or lunch or breakfast if I were choosing for myself? Because a lot of times people who are trying to lose weight are choosing because of the program. I'm on a high protein diet, I'm only gonna have eggs this morning, and your friend's having a bagel with cream cheese, and you're like, God, I want that. You don't have it because you are following a program, so it's no longer your choice. So it would be wild to say it is my choice. And I'm sure people go gangbusters in the beginning, your clients.

SPEAKER_02 57:46

I really work with that because I know how much deprivation has built up. And I need to know you can really lose your storage, and this is the way to lose it with intuitive eating. But it's it's mine is like intuitive eating with a detailed process, and I'm with them. That's the other thing. I am with them so they don't feel that panic, like they're gonna keep eating and eating. I want to know in that moment because that deprivation has built up, and I want to know why that deprivation, where is it? Does it come totally from choice? But there's usually something underneath. So I work with them so they feel very comfortable opening up choice.

SPEAKER_01 58:27

Absolutely. So, have any of your clients thought or shared with you? Okay, so I'm gonna make my own choices. And maybe their choices were again, we'll use cheeseburger as an example. I've deprived myself of cheeseburgers for way too long. That's what I'm gonna have. And maybe they have it several days in a row, and the body then is okay, I want a salad or I'd love some broccoli with rice and a grilled chicken breast. Have your clients experienced that when you eat too much, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 59:06

Because you can even have a hamburger, and there may be people that feel fine with that. Other people don't. It all depends on what each person feels within themselves as to how that food reacts with them. So what and as you uh keep understanding total choice, now it's not coming from deprivation, it's coming from what your body feels good eating. It really feels good eating. But if I start telling them, now they don't own it. So they've got to feel, okay, that didn't feel so good. They don't even know if it did, but a lot of times they'll eat it and then go, okay, I thought I liked it. I don't really like it. It didn't make me feel good. Because I go with taste and feel, and we get rid of deprivation, and we really feel like, okay, what did my body feel like after? What did it feel like during? What did it feel like after? And it's a real system that becomes theirs. And I have worked with so many that they go along fine, and then all of a sudden they get tripped into what somebody thinks they should be eating, or somebody's a comment, and their confidence is shaken a little bit, and then when they talk to me, I get them back to themselves. Back to themselves. What did it feel like to you?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:31

It's being more aware, so eating mindfully and not mindlessly, and sitting and having your meal. I love that one. What would you say to somebody who's listening as we wrap up that's really struggling with their weight on where to start?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:48

I say start with sitting, just make sure you sit first and make sure that you're doing nothing else. Really taste the food, feel what it feels like to really taste the food be and choose in that moment what you want and really taste it because in choice there are boundaries. Because what's when you talk about addiction, what's addiction? The act of decreasing choice. If you don't own the start of a particular food, how do you ever own the stop? So you need to choose the start. I have the right to choose the start of what I am eating, and then really be with it, enjoy it, and then when you're done, stand up and go. Now I'm gonna be living my life. There's where the difficult part comes in because they've so fused it with their movement and helped them move through the day, either nibbling or taking the break or what all the different reasons. I do offer a free half an hour consultation to explain a little bit more what this process is all about, but it is the answer to all eating and weight issues because I bring them back to themselves. And that's the only place where there's true eating boundaries where you're meant to be. How can people reach you? I have a website and it's energetics. Everybody spells it E-N, but it's I-N-N-E-R, Energetics, Energy from Within. That's my website. They can also reach me by email, shirley at energetics.com. They can sign up for a free consultation. Sometimes I will put out a masterclass and I will take one particular subject like what you described, but it tastes so good. Why can't I stop? And there are some of those masterclasses that they that are previous ones that they can purchase on my website, or they can work with me one-on-one. I that's my what I love the most because I can catch those moments because I know the magnetism of that moment when you know you're not hungry, and that strength of that pathway of eating out of order is strong.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:03

It's very strong. Yeah, I've had that in my life as well. Well, this was incredible. You have shared some amazing tips with everybody listening. And I believe if somebody really wants to change, they should have a coach. You need that mentor, that coach to really help change the way that your mindset is. I'm sure your online programs are incredible, but there's nothing more beneficial than working with somebody one-on-one.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:33

Yeah. And it's interesting that you say that because when I created this course, because I always used to do just individual, but I thought I need to reach more people. And when I created this course, I have over 60 videos, I have handouts, I have checkpoints, but I knew they still needed that one-on-one and as close to that moment as they could. So that's what I do with that course because I know how strong that magnetism is.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:00

You're absolutely right. We need that mentor, that coach to really help us shift our mindset. Online programs are super powerful. I know people who have great success with them, but there's nothing quite like that one-on-one support. That kind of support, I think, has longevity. It lowers your likelihood of gaining the weight back because now you've got the right tools, not just you need to eat this, don't eat that, but truly understanding what triggers food noise and emotional eating. Those are the practices and tools that we need in order to be successful during our weight loss journeys. And I love what you shared, Shirley, because even with your course, you recognize people still need that connection in that moment, that ability to reach out, send you a text, hop on a quick call, so when they're about to fall back into old habits, they have you there to course correct. For those of you listening and thinking, this sounds really great, but how quickly will I see results if I'm still eating foods that I enjoy? Shirley's clients often begin seeing results within the first few weeks by focusing on that gut-brain connection. She helps uncover the emotional patterns behind overeating and more importantly, how to break them for lasting change. Her mission is very simple but extremely powerful to help people live free from food noise and that extra storage. So you can truly feel at home in your body. She has something that works. I'll drop Shirley's contact information in my show notes so you can connect with her directly if this is where you feel you need support. Until next time.