‘Nobody Emotionally Eats Carrots!'
SEASON 1 EPISODE 8
with Cassie Christopher
In this episode of Neighbourhood Nutritionist, I talk to Cassie, a Registered Dietitian about emotional eating.
In my conversation with Cassie, we talked about:
Her personal journey from Registered Dietitian to an expert in emotional eating
What emotional eating really means
Cortisol, ghrelin, insulin and leptin
‘All or Nothing’ mentality
The effects of sleep deprivation and dehydration
The ‘urge surfing’ technique
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Cassie Christopher is a Registered Dietitian and Mom to a busy toddler. She supports women in their 40s-60s to get a handle on emotional eating so they can feel more confident in their bodies without depriving themselves of what makes them happy in life.
If you want to connect with Cassie, you can find her on:
Facebook Group: facebook.com/groups/emotionaleatingandwomensweightloss
Instagram: @cassiechristopherrd
Website: cassiechristopher.net
Download Cassie's 11 Ways To Help Emotional Eating here
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How Cassie became an Expert in Emotional Eating
Sure, yeah, I'll share a little bit about how I became an expert in emotional eating. And I kind of say that with a smile on my face, because it's not something I really want to be an expert in. But I became one because I really struggled with emotional eating. And then I can talk about you know what exactly that means. And for me, I noticed that I was turning to food for comfort. When I was in a really stressful time in life, I was getting my master's in nutrition and competing for a small number of spots to become a registered dietitian. And, you know, I was just so stressed out and the only coping mechanism that I really had to wade through all of that stress was eating. And, you know, outwardly I had it all I had, you know, I was the top of my class handsome husband, you know, appeared to be healthy and everything else. But inside, I was really a hot mess. And so for me food, you know, I had a chocolate bar a day really was what I used. And over two years of being in school, I gained 20 pounds. So having actually studying nutrition, and also gaining weight and not being able to stop and knowing what I should be eating. And yet, you know, not eating it, I felt like such a fraud. And really, I felt stuck because nothing I was learning in school had helped me at all. In fact, those things seem to make it way worse, you know, I would try low carb, try counting calories, try you know, eliminating things, try fasting this than the other. And all of that just seemed to make me hungrier and crave chocolate more. So it wasn't until I was out of school, working with clients and seeing what was working for people to lose weight. And I kind of started to piece it all together for myself. And what I really noticed was those people who were able to get a handle on their stress, who were able to be graceful to themselves while making these difficult changes, who were able to balance their blood sugar. All of those things seem to help them and I was able to figure out that the stress hormone cortisol was actually the root of mind problem and the root of of so many others when it came to emotional eating as well.
Restrictive Food Guidelines
A lot of the advice out there is to restrict food in some way or another. And I think the reason that is the advice is, because when when these things are studied, you know, in labs, they're usually studied for three weeks, four weeks, maybe 12 weeks, maybe even a year, if if they can make it happen that long. And the the moral of the story is, if you restrict, whether that be the amount of calories you eat in a day, whether that be you know, stopping eating certain food groups, like, you know, grains, or carbohydrates, or if you only eat during certain times of the day, whatever that restriction looks like for you, restriction is going to lead to weight loss in general, for most people in a short amount of time. But what we know to be true after decades and decades of doing that is that people usually gain that back, if not more, because, you know, cutting out whole food groups is not sustainable for people in their life. And I think that that on a mental, the mindset side of things, people begin to think of that all or nothing, either they don't eat any carbs, or they eat all the carbs, you know, and those extremes are unhelpful for actual sustainable, healthy lifestyles.
What is Emotional Eating?
I define emotional eating as eating for any reason other than hunger. So you may be eating to comfort yourself, you may be eating because you're sad or bored or even happy and celebrating something like, you know, cake at a birthday. It can be eating when you don't need to eat, or it could be choosing larger portions. Or it could be choosing certain foods, you know, maybe you are hungry, but you choose a certain food more emotionally, like nobody emotionally eats carrots as the example I always give. Yeah, and, and this happens for many reasons. But I think most of the time, when people are eating emotionally, they blame themselves. And they say they have no willpower, no self control, no self discipline. But the point that I would like to make is that actually, it's not about willpower. It's about hormonal processes that are that are happening, you know, beneath the surface to cause emotional eating. And you mentioned cortisol. And in fact, cortisol is the primary stress hormone that gets released when we are stressed, it's responsible for fight flight or freeze, you might have heard of, you know, fight or flight, or maybe the freeze was in there too. But those are all reactions, you can have to stress. Cortisol also is important because it controls our circadian rhythm and our sleep cycle. It gets elevated when there are high levels of inflammation in our body, like when there might be a disease process going on. And also cortisol can get released following low blood sugar, maybe you know, there was something that spiked our blood sugar, like candy or pasta or whatever. And then when blood sugar gets lower, cortisol gets released. So cortisol is important in the body gets released for a lot of reasons. But when there's too much of it, you find increased cravings. And also cortisol moves fat from other parts of the body, to the belly as well. And so, you know, so many times people are blaming themselves for these cravings and stress eating and emotional eating, when in fact, there's actually hormones involved.
You know, one of my clients who I was working with, she was amazed to find that her cravings were greatly reduced once she started my programme, and she was telling me like, I just can't believe it. I didn't know if it was placebo effect. But still, I'm not having this nighttime eating. It's so amazing. And I was excited for her. And then one day she reached out to me and said, Help, oh my gosh, I started my period and now I just want to eat everything inside again. What do I do? And so I think that speaks to you know, what you're saying is, especially for women, these hormonal fluctuations throughout life, and then research also shows that cortisol levels when measured in the blood go up when women enter into menopause as well.
Hormones and their Impact on Us
And I think that self compassion is one of the strongest tools to combating emotional eating and high levels of cortisol. And we can definitely get into that more later. Two other hormones, I wanted to mention one being ghrelin, which is just the craziest name for hormone. Ghrelin is essentially an appetite hormone that builds up higher and higher, the longer it's been since you last ate. And so I think of ghrelin almost as probably because of the name, a little gremlin sitting on your shoulder that you know, if you just ate the Gremlins just there, and then the longer it's been, since you ate, the Gremlin might start to whisper and say, Okay, time to eat again. Yeah, you want something to eat, and then longer goes by and the growling gets a little louder and longer goes by and longer goes by until it's been maybe I don't know, six hours since you ate last, maybe more. And that Gremlin is screaming in your ear, eat something and eat something now. And that's essentially what's happening is your brain is receiving this hormone, and essentially telling your body that if you do not get energy, now you are going to die. And so that's that feeling of when you're super hungry, like it's been a long time since you ate and you just will grab anything. And it's not going to be oh, let me grab the carrot sticks. Again, it's going to be let me grab the chips. Let me grab this cookie because your body wants quick energy. And those things deliver quick energy. So you're going to choose higher calorie foods. The longer it's been since you last ate because of high levels of ghrelin.
Transitioning Away from Veganism
I was vegan for 10 years, right. And I really honestly thought that that was the best way. And I'm still a huge advocate for eating plants. You know, we all need vegetables because of the vitamins and minerals like, that should be obvious, but it's just not. But I it became so much of who I was, I found significance and identity and value in it, that I think that the addictions happen because of the fear of what will happen if you publicly change things, whether on a mass scale or on a minor scale, or you feel like a failure. And so all those those lies come into play. Right. So I think that that's kind of the scariest thing is that addictions happen because of if you just said they, it sounds scary. And I honestly it is, but I think that when we look at addictions, we think bulimia, anorexia, you know, binge eating. And then and then now the two are excessive exercise and excessive obsession with health, which is orthorexia. But I still think that there's so much that goes unsaid, because I mean, the health industry is, I think the last statistic that I found from this past few years 4.6, something like that billion dollars per year. That's crazy. And that just shows how obsessed we are with finding solutions, you know.
so often, we again, blame ourselves and we think, Oh, I get home from work. And I just eat everything in sight, what's wrong with me. And it's like, well, your body is hungry. And you've got these appetite hormones literally coursing through your veins. And this Gremlin on your shoulder screaming at you, you know is there's no willpower that can fight that little guy. So I think it's important to understand that. And insulin two is important to know about we think insulin gets talked a lot about in relationship blood sugar management, and you know, helps move the blood sugar from the digested food you eat, from your blood into your cells for energy. And really Insulin helps to put you in fat storage mode. So it's all about losing up energy. And what happens is, if cortisol gets released after a blood sugar spike, and then a low cortisol will have the liver make more blood sugar, and then that relates to more insulin and keeps you in fat storage mode. So high levels of cortisol keep you in fat storage mode, rather than fat burning mode. And I know weight loss is a topic for so many when they think about healthy eating. And it's important to know that actually because of the way these hormones insulin and cortisol are working together, that it can stop you from being able to burn any fat to lose weight. If that stress hormone cortisol is too high.
You know, leptin is another hormone that comes up a lot for people who are trying to lose weight. And leptin is actually created and stored primarily in fat cells. And it helps to regulate energy balance by stopping us from being hungry, which in turn then stops our fat cells from storing more fat. So it's a hormone used as a feedback mechanism to help our bodies. Understand, you know, when we need more energy to store fat or less energy to store fat, and so people who have a lot of fat, then may have trouble. This this cycle, I guess, when there's a lot of fat on board, the body can get disrupted. And it can be harder to get that inhibition or that feeling of satiation, you know, feeling full. And that's what leptin helps you do is it helps you to stay full.
All or Nothing
And I think that stress is a word is a word with a lot of meaning behind it. And you know, there are so many things both internally and externally that affect how stressed we are. Certainly stress management practices, like deep breathing and you know, meditation or yoga or these kinds of things can can help. But something else that can help in helping you feel less stress includes more of an internal factor, which is putting less pressure on yourself to be perfect. I see this with my clients and all or nothing thinking. And really, I would say a lot, if not most people who try to make health changes struggle with all or nothing thinking. And it really looks like this. It looks like they know that they should be, for instance, exercising four times a week, say for an hour, that's their goal they want to get there, they want to go to the gym four times a week for an hour, let's pretend gyms are open. And, and so they they know they need to do that is where they want to go. And maybe they've even done it before, which can make this harder. So that's the all the all is going to the gym four times a week for an hour. But say they struggle, something comes up that the week's half over, they haven't been to the gym once and they know that they're not going to hit their four times a week goal. Well, they go to nothing and say, Oh, well, not this week, I'll try again. Yeah. But in reality, if by Wednesday, you get to the gym once that week or twice that week, that's going to be progress that's going to help you towards your goal of you know, health or whatever it may be. Whereas just skipping it for the week all together, because you're so focused on that perfection that all or nothing. That's really unhelpful. And I see people do that so much. And they say, Well, I just had the cookie might as well just eat the whole, you know, buffet or whatever it is.
The Importance of Sleep
Sleep and cortisol are very closely related. And when one is out of balance, the other will be out of balance. So trouble with sleeping can certainly be due to a cortisol imbalance and addressing that imbalance by you know, working on lifestyle factors and things like that can help sleep. And of course, improving your sleep can can help balance cortisol, so it's really one of those chicken or the egg scenario. But the thing to know is, there was some great research that showed that for every hour of sleep, you are deprived, you will eat I think it was 380 something additional calories. So that is a lot horrifying. It's a lot that's you know, for people in the States, that's a McDonald's cheeseburger worth of I mean, I think it's even less than on the the cheeseburger is actually less calories than what you would take a big man asleep. Yeah, maybe not that quite I actually did this the other day. Like how does this relate to, you know, fast food terms that we can understand. But, but yeah, so sleeping increases that are not sleeping rather increases those cravings for unhealthy foods increases the need for comfort. So you're you're eating to sue the motions as well, and really can have a big impact on overall health goals.
How to Deal with Cravings
Yeah, so if there's always prevention, and in the moment strategies, and you know, I can speak to prevention in a moment. But in the moment strategies like when you're having a craving you don't want it involves a, a series of really checking in with yourself and a level of self awareness. And so I recommend that people pause when they notice they're having a craving, first of all, celebrate that you're noticing that because how many times do we have a craving, grab a bag of chips and don't even notice that whole cycle? So noticing the craving is a good first step and then checking in Am I hungry? You know, is my body feeling hunger? Usually you feel hunger in your stomach, you know, or in your lower body. But if you're feeling this drive to eat in your chest or above, it's probably not related to hunger. And if you are hungry, what is it that you want to eat? If it's, you know, really unhealthy foods, you could ask yourself why and if it's because you need comfort. Well, again, why? What is it that you need comfort from? And oftentimes what people will tell me is that they The reason they're eating is because they deserve a reward I think That's the common man's playbook. It's like I've had a hard day, I deserve a reward, I'm going to reward myself with this thing that I think that I shouldn't be eating. And what they're doing with that reward is they're actually avoiding feeling what it's like to have a hard day, or they are numbing out so that they don't have to feel their hard day. And so one thing that's important to know is emotions are meant to be transient, these feelings are meant to be things we feel and then, you know, float away, if you will. And what happens when you avoid or numb something is you get stuck in that emotion, you don't fully move through it, it's a very uncomfortable feeling, actually. And it ends up if you're using food to cope with that feeling, well, you end up just using more food to cope with the discomfort of avoiding the emotion, if that makes sense.
And one of the strategies that helps with with people who are emotional eating and having these cravings is a strategy called urge surfing, which was originally developed for alcohol and substance abuse. And it's this idea that these cravings in these urges will pass that they come upon us, and then they go away. And using techniques like this can help people to recognise that not eating and feeling their emotion for a time isn't going to kill them, you know, that you you will survive that even if it's uncomfortable. And in fact, when you get to the other side, you find that the craving is gone, because cravings have a shelf life, they don't last all day, they don't last forever. Now, if you are the it's interesting, because even in the research, it shows that this technique works when you allow yourself to stay partially aware of the craving. So where you're not that you're like thinking about how much you're having a craving for the whole 20 to 30 minutes that this urge is upon you. And you can also completely distract yourself because then it will just come back stronger, there has to be some level of awareness, some amount of feeling without just completely giving in and becoming lost in the middle of the craving, because that'll just make you give into it altogether. But I say this, because I think sometimes we are afraid to feel our difficult days, and we're afraid to feel even our cravings. And so we just give into them immediately. Because we believe the lie that we don't have enough willpower, self control or self discipline. But in reality, once you start to balance some of these hormones and understand what they're doing in your body, you have so much more freedom to exercise tools like urge surfing, and feel more in control.
Limiting Beliefs
I think that the reason people and in my experience the reason my clients a lot of times don't believe in themselves is because they they look at their track record where they've tried to make changes in the past and they've gotten stuck. And that all or nothing thinking and you know, they, they've gone to the nothing, or they've tried to make changes, but their cortisol, you know, hormone was all over the place. And so they had so many cravings and they couldn't find it or that whatever the diet was, they weren't allowed to eat enough. And so, you know, their ghrelin was high, or what, what have you their insulin was always high. And so they were in fat storage mode, rather than fat burning mode. You know, you I joke sometimes that you can't fight your hormones, they win every time. But really, that is true to some extent that it you have to balance and work with your hormones to set yourself up for success. And of course, change those unhelpful mindsets that keep you giving up.
Key Takeaways
Here are Cassie’s three actionable steps for you:
Eat regularly throughout the day.
And that's going to help keep ghrelin low, and help to balance cortisol.Eat enough protein.
Make sure you're always getting protein to help decrease the amount of insulin that gets released in your body so that you aren't staying in fat storage mode for too long.Find out how to manage your stress.
Really take a good hard look. Maybe you need to say no to things maybe you need to ask for help. Maybe you need a regular stress management practice or to learn more about self compassion to get away from that all or nothing thinking whatever it may be for you. Find a way to manage that stress.
The One Food That Takes You To Your Happy Place
As I was thinking about this question, I kept thinking of specific foods and then I would, you know, my brain would move out and I think about who I was with and what I was doing. And in the end, I couldn't think of one specific food that takes me to my happy place. I actually think that it is the person that I eat my food with. And that is my husband, for me is the instigator of my happy place. And we love to try new foods together and go on food adventures. I have memories of Poolside chips and guacamole in Mexico and Porto tacos in Portugal and you know, chef's specialties closer to home. And those memories of these fun food experiences with him and in different places around the world are really my happy place and I smile just thinking about it. So I appreciate your question.
