Now these two women look pretty much exactly the same. The two types of eaters look exactly the same on the surface, but their root issue is different. At least that’s what I’m seeing in my practice. And understanding which you are can be very helpful in many regards. So what I’d like to say is there’s a stress anxiety eater and then there’s an emotional eater.

So the two types are stress anxiety, and emotional eater, and essentially the stress and anxiety eater eats well all day. Doesn’t have a lot of thoughts about food. Can relatively stick to any sort of meal plan, has really no food drama until stress hits. 

And then when stress hits, she turns to food for comfort. She turns to food to push the feelings down. She turns to food because she’s always done that. So through the ups and downs of life, one of her coping mechanisms is food. 

And I want you to just recognize that the way I talk so plainly about this is because it is just so judgment free. I just recognize that we are all stinking human beings and we all are trying our best and we are all trying to get through life.

So I can look at the other humans that I live with who binge on perhaps worrying about their finances and checking their financial apps, and then that’s what brings them comfort. And through the ups and downs of life, maybe that’s what they turn to. Some people turn to a couple glasses of wine. Some people turn to exercising. Some people turn to yelling and anger and frustration. 

So I mean, come on, let’s just recognize. That we’re all humans learning how to cope with being humans on earth, and that stress eater is the person who uses food for that time, but pretty much outside of that time. They’re a normal eater, which means they eat when they’re hungry, they stop when they’re full and they go about their life.

But when stress hits, their brain goes into tornado thinking and all bets are off. And right in the pantry. The other type of eater is the emotional eater. And the emotional eater is someone who eats for emotions. And that sounds like, well. But if you’ve ever been an emotional eater like I have, then you know that any moment of the day you are having an emotion.

So you could be happy and you eat. You could be sad, and you eat. You could be frustrated, lonely, offended, wanting to procrastinate, and then you eat. It’s almost like every emotion feels so uncomfortable and feels unsafe, and so to seek safety, we turn to food.

So the difference between the stress eater and the emotional eater is that the stress anxiety eater, the stress comes first, and then the food is what they’re using to cope. Is the symptom, if you will, eating is the symptom. Eating is their solution. And the emotional eater, their relationship with the food is just so enmeshed that then becomes the source of stress in her life.

So let me say that again. With the stress, anxiety eater, stress comes and then she eats. With the emotional eater, the way that she eats in her relationship with food is what causes her stress. Now, she might then eat because of that, which I did as well. But just to know that that emotional enmeshment with food is what I like to say is the emotional eater.

And so what I find is that if we can take that stress and anxiety eater and truly the emotional eater. And help her recognize when she’s being triggered to eat. We can start to detect what those patterns are and be able to help her prevent that or when she is triggered, be able to calm down so that she does not go into tornado thinking and does not end up in the pantry.

Lemme tell you a little bit more about the difference I think between the stress anxiety eater and the emotional eater. And again, this is just me and observing the over 5,000 women that I’ve worked with. 

Okay. And just the women who come to coaching. And what they’re asking for is that the stress anxiety eater, like I said, she can follow a plan for a pretty extended period. The emotional eater cannot, I could not go more than three to four days. 

That stress, anxiety eater, she turns to food mainly when she’s triggered or stressed. Otherwise, like I said, there’s not a lot of food drama, but that emotional eater, there’s always a reason to eat. I used to say I’m happy, I eat, I’m sad. I eat, it’s Tuesday, so I eat. It just didn’t matter. 

Now the stress, anxiety eater. She is aware of what drives her to eat. She can clearly see I was okay and that I wasn’t, and she can usually pinpoint the where I wasn’t peace and it was this happened or that happened, and sometimes the emotional eater is aware of her triggers, but often it just sort of feels blindsided, like I have no idea how that happened.

And often because that emotional eater is plagued by food noise and food noise, are those intrusive, distracting thoughts about food? And if we know that what you’re thinking about leads to your behaviors, if you’re thinking about food often, then you’re probably eating food often. 

What I really love for that stress and anxiety eater, and what I want you to hear is that what you’re noticing is what’s throwing you off from eating the way that you know will lead to your healthy weight are certain events. In your response to those events, you are being triggered. And so the fix for you is to start to identify what those triggers are, learn how to handle those triggers and be able to prevent them. It’s very, very simple. 

Now, the emotional eater, what we want is for you to also be able to identify what your triggers are. We want you to be able to support yourself when you are triggered without food, which you can learn. But another skill for you to learn my friend is what will truly quiet food noise for you, which is retraining your brain that all food is safe, and that food will be reliable and consistent.

I wanna do a little food noise teaching here because I’ve been teaching about food noise in different workshops, and the truth is that what heals food noise, which are those constant, distracting, intrusive thoughts about food. Usually there are not only about food, but about the way your body looks.

And they’re usually not just about your food and your body, but it’s also about the food noise about other people’s body and their food and the judgments that you’re making on that. And you also believe that you are being judged often for the way that you eat, you’re often feeling judged so that. You are more prone than to eat normally or even less in front of people, and then hide and sneaky and eat large amounts of food. That was my pattern at least.  

And so to heal that food noise. Being able to create safety with all foods, not just within the food rules that you have learned about. And if you haven’t heard my podcast about food noise, please go listen to that ’cause that’ll tell you a little bit more about the safety that’s being created with the food rules.

But finding safety in all food and then also retraining your brain and your biology and your nervous system, that food will be reliable. If you are a chronic dieter and you have a history of restriction, then likely your biology says, oh no, we’re not sure. Is this the week that we were like on that food rule or not on that food rule?

You guys, I have to tell you a funny story. I remember before I came into food recovery, I had a. Like a week where I was like, I’m eating everything raw. It was like this raw food thing that I was doing. I thought it was just gonna be super helpful because it was live food and you may have heard about something like this.

And the way that I ate protein, I would take raw fish and I would quote in like air quotes, cook it in air, quotes with lemons, lemon juice. And so that was one of my food rules. And so if you have been on and off food rules and diets, we have trained our nervous system to get food when it’s coming in and always look out for an opportunity to eat because it didn’t know if we would actually feed ourselves well. 

And I promise you that you can recover from food noise. I used to have food noise 85 to 90% of the day, and I just don’t know. So definitely, listen to that podcast. That will help you if you are really into food noise. 

Okay. But both of these women, I’m gonna tell you there are three things that no matter if you are a stress anxiety eater, or you are an emotional eater, all of us have been chronic dieters, chronic food rulers.

The women I work with come to me with big bags of food rules. I think of them as like Santa Claus with a big bag of food rules. And it’s just depending on the week, which one are we gonna use? 

Okay. These women, also, both of them, experience that I blew at thinking and can turn mess ups into multiple mess-ups for hours or days. And both of these women need to be surrounded by other women who get them, who understand them. Because if you’ve been listening to this podcast long enough, you get. That I get you.

You can clearly see that I’m talking in a way that you aren’t hearing other places, and it’s not because Denise Jelinek is fantastic and is just all knowing. It’s just because I’ve been there. And I commit to it daily to not be there. And because of that daily commitment, I know that is what is required is a daily commitment. It doesn’t just naturally go away. 

In fact, I was coaching a woman today who said, oh my gosh, you know Denise, I really have been just doing this in my head and thinking, well, I’ve got this down. She’s been in our community a year, and what happens when we don’t have that daily commitment is we slowly by slowly get distance away.

The cool part is that she knew where to come back. She knew who to ask. She knew where to come and get coaching. She knew that there was somebody who cared would get her and get her head back on straight and get her refocused. 

So that’s the third thing is I just want you to know that being out there by yourself, whether you’re an anxiety eater. A stress eater. I’m putting those in the same category. Stress, anxiety eaters or an emotional eater. You all, we all need each other. We just all do.

So I hope this has helped you just get a little bit more clarity, and hopefully you can start to see some of the solutions that would be helpful for you if you find that really being able to identify what your triggers are so that you can not only prevent them, but also know what to do when you are triggered.

Then I want you to go to weightlosswiththeholyspirit.com. We have a program called Untroubled, and Untroubled is a six week program that slowly by, slowly, by slowly helps you tune into your body to know when your body’s being triggered, even if your mind doesn’t know it, how you can detect the sensations in your body that you’re about to be triggered, that you’re about to go into tornado thinking, and you’re about to go into the pantry.

So I teach you how to detect those sensations in your body. I teach you how to detect the thoughts that are about ready to take you into the pantry. And once we start each week developing this personal trigger map, you’ll then be able to not only prevent the triggers, but when you are triggered return to calm.

So that you don’t escalate into that tornado thinking because the truth is you guys changing the way that we eat or losing weight is usually not about the food because we are all very clear on the food that will lead us to a healthy weight. What is throwing us off and unable to eat the food that we know will lead us to a healthy weight is what’s happening in our mind. And our mind so often will get triggered and then we turn to food. 

So finding that personal trigger map, looking at your specific body and the signs that your body is giving you. It puts you in the driver’s seat and you will no longer feel out of control about your food decisions. You will no longer feel like food is controlling you because you will start to see when your body is starting to become vulnerable to these triggers where your mind is starting to become vulnerable.

You’ll even start to notice the situations that create the triggers for you. So it’s just really golden information to step by step by step, get eyes on your own life, on your own triggers, and along the way you get to experiment with different things, see what’s working along the way. You get weekly coaching, you come, you chat with me, we find out what went well, what needs work.

You are not meant to do this alone. You’re not meant to do this alone. And the only reason why you aren’t doing it now is because no one’s ever slowed down your life and told you how to find what your triggers are. 

And I know your brain kind of thinks like, oh, I already know what triggers me really. I’m gonna guess that you think you know what’s triggering you, but it’s truly only when you get like six or seven steps into an escalated trigger.

But what if you could detect it at like step zero? What if you knew, it’s about to start. What if you knew how to take it back down to negative two? I’m just promise you that it’s just a skill and once you learn it, and once you practice it with other women who are practicing this, you’ll then be able to know when you’re being triggered and what to do.

So go to weightlosswiththeholyspirit.com. Get in Untroubled and I can see you next week for coaching. You can start today finding out what your personal triggers are. In fact, the very first lesson is how your body is telling you that it’s about to be triggered. Isn’t that cool? You can spend this whole week learning that this whole weekend.

It’s a skill. It’s a skill. You weren’t born knowing it. You’re not gonna be good at it at first, but you can be taught it and you can practice it. The women who are currently in untroubled are having massive shifts every single week, every single week.

They’re saying things like, I can do hard things without food. They’ve said, I’ve moved into the next week, and my mind was blown. This makes so much sense. Someone said, I’m seeing everything through different set of glasses. I love this woman says, I feel a lot of stress and anxiety. But I’ve noticed it’s actually perceived stress.

And when I stop and think about what I actually have to get done, it’s very manageable. And see you guys, when you can stop and develop that skill to see that is very manageable. You are not going into tornado thinking, which means you’re staying out of the pantry.

I love this woman, said, I’m feeling less weight in my thoughts and in my body. Another woman said, I’m learning to recognize what is in my control and what’s not in my control, and I’ll tell you what are the things that’s leading you into tornado thinking is trying to control things that are not in your control.

Another woman said, I’m loving discovering who is really in my control, and she said, and I’m so happy it’s not. Me who has to control them. She just felt it was so freeing. Another woman who really suffered from tornado thinking said, I feel so much peace and not so rushed and panicked. I’m looking through life in a different lens, you guys, and this was only through one or two weeks in the untroubled work.

So, I know I’ve spent a lot of time talking to you about un troubled, but the thing is that when you can recognize what triggers you, and now I know your brain is thinking, you do know what’s triggering you, but so often I find that women understand their triggers, but only once they get to step six or seven in feeling triggered.

And if we can help you detect the signs in your body of when you’re becoming triggered, like at step zero, then you never have to get into 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,.. step 50, where you now are halfway through a bag of potato chips before you even realize it.

So you can start this work today. The very first lesson is learning how to detect inside your body when you are about to be triggered. It is one little skill every week that you will practice and they build upon, so you don’t even have to know how to do this.

So go to weightlosswiththeholyspirit.com. Check out Untroubled, and you can be joining me every single week in making progress so that by the end of six weeks, by the end of six weeks, you’ll be a woman who can encounter stress and not turn to food. You can still let stress be in your life, but it will not drive you to the pantry.

And isn’t that truly what we all want? We don’t expect our lives to be perfect. We just want to be able to get through the ups and downs of life without stress eating. To go to weightlosswiththeholyspirit.com, start untroubled today. So thank you for listening.

And I just want to encourage you to do weight loss like you do everything else in your life. The Catholic way, which just means putting God first, keeping God our God, not the scale, not weight, not our food. Let’s lose weight the Catholic way. 

All right, everybody have a blessed day.