Understanding Emotional Eating and Stress Management with Jodi Katzin
For the month of July, Go Long is engaging with some experts in diet and nutrition to share their expertise on various topics. For this week, Jodi Katzin, Founder of Just Be Coaching, was generous enough to share her thoughts on diet and burnout, with a special focus on how burnout can lead to poor dietary habits. She then focuses on small shifts you can make to help your mental clarity to feel better during times of high stress, which is really helpful when dealing with the symptoms of menopause.
You can contact Jodi via Instagram (@justbecoachingwithjodi) and her website (www.justbecoaching.me).
The Cycle that Never Seems to Correct Itself
“I eat because I am stressed and I am stressed because I can’t stop eating.” or
“I eat my feelings.”
Can you relate to this vicious cycle? Turning to food in moments of high stress and anxiety is something I am sure we have ALL done at one time or another.
You have had a looong day at work and likely haven’t even stopped to eat lunch…you get home and hit the pantry, and of course all you want at that point is sugar.
So you polish off a row of Oreos, have a handful of jellybeans, some nibs and a scoop of ice cream. Yet instead of feeling calm, you likely feel even more stressed then you did when you walked in the door. The sugar high lasts for a short period of time before it wears off, you get really tired and you start beating yourself up for consuming all that sugar. When this pattern becomes a regular occurrence in your life, it starts impacting your energy levels and mood.
Sugar revs you up but it is short lasting and this erratic eating can lead to depression and increased levels of anxiety. Your hormones are already out of whack due to menopause symptoms.
The speed of most of our lives right now is too fast and many of us are stuck in a permanent state of fight or flight. Many of us are walking through our day to day lives in a constant stress response. This generally leads to burnout.
“You see, our bodies are equipped to deal with stress that lasts for 2-4 minutes – the response that kicks in if you come face to face with a bear in the forest.”
And not only does this lead us into the refrigerator or pantry, it can also shut digestion down, cause an increase in the hormones cortisol and insulin (which leads to us storing more belly fat - a common complaint during menopause), and can impact our body’s ability to assimilate nutrients and our calorie burning capacity. Being in a chronic stress response can also impact sleep and mood, another leading cause of burnout.
Let’s Break the Cycle Now
So how do I end this cycle you might be asking??
I think it is really important to build a toolbox of strategies to manage both your emotional eating AND your stress.
Firstly when you are feeling pulled to eat, I would ask yourself if you are physically or emotionally hungry. Physical hunger tends to come on gradually, your stomach might be growling, you are open to different food options, and a normal portion will satisfy you. When you are emotionally hungry, it usually comes on fast and furious, it tends to be in the form of thoughts rather than physical hunger pangs, you likely crave a specific food and you eat in large volumes until you are uncomfortably full.
The next time you feel tempted to eat, start by thinking about if you could get through an entire apple. If the answer is yes, you are likely legitimately hungry.
My next suggestion would be to PAUSE before eating and ask yourself:
1 - What am I feeling right now?
2 – What do I need right now?
I find that even by taking a few seconds to tune inwards, you can get a lot of information. You might even want to pull out a journal and jot down some thoughts.
Food is often a way to avoid difficult emotions, or you might be really out of sync with what you are actually feeling in a given moment. Which is why wanting to raid your pantry is a good alarm for you to get curious and take the pause.
“Fun fact – it actually only takes 90 seconds for a feeling to pass through your body, so practice sitting with it.”
I think it is also important to explore pleasure in your life. You’re likely in the ‘women over 40’ category. You deserve that. While food can and should be a source of pleasure, the danger is when it becomes the only area in your life that brings you joy. Spend a few minutes doing a pleasure inventory and see what you can add into your life outside of food to make you happy. When your life is filled with activities that bring you joy, you are less likely to reach for the “treats”.
For most of us, emotional eating is often caused by stress. It is easy to be on autopilot and just reach for the food without being fully present. In order to manage your stress, I find it helpful to brainstorm calming activities that help YOU feel relaxed, as we are all different in this way. For example, meditation, yoga, breathwork, getting outside in nature, essential oils…
The take home message here:
Carve out opportunities to bring in calm throughout your day and take you out of that stress response.
When you feel pulled into the kitchen, find the power in the PAUSE.
Most importantly as you try these strategies, always choose curiosity over judgment. The last thing you need is to judge and shame yourself and bring more unwanted stress into your life.
More About Jodi’s Story
After countless diets, cleanses, and working with every health practitioner under the sun, I realized that my food and body issues had very little to do with food alone. The real journey that I needed was an internal job. No one was coming to save me or to hand me a magical fix to my struggles. Berating and hating on myself wasn't getting me closer to any of my goals, and was beating down the little self-confidence I had. I needed to stop focusing on what I could do to finally accept myself, and instead learn to JUST BE as I am now.
Just be happy.
Just be satisfied...
...and JUST BE ME - irrespective of a number on the scale!
I turned my pain into purpose and became certified as an Eating Psychology Coach through the Institute for the Psychology of Eating, in addition to my degree as an Occupational Therapist. I realized that this program was the missing piece I had been looking for to truly unpack and address my deeply ingrained disordered eating patterns.
Today I work with women who are in the throes of emotional eating, binge eating, chronic dieting, or other disordered eating patterns and struggling with body image. I help them peel back the layers behind their ongoing struggle with food to finally make peace with it. I provide them with tools to feel nourished from the inside out, while ending calorie counting and obsessively focusing on the scale. With my guidance and unwavering support, women can learn to JUST BE.
Some Thoughts from Go Long
One of the things I really appreciate about Jodi’s approach is that it aligns with Go Long’s approach around empathy for your struggle, pragmatic solutions that need to work for your life and optimism that you can make the changes you want to make without aiming for perfection.
I’ve seen in all genders that most of us tend to be very hard on ourselves when it comes to our food choices. What is “good”. What is “bad”. We covered this on the Dr. Jill episode of the Go Long show. We all need to learn to ‘JUST BE’ and be kinder to ourselves. After all, we’d probably tell the people we care about most in our lives to do that, so why not give ourselves the same love?
Thank you to Jodi for providing the Go Long community with your experiences and sharing your journey. It’s always ongoing.
Read more about Jodi’s story here. You can contact Jodi via Instagram (@justbecoachingwithjodi) and her website (www.justbecoaching.me).
