Do You Eat for Emotional Reasons?

Here is the transcript to follow along with the video, Do You Eat For Emotional Resons

Do You Eat for Emotional Reasons?

Kim McLaughlin  00:01

Hey, hi, hello, hello, hello. Hi everyone, this is Kim McLaughlin, and we are live food freedom live. And this is our second day of food freedom live. I’m so glad you’re here, we are going through three days of talking about food, food freedom, how to move out of feeling overwhelmed with food. And if you are struggling with food, if you over eat, this is the place to be because this is what we’re talking about today, today is that the conversation we’re going to have is about emotional eating. And don’t worry if you’re not sure if you’re an emotionally, you’re we’re going to work through that today to help you figure that out. So today’s emotional eating yesterday we talked about, we talked about the diet mindset and how diets fail you. I encourage you to listen to that day. If you get into the dieting mindset if you didn’t listen yesterday, lots of really, really important information. I think it’s what I talked about yesterday is that it is the starting spot to start wondering what’s going on for me with food and what am I doing? And what do I need to do differently. So go back watch today, watch with us today. But also go back to yesterday and listen to when we talk about diet mindset. Tomorrow, we’re going to be talking about mindfulness. And that’s super important. But today, let’s get way into emotional eating. What I want to do is first talk Well, yesterday I talked about I qualified in terms of where I’ve been over my life. In terms of dieting, I shared a lot with you about my progression through diets and how in the end, it finally became really clear to me that I was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. And I felt worse and worse about myself. And worse and worse, worse and worse about my body. And I know a lot of you feel the same way. What I talked about yesterday is a lot of my clients tell me that they hate themselves, and they hate their bodies. And I don’t want that for you. And I don’t want that for anybody. And there truly is a way out of that. So today we’re gonna get into more of that with the emotional eating. I am a licensed psychotherapist, I am a coach, on a blogger, I have a podcast called feed your soul with Kim.

Kim McLaughlin  02:36

This is what I do. I am an intuitive eating specialist, a counselor and intuitive eating I have eating sorter certificate. So I help people in a lot of different ways with food. And what I found is we’ve got to start getting clear about emotions got to get started clear about emotions. And what I want you to start thinking about is how might your emotions have gotten in with you and kind of affected you in terms of eating? It’s a little hard to walk through. But I want I want to work that through with you. Actually, before we do that I missed out I forgot to tell you we have our playbook. This is food freedom live playbook. If you didn’t get it, oh my god, it’s a standalone I was telling people about it. It’s a standalone book that is 18 pages of information of all the things you need to know about food freedom, and then you have success. What did I call it success skills at the end where you do some journaling and start thinking about what your success skills will be. So in the down in the comments, I’ll put the link for food freedom live the playbook, please sign up for it. It’s really good. It’s only $9 Oh, and if you get that you get the playbook you get the success skills and you get a free one hour q&a call with me. One hour with me. Oh my god, you guys you get it asked me all the questions, we get to talk about all the stuff. We’re going to talk about it together. So I really encourage you to sign up for the playbook. If for anything playbooks super cool, but also for the hour-long q&a group call with me. I think you’re gonna like it. Everybody loves the opportunity to talk about what’s going on for them with food and we get more clarity for you individually. The other thing I wanted to tell you Sorry, I was hopping into all of the stuff I want to talk about today but I forgot to go over. We are having a drawing this week. So I’m going to give five people my book called feed your soul. I didn’t have this free yesterday feed your soul nourish your life, a six step system to peace with food. It’s got everything. It’s got everything in it and I want to send it to you for free And I’m going to pick five people that send me their name and address. So send it to info at feed your soul unlimited.com. info at feed your soul unlimited.com, I’m going to put the link again, I’ll put it in the comments so that you can do that, but send me an email. And also, I’d love to hear what your takeaways are from this live and what you’re learning and what’s kind of coming true for you. Okay, so let’s go into emotions. One of the first things I want to do with you is talk with you about one of my

Kim McLaughlin  05:37

things I do with my emotions. And I like to start before I tell you about all the emotions, like let’s just go over something that’s really good. That helps me set the tone. For my day I like to use I have different cards that I use. And some of you might have seen I do lives with my animators, animators, I love them, animators 50 affirmation cards to help you help yourself without the self helpy ness. They’re super cute. They’re super fun. And I thought I’d pull a card today from an formators. And what I do is I literally do this in my life, I do this in the morning where I I kind of just shuffle the deck. And then there’s one that generally pops out at me that kind of just gets my kind of gets my attention. And this one just got my attention. Ooh, look at that. And they always are spot on, they make me think about something different. And when we’re talking about emotions today, this is a way to start using some tools that you have to check in with yourself and get you on the right emotional path or the path that works for you for the day. So this my affirmation is, if you can see it, it’s called personal growth. And that’s perfect for today. So it’s a frog on a on a large bicycle. And it says as I move toward greater consciousness, I feel old thoughts and habits fall away. like training wheels on a bike, they helped me get to where I am. But now I can ride. I don’t need those slow and crumbly wheels, except when I’m making big or bike analogies, except when I’m making bike analogies. So personal growth, it’s about letting go of the old letting it fall away. Like the training wheels on a bike when you were riding a bike when you were a kid, you had training wheels, and then as you got better and better you let them flow off. That’s what we’re talking about. This was perfect today, right? This was what we’re talking about in terms of emotional eating. What what we want to do first is notice whether you are an emotional eater, and I will often have people tell me, Kim, I’m not an emotional eater. I just overeat. I don’t eat when upset or sad or angry. And like, it’s not, it’s not a one for one where like, I get upset, I feel sad. And I eat Oh, I’m sad. I’m going to eat. It’s very, it’s much more nuanced than that. So how do you know if you’re an emotionally I’m going to read you some qualifying statements you eat when you’re not hungry, eat when you’re not hungry. So how is that connected to emotions? Well, if we’re not following what our body says, there’s something else going on with us that’s leading us to eat. And one of them can be emotions. So when you’re eating when you’re not hungry. I could, if I talk to you privately, if we talk, I probably could figure out with you what feelings were coming up that led you to overeat. So eating when you’re not hungry, using food to make you feel good, right? So it can be once again not that I feel sad, I feel upset, I feel lonely, I feel angry. And then I eat but then I just something’s wrong, something’s wrong, and I eat to feel good. And what we know, we know this food makes you feel good. Food makes you feel good. It makes your tummy feel good. It makes your mouth feel good. Especially certain foods are kind of light up your brain and go ooh, that that tastes good. And so when we’re not feeling our best, he emotionally will turn to food to help us out. And I want to start talking about this in more of a conscious way so that you notice I’m not feeling quite right now I’m feeling off and I want to eat well, feeling off and eating. They don’t correlate because food is meant to nourish your body. Not nurture your soul. Right? So using food to make you feel good. Using food in situations where you feel uncomfortable. How often has that happened? My God. When you’re at a party and you don’t know anybody, let me get some food. Let me eat when you’re at a family gathering Miss Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, you’re in a family gathering and you eat. Right? That is uncomfortable situations. So if we started to notice that we’re feeling uncomfortable and we’re eating, well, then we can start making a different decision. But we got to notice that we’re feeling uncomfortable, right, we have to notice that feeling. How do you know if you’re an emotional eater Another way is if you eat too overfall. Eating too overfall means

Kim McLaughlin  10:27

we’re not paying attention to our body, we’re not paying attention to what’s really going on inside of us. And we’re, we’re kind of disconnected from it. So that’s another way that we can notice if we’re an emotional eater, feeling ashamed, feeling ashamed when you overeat. Shame is a deep, dark feeling that is connected to not thinking you’re good enough. I’m not okay. I’m not good. And that feeling of ashamed when you overeat is pretty big. And feeling the shame can go with eating and secret, hiding the wrappers, hiding it in your car, throwing it away underneath everything, so nobody can see it. Hiding, I used to do this where I would try and hide, I eat things. And I would try and make it look like it didn’t cut more than what I did, or cut, you know, cut out more out of whatever thing I was eating. And I would try and kind of hide how much I ate. And I felt really ashamed that I would be over eating and hiding the food. It was horrible if I felt really bad about myself. And then if I got called out on it, oh my god, I even got I felt more ashamed, I felt more ashamed if somebody found the wrapper or notice more of the food was gone. Like who ate all this stuff like, not me. And I felt really ashamed. So notice, if you’re feeling ashamed when you overeat, or even feeling ashamed when you eat, that’s a sign of emotional eating, feeling bad about your body. That is another sign of emotional eating is in there really connected that we have really got this connection of when I eat, I feel bad about my body. When I eat, I feel bad about my body, I don’t like what we make the connection is I’m going to get fat. I don’t like what I just done. I hate myself, I did it again. And we feel bad about our bodies when we emotionally eat, and they begin to be connected. And what I want to do is start disconnecting all of those from each other. The thing that I talk about is I call it the six components to feed your soul. Six components and they are physical, which connected yesterday with the diet with dieting and how you feel physically in your body. So physical, emotional, what we’re talking about today, thoughts how the thoughts make you want to overeat or make think bad thoughts about yourself. The fourth one is lifestyle. And that’s how food shows up in holidays and family gatherings and all the places we go and also how we live our lives, how we live our lives, right. The fifth one is mindfulness, which we’re going to talk about tomorrow in our third day live. And the last one is the sixth one is self love. And it is the idea that when we don’t love ourselves, we overeat. And we hate ourselves when we overeat, that’s that these all these six components, they really connect together. When you think about it, I like to pull them apart so that you can get each of the six and learn about them and learn about how it affects you. And then we talk about how they interact with each other. Right. So those six come into play when we’re talking about emotional eating, and whether kind of whether it you qualify and whether it fits for you. So emotional eating. So think of those when I give you six different descriptions. And if you fit any of them, you might be an emotional eater. If you fit one of them, maybe not if you fit to, maybe if you fit more than that. Yeah. And this is the time to start seeing that and to start recognizing that these things are out of line. And what happens is, is that what we tend to go to is what we talked about yesterday is we go to the diet, right? We go to dieting and what we know we talked about yesterday is it’s what 256 billion dollar company. And it worked, it wouldn’t be a growing company, it wouldn’t be a growing industry think about that. The weight loss industry would not be growing by leaps and bounds. If it worked,

Kim McLaughlin  15:17

if it worked, you wouldn’t have to keep trying it. What happens is when we do a diet, I’m going back to the diet mindset yesterday, because it’s super important is that what we do if it’s a diet is that we think that we’re wrong. We think that we’re wrong. And we want to make ourselves bad. Think we’re the ones who are at fault when maybe it’s the diet, and maybe it’s dieting, that’s a sign of self love, is to notice that maybe it’s not me, maybe it’s out there. And maybe I need to do something different. And this is what I’m presenting to you in these three days is how do we do it differently? How do we look at it differently? Because I promise you going on another diet is doing the same old thing. When they call it definition of insanity? Doing the same old thing expecting different results? Same old thing, different results. So consider, if you feel kind of charged with me talking about emotional eating, then no, there’s no way no way I am like, well, maybe, maybe you are. Because if you’re having a big reaction, some of you out there going Yeah, Kim, I know, that’s me, I get it. That’s me, I get it. And good for you for noticing it. Because I suspect there was a day where you didn’t recognize it. Because I know for me there was absolutely there was like I don’t emotionally eat. I just overeat because I’m because I want to I just eat because I do that I had no kind of idea about what it was about for me. And so the first step is just kind of wondering for yourself. So then if you do that, you start noticing it and why is emotional eating so important is because we start to do the emotional eating and it works for a moment. And then it doesn’t. Right? It works. And then it doesn’t. So we have the point where we eat, or I’m sorry, the point where you have the feeling and then we eat. We’ve never dealt with the emotion. We never dealt with it. And so the eating does not. It does not settle emotions. Okay, so let’s talk about what can help because what we know is that when we have emotions, and we eat, it doesn’t fix it. It doesn’t fix it, it actually makes everything worse. So what could you do? What could you do? First, you got to notice, that’s what I started with the list of the definitions, you’ve got to notice that you’re an emotional eater. And I encourage you that with that, to start noticing it tonight, just start noticing Kim gave me these you know, these six, these six definitions of emotional eating. How many of them do affect me, I have actually my freebie on feed your soul unlimited.com There’s a little freebie that pops up with EMI and emotional eater. And you can walk through that. I mean, if you don’t remember any of these, get the playbook that I was just talking about we talked about and then there are else get the freebie on my website at feed your soul unlimited.com. And notice if you’re an emotional eater, notice if you eat for emotional reasons. So we got to notice it. And then we’ve got to acknowledge it like, oh, that’s what that was. And when we do that, we are not doing it to berate ourselves. We’re doing it to free ourselves. It’s freedom. What did they call us today? I call this live food freedom. Freedom. It’s free freedom to know what’s going on and to acknowledge it. So notice the feelings and acknowledge it. Oh, I ate for this reason. I eat for this reason.

Kim McLaughlin  19:17

We had a death in our family this last week and super been I’ve been feeling super emotional about it. And I noticed it. I acknowledged it and noticed if I felt like going towards food, right? Because then it’s like, oh, this is what’s going on for me right now. I’m feeling sad and upset, and I want to eat and then I get to think about do I really want to eat? Am I hungry? How’s this gonna make me feel I walk through all these steps that I have. We’re gonna talk later about emotionally in solutions. I have all these steps that we go through to start noticing the feelings and then like moving Literally, what do you ask yourself point by point by point, I walked through it all, and I didn’t overeat. I didn’t overeat. But I definitely not. And I definitely, definitely acknowledged my feelings. So the third thing you have to do is identify what feeling is it oh my gosh, that’s hard for people. sad, mad, happy, anxious, bored, lonely, tired. Those are general kind of all encompassing feelings underneath those, you can get other kinds of feelings that come up. But those are the feelings that are generally that I will ask people happy, mad, sad, anxious, bored, lonely. which one fits. Because if you kind of have this short list, then it’s easier to figure it out. And what I like to do is take a deep breath and ask myself, you know, I knew this week when we had the death in our family is that I was feeling sad. I could feel it. I’ve done this enough, where I’ve noticed my feelings enough that I can notice like, oh, I feel I just feel sad. I feel sad. And I recognized it. I recognized it. And then the next part is fourth is asking what those emotions are trying to tell you. Sadness. For me, it was like sadness, what are you trying to tell me? Well, I’m sad that this person in our life has passed. I feel sad about that. And it told me that it also what the emotions were trying to tell me is, is, is I need to talk about feeling sad, and I need to just feel sad, and know that the next one is then asked, then what do you need to do to take care of yourself to take care of those emotions. So with the sadness, I talked about how sad I was, we took a walk, my husband and I, we cried, and we lit a candle for aunt that passed. Just to kind of it made us feel our family, we prayed and we, you know, lit a candle for her just because enter her husband, our uncle. So we did that. And that was, it felt really good, I can feel emotional when I tell you that because the sadness isn’t gone. And what I did was I use what I called my wellness toolbox. And that’s how I move through the feelings. And so I don’t overeat. And I move through the feelings because I can acknowledge day that I still feel sad. We’re still grieving, and, and that that’s okay, and that I have my wellness toolbox. So what do I do I journal, I meditate, I talk, I talk about it, I noticed the feelings, I use my affirmation cards, right, my, my affirmation cards to help me take care of those emotions. So those are the things I do that are an app, my active plan, so that I deal with the feelings because what I know is that when I deal with the feelings, I feel better, there’s more self love and caring towards myself, and I don’t overeat. Or if I do overeat, I noticed what it is. And like, it’s just all it makes me feel good at this moment. But it’s not my ongoing plan. It’s not my ongoing plan to deal with those feelings. Right? If food is my plans, deal with all my feelings, I’m screwed. Because it doesn’t, we know this, right? If I eat for my, if, if I eat for my feelings, the feeling hasn’t gone away. And I actually feel worse, because I now feel angry at myself, get angry that I over ate, I am afraid I’m going to gain weight, my body doesn’t feel good. All kinds of things happen when I eat for emotional reasons. Because what we want to do is move into eating for physical reasons, right? What I told those six components, physical is the first one, hungry and full, are really what we look to as the guidance towards whether we eat or not. That’s a lot of information. And I just want to encourage you get the playbook

Kim McLaughlin  24:19

because it can walk you through some pieces of what we did. And then there’s the success pages that are really helpful. And I want you to consider that. If these things if all these things I’m talking about yesterday about the diet mindset today about emotional eating. If you answered yes, then let’s get you some help. Let’s get you a different way to do it. Because I promise you that dieting industry doesn’t have your best intentions in mind because they want to make a lot of money and they have been it’s growing and growing. I want to help you feel better. That’s my goal. That’s my goal. I want to help you feel better. I want you to have food freedom. So what we have is Is the program I wanted to tell you just a little bit about is called emotionally eating solutions. Because I don’t think it’s fair for me to come on here and talk about emotional eating. And that you have to do something different. If I don’t give you an option of what you could do different, just not right. What I like about emotionally eating solutions is it’s an eight week Do It Yourself course, it goes through all of the six components, it gives you a lot of doable, you can do it really at your own pace. And it’s super affordable, it’s super affordable. And I want you to get on it now. Because what’s going to happen is next month in, in the middle of April, the price is going to go up, the price is going to go up, I’m going to revamp the program, put some more things in it, which you’ll have access to. So don’t worry that you’re going to get you’ll get the newer version, and also what I’m adding in starting in April, I’m doing a monthly call with everybody in the program. So you’ll get a opportunity to ask me questions. And you’ll also get an opportunity to talk with other people in the program. What I’ve gotten consistent feedback on is people in the program wants to talk to other people in the program and talk about how they feel and what their situations are. And they want to learn from each other. And we’re going to do that. We’re starting with once a month where it’s going to be a q&a, a tart, a chance to ask questions to listen to other people, because there’s so much learning that happens from the questions other people ask, right, the things I’m talking with you about today are based on what my experience is my personal experience, my professional experience, but also what other people have asked me, and what other people have said are their concerns and their problems. So the emotionally eating solutions is the way to get clarity. Because you don’t want to do this alone. You don’t want to do it alone. And this is something that is really important. And it to me, it’s a lifelong process. It’s not a one and done. For me learning about my feelings, learning how my feelings how they affect me and how I feel or how I live my life is an ongoing day by day. That’s why I love what I call my wellness toolbox is every day I use my wellness toolbox, so that I can feel better and feel better and feel better. And food becomes less of an issue. I was thinking of that like food really didn’t become when our aunt died, it didn’t become an issue for me because I have all of my tools. Sometimes it does become an issue for me but just not always not like it used to I used to feel out of control. And everybody I work with feels out of control. And I want you to to know that there’s something different and that I’m on your side. And I want to make sure that you get all the help you need. So that’s that emotionally eating solutions is my the course that I really want to encourage you to get it’s going to be listed in the comments. So have a look at it, I encourage you to get it now the price will be going up next month. And it this is the best time to get in when we’re making some changes and you’re going to have access to all those changes. I really appreciate that you guys have been here today I made a commitment to make this a half hour so that you can get in and get out get some good information and have some doable so consider your doable for today. First is email me info at feed your soul unlimited.com and asked to get this book five people are getting it this week is the freebie. So I just need your to email me at info at feed your soul unlimited.com And send me your name and your address. And for the first five people we’re sending out the book. Easy peasy. The other thing I want you to do is consider if you’re an emotional eater, look at your eating tonight. And notice if there are these emotions or if you’re eating for reason other than hunger, right? Am I’m eating and I’m not hungry. I wonder what’s going and just

Kim McLaughlin  29:11

do that. I call it being the detective. Just wonder. I wonder what’s going on right now. I wonder what’s going on right now. And it doesn’t mean you have to stop the eating but just wonder if you’re thinking about overeating or feeling like you’re eating and you just can’t stop. It’s like, Huh, I wonder what’s going on? What I find is that when people are new, they can’t stop it immediately. Right? It’s like you can’t say Oh, I’m not going to overeat right now and I’m gonna go journal about my feelings like well it doesn’t work that way but after it when you’re done and when you’re feeling into it like go and ask yourself what is what did that mean for me? And do it really as the kind Auntie or the kind parent to the little kid saying, Oh honey, what went on what was going on right there. So they you’d begin to notice what’s going on for you. And notice if it’s emotionally eating, notice it, acknowledge it, identify the feelings, ask the feelings what they had to teach you. And then finally find out what that is and do a little bit more towards taking care of those feelings. Okay? There’s a lot with this. And like I said, it’s not a one and done where you just kind of learn something and then you’re totally, you can do it all. It’s a process. It’s a process. We come to the table every day, at least three times a day. So just notice it’s a process. Be kind to yourself and notice that this can be an opportunity for you. So I’m looking forward to seeing you tomorrow. Food freedom live. We’re going to talk about mindfulness. It’s a core component, really important. And I will see you tomorrow everyone.

Kim McLaughlin is a psychotherapist, coach, podcaster, and author. She helps people who are struggling with overeating and emotional eating. You can find out more at www.FeedYourSoulUnlimited.com

This blog is based on a Food Freedom Facebook Live where we went into depth about emotional eating. You can access the video here.

Why Diets Fail You

Here is the transcript to follow along with the video, Why Diets Fail You. 

Hello, hello, hello, hello. Hi everyone, this is Kim McLaughlin, and we are live, this is food freedom live, I am so glad to be with you. I’ve got lots of notes, I’ve got things to talk about, we are going to talk about all things having to do with food freedom, because I know that’s why you’re here. And that’s what we want to get into. What we’re doing is this is over three days, we’re going live at 11 o’clock, it is a good time. So if you’re east coast, that would be three hours later. And it’s kind of a nice time in the middle of the day. So I’m glad to be here with you. Those of you who signed up for VIP, I hope you’ve got your playbook out. Here it is right here. Here’s the playbook I had it printed. And you can actually follow along in the PDF version on your computer. So for those of you who don’t know or don’t, didn’t notice that we’re offering a VIP upgrade for those of you that are interested, it’s $9 people like it’s super affordable. It is what is it, it’s like 18 pages of information that you can use to help you get food freedom. And it’s also got, so it’s got the playbook. And then it’s also got success skills. So it’s got this opportunity to learn about overeating, learn about what doesn’t work, but then also start focusing on how you’re going to release into something new. I’m very proud of it, I’m pleased with it. So go on the VIP, I will put the link at the end in the chat, or at the end in the comments so that you can get the playbook. If you’re interested. I don’t know why you wouldn’t. So you get the playbook, you get the success, success skills. And then thirdly, you get an hour with me, it’s next week, we’re going to do an hour q&a, you get to talk to me about what’s going on with you, you get to share with other people what’s going on, and we’re gonna have a really good conversation. So sign up for the VIP. It’s really valuable and good. And like I said, I’m going to put it in the comments below so you can get it later. So that is where we’re starting. We’re talking three days about food freedom. Today, we’re into diet mindset. And it’s the starting spot that I like to go to, is to talk about diet mindset, because it is the place that really kind of we got to get clear on what it means to us. And why do you diet because when people want food freedom, what they tell me is I want to lose weight. I don’t like how I look, I hate my body, people have used the H word they hate word that they hate their body. And they also tell me they hate themselves. And that just makes me feel I feel sad when I hear that because there literally is a solution away out of that a way of feeling horrible about yourself. But first, we’ve got to start talking about the diet mindset and why? Why diets don’t work. And that is a radical concept to say that diets don’t work. And I’m going to give you some Let me see. Let me get in here. So first I’m going to talk about so what I want to first go over with is the what the stats are about dieting, get this diets. The facts are that it’s predicted that the global market for weight loss industry will grow from 254.9, almost $255 billion in 2021 to 377 billion by 2026. So we’re talking what four years from now, it’s going to increase the the dieting industry weight loss industry will grow 120 billion by 120 billion with a B, that’s a lot of money. So I want you to think about that. There’s this investment. There’s this investment you guys from the weight loss industry, for us to buy their products. It’s not all it’s not about us and what really works and what makes us feel good. It’s about getting us to buy these products, these services, this type of food, and then making us feel bad when it doesn’t work. Because what we know is that when we die it you guys know this. When you die it you end up regaining the weight. It’s a fact we know this. We all know this from our personal experiences and we know this from what we what the stats say

Kim McLaughlin  05:02

I think it’s what 90% gain weight back 90%, gain the weight back, and then some. And you and I know that from our experience. So think about the diet mindset and think about how dieting has really taken you away from what works for you. Okay? The thing I forgot, I’m starting looking at my notes, and I’m so excited to talk to you that I forgot to tell you that I’m going to have a freebie there is a freebie for those of you that attend live, I’m going to give up five books, I have my books, the feed your soul, nourish your life book, I’m sorry, I didn’t bring it up here to show you. But it’s the book, I’ll send it out to you for free. no cost to you. I’ll put a link in the comments. If you send me an email at info at feed your soul unlimited.com The first five people over the next three days the first five people that email me they get a book. And all I’ll do is get your address and we’ll send it straight on out to you. Five people get a feed your soul nurture life book, it’s it’s really the way out. It’s an in depth look at how to get freedom with food. So I forgot to say that. So I wanted to make sure that I told you about the freebie for attending live. When I’m talking about dieting, I often don’t talk about my story. I thought that would be helpful today, I thought that might kind of set the tone for where I come from, because I think my story is your story. And over the years, I’ve heard lots and lots and lots of stories about dieting. Mike’s no different, but I think it gives you the the it kind of qualifies me for where I’m coming from and why I do what I do. I noticed back when I was about eight years old, my parents got a divorce. And you can see from one, one year to the next you can see my pictures where I got bigger, my body got bigger. And that is interesting. Because I noticed at that point in time, I started to think more about food, my memories, at that time were a lot about things that I would make, I would make things for myself, like after school since my parents were divorced. My brother and I were home alone in the afternoon. And so I would make food and I would eat the food. And generally it was sweet and fat, you know, buttery kind of things. Not that those are bad. It’s just that’s all I focused on. And that that happened for a long time. Now looking back, I think about all poor cat and poor little Kim. Like, there was no notice. And back in those days, there wasn’t to notice about what were the emotions. And truthfully, I would have never told you I had emotions at that time about the divorce. But now it makes total sense that I had feelings about the divorce that weren’t being expressed. And those feelings showed up in food. The feelings showed up in overeating because it feels good to eat. It feels good to eat, my brain would light up I feel great. Well, what happened then is in my teen years, it was noticed that I was gaining weight. And what happens is, is that there’s this really misperception that there’s something wrong with you if your body is larger, I’d be quote larger than what people think it should be. And there’s this thought of there’s something wrong with you. There’s a lack of health, that somehow you’re not healthy, if there’s a larger body size, and that you’re shamed for it. And I felt shamed for it. And I went on a diet, I was offered a diet, I was offered special food. And that started the ball rolling. What we what we know is is that when you’re when you’re a team when you’re a kid, and you are offered a diet, that is the leading predictor, the leading predictor of eating disorders later on in life, it turns into eating disorders. Many of you know I’m going to eat disorders, therapists I specialize in eating disorders. So I know what I’m talking about and that dieting in teenage if you have any kind of predisposition towards having an eating disorder that will then kind of kick in that eating disorder. And that’s what happened for me. It was years and years and years of dieting, gaining weight, dieting, gaining weight, and that happened throughout my life until I decided to stop it.

Kim McLaughlin  09:57

It was just a feeling of such shame. And, and feeling bad in my body and always hating my body. And I think like many of you, like, I look back at my old pictures like, dang, I look fine. I was good. Like, why I didn’t believe that I was okay, I didn’t believe but I looked fine. And I was healthy, I could do everything I wanted to do, there was nothing wrong with me, there was just a societal perception societal perception that there was something wrong with me because of my size. And I hope that this is resonating with all of you that like, yeah, it begins to make us feel like we’re bad and wrong, and that the only way I can be valuable. And the only way I can be accepted and loved is if I’m thin. And so we go on the diet, we find the diet I did, I did the same diet over and over and over again, expecting different results, always expecting different results, and it never happened, I would gain some weight I never get, I mean, I would lose some weight, and then I would gain it back, I would lose and gain it back. So what happened is, is when I was getting ready to get married, I went on another diet, and I bought those packaged foods that you mix in water and they taste nasty. I remember having a boxes full of them in my car in the trunk of my car. And I did that and it didn’t work. And after that began, the process became I wonder if your diets after that became the process of this is madness. This is madness. And it doesn’t work. And what I learned about is what I’m going to talk about later is his intuitive eating. And I learned about that the things that were keeping me stuck. And that’s what we’re going to talk about in these three days is what are the things that keep you stuck? And then what can we do about them? Right? What can we do about them? So I like I said I wanted to qualify and just tell a little bit about my story, because I think that’s probably feels familiar to all of you. Because the idea of dieting is pervasive. And what we know about dieting is there, there are things that we know for sure is one we know is that it’s deprivation. It’s what do they call it, where they say lower calorie, calories in calories out. So lower calories, do more exercise. So there is this deprivation of I have to have less and less and less and less. And then I have to do more and more and more activity, I would often plan my activity around whatever diet I was on, because sometimes I didn’t have enough energy. It didn’t have enough energy to do the exercise that I thought I needed to do to lose weight. So that became tough. Also, sometimes I would do more exercise because then I thought I could eat more food. Right? If I do a harder exercise, if I get my burn off enough calories, then I can eat this other food. It was it was the only way I could eat is if I had done something enough. If I worked out enough, then I could eat this food. And it was really a horrible way to look at food. So there’s this idea of deprivation and that we have to deprive ourselves. We also then ended up focusing all day on food. I remember on diets like it would be I would have to think through my whole week worth of food. Because I’d have to know what can I eat today and tomorrow to know what I can eat on Saturday. Oh, the party’s coming up on Saturday. So I can’t eat much food on Monday, Tuesday Wednesday because I got to save all my calories, my points my whatever my macros, whatever. I’m gonna save everything for Saturday. And I would eat less food during the week so I could eat more. On the weekend. I had it was all this focus on what was I gonna eat? Did I have the food? Was it too many calories? Was it too many points did it not fit into the program. And if I didn’t follow the program, I felt bad about myself. I felt shamed and demoralized. What happened for me is with all of the deprivation, I was I was starving myself. And then the focus on food was like what could I eat? But what could I eat? Not about what did my body need? What did my body need to do the things that needed to do? What did my body need to nourish itself? The focus wasn’t on that the focus was on how do I fit within this box this framework? There was no focus on did I like the food I remember eating I don’t eat them to this day. And they’re they’re not so horrible that they connect with diets. There’s two things oh,

Kim McLaughlin  14:49

oh my gosh, cottage cheese and Rice Krispie’s the not Rice Krispies, but those rice bars, you know that you put stuff on top of them. I’m not thinking of the right name for them rice cakes. That’s what they are. Oh, that when I look at those, I always think of diet. I always think of diet, and so they’re just not necessarily my food anymore because the association is so huge for me about dieting, that there are some foods that I just don’t want to eat, because it’s it reminds me of all that dieting mindset. So that focus on food is part of that diet mindset. Right? The third thing is that, that what do we know about diets is that and begins to categorize foods as good foods, food you’re supposed to have, right? And bad foods, foods that are off limits, and foods that are off limits generally are fat, salty, sweet, high calorie, or off whatever the program is, right? If it’s a, if it’s a keto diet, then you know, no carbs, or, you know, breads. And so it’s whatever the the diet tells you, those foods are bad, and we can’t have them, right. These foods are good, which are low calorie or fit whatever, into the diet. And so we categorize them as good and bad. And, and it would often be like, I asked people like so, you know, what do you want to eat? And they’d have to think, Well, what diet Am I on? And what can I and can I eat? What can I can I eat? Oh my god, there’s no thought about what do I want to eat? What fuels my body? What feels good in my body? What satisfies my body? There’s no look at that. And so we are categorized as good and bad. And we don’t want to have the bad food. Oh, I can’t have that. That’s bad. How many times do you say that? How many times do we hear that? That’s bad food, I can’t have that. And bad food generally means it’s not very satisfying. I’m sorry, good food. I’m sorry, the good food is it’s not satisfying. And what I know is that when we take off that idea of good versus bad food, it’s just food people. It’s just food. And I can look inside of myself. This is the part about intuitive eating, I can look back inside of myself and go Well, what’s my right food? What’s the food for me today? And what? What can I what? What’s gonna fit for me? Right? What food is gonna fit for me? I think about some times this morning, I know that I was going to talk today, I was going to do a talk. And generally my tummy. I say this, every time I speak, is like, I feel my tummy gets a little upset because I get nervous. I get nervous, excited when I went to talk, you know, the number one fear is the fear of speaking in public. Well, I get it too. And I then think about what can I eat that’s going to be soothing on my tummy, right? Because I didn’t want to eat too much. Because I don’t like that feeling of having much food in my tummy. When I come and talk. I’ve just learned this over the years. So I ate in a way that felt good for my tummy felt good for my body, but gave me enough energy to do the things I need to do today. Right. And that is what we’re talking about when we’re talking about food freedom. Next one I want you to consider is that ditching the diet means we have to go inside of ourselves. If we’re not going to diet, people say well, then Kim, what do I do? What do I do? Well, first, we got to figure out is dieting your thing? Like does it work for you? And I just told you my story of how dieting doesn’t work for me. All the all the story and I could even go in deeper, I could do more writing on it. There’s there’s a lot of pieces of that diet, those diets that just literally don’t work for me. And they set me up for failure. So what I encourage you is is how to get out of that diet mindset is first, what is dieting mean to you do some journaling on that. That’s actually in the playbook. The VIP playbook I just talked about earlier. This the VIP playbook has journaling about this about what is the diet mindset mean to you, and journal about that and journal how has it not helped you?

Kim McLaughlin  19:23

And, you know, is there any way that it has helped you really have that conversation with yourself? What’s been the good parts and what’s been the bad parts? For me? The the parts that that are bad and that actually lead me in a really bad direction or, you know, doesn’t suit me is larger than anything that’s worked on a diet. Most of the things that worked for me on a diet is I didn’t know what a serving was. That was interesting to me. I didn’t know what a serving of a food was. So that helped me a lot in my interview. defeating journey is like, Oh, this is a serving. How does that feel in my body? How, how much is this? Does it? Does it satisfy me? Am I Am I satisfied enough? That was that was the one thing I got from it. Oh, and drinking water that was a good thing from from dieting is like, water is good. That’s actually just a normal thing to do. Right? And so noticing, like, what didn’t work and honoring if there’s something that did work, but notice that the things that did work, is it because it’s restrictive, right? Is it restrictive? Because that’s deprivation? is the one thing we know that’s dieting. It’s to me the releasing that dieting mindset is something we move towards. Because the the the society, our society, and the community is so pervasive in the dieting mindset, it’s hard to move off of it, the way that the the weight loss industry has really co opted. Intuitive Eating healthy eating is they call what they call it now a healthy healthy diet plan, healthy plan of eating, I’m on my weight journey, I’m on my healthy eating journey. Well, those are code words for diet. As far as I can tell. Those are code words for deprivation, right? Diet equals deprivation. So when we dish the diet is one look at what is dieting mean, to me, two, diets focus on weight, that’s the only really category of how we know if we’re succeeding is if we lost weight. And I don’t know about for you, but for me, I can go on a diet and gain weight. I don’t know what it is, but my body, when I’m in deprivation, my body holds on to weight. It doesn’t work for me, it just and then it makes me crazy. It’s like I ate less food all week long, I should have lost weight. I I focus on the weight. And then what happens is, is that I either didn’t lose enough, I didn’t lose any or I gained, it was always that even if I lost some weight, it would be I didn’t lose enough, I should have lost more. And then if you’re in those group settings where people share their weight loss, it’s like I didn’t lose that much. How come they lose more weight than I do? What’s wrong with me. And there would be this comparison of weight. And also, just within myself, it was never good enough. It was never enough of a weight loss. What I want you to think about is how do we ditch the diet? How do we ditch the diet is intuitive eating. And Intuitive Eating is what I work with people on and why I know there’s a way out of dieting is intuitive eating gets us back in contact with our body. When we were children. We knew how to eat. We knew what we needed and when to stop. You cannot overfeed a kid. They’ll shut their mouths, you know a baby, they’ll shut their mouth, they won’t let you put food in their mouth when they’re done. They know when to stop. They know when they’re hungry. They’ll cry, they’ll scream, they’ll get irritable. And they know when they’re full. They shut their mouth. They shut their mouth and they won’t eat anymore. They’ll leave food it. It throws me every time it’s like you love food, because I’m full. Well, how is that a measure of when we stop? Therefore they stop? This is what we all had when we were children. We had that idea of when do we stop? When is it enough? We knew that. And what happened is, over the years, we’ve lost that sense of being in contact with our body. Intuitive Eating is about getting back in touch with your body. And knowing when you’re hungry, knowing when you’re full and knowing what to eat em. The problem is, is we have to kind of swim through all of the things that kept us stuck. All of the things that we’ve learned that dieting mindset is pervasive. It is what we all go to. It’s really the if I overeat, what do I do? Well,

Kim McLaughlin  24:12

I have to diet. What else could I do? If I overeat? If I feel uncomfortable in my body, I obviously have to diet some more. I’m here to tell you that’s not the case. And actually I’m here to tell you that the opposite is true is the dieting makes it worse. And it makes you feel worse. Remember what I said the beginning of this live I said that people will tell me that they hate themselves hate themselves because they eat too much food or hate themselves because they don’t like how their body looks or they hate themselves because they’re not thin. Wow, hate. To me those those are outer outer representation. It’s not who I am. Who I am you is kind and caring and loving and spiritual. Those are who I am not my body on the outside, the more we get in contact with who we are, and, and our body on the inside, the more we’re going to do what we need to do to fuel our bodies to make our bodies feel good, and also to eat in a way that satisfies us. It just works that way. And that all is intuitive eating. And we’re going to talk about that more over the these next three days. I hope you’re liking what you hear, I hope that this is kind of pushing a little button in it in a kind way. Because I don’t want to say ditch the diet and not tell you what to or not give you any other options. But we got to move through that idea of that dying mindset because those What did I say it was a $255 billion industry at this point in time. They’re very fierce, and they’ve got us wrapped around his finger, you know, they’re pulling us and I want to pull you in a different direction to help you look at something different. We’re going to talk about emotional eating solutions, which is my core course that I have. That is a self study course that’s over eight weeks, it’s very affordable. I’m going I’m doing this live now because the price is going to be going up. And I want to let you know about it. I’ll put a link for it in the comment section. And I’ll talk more about it tomorrow. But it’s really the way out. And it’s using the framework of intuitive eating to help you get back in touch with your body to get back in touch with the emotions. So tomorrow we’re going to talk about how emotions play in to us over eating. There’s this whole piece of remember my story about being a kid of divorce, after the divorce, I gained weight, because I started to eat my feelings I started to eat to soothe my feelings. It’s clear, it’s clear, I didn’t know what to do. Now I do. Now I can notice my feelings. And now I know what to do with my feelings. But it took it took a lot of I don’t call it work. But it’s part of the process. It’s going through the process of figuring that out. Tomorrow we’re going to talk about emotionally eating and Friday we’re going to talk about mindfulness. And truthfully, I have to apologize. Mindfulness is that part of the program that I don’t talk about enough. And I’ve really been thinking about mindfulness more, and actually how much I use it. And I don’t talk about it. So I’m talking about it more on these lives, to make sure that you know how to use mindfulness. So for as much as I say, you want food freedom, and dieting is not the answer. I’m going to give you the answers. I’m going to give you the ideas. So don’t go away. We’re going to talk about it’s more, but just over tonight, I encourage you to get in that idea of what is dieting to you, and what has it meant to you. Watch how you eat tonight, watch and feel if you know when you’re hungry. Do you know when you’re full? Do you know what your right foods are? We don’t talk in this program. We don’t talk about specific foods. I’m not a nutritionist. I’m not a doctor, I can’t and won’t tell you what to eat. But I can’t tell you how to get in touch with your body so that you’ll know what works for you. Because we often know what our body needs, we just don’t do it. Because we’re so stuck in that mindset. That’s why today I want to work on ditching that mindset, getting rid of it. Because it’s what’s gonna keep you stuck. That mindsets what keeps you stuck, and it keeps you going back to what doesn’t work.

Kim McLaughlin  28:33

Remember that dieting industry is committed to happiness not having this not work for us. I don’t I want it to work for you. I want you to learn how to have freedom with food, and not rely on a diet to have freedom with food. There’s a way to do it. So we’re going to talk about that over the next three days. Think today about ditching the diet mindset. If you want to sign up now you can sign up for emotionally in solutions. Like I said, it’s a it’s an eight week self study, what I’ve done is as for all of you I’m adding in when I increase the price next month, I’m gonna do some add ins on calls where we talk with each other. And you’re going to get in on that. So you’re going to get it on on the price right now. When I raise the price that’s going to be part of the program. Now it’s kind of the secret that I’m doing for all of you to get us going to get started before I raise the price. So I want to I wanted to come on live to give you guys options about what to do. But but don’t go away because we have two more days. The other thing I wanted to remind you of is that anybody who comes on live, you have the opportunity of winning a prize and that is one of my my book Feed Your soul nourish your life books. I’m sending them out to five people over the next three days. The people who email me They’re their information I need your address and your name, I’m sending you out a book first five people for free. The, the address you send it to is info at feed your soul unlimited.com feed your soul unlimited.com I’ll put that down in the comments. Also, I’ve quite a few things to put in the comments, so you’ll know where to send it to, I’d love to send you a book. I’m so happy that you came here. We are at 30 minutes. And that was my commitment to all of you to keep us to 30 minutes. There’s so much more to talk about. But I just want to start with this. And we’ll move further into it tomorrow. I want to thank you all for coming because I know there are hundreds of other places you could be right now there are so many other things that you could do and things that are pulling on you and that you sat for this and you gave yourself the gift. I am honoured with that and I want to recognize you for what you’ve done. Really good job. And we’re going to work through this together to get to that piece with food, that freedom, that food freedom. We’re going to do it together. So I look forward to seeing you tomorrow tomorrow at 11 o’clock. I’m going to have the replay up for everybody soon. And I look forward to talking with you them. Have a great rest of your day. Bye

Kim McLaughlin is a psychotherapist, coach, podcaster, and author. She helps people who are struggling with overeating and emotional eating. You can find out more at www.FeedYourSoulUnlimited.com

This blog is based on a Food Freedom Facebook Live where we went into depth about emotional eating. You can access the video here.