My election Tuesday involved a 3-hour nap, a foot massage (gotta pay for physical touch when you’re single and dysregulated amiright), and a pizza, hbu?

This topic of emotional eating came up in one of my calls this week and I thought – this feels like a really good time to talk about this subject on a broader scale.

By the way – not to brag (jk I’m totally bragging) – my newsletter is up to a 60% open rate. That might not mean much to many of you, but that’s an absurd statistic. It means a lot to me because while a lot of my business is automated and taken care of by a team these days, I sit down and write every one of my Sunday Letters myself.

It’s my way to communicate with you on a more intimate level and I love when you respond! The emails go straight to my inbox and while I can’t respond to all of them, I always read them all.

Now, back to emotional eating…

Emotional eating is where what we eat and why we eat it intersect. Now I’m not a psychologist, so I’m only going to address the dietary side of this topic and explore how negative emotions may result in overeating. But I do have an incredible emotional eating psychologist I refer a lot of clients to and she sees patients all over the US. You can find her + her practice here. ​

First of all, know that we all emotionally eat. Even me. If I’m having an awful day, I’m far more likely to choose chips and queso for dinner than if I’m feeling great about myself. When I’m bored (which is extremely rare these days but it happens lol), mac ‘n’ cheese sounds more entertaining than chicken. Food makes us feel good. That’s totally normal. What makes emotional eating a problem is when we do it often enough that it has detrimental effects on our bodies.

Here are my top 2 weapons to combat emotional eating:

1. The greatest weapon to combat emotional eating is to manage your blood sugar levels. YES SERIOUSLY. You simply cannot respond well to stress, overwhelm, gloom, or any of the other amazing tests life throws at you when your blood sugar is crashing. You WILL turn to comforting carbs and eat your feelings when that happens. In these situations, the biology overrides the psychology, so sheer willpower probably isn’t going to be enough to get you through.

I swear to you – this is why I’ve been so successful in my years of coaching. Because so many struggle with overeating/emotional eating, and managing your blood sugar, for many, can be such a huge help.

2. The next weapon in your arsenal to reach for is your curiosity. Get extremely curious about what your patterns are when it comes to certain emotions. Questions to ask yourself:

• What emotion is it that I’m feeling prior to emotional eating? Stress? Boredom? Anxiety?
• Why do I start to feel * insert emotion here* at *insert time* every day?
• What leads up to that?
• Why is my first reaction to that some 1-on-1 time with a bag of chips/bowl of ice cream/the entire pantry?

In these instances, food is just a buffer for whatever it is that you don’t want to feel. Same with alcohol. Or scrolling. Or Netflix binging.

It’s important to think about these things NOW because you won’t be able to in the moment. Get ahead of it, guide it down different tracks, and figure out some alternatives:

• Can you prevent that 4 pm stress in the first place with some deep belly breaths throughout the day?
• How about some calming music on your commute instead of your favorite political podcast?
• Are you simply not eating enough at lunch, meaning your body can’t respond to your 4 pm environment because it’s undernourished?
• What can you do to replace food in those moments?

I wanna give you a good, tangible example here.

I had a client once who REALLY struggled right before dinner. She was always eating comfort foods out of the fridge around 5 pm, and often wasn’t hungry for a healthy dinner. When we explored the feeling she was having, it was very clear that it was sensory overload.

Kids running around the house being loud. Dogs barking. Laundry machine going. The house is full, dinner is cooking, and there’s a lot going on after a full day of work!

Sure – it would be easy to say – just go for a walk instead! Take some deep breaths! But I like to tackle this a little differently.

I asked her what she was doing during the day when she WASN’T feeling overloaded. When she felt calm and relaxed. Immediately she said – “in the carpool line! It’s quiet and I just sit there for about 20 minutes with myself. I can listen to music or do things on my phone. It’s my quiet time.”

So I asked how we could replicate that at home.

“Can you go sit in your car and take a time out?”

“Maybe…what if I just went and sat in my closet for 5 minutes?”

So she tried it. And she let the whole family know – “Mom needs a time out – don’t follow me. I’ll be back.” And she’d go sit in her closet and chill out, and then get back in the game refreshed and ready to go.

I love this story because it demonstrates self-awareness. Which I believe is the solution to the majority of our blocks in life across the board.

New Telegram Program

Switching gears only slightly, this week, I launched Keep Calm + Eat PHFF which is a month-long Telegram program focused on managing stress through the election, holidays, and beyond.

On the same day I kicked the program off, I decided I couldn’t do it alone and invited the Queen of Stress herself, Lyndsey Chambers, to join me. Here’s a small screen grab of a few reactions:

The hype is real and for good reason. Stress “management” isn’t about deep breathing. It’s about completely transforming the way you view your life. It’s addressing your addiction to cortisol. And it’s getting your nervous system in check. If you’ve never done a program with us before, and you’re struggling with stress right now, don’t miss this one.

​SIGN UP HERE. You can head right into Telegram and binge the content from the last week. You’re not behind.

It’s gonna be a great week, friends. It’s my birthday week. 

xxMegan

Ways to Work Together:

1. ​Metabolism Makeover: our signature 30-day program, helping you to feel better and lose weight by increasing your metabolism instead of decreasing your calories.
2. ​VIP: high-touch, customized nutrition coaching for those who need 1:1 support.

P.S. If you like this post and want to support it, you can share with a friend with an invite to join my newsletter and subscribe right here to spread some good cheer. Seriously, it would mean the world to me.