Emotional eating can be difficult to cure due to an often confounding mixture of emotional, psychological, physiological, and societal factors. We often expect ourselves to be thin, fit, and perfect on the outside, and when our physical appearance doesn’t meet–or exceed–societal standards, we tend to fault ourselves. We can even become filled with shame that leads us to extremes such as chronic fad dieting, depriving ourselves of food, binge-eating, or exercising to the point of depletion. The more we strive toward the fictional ideal of perfection, the more we feel broken inside. These cycles, which are heavily perpetuated by our dualistic society, create incredible harm. Is the cure to discover what is eating away at you inside? Can you create healthier eating habits by understanding the mystery of why we eat the way we do? Are there strategies you can follow so that you never go on a diet again? Join Dr. Carla and food psychology expert Dr. Nina Savelle-Rocklin for a fascinating exploration into the world of disordered eating, eating disorders, and her decades of work in the realm of curing binge eating disorder. Please note that this episode contains sensitive material; listener discretion is advised. Note: If you or someone you know needs immediate support, please call your emergency services. For assistance with eating disorders, please contact your healthcare provider. See the show notes for additional information including this link: https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org
Books by Dr. Carla Manly:
Date Smart: Transform Your Relationships and Love Fearlessly
Joy From Fear: Create the Life of Your Dreams by Making Fear Your Friend
The Joy of Imperfect Love: The Art of Creating Healthy, Securely Attached Relationships
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We often expect ourselves to be trim, fit, and perfect on the outside. When our physical appearance doesn’t meet or exceed societal standards, we tend to fault ourselves. We can even become filled with shame that leads us to extremes such as constant fad dieting, depriving ourselves of food, binge eating, eating, or exercising to the point of depletion. The more we strive toward the fictional ideal of perfection, the more we feel broken inside these cycles heavily perpetuated by our dualistic society and create incredible harm is the cure to discover what’s eating at us from the inside.
In this episode, we’ll focus on this audience’s real-life question, “I’m so sick of myself and my eating habits. I try hard to lose weight until I’m starving myself. I sometimes get close to my goal weight, but then I binge on all the things I deprive myself of, especially ice cream. My friend says it’s a mental thing, but I think my body wants to be fat. Who is right?” With that question as the focus of this episode. Please note as this episode contains sensitive information, audience discretion is advised. If you need support, please see the special links.
I’m joined by a very special guest, Dr. Nina Savelle Rocklin, who will be sharing her expertise as an author, podcaster, and Founder of The Binge Cure Method. She will be sharing her wisdom on the Psychology of Eating. Dr. Nina, welcome to the show. It’s such a pleasure to have you with us.
It is a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much.
I’m wondering before we launch into the episode topic, what makes you you?
Two things come to mind. 1) When I was five years old, which is a very important age for me, which I’ll get into later, I remember having the thought, “I act like I’m five, but inside, I’m just me.” I’m not even sure how to define that. The other thing that keeps going through my mind as you ask that question is Dr. Seuss, “No one is youer than you.” Why? I don’t know because no one is youer than you. No one is Mer than me. I don’t know how to answer that question other than there’s only one in me.
I love that. It’s so beautiful. It sounds like a lot of things probably make up the you you are. Do you happen to have any pets or children or a spouse somewhere lurking in the background?
I do. I have not in this order of appearance, but in what you asked me, I have Zane the Dane, who is a ten-year-old Great Dane but acts like a puppy. We rescued him, but I think he rescued us, completely deaf since birth and partially sighted and 150 pounds of absolute love. Definitely, a lap dog because he will sit on anybody’s lap, and stretch a sweetie. This might be too much information, but he has a twin-size bed that we put next to our king-size bed because we have to co-sleep with our dog. Our sixteen-year-old daughter is okay with that and so is my husband.
That tells me an awful lot about you, that you have a twin-sized bed next to your king-size bed for your dog. My giant schnauzer would love to have his own twin-sized bed, but that’s probably not in the cards. Thank you for sharing that tidbit with us. I appreciate that. It’s beautiful. Thank you. Before we get to the audience’s question, do you mind sharing how you came to specialize as a psychologist? There are many areas to specialize in and some people specialize in anxiety, some in depression, and some in a little bit of everything, but it seems you’ve chosen the psychology of eating. What brought you there?
I’m reminded of when I was a brand new therapist and I was going to start my first group for women with binge eating disorder. I walked into the group and here’s this group of women they were very intimidating. They were at that time old, like in their 50s. They were not so old anymore. They looked at me. One of them had bright red hair and big jewelry. She scared the heck out of me. She looked me up and down and said, “What does a skinny thing like you know about binge eating?” Only she didn’t say a thing. what I thought was, “She does not realize that I once considered myself the poster child for eating disorders.” What I said was, “Ohis skinny thing, once scarfed down an entire box of gingerbread cookies and about fifteen minutes flat, and I hate, despise, loathe gingerbread, but I could not stop eating those cookies.” I told the group that when I was five years old, an important age, I had suddenly come to think that I was too big and I was a perfectly normal weight child.
I got this idea in my head. By the time I was a teenager, I was in a full-on eating disorder. I would starve myself. Eventually, my willpower would fail. I would eat in the kitchen. Sometimes I would purge. That is why I was the poster child for eating disorders because I basically had all of them. In college, I finally went to therapy, but I went for anxiety. I talked about guys, my family, goals, friends, and all the things, except I never spoke about food, not once. Yet, by the time I left treatment, despite having never discussed my eating disorder behaviors, which were extreme, my therapist had no idea she was in fact treating the poster child for eating disorders. By the time I left, all my eating disorders had gone, and all my behaviors were gone. Not once had I talked about food.
People say, “How is that possible? How do you get over all forms of disordered eating and outright eating disorders without ever talking about food?” My answer is that food was never the problem, it was the solution to my problem, which in my case was a very harsh way of relating to myself. I was very much a perfectionist. Nothing was ever good enough. I would berate myself, beat myself up, drive myself crazy, and then focus on food, whether thinking about it or eating it or whatever as a way of coping. that led me to want to become a therapist and fact a psychoanalyst so that I can help other people stop the madness around food weight and body image issues.
Thank you so much for your honesty and for that transparency that will allow many of our audience to identify with you and see that it is possible to move through eating disorders by handling those issues inside that give rise to the eating disorders. I’ve noticed in my client base that those who come with disordered eating or eating disorders, that it is generally exactly the same thing. The food is the issue that is latched onto in daily life. There are messages many of the people I work with, you can go back to their childhood. For you, there was no identifiable moment.
I must interrupt because I must share the most important part that I left out. Why at age five did I suddenly and randomly decide that I was too big? My parents are college professors and they’re very serious. I was not, and still have a lot of energy I was constantly being told, “You’re too sensitive. You’re too emotional. You got to calm down. You have to bring it in. You’re so dramatic.”
My five-year-old mind took this as “You are too much,” because five-year-olds are very concrete. I took that as, “You’re too much, as there’s too much of me.” That’s why I felt like I was too big. That speaks to the psychology. I consider myself a detective of the mind as are you solving the mystery of why. That has a lot to do with why this seed got planted in the first place. I never shared one of the more important pieces of that.
That is incredibly important you are right. I often tell people, “I’m like Sherlock Holmes. I’m looking for the pieces to put together. No clients are the same. You got to hold up a lantern and go along, look for the breadcrumbs, and put it together.” Thank you for sharing that piece because there usually is, if you do enough digging, you can find a moment or many moments it does. If you only have one moment, usually that moment is symbolic of the types of messages you were getting over and over again. Your young little mind was only able, willing, or wanting to hold on to one of those key owl moments, those key pieces.
From parents saying that food will look better on the plate than on you to a 6-year-old, two children being forced to run to work off their dinner or their dessert when they were 7 years old, two kids being told, “You can’t have bread, there are too many carbs,” to, “You’re fat. You have a big butt. You have jelly thighs,” or whatever it is, all of the things I’ve heard.
I think even in my case because I have my own history with food and as most people do you can go back and find those messages that maybe weren’t always pointed at you, but at a sibling being told, “Don’t eat the mayonnaise. You are too fat. You went to college and gained 10 pounds,” and here you are tiny looking up at this person and saying, “They’re being shamed and I don’t want that to happen to me.” We can see even before we get to this audience’s question that so much of what we need to do and which is why psychotherapy and readers, let me bracket this with something important. If you have a full-blown eating disorder or there’s anorexia or binge eating, neither Dr. Nina nor I are saying don’t go to an eating disorder specialist.
We’re not saying don’t get help from your medical care provider or don’t check yourself into a facility for anorexia. We’re not saying that at all. We are saying that there are times when the fit with a therapist is good and you continue to do the work every week, showing up for your sessions, and plotting through the work, you will over the course of years tend to get to the issues that are eating you from the inside out. If there’s a health issue, a serious mental health issue, or a serious physical issue, we are not ever saying to not seek immediate and appropriate support. Would you agree Dr. Nina?
Absolutely. I speak as someone who has exclusively treated people with eating disorders for 23 years. I think it’s important. I don’t treat people with anorexia. It’s mostly binge eating. You cannot think if you are starving your brain. The Binge Cure Method is for people who struggle with binge eating or emotional eating. Anorexia is a dangerous is most lethal diagnosis in the DSM it is important to get help, serious help. Often, you need to get medically stabilized before you can even do the work because you can’t think in a starved brain.
Speaking of starving, this is a terrible segue, but I want to go back to what the audience was saying that she starved herself and her willpower would fail, which is exactly what happens. First of all, binge eating is the most prevalent eating disorder that nobody knows they have. They think that they have no willpower, don’t have control, they’re a food addict, or things like that. No, binge eating disorder is a diagnosable and treatable condition. It is a coping strategy.
Binge eating is the most common and prevalent eating disorder that nobody knows they have. Share on XSome people binge eat because they don’t eat enough and there is the diet binge cycle. They may not fit into the diagnosable binge eating disorder category, but they’re binging because they’re not eating enough if you don’t eat enough. If you’re on a diet and you haven’t allowed yourself to eat X, Y, Z, eventually, your willpower is going to stop working and you’re going to want the thing that you can’t have and you’re going to go crazy, especially if you have good food, bad food, good me, bad me mentality, then that leads to that diet binge cycle. She said something else, which is that when she gets close to her goal, she starts to sabotage herself.
The starving part of it might be her binging, which might be based on some deprivation or anticipation of deprivation or dichotomous thinking around food, food rules, and all of that. Her sabotage likely has more its roots more in something psychologically conflicting. For example, many people are afraid to lose weight, but they don’t realize they’re afraid to lose weight. I’ll give you an example This comes out of the same group where the woman said, “Was a skinny thing like you know about binge eating?” Another woman. we were looking at the underpinnings of why. What’s eating at you? What’s your relationship with yourself? All the things this one woman kept saying, “I have no willpower. I just like food too much.” She said, “Every time I get close to my goal, I want to lose 20 pounds.”
Every time I start eating again because I love food too much. On the last day of that group, maybe 20 minutes before the end of the group, she said something important. She said, “I’m thinking if I were not focused on these 20 pounds, maybe I would want to leave my husband.” Thinking about these sabotaging herself, kept her focus on the 20 pounds that she wanted to lose instead of wanting to change her marriage, lose her husband, or whatever that was going on. Often we sabotage for a reason that’s out of our awareness, but not out of operation, the very definition of unconscious motivation. It’s important to dig deep one of the most prevalent reasons for sabotage that I see is one that surprises everybody. Initially, they say, “No, you are crazy.” That’s this fear of happiness.
When I say, “I think you’re sabotaging yourself because there’s a part of you that’s afraid to be happy, to feel too good, whatever that is,” they usually say, “Are you crazy? I will be so happy when I not only lose weight but lose this obsession and preoccupation with food.” When we dig deeper and we look at some of the societal prohibitions against trusting happiness, like, “The other shoe’s going to drop.” It was too good to be true,” or something like that, then people start to look at, “Maybe I’ll get punished in some way by the universe if I let myself feel good as long. As I don’t feel good about my weight, I am safe from that punishment of the universe.” It also keeps them from thinking about other things like the woman in the group that they don’t want to think about. If you’re thinking about your weight, you’re not thinking about other things that might be disturbing and upsetting to you.
I see it the same in my practice where people do want to lose weight. One part of them does want to lose weight. The other part has that secret awareness that, “If I lose the weight, then I’m going to be getting different clothes, there are going to be a different me so I might want this different career. I might start really dating. I don’t have this insulation of body mass around me. I might do this. I might start doing more socializing or more of these activities. I might put myself out there into this scary big world instead of being reclusive and using my weight as the reason why I am not getting out there.” I agree. I’ve seen that one. I’m curious if you see this one, it sounds as if you do because it’s where you were.
I see this one almost as equally as common where it is that idea that the world is uncontrollable, everything out there, that if I can restrict my eating, my food, and keep all of that in place, then I am safer. I can’t control all of these things out here, but I can control that I have 3 slices of cucumber or 2 slices of lettuce or whatever it is because food is something that is controllable in that way, but then the body gets starved for nutrients for regular fuel like if you were starving yourself of water, if you wouldn’t give yourself water, you are going to go into that lake and drink, maybe vomit from having drank too much. The idea, what our bodies like is steady portions, consistent portions, and little snacks, but often that’s what we don’t give ourselves because in our brains, we think that will make us fat or that is not healthy. What do you think about that? It’s tied to perfectionism, but it’s also tied to heavy anxiety about the state of the world and all these things we can’t control.
Powerlessness over the world we can’t control can be displaced into powerlessness about over food. The other thing is that the $60 billion diet industry sells us the illusion that if we lose weight, we will be different people. If we’re shy, we’ll become confident. This is another reason for sabotage. Somehow we’re going to get a great job. If we d aren’t dating, we’re going to go date up a storm. It sells us the illusion that we’ll be different people if we lose weight and people will treat us differently if we lose weight. That is a powerful, wonderful illusion, and when we get closer to our goal weight when everything is going to be great and realize we’re still ourselves with the same problems, the same issues, the same whatever, sometimes that sabotage occurs so that we can preserve the illusion that, “If we get to that weight, then life’s going to be good.” We don’t want to give up that illusion on some level.
The 60-billion dollar diet industry sells us the illusion that if we just lose weight, we will be different people. Share on XIt’s important for our readers to realize that what we’re talking about here in general are small changes in psychological awareness that allow you to release the focus on food and turn the focus more on your internal world. Sometimes it’s definitely heavy in the past figuring out that unhealthy message, expectations, maybe hypercritical parents, hyper-demanding parents, maybe past relationships that worsen things. Certainly, as you work on those issues, the inner world feels much safer and more secure and gentle when you’re more empathic with yourself and empathy isn’t an excuse to go and binge eat because some people get afraid of that. If I’m gentle with myself, I’ll get out of control. The gentleness inside, I found that easing of all of that hyper-perfectionism and hyper-demanding makes us more in tune with when the body is hungry.
When the stomach is hungry, what am I hungry for? Am I hungry for a hug? Am I hungry for a kiss? Am I hungry for a phone call with a friend? Am I hungry for a walk or am I truly hungry for food? If I’m hungry for food, am I truly hungry for that ice cream or am I hungry for a carrot, berries, or a handful of nuts? Sometimes we might be truly hungry for ice cream, but most often the body is hungry. When it is hungry, it wants clean and pure food.
The aforementioned sixteen-year-old is going to be cringing if she reads this. When she was about nine, how I raised my girls, I also have an older daughter, is food neutrality. I would say, “Do you want some ice cream or do you want some apple and peanut butter? Do you want some hummus and carrots or do you want some cookies?” I’d offer them two equals. One Halloween we went trick-or-treating with a friend of hers whose mother believed that sugar was poison. The girl who was going trick or treating with us knew that as soon as we came home, her mother was going to confiscate all her candy because candy is the devil.
Sugar is poison and she’s going to take it all away from her. The whole time this kid is sneaking candy, she must have had twenty pieces of candy finally. At one point my daughter said, “I’m hungry.” My husband said, “You have a king-size pillowcase, full of candy. Have some candy.” She said, “No, dad. I want real food.” That’s because her friend got the message, “That’s bad, you can’t have it,” which of course made her want it more instead of learning to be intuitive and have some sometimes without overdoing it.” My daughter who was raised with food neutrality could make healthy choices and know that she was hungry for real food. It illustrates how deprivation leads to bingeing, either deprivation or the anticipation of deprivation leads to bingeing. It’s important to look at when it comes to emotional eating or binge eating as you said, “What are you hungry for? Are you eating to fill an emotional void that we can fill, feel as emptiness, and fill it symbolically with food?”
Either deprivation or the anticipation of deprivation leads to binging. Share on XPeople will say to me, “I ate until my stomach hurt. What’s wrong with me? How can you tell me I’m not addicted to food when in physical pain unbuttoning all of the pants of my jeans and I still can’t stop?”My answer to that is, “Let’s look at what emotional pain you might be in that you are unconsciously converting to physical pain because your physical pain may be expressing what your mind cannot.” It’s important to be curious, to be that detective, and to look at your why. I like to say it’s about why power, not willpower. Your why is everything.
Thank you for highlighting that because you’re right, it is the why, the being curious. I always lead by trying to look at things nonjudgmentally, leave shame outside, leave blame outside, and look, “Why am I doing this?” Often people were parented with no why, just, “Because this is how it is.” I also love how you brought up the example of the pillowcase of candy and food neutrality because I do the same thing. There’s plenty of anything in our house. You can have whatever you want. Nothing’s but, just look at what your choices are. You can have what you want. You can have an apple, you can have a cookie, you can have carrots and whatever you want.
You can have chicken. I’m a vegetarian you can have some of my tofu, whatever it is, and when we make it neutral, and older research on this that when kids are deprived of food, even little ones, they will tend to go one way in order to get homeostasis to feel like they’re getting full again. There’s also research that if kids are given sweets and they are deprived of sweets, but also a table of healthy food, the kiddos will at first go to the sweets, crazy for the sweets, but over time they’ll be, “No, I don’t want that.” They will naturally want the healthy food, the real food as your daughter put it.”
When we look at that, it reminds us that if we’re starting from that place as kids or teens or as adults, it’s not wise to deprive ourselves because we always want what’s forbidden as human beings. We are going to want that thing behind the glass. We are going to want that thing behind the lock cabinet. We’re going to want that thing we can’t have. If we make it well, you can have it, can we practice moderation? Can we plan to see if we’re hungry? If you gave me a choice any night of the week of do I want a cookie or do I want raspberries, I’ll take raspberries. It’s what I want. I love berries. That’s not how I was necessary. I wasn’t raised that way. I was raised to believe that Cheez-Its were a treat, or sugar was a treat, or that thing. We can reprogram ourselves to find real food, plenty wonderful.
Once we realize how we’re using it for other reasons. That’s why you can’t start to learn to eat intuitively until you’re looking at why you’re eating out of some conflict, or emotional need, whether it’s for comfort, or even celebration, to fill the void until you look at what the holes in your life and find new ways to fill them. You might use food for that purpose until you learn new ways of comforting yourself. You might comfort yourself with ice cream, but when you do learn new ways of responding to yourself and relating to yourself, you don’t need to eat for that reason.
When you learn to trust people, food is always reliable, predictable, and available. People can be unreliable, unpredictable, and unavailable. Often we can turn to food, which on some level represents a relationship because our first experience of being fed is of being fed by a person. When we learn to turn to people who are trustworthy, with who we can have fulfilling notice of the language, and satisfying relationships we don’t have to be satisfied and fulfilled symbolically with food, then we can naturally learn to be intuitive with our food.
I love that we’re taking this line, this thread because we can see how it’s the same with anything that we overdo in life. Although some of them are more socially acceptable, if we overwork, we’re applauded for it. If we over-exercise, we’re often, “Great physique, good for you. You ran 82 marathons over the last month,” or whatever it might be. We’re applauded for certain excesses, yet food and a poor relationship with eating is one of those excesses, especially if it’s excess weight. If you’re underweight, people are far less likely unless you’re emaciated to look at US scams. It is one of those there is that similar thread when we are overdoing something, having too much sex with strangers or complete strangers unprotected.
We look at that and say, “Why? Not judging the person, but is this making you happy? What are you looking for when you’re doing this? What are you looking for in five ice cream cones a night? What are you looking for? What void are you trying to fill?” I think that’s such an important piece to notice that it’s not just food that affects us in this way. It’s a very natural human tendency when we feel alone, unworthy, isolated, sad, or depressed, we might turn to a coping mechanism that either society applauds or one that society doesn’t. Overeating is one that society does not applaud, but it also has serious health consequences. Thank you for drawing that out. Now let’s look back to the audience’s question. If they’re listening, they might be saying, “You still haven’t answered my question. Is it a mental health issue, which we’re both agreeing it’s or is it that her body wants to be fat?”
Nobody’s body wants to be fat. Your body isn’t like, “Let me make you fat.” No, your body is not an entity. Your mind. One of the things that people need to realize is that you’re not just a brain. People are like, “My brain is craving sugar. I’m addicted to sugar.” No, you have a mind as well as a brain. I would say if you are starving yourself, you are setting yourself up for the diet binge cycle. Starving is dieting, and that is followed by binging, then you go like, “I can’t believe I ate all that. Let me go on a diet again,” then you stay in that diet binge cycle, rather than starving yourself, look at what is your motivation for losing weight? How can you lose weight in a way that is safe? What are you starving for in life?
How are you deprived of life? Take a look at that. If you get close to your goal weight and then sabotage yourself, something is going on, there is a reason for that. You are afraid of something. It’s a wish, fear dilemma. The wish is, “I want to lose weight and then life will be great.” The fear is, “It won’t because then I might be impulsive or I might have to look at something I don’t want to look at. I’ll have expectations on me,” or all kinds of things dig deeper than the surface. I like to think of emotional health rather than mental health.
Turning to food is a way of coping. When you can identify what you’re coping with, what’s eating at you, and find a new way of identifying it, expressing it, and responding to yourself, everything with food will change because you’re not going to need it to cope. I co-edited a book called Beyond The Primal Addiction, all of these addictions that we talked about, whether it was food, although I don’t believe in food addiction, maybe eating addiction, sex shopping, and all the things are all coping strategies. We talk about work too, virtue, and advice, but they’re all ways of coping. When you learn new ways of coping, which is easier said than done, but possible, then everything changes with food or whatever else that you’re grappling with as well.
I have a question that I imagine some audience might be asking after we talked about the whole fat word. I believe that each body has a set point. Some people’s natural set point is to be more on the thin side. Some people are on the medium side. Some tend to be a little curvier naturally. I think that’s healthy for us to know and not battle against our body’s natural set point. We tend to know what that is it doesn’t have anything to do with the scale. It tends to be that place where we’re like, “I feel good. I can do what I want to do. I feel good in my skin.” That is different for everyone. We’re not all meant to be five x whatever it is, and X number of pounds. We are all meant to be a little bit different. Would you agree?
I would also ask the listener what she meant by my body wanting to be fat because I have had someone who was 5’7and 92 pounds back when I used to treat people with anorexia, tell me she was fat. What does that person mean by, “My body wants to be fat?” What is fat to you? Often we think that by losing weight, we lose the parts of ourselves that we don’t like. If we’re shy and scared of the world, and if we don’t like that about ourselves, we imagine if we lose weight, we’re going to be outgoing and comfortable. You cannot change your personality by changing your weight.
Sorry, diet industry, you’ve sold a bill of goods, but we have to go inward. Happiness is an inside job. It is not to be found on the scale, which cannot measure your value to find a way to like yourself, accept yourself, the things you like, and the things you don’t like so much, but maybe you can work on changing that you come to a healthy relationship with your whole self.
My first book, Joy From Fear, certainly not focused on eating or eating disorders, but it is what we’re talking about here. The more you dive inside to figure out what your fears are, your unrealistic fears, not the fear of the dog biting you when the dog has bit you before, that’s a realistic fear. You live next to a dog that bit you once, chances are it’ll bite you again. The unrealistic fear that, “If I do this, I’d be loved. If I weigh this much, I will be hated If I break off and follow this career or do this or leave my husband, as you said, I will not be loved, I will be wrong. I will be bad.” All of that dichotomous thinking that right, wrong, good, bad thinking, perpetuates eating disorders.
When we learn to work through our fears, to make friends with them, to listen to the messages, readers, this is not easy. As Dr. Nina was saying, her journey through therapy was years. As we do our therapy, my journey through therapy, “The amount of therapy you need to do to get your masters, and then because they require it, good programs require it then to get your doctorate, thank goodness, because you’re working out all your issues as best you can. Life never stops giving us issues,” but it’s the process our society has us believing it’s one pill, one shot, one, “Let me read this self-help book, and that will change my life.” It’s not, “Let me order this diet plan.” Those things may help you get a start, but you are not going to be successful long term on the well-being inside, on that mind. As you say, people often use mind and brain interchangeably, but the mind is separate from the brain.
When you start doing the inner work, and yes, it’s scary at first, it’s uncomfortable, you’re dredging up stuff that you might not want to look at that might be like, “That’s why I’m eating? That’s where that goes back to that?” It’s all normal human stuff. We are all much more imperfectly, wonderfully alike than we are different. We start looking at this and making friends with it, journaling about it. As you said, going to support groups.
I say it over and over again, support groups are a well-run support group. Well-run emphasis on that is worth its weight in gold. Why? Even when you’re not speaking or sharing, you’re hearing from other people, maybe things that have worked for them or about their dark times or their light times. You are seeing how you are another part of humanity that you are not broken and they’re often either free or low cost. If you can’t afford one-on-one psychotherapy, maybe you can afford a support group and a self-help book. That’s a good one. I’m seeing Binge Cure on your shelf behind me, but we will get to that. What do you think about having run support groups, what do you think? Now we’re trying to add some tips for our readers, not just the one who wrote in, but any readers who are struggling with disordered eating.
I think you want to look at a find a therapist or a group or someplace that does not look at the behavior, but looks at what’s causing the behavior. I liken it to a weed and a root. If we address the behavior that’s like plucking a weed, whether it’s dieting or going like instead of binging, I’m going to walk my dog. That’s not going to help you. I’m going to take a bubble bath. That’s not going to help you. You’ve got to dig deep. I love this analogy because we cannot see a root, but we know it is there because it grows a weed. it’s in the dark and we’re in the dark about aspects of ourselves.
We need to dig deep to get to those roots. When we do, the weed is gone. That is why I say it’s a binge cure method, not a binge recovery method because recovery means you have to wake up every day and go, “I’m going to be good about this thing. I’m going to be good. I’m going to be mindful. I’m going to be whatever.” No, I want you to wake up and think about your day, not your diet. That’s why I believe in the cure for liberation. When you get to those underlying reasons for why you’re doing what you’re doing and find new ways of coping that is going to be transformative for you.
When you get to those underlying reasons for why you're doing what you're doing and find new ways of coping, that is going to be transformative for you. Share on XMany therapists must use that same analogy. It’s like that. I talk about the clover. You see the clover at the top, but if you don’t do the work to get down and get all of those roots from that clover, that baby’s going to be sprouting up by mourning it seems because then you see it. I thought I pulled that out. It takes more work. You have to go and get this special spade and you have to dig down. You have to be gentle pulling it up. That’s what we need to do we’re working with aspects of our society and readers, Dr. Nina and I get that it’s hard and we get it’s laborious, but this work, there’s no way around doing the digging. Once you get used to it, I think it gets to be a bit of fun. It’s not this black psychotherapy. I think it’s wonderful, for those who have the opportunity. It’s wonderful because you’re learning and you’re growing this beautiful you. That’s what we’re here for, to grow this beautiful us on the inside.
I love what Michelangelo said, and I say this in my mainstream book, that Michelangelo was once asked, “How do you turn these great blocks of stone into statues?” Having seen the David out of you, “How did he do that?” He said, “I do not turn the stone into statues. I free the statues from the stone.” That is this work. We are chipping away at what is keeping you stuck so that you can be free, authentic, most beautiful, true self. That is how I see this work. It’s not about you need to change, it’s not about you’re broken, you need to be fixed. It’s about discovery. Whether we’re chipping away or digging deep or both, you can discover your truest beautiful self.
Thank you for reminding us of Michelangelo, because when we look at the idea for anyone who knows his work, those sculptures took him much time and so much energy. It is the same with self-work sometimes he’d be working and working and be almost done and would find a vein within and it was like, “Abandoned ships start again.” That is the work of the self. We need to be patient and realize that, especially with food and I want to go back to the piece you said, it’s our earliest relationship. Being fed by a caregiver, whether by the breast or by the bottle.
However, that’s what we know as primary relationship, as primary soothing. It’s natural for us when we’re stressed, sad, or lonely. It’s hardwired into us it is about digging in and not just fixing it at the moment, going back and saying, “What am I longing for? What emotional nourishment? What always is inside me that wants some attention and some attunement, some loving and cuddling?”
That is such precious work. I agree with you. The diet industry has it all wrong. They’re making tons of money. Drug companies are making tons of money. As with most not all mental health issues, the cure is within. Dr. Nina, you are such a wealth of knowledge. Can we go into a little bit, you talk about the seven steps, and we don’t want to give away the whole book because we want to leave some things for readers to find within your book. You’ve given us some lovely broad brush strokes and an acute awareness of how much it’s self-work and guided self-work. We’re not asking you to start these readers without having some tips that’s why Dr. Nina’s book is such an excellent guide. It breaks it down into seven doable steps. Could you highlight a few pieces, Dr. Nina?
I want to highlight a few with one story about a woman I called Jenna who told me that she’s like, “Dr. Nina, maybe some of your other people are dealing with emotional things.” She tells me she’s a food addict and can prove it knowing I don’t believe in food addiction. I said, “Okay, I’m all ears.” She told me that the night before, she was watching tv and all of a sudden Ben & Jerry’s was calling her name. This is how she put it, “Calling my name. I’m addicted to Chunky Monkey.” “What were you watching on TV before Ben & Jerry’s started calling your name?” She tells me it’s charmed, her favorite guilty pleasure because she’s doing something she enjoys. There’s no reason or she thinks that she would want to down a pint of ice cream. What was the episode about?
It’s when this demon comes down, and breaks the bomb between the sisters. They start fighting. It gets very nasty and contentious. I know that Jenna has a terrible relationship with her sister. I say, “Sister’s fighting, huh?” That’s when she gave me that home alone with hands on her cheeks because that’s when she realized watching the show activated her sister’s stuff, her feelings about her sister. But before it reached conscious awareness, she went to ice cream for comfort and distraction. If we had talked about, “When ice cream calls your name, do this, do that.” No, we had to look at what was the real cause. In my book, I helped people identify the real cause as I did with Jenna. When she was able to cope with and work through and process some difficult feelings about her sister, Ice Cream stopped calling her name.
In my book, I help you identify what are those hidden roots. What are those hidden reasons why you might be turning to food? You might think it’s, “No, I’m addicted to Chunky Monkey.” Something else is going on then after that, you have to learn how to express your feelings. We’re told in our society, especially women, “Don’t have feelings.” Men are told, “Don’t be sad. Don’t be vulnerable.” Women are like, “Don’t be angry, don’t be this, don’t be that.” What do we do with those feelings? We turn it on ourselves. We don’t know how to appropriately express our feelings and comfort ourselves with words. The book takes you through all of that, learning how to heal the past, be in the present, and think about the future all without using food as a way of coping that’s the general overview.
You make it sound very simple and yes, it’s complex, but it’s simple. I don’t think you are at all oversimplifying it. It takes us time because the body wants to be in balance. The psyche wants to be in balance. Everything in the external world, not everything, but many things are working against that natural balance. there are simple principles, but we do have to do a lot of work to notice, as you said, something as minor as a TV show, something as minor as seeing a happy couple walking along a path if you are alone and used to comfort yourself with food. All of these little things, talking to somebody who reminds you of a critical father who was hyperfocused on food and thinness.
We’re getting triggered then we turn and we turn on our cell phones and look at social media and we’re immediately comparing ourselves to someone who might be a real person. They might be exactly, look that perfect way, or they might be heavily airbrushed, filtered, or whatever it is. The point is, that type of comparison doesn’t do us any good we’re surrounded by it. There are many things to look at. I wish we had more time. Are there any final pieces that you’d like to share?
I have treated people who have struggled for 10, 20, 30, 40, and even 50 years, women and men with this I want you to know that no matter how long you have struggled, there is hope. It is never too late to create change. It is never too late to create a new awareness and new ways of understanding and responding to yourself so that you stop using food for comfort, and distraction to express something unconscious. Whatever it is, there is hope.
There is hope. It is never too late to create change, to create a new awareness and new ways of understanding and responding to yourself so that you stop using food for comfort or distraction. Share on XI 100% with you I also meant to affirm what you were saying about the emotions. I often say, “Men are allowed to be okay or angry.” Sometimes a wee bit sad. Women are allowed to be okay, and unhappy but not too happy because if you’re too happy, then there’s something wrong with you. We’re not allowed to be angry because the minute we get angry, somebody’s calling us aggressive. Forget the fact that we’re allowed to be assertive. But people say, the minute you speak up for yourself, “You are angry. You are aggressive.”
No, I have boundaries. When you realize that many people don’t know how to use their emotions because they weren’t raised to use their emotions, I certainly wasn’t raised to use my emotions. I was raised to keep my mouth shut. These are things we have the right to, and I often say the responsibility of embracing, learning, and seeing it as truly fun because when we get to know more about ourselves, then we’re making the most. We’re freeing ourselves from the stone. We are freeing ourselves. I love that image it’s beautiful. Dr. Nina, thank you so much. Where can our readers find you?
Everywhere. You can find me on my website, which is DrNinaInc.com. You can find me on Instagram at @Dr.Nina.Psychoanalys. You can find my YouTube channel, The Binge Eating Cure. You can find me on TikTok The Binge Cure. You can listen to my podcast on Voice America called The Binge Cure With Dr. Nina. You can listen to my old radio show, The Dr. Nina Show on LA Talk Radio, it is on Apple Podcasts. You can find my book, The Binge Cure: 7 Steps To Outsmart Emotional Eating on Amazon, as well as the accompanying workbook, The Binge Cure Journal, which gives you many ways to take the principles in the book and apply them. If you don’t have a support group, you can join Dr. Nina’s “Food For Thought” Community on Facebook. Even if you do have a support group, join me there, and get the book, it will help you on your path to freedom Liberation.
Readers, there you have it. You will not be able to not find Dr. Nina. She is truly everywhere and such a joy to connect with. What a gift to have you share this wisdom with our readers. I believe with guests like you, we can help the world one step at a time become liberated from all of this craziness in the external world that is getting us off kilter, emotionally, mentally, and physically. Bless you and thank you. Anything else, Dr. Nina?
Thank you for having me and it was a pleasure to have this discussion with you and help because it’s not about food. It’s about our humanity and changing the way we think about being human.
You have a Great Dane and a daughter to get back to, plus a husband. Thank you so much. Readers, thank you so much for joining us.
Dr. Nina Savelle-Rocklin is a renowned author and podcast host and one of the nation’s leading psychoanalysts known for the psychology of eating. Her signature message, “It’s not what you’re eating, it’s what’s eating ‘at’ you,” has resonated with hundreds of thousands of listeners from around the globe in 46 countries. As founder of The Binge Cure Method, she guides emotional eaters to create lasting food freedom so they can take back control of their lives and feel good in their bodies.
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