Emotional Eating and How to Cope [Podcast]
Are you a stress eater?
A reward eater?
A comfort eater?
You’re not crazy. You’re not lazy. This is not about will power. There’s a reason why this destructive eating behavior is going on.
Women with PCOS are often told, “You need to lose weight and go on a low carb, ketogenic or paleo diet.” For a lot of us, the thoughts of going on a strict food plan leads to a sense of denial and a cycle of stress/emotional eating. Dr. Melissa McCreery is a well-known psychologist and author who can suggest some reasons for our eating habits and practical ways we can avoid pit falls. Listen to my interview with her and learn:
- How to live, eat well, and have the health that you want without feeling deprived, miserable and overwhelmed
- The power of adopting a transformation mindset
- What’s your why?
- Is your overeating biological, emotional, a coping mechanism, or all of these?
- Practical holiday eating tips
A complete transcript follows.
A complete transcript follows.
All PCOS Diva podcasts are now 
Psychologist Dr. Melissa McCreery focuses on the three Os that ambush successful, high-performing women—overwhelm, overload and overeating. She is the author of The Emotional Eating Rescue Plan for Smart, Busy Women and the creator of TooMuchOnHerPlate.com, a consulting company providing busy women the programs and resources they need to take control of stress and overeating and add more ease, success, and joy to their health, their businesses, and their lives. Melissa’s approach to helping working mothers, busy professionals, and stressed out business owners has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Weight Watchers Magazine, Good Housekeeping, Working Mother, Fitness, Women’s Health, and Self and The Huffington Post. A busy woman herself, Melissa lives with her family in the beautiful Pacific Northwest where she enjoys the incredible trails, island views, and of course, great coffee. Visit http://TooMuchOnHerPlate.com to learn more and to take your free Hidden Hungers Quiz to find out why you’re really overeating.
Complete transcript:
Amy: Hello and welcome to another PCOS Diva podcast. This is your host, Amy Medling. I’m a Certified Health Coach and the founder of PCOS Diva. Today, we are going to be talking about a topic that I think is going to hit home for so many women listening. I can probably guarantee that when most of us go to the doctor’s office we hear, you need to lose weight and you need to be on a low carb or ketogenic or paleo diet, whatever the doctor thinks is the most approach for managing your PCOS lifestyle. I think for a lot of us, the thoughts of going on this strict sort of food plan sends us in the opposite direction and it can often lead to stress eating and emotional eating. I hear from a lot of women with PCOS that they really struggle with those issues of stress eating and emotional eating. I have brought in an expert to talk to us about ways we can kind of avoid that pit fall. I want to introduce everyone to Dr. Melissa McCreery. Welcome, Dr. McCreery!
Dr. McCreery: Hey, thanks so much for having me, Amy. It’s great to be here.
Amy: I want you to just give everybody a little information about your background. You are a psychologist and you focus on the three O’s that ambush successful, high performing, women. Those O’s are overload, overwhelm, and overeating. You’re the author of the Emotional Eating Rescue Plan for Smart, Busy Women and the creator of toomuchonherplate.com, a consulting company providing busy women the programs and resources they need to take control of stress and overeating and add more ease, success, and joy to their health and their lives. That sounds wonderful. I’m really anxious to kind of dig in and tell us how we can add more joy and ease to our lives, especially around this topic of stress and overeating.
Dr. McCreery: Stress and overeating and, like you were saying, being told that there is a plan that you are supposed to follow or a set of rules that you need to dive into or invest yourself in. For a lot of people … you were giving the scenario of going to the doctor and being told what you have to do and that ends up being the feeling that you carry with you. There’s this other thing that I have to do. For a lot of us, it feels like your freedom is being taken away, so what I’d really like to talk about is how can you do the things that are going to allow you to live the life you want to live and have the health that you want to have instead of feeling deprived and miserable and like you’ve had a whole bunch of other stuff thrown on your to do list. How can you actually approach this in a way that gives you more of that feeling of freedom and more of that feeling of ease, which is not the way we are taught to think about it at all.
Amy: I think a lot of women with PCOS are stuck in what I call the diet, deprivation, and denial place. How can we start making some shifts to a healthier mindset around food and eating, especially when for our health, we kind of have to have some constraints around what we are eating?
Dr. McCreery: I love it that we use a lot of the same language because you talk about deprivation and that’s something that I talk a lot about too. The first thing that is really critical is to not buy into that deprivation mindset. I talk a lot about the difference between deprivation, which a sole focus on what you can’t have, what you shouldn’t do, what you have to make work, what you have to go without. This kind of going hungry, which is … I think that’s what a lot of people think about when they think about having to lose weight or eat healthier. I’m going to have to be hungry all the time. Feeling deprived. Contrasting that with really adopting a transformation mindset.
Amy: I like that.
Dr. McCreery: Yes, because really what you are looking for … I think the women that you work with all the time, Amy, are looking for is a transformation. They want a shift, you want a shift in your health. You want a shift in your energy. You want a shift in your life. You want things to be easy that aren’t so easy. You want stuff to work better, whether you are talking about your physiology and physical stuff or just the ease of your life. What we’re looking for is a transformation. When you go to the doctor because you have a problem or symptom or a set of symptoms, you’re going because you want a transformation.
The very first thing is starting to keep that in mind. When somebody hands you a food plan and you decide, okay, I’m going to buy into this. This is something I do really need to do. You can go two ways with your thinking. You can focus on the deprivation because it probably has a list of things you have to do or should do or need to focus on or should count or all that kind of stuff, or what I really work with clients to do which is, focus … so what’s the transformation. Really keep that in mind. What is your … I talk about what is your why? Why do you want to invest in this new way of eating or this new way of looking at food or why do you want to make a change in your weight? What’s the payoff for you? That’s the thing that you want to be thinking about every morning when you wake up, not I can’t eat sugar or I need to have more protein. Just the energy behind those things … what do you want? What’s your why?
I’m betting you’re trying to impact your fertility or you want to have more energy or you want to feel more able to chase your kids around and more flexible. What’s the transformation that you want to have? That’s the … almost the foundational piece that fuels positive change and it gets so little emphasis in most traditional, health, nutrition, wellness kind of programs. Does that make sense?
Amy: Oh yeah and I really love that whole approach. I was talking to a client today and we were … she was kind of coming to this realization that she has to make positive choices based on who she wants to show up as in her family. What kind of mom does she want to be for her son. What kind of wife she wants to be for her husband. I thought, you know, bingo. That’s kind of what approach that I take, as well. I guess that is the transformational mindset and for me, it’s really helped. We are recording this a week or so after Halloween, where we have all of these wonderful, fun-sized candy bars from three kids from Halloween trick-or-treating around the house.
Dr. McCreery: They’re everywhere!
Amy: They’re everywhere, right! Everybody’s trying to get rid of them and boy, I do love a Milky Way every now and then, but I have to make that conscious decision. Do I really want this Milky Way enough to then have it trigger this kind of sugar slide and you know, five, six, seven, fun-size bars later, I’m on the couch, too tired to make dinner and then ordering take out. It just creates this whole snowball effect, so bringing it back to who I want to show up as in my family, really keeps me from dipping my hand into the candy bowl.
Dr. McCreery: I said this in the beginning that a lot of people equate to being able to eat whatever they want with freedom, so it feels like when you get a set of rules, that you are having your freedom taken away. But really, if you start to look at what you want in your life and just a simple question like how do I want to feel when I stand up after I eat dinner? How do I want to feel in the afternoon? What do I want my lunch to do for me? What kind of feeling do I want that to help contribute to? Do I want to feel tired, sluggish? Do I want to feel like my pants … like I have to loosen by belt? Do I want to feel energized? Do I want to feel vibrant? How do I want … what do I want this food to do for me? When you start to think that way, there’s a different way of approaching free … you know, that’s a different kind of freedom than I can eat whatever I want because it’s choosing your feelings. It’s choosing your transformation and that can be so powerful for people. That’s one huge piece of how to adjust your thinking when you start to think about weight loss and how to eat and what to eat.
Amy: I think for so many women with PCOS, we feel like we are out of control. That we’ve lost control over our bodies and by choosing how we want to feel, based on the food that we eat, really brings that control back to us.
Dr. McCreery: Yes and when you start to pay attention to that, a lot of people … for a lot us, you get more in touch with how different kinds of eating really affect your body and so once … for me, I know, knowing that there’s certain kinds of foods that do make me sleepy or there’s certain kinds of foods that make me crash. When I know that, my choice not to eat them comes from a totally different place than I read an article that this is bad for me and I should have it, you know? It feels like an empowered choice versus something that somebody is forcing on me. That’s one piece. I know you also mentioned emotional eating and stress eating. I think that’s another big factor that comes into play and can really snowball because when you are feeling put upon or you’re feeling forced to do something or you’re feeling discouraged, all that stuff. It’s one of the ways that so many people have learned to cope with that is by reaching for something to eat to feel better, to comfort themselves or just to say nobody’s going to tell me what to do, right? I’m going to be in control. I can eat whatever I want. That can be another big piece of this puzzle and it’s really important to pay attention to. Should we talk some about that?
Amy: Oh, I’d love to.
Dr. McCreery: Yes. It’s a complicated topic, emotional eating. By emotional eating, it’s any time that you’re using food, well it can have a lot of different definitions and we can go really big with it, but just in general, it’s using food to cope with a feeling, to change a feeling, to not think about a feeling. It’s things like comfort eating or stress eating or boredom eating, but it’s also eating to celebrate. Eating because you feel like you deserve it after a really hard day, which is a place I see a lot of busy women get stuck, you know, eating in the evening because it’s been a long hard day and it’s the only time you have for yourself. Who doesn’t want to curl up in front of the TV with a big bowl ice cream, right?
In the midst of all of this stuff and when you’re trying to think about how to not feel deprived and go hungry, it’s really important to take a look at what food does for you in your life and the different kinds of things that you use it for. I always tell people that one of the first premises that I have about eating is that we eat for a reason. We always eat for a reason and if you’re overeating, there is a reason that you are doing it. It might be partly biologically driven. It might be driven by your emotions. It might be because you’re in a tough situation and this is the coping skill you’ve learned and you don’t know anything else to do, but the … one of the very first empowering things that you can do, is to own the fact, whatever you’re doing, even if you hate that you are doing it, there’s a reason that you are doing it. You want to approach that really respectfully and start to understand what that reason is. It’s only when you start to look at that and understand it, that you can start to put together strategies to start to address it in a different kind of way.
Amy: Awareness is the first step, isn’t it?
Dr. McCreery: Yes, well, awareness it’s … it’s respectful awareness because I think a lot of times what happens is it’s so easy to get frustrated with yourself because you’re doing this thing you didn’t want to do or you feel like I just need to knock it off and so there’s this tendency to get really harsh with yourself or there’s also a lot of guilt and shame and self-blame that comes in when you are overeating or you are not eating in a way that serves your health, so stopping … pushing all of that to the side and saying, okay, wait a minute, I don’t like this, but, why am I doing this? I’m a smart person. Why am I diving into the Milky Ways in the afternoon? What’s going on here? Is there something else that I’m really craving? Is there something else that I’m really hungry for that isn’t food that would be worth my paying attention to? Is there something going on with my body? It’s by starting to ask those questions. You have to be in a compassionate place to do that, that you get the power back to break the cycle.
Amy: I think it is that non-judgmental place, where you almost look at it from an outsider’s perspective and I know a question that always seems to work for me is, is if I ask myself what am I really hungry for?
Dr. McCreery: Yes.
Amy: If I am looking at those Milky Ways, it usually isn’t because I’m hungry, you know, physically hungry. Like you said, there’s something else going and I have to get to the bottom of it.
Dr. McCreery: Yes. I call them hidden hungers. What is it that … and sometimes if you’ve been doing this for a really long time … sometimes we can sit back and say oh, I’m stressed or I’m tired or … but, if you’ve been doing this for a really long time or if you’ve really learned to use food in a specific place in your life, then you may not, could be really, really smart and really, really capable, and come up empty when you ask yourself that question. That’s pretty normal. That can be really frustrating if you’re somebody who’s used to knowing answers and being capable and all that kind of stuff, so that’s really why I come back to even if you really don’t know what it is, just taking a deep breath and knowing I’m not crazy. I’m not nuts. I’m not lazy. This is not about will power. There’s a reason why this is going on and I just need to keep paying attention and asking the question because that’s how I’m going to learn how to do something different.
The really cool thing is when you can start to put those pieces together and do something different, food loses so much of its power, which is so wonderful because you can go from having to fight it all the time to just … it has a different place in your life, you know? It’s less compelling. That’s just the most amazing feeling in the world when that happens.
Amy: Yes, it’s definitely that sense of freedom that I think so many of us with PCOS are looking for. Food, especially, well, I mean we have the physiological issues to deal with. The insulin resistance and the blood sugar issues, but I do think that that aside, many of us are still dealing with some type of emotional triggers around eating, so that’s why I think this conversation is so important.
Dr. McCreery: They all kind of … they can all snowball together too. If you have physiological stuff that’s going on and you’re eating in a way that you don’t like and you’re judging yourself for doing that and you’re mad at yourself or you’re embarrassed or you’re ashamed or you feel guilt, which can also trigger more overeating, right? Those are huge triggers for not wanting to think about things and shove things down with food. I see that a lot. When all of that starts happening, it gets almost impossible to be able to take a step back and ask yourself in a compassionate way, okay, what’s going on? It could … whether it’s I need to find a better way to deal with my stress or I’ve got to find a way to reward myself that isn’t food, or really, I’m going to feel so much better if I could be managing my blood sugar in a different kind of way. We can’t get to that place to ask those smart questions if we are busy beating ourselves up or feeling back about what we are doing or trying to distract ourselves or numb out because it’s all overwhelming and so we’re just in the cycle of overeating. I see that … do you see that in the women that you work with, Amy? Because I see that all the time.
Amy: Yes and I do think that so much of this boils down to self-love, especially with my clients and you know, ultimately myself. I was loving myself with food for a long time and it wasn’t until, you know, that I became a Diva, as my husband puts it, and I really put myself first and my needs and made sure that I was getting the time to nurture myself. Food kind of lost its’ appeal when I started making sure that my needs were met in other non-food ways.
Dr. McCreery: That’s such a huge piece of it and that something that’s such an ongoing challenge for so many people, right? Whether it’s the challenge of learning how to say no or carve out time for yourself or … and also to just take the time to …not just, but simply take the time to tune into yourself and start to get good at identifying what your spirit really needs to be fed because sometimes …
Amy: I love that.
Dr. McCreery: … we can be so numb that we don’t really know anymore and it takes … it’s a process. When of the things I often tell people is don’t worry if you don’t have … if the sky doesn’t open up and you don’t get this perfect answer. Start with how could I feel an inch better? How could I …
Amy: I like that.
Dr. McCreery: … feed my spirit just a little half an inch? What could … because I think sometimes we get really perfectionistic and we can’t come up with the perfect answer or nothing’s going to feel as good as chocolate, so why even bother? It’s really just building it in in little tiny ways. That’s how it starts to become a different cycle and a different habit, instead of just automatically wandering into the kitchen.
Amy: Yes and what I’ve found, again, with myself and women that I work that I with, that women with PCOS are highly creative, and I find that those who are suffering the most with their PCOS symptoms have lost touch with their creativity. I often find that if you can think back to what you enjoyed doing as a child and try to re-connect with that, whether it’s dancing or drawing or writing or even like riding a bike, those are the things that feed you in a way that food never will.
Dr. McCreery: It’s so true. It’s so easy to fall out of touch with thinking what would I love to do? How do I love to play? What makes me light up? To go back to that whole transformation idea, that’s what we want, right? I remember hearing … I can’t remember who said it the first time I heard it, but even if all the goals that we have, everything that we try so hard to do, everything that’s on our to do list, isn’t there because, how can I say this clearly, it’s really not about all these things that need to get done. All those things are important to us because of a bigger why. It’s either a value that we have or a feeling that we want to have in our life or a feeling that we want to share with other people.
We’re doing all this stuff. Doing, doing, doing, all the time because we want to feel a certain way or be it … like you were saying, show up a certain way or have a certain impact on the world. Staying in touch with that, it’s like … you we’re saying, what are those things that light me up? I want my soul to be fed. I want to have great energy. I want to be a vibrant force in the world. Starting to think more about what are the kinds of things that help me feel that way. I guarantee you, it’s not what you find in a vending machine. That’s what we’ve learned to do when we start to feel bad. We put something in our mouths. I’m not saying that in a blaming way. It’s so pervasive in this culture, but there are some questions that are so much more powerful that really are game changers.
Amy: Yes and I think too, when you are having a craving or you’re having that urge to emotional eat, to try to just sit with that feeling and not eat and just sit there and kind of let that wash over you. I think that often in those moments where you can be vulnerable to that whatever it is underneath that’s bubbling on the surface that you’re keeping down with food, that’s where the big a-ha moments lie and you can really get in touch with what it is you really need and what your fears are.
Dr. McCreery: Yes. It can be hard. It can be really hard, so sometimes that stuff is really powerful and I also think there’s a place for other kinds of distractions. I think sometimes people get scared to look at emotional eating because they feel like oh my gosh, if I just sit and feel my feelings, I’m going to get in this pit of … it’s like this Pandora’s Box and I don’t know if I want to do that. Again, giving yourself permission to do it for an inch. Giving yourself permission to sit for a couple of minutes with a craving before you act on it. Giving yourself permission to have some other distraction strategies. If you really need to avoid whatever you are feeling, not for a lifetime. This doesn’t work as your only strategy, but sometimes we just don’t have the bandwidth to deal with something, so I always talk about what are some other things you can have in your toolbox besides overeating or besides having a binge or besides numbing … what are some other ways if what you really need is some kind of soothing warm blanket comfortable where you just need to distract yourself for a while. It’s possible to have strategies that aren’t food.
Amy: Can you give us some examples of those strategies that you may use with some of your clients?
Dr. McCreery: Yes. Different strategies work for different people. The other interesting thing is and one of the things we talk about in my programs are instead strategies, so what are you going to do instead of eating? There are different kinds of instead strategies. There are strategies that, like you said, can help you really be with a feeling and help you connect with yourself. There are strategies to help you distract yourself. There are strategies that help you transform a feeling that you don’t like. How can I feel differently than I feel now? How can I cheer myself up, for instance.
Part of this is starting to learn what kind of strategy you need in the moment. The other kind of weird thing is the same strategy might serve a different purpose for, you know, different people, so … but, just a distraction strategy. I know sometimes, for instance, that time between work and dinner is … if you come home from work and especially if you are the one making dinner, it can be such a crazy, chaotic time. I know a lot of women have found some real success creating just a little numbing out time for themselves. Maybe it’s you come home and you just get to read your fluffy novel for twenty minutes before you dive into anything, right? You just lose yourself in that. Or you spend some time on Facebook or there’s a game that you like to play or a crossword puzzle that you like to do. You just take a little break from life for a little bit. That’s the kind of thing that I’m talking about instead of wandering into the kitchen and picking through the leftovers because that’s just your automatic habit and it’s kind of a way of procrastinating the next thing on your to do list. That might be a distraction strategy.
The kind of things that you’re talking about, which are how can I sit with my feelings? That could be anything from giving yourself a little time with your journal or going for a quiet walk by yourself or just having … creating some kind of ritual where you check in with yourself and actually ask yourself what am I feeling? It’s amazing how many hours in the day we can go through without ever thinking about that. Is that answering your question, Amy?
Amy: Yes. Those are all great ideas. I love that idea about … I know I’m the only one that cooks in my house. I think I have enabled my three guys. I need to teach them how to cook, but dinner time, it’s very crazy time. What really helps me, is after I’ve connected with my kids and helped with homework or whatever, I love Audible. I always have a great novel. I know we’ve talked about this, Melissa, but I love Diana Gabaldon and I listen to her books over and over because it’s really a great escape. I can put those headphones on and kind of be in a different place, even while I’m cooking dinner. That kind of helps me from snacking while cooking dinner, so I think you’re right, finding the strategies that work for you and you have to try different things.
Dr. McCreery: You have to really start by asking yourself that question, what is the reason that food is so compelling right now? If you can give yourself … that’s kind of the process you probably went through. You realize it’s an overwhelming time. You’d like a little escape. It feels good. It feeds you on a feeling kind of level to zone out; to go to a different world with your books.
Amy: Right.
Dr. McCreery: I think, especially if you’re in a cycle with food where you are frustrated with yourself, and it accounts would be in a cycle with your health for your frustrated with yourself, we lose … when we get to that place, it’s so easy to lose your sense of self compassion, that’s where you need enough compassion to just ask, okay, self, what is going on? Why am I having a hard time here? How can I help myself? Instead of going into what I see a lot, the inner drill sergeant mode of I need to shape up, I need to get tough with myself. I just need to come home and make the dinner. You know, it’s like, it’s like talking to ourselves like we would talk to anybody else in the world.
Amy: That is so important, that treating ourselves with that love and compassion that we would afford our own kids and spouse.
Dr. McCreery: Yes. I always say, would you talk to your mother the way you talk to yourself?
Amy: Oh God. Heading into the holidays, do you have any tips for us? I know there is definitely those foods that conjure up an emotion. For me, I’m gluten free, but the family turkey dressing that’s been passed down from generation to generation- when I eat it, I feel like my grandmother, who has been gone for, oh gosh, 13 years, is sitting beside me. How do we deal with holiday foods that bring up so many memories, but we know aren’t good for us?
Dr. McCreery: First of all, I think it’s being honest that you have a challenge ahead of yourself. This is a great …. the time that we are recording this is really a great time to start thinking ahead. Just making some … setting some mental post it notes ahead of yourself of what are the potential challenges coming up? Where are the place where I may feel most challenged? Starting to ask yourself, how do I want to deal with those? I think people have different comfort levels with how flexible and how rigid they want to be with what they eat, but I question that I think can always be useful is to ask yourself, what kind of policies do I want to make for myself? Not, what kind of rules do I have to follow, but what kind of policies do I want to make for myself with food that’s during the holidays?
One policy that is often helpful is kind of dividing up what’s the food that is the once a year special treat kind of food, like your grandmother’s stuffing, that probably doesn’t show up every day, and what’s the food that’s going to show up during the holidays that really isn’t that special and that I could get at the grocery store any time that I’m going to be tempted by it? Like, the basket of Ruffles potato chips that everybody puts out to fill up the table or the punch that you don’t really care about or the store bought cookies. That can be helpful. What are the things that are really important to me and what’s my policy going to be?
It may be that my policy is going to be, I don’t care what plan I’m on, I’m going to taste that stuffing. Letting yourself decide what your policies are, but the rule I always really challenge my clients to follow is are you willing to only eat when you are hungry and if you are going to eat something … I just feel really strongly about this one. If you are going to eat something that you really, really want and it’s a really special treat and that you totally love and you’re eating it because it’s so special, then I really want to challenge you to make you savor 100% of whatever it is that you eat. Don’t go into that cycle of I’m going to eat it because it’s special, but I feel guilty because I really shouldn’t be eating this, but I really want it. I’m going to finish it, but I’m going to eat it really quickly because I feel really bad about it. I’m feeling self-conscious and now here I’ve eaten this whole portion and I haven’t even tasted it. That’s what happens a lot of the time.
Amy: Yes. This is something that I talk about in my coaching. It’s a quote that I picked up from the Whole Living magazine. It was the editor, her name was Teri Tripescoe and she says, “Indulgence is an opportunity to experience pure pleasure.”
Dr. McCreery: Yes.
Amy: I think that’s exactly what you’re describing.
Dr. McCreery: If we let … if we give ourselves permission to savor it. So much of overeating … I wish there was this monitor that we could use because so many of the calories that get ingested aren’t even valued. People get caught in cycles with overeating and feeling like if I don’t eat this thing I will be deprived, or I want to have this because I want to have freedom. Yet, I wish we could measure the percentage of calories that aren’t even tasted for lots of different reasons. Really slowing down, really being mindful of the choices that you make, but also being mindful of the food that you eat.
Research shows us that over and over again that people who eat mindfully, eat less, they feel more satisfied, they feel satisfied sooner. If you want to enjoy the food, stop and enjoy it instead of saying I’m going to enjoy it and getting into that whole cycle … that deprivation cycle of feeling like you shouldn’t be eating it and never feeling satisfied because you didn’t get to have the experience.
Amy: It didn’t register, right?
Dr. McCreery: Yes.
Amy: Dr. McCreery, do you have some resources over at Too Much on Your Plate that you can direct listeners to?
Dr. McCreery: Totally. That’s “Too Much on Her Plate” and there’s a bunch of different … we’ve got weekly blog posts, articles, and tips and resources. There’s a stress eating cheat sheet that you can download over there, but I think the best place to start is … if this stuff … if what we are talking about it resonating with you, I would invite to come over to toomuchonherplate.com, that’s toomuchonherplate.com, and sign up and take the free hidden hungers quiz. You can sign up, you can take that. We will email you the quiz. You can take that and you can get that scored. What it will start to show you is where your hiding hungers are the highest, what kinds of things might be triggering overeating for you, and then it will take that score and give you some places that you can start to make changes. I feel like information can be so overwhelming in this day and age because there is so much of it. What I really want to be able to do is be able to give people … it’s like those one inch action steps that we were talking about, what can you start to do right away so that you can start to get into a different cycle and start to make some positive changes instead of feeling trapped on this hamster wheel, where stuff isn’t working for you.
Amy: That’s sounds great and we will post the link to that underneath the podcast.
Dr. McCreery: Perfect! Thanks, Amy!
Amy: Thank you for sharing your wisdom and knowledge with us today. I think it was really helpful and I definitely picked a few things up as I head into my holiday season.
Dr. McCreery: I love talking about this topic and you’re right, I think this is a perfect time of year to start thinking about how do I want to feel? How do I want to eat? How do I want to feel? What kind of transformation do I want to have?
Amy: Thank you, again, and thank you everyone for listening, and I look forward to being with you again next time. Bye-bye.
