Health, Fitness & Personal Growth Tips for Women in Midlife: Asking for a Friend

Ep.191 Emotional Eating in Midlife: Why Willpower Fails and What Actually Works

• Michele Henning Folan • Episode 191

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Emotional eating isn’t about willpower — and for many women, midlife is when it finally becomes impossible to ignore.

In this powerful episode of Asking for a Friend, Michele Folan sits down with emotional eating expert, TEDx speaker, and bestselling author Tricia Nelson to unpack what emotional eating really is, why it intensifies during midlife and menopause, and how women can finally break free from decades of dieting, shame, and self-blame.

Tricia shares her deeply personal story — from childhood emotional eating and binge drinking to sobriety at 21 — and explains why food is often used as a coping mechanism for stress, unprocessed emotions, people-pleasing, perfectionism, and burnout. Together, Michele and Tricia explore how hormonal shifts, caregiving roles, identity changes, and boundary struggles collide in midlife, making emotional eating patterns louder and harder to manage.

This conversation goes far beyond food rules and meal plans. You’ll learn how emotional eating shows up as pain-killing, escape, and self-punishment, why dieting alone never solves the problem, and what it actually takes to heal your relationship with food — without restriction, guilt, or obsession. Tricia also addresses the misunderstood link between emotional eating, addiction, alcohol, and highly processed foods, and explains why healing requires addressing emotions, stress, and daily habits together.

If you’ve ever felt stuck in a cycle of “doing everything right” but still struggling with food, weight, or self-trust — this episode will feel like someone finally put words to your experience.

Tricia is the author of Heal Your Hunger and founder of Heal Your Hunger, a proven program helping women end emotional eating by addressing the root causes — not just the symptoms.

🎧 If you’re ready for a more compassionate, sustainable path forward with food, this episode is a must-listen.

Take the quiz - https://healyourhunger.com/quiz-splash/?nav=yes

Free live masterclass with Tricia Nelson on January 29th at 2:30pm PT / 5:30pm ET, focused on helping women stop emotional and binge eating around sugar in a sustainable, compassionate way.

Here is the link to join - https://go.healyourhunger.com/stop-sugar-bingeing?am_id=michele6703

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If you’re doing “all the right things” and still feel stuck, adding a layer of support may be an option. I’ve partnered with a trusted telehealth platform offering modern solutions for women in midlife—including micro-dosed GLP-1 and other peptide therapies.

https://elliemd.com/michelefolan - Create a free account to view all products.

1:1 and group Midlife Health and Longevity Coaching mailto:mfolanfasterway@gmail.com

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Transcripts are created with AI and may not be perfectly accurate.

Disclaimer: This podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing, or other professional healthcare services. It is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your qualified healthcare provider with any questions regarding a medical condition.

Michele Folan:

The information shared on this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. The content is meant to support informed conversations about health and wellness, not replace individualized care from a qualified healthcare professional. If you've been doing the work lifting weights, prioritizing protein, managing your stress, and your body still isn't responding the way it used to, you're not doing anything wrong. Midlife physiology is different, and sometimes lifestyle alone doesn't fully move the needle. That's why I partnered with a trusted telehealth resource to offer Dr. LED medically appropriate support for women who need an extra layer. GLP1s and other peptides are not scary when used responsibly. With proper medical oversight and FDA certified compounding pharmacies, these tools can help support metabolic health while you continue doing the foundational work that matters most. No shame, no judgment, just informed options our mothers never had. If you're curious about GOP1s or other peptides, check out the link in the show notes for my trusted resource or reach out with questions. Health, wellness, fitness, and everything in between. We're removing the taboo from what really matters in midlife. Emotional eating is one of the most common struggles women face and one of the most hidden. It's not something we talk about at dinner parties or admit to our friends. It happens quietly, often behind closed doors layered with shame, self-blame, and the belief that I should have this figured out by now. For many women, midlife is when emotional eating really starts to take its toll. Hormonal shifts, chronic stress, caregiving, identity changes, loneliness, and exhaustion all collide. Right at the same time, our old coping strategies stop working. Food becomes comfort, relief, distraction, or escape. And then comes the guilt and the cycle repeats. This isn't about willpower. It's not about a lack of discipline. It's certainly not about being bad with food. Emotional eating is often a signal, one that something deeper is asking to be seen, healed, and supported. That's why today's conversation is so important. My guest today is Tricia Nelson, an internationally recognized emotional eating coach, TEDx speaker, and best-selling author of Heal Your Hunger: Seven Simple Steps to End Emotional Eating Now. Trisha's work is deeply personal, rooted in her own decades-long journey with emotional eating and addiction, and has spent more than 30 years studying the addictive personality and helping people heal the root causes of overeating, not just manage the symptoms. Today we're talking about what emotional eating really is, why shame keeps so many women stuck, why midlife can be the breaking point, and most importantly, what true healing can look like. Tricia Nelson, welcome to Asking for a Friend.

Tricia Nelson:

Thanks for having me to the show. I'm really excited to be here.

Michele Folan:

Yeah, you know, we've not really dug into this topic before. And I I thought, you know, and I was sharing with you a little bit before we got started, that being a midlife health and nutrition coach myself, oftentimes, you know, we think we know the root of the weight gain and the weight loss resistance, but this is a topic we often don't really get to the bottom of. So I know you have an amazing story to share. And so I'd love to start with that because you didn't become an emotional eating coach from a textbook. This came from lived experience. So I'd love to know what was food helping you cope with early on in your life.

Tricia Nelson:

Yeah, I'm happy to share about it. Totally, you know, this whole, you know, the reason why I do what I do is because of my very bitter experience with emotional eating. So I think I was an emotional eater from the get-go. Of course, I didn't know those words or what that meant. In fact, my sister came home one day. I was a teenager, and she announced, I'm an emotional eater. And I thought, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. And then I thought, I'm not an emotional eater. I just like food. And so, you know, but the thing is, you can't unhear it. And so I started to observe my habits around food. And I'm like, there's something different about the way I relate with food than my friends. So we'd be out at a you know ice cream shop, a friendly's or Denny's or something like that. And my friends would, you know, get a sandwich and would come with fries, and they'd eat their sandwich and pick up their fries. Well, I would eat my fries and pick up my sandwich. And so I'm like, there's a difference there. And then they'd get like a hot fudge sundae or something, you know, those, I'm totally dating myself, but those long jars with the long spoon. And they'd eat a few bites and they'd push it away and they'd say, Oh, I'm full. And I'd be like, wait a minute, full? What does that have to do with anything? Like, there's fudge in that container. So, so again, I started observing, I'm a little bit different from my friends. Like, they don't do what I do, or or at least they don't seem to. And so, you know, that that awareness around my relationship with food, it's not just that I like food. I mean, definitely I do like food, never, never won't like food, but it was definitely a bigger draw for me. Like, I get so excited to go out to dinner. I'd get so excited around, you know, cookies being baked. I mean, it was just a like I'd have almost heart palpitations when something ooey-goooey or chewy was coming my way. Something came right out of the oven. And so it was definitely an emotional relationship. You know, this wouldn't have been terrible, except that I gained weight easily. And by age 21, I was 50 pounds overweight. And that was painful. You know, I was a busy person. I was, you know, athletic, but I carried this excess weight and I had a roll on my tummy that I would scrunch up in my hands and imagine cutting off, like you cut fat off the side of a steak. And I just had these crazy thoughts like, oh, maybe I'll get a disease where I automatically lose weight without having to diet or exercise. So some pretty crazy thoughts because I was out of control, because I couldn't snap my finger and lose the weight, and I didn't like, you know, being fat. I hated it, you know? And so that's sort of the pain behind my journey. And what happened for me is no matter what diet I tried, it didn't work for me. So I could, I could lose weight for a time, but I'd always put the weight back on. And so diets didn't work for me. Then I started doing more psychological things. I went to an eating disorders therapist that didn't really move the needle. I went to 12-step programs. So I was really, I wasn't a slouch, I was really in a search for how to heal, but it wasn't until I met a coach who had been obese and he lost the weight. He lost over 100 pounds. And it was more through spiritual and emotional, you know, means. And he told me, he's like, Trisha, your problem isn't food. You know, that's a symptom. Like overweight is a symptom of overeating. Overeating is a symptom of what's eating you. Let's go there. And that made all the difference for me. And then we worked together to help others. And then eventually I founded my company, Heal Your Hunger, and I codified everything he and I did together to help people. And it's been online for about eight years. Um, my process and my courses.

Michele Folan:

All right. This is great stuff. I want to back up a little bit. Right. So your sister identifies herself as an emotional eater. Did she have the same struggles you had through adolescence and early adulthood?

Tricia Nelson:

She did. She was uh, we were both obese. Um, we both had that physical, you know, uh propensity to gain weight very easily. My middle sister, she was my oldest sister. My middle sister was a beanstalk, and so she didn't uh gain weight the way we did. But eventually we all were self-diagnosed emotional eaters. So we were three for three. My parents, you know, they had it too. Like they had weight issues as well. So yeah, we all had it, and we all had different kinds of ways of uh healing. Um, we've all been on healing journeys. Uh, what worked for them didn't work for me. That's how I ended up in my journey.

Michele Folan:

You said that you attended Amherst College and then worked at a Seattle art museum or at the Seattle Art Museum. Yeah. So you didn't take this straight line into coaching. You had other jobs along the way. Could did you ever pinpoint what was missing in your life at that stage?

Tricia Nelson:

So I think the misconception around, you know, emotional eating, it a lot of times people like, oh, I'm an emotional eater. I have to give to the underlying causes. Let me go to therapy. Like, let me go to therapy and figure it out. You know, my experience is there's not just one cause. You know, we want to, it would be so easy to say, oh, it's because my like my mother was an alcoholic or my dad was a rager or whatever, my brother had special needs and I got neglected. We want to make it one thing, like the trauma, right? What's the trauma? What's the thing? Problem is it doesn't work that way. So what happens is, and believe me, emotional eaters are, you know, they they're they have no shortage of trauma in their past. Like it's very customary for us to have some kind of little T, big T trauma. However, when you're a kid and you do have a dysfunctional upbringing, like home, home life is not great. You know, few people can say it was, but you know, when there's stuff at home, we're looking for something to make us feel better. And food is that something at a very young age. So that's the first problem is that food is like the only thing that's available to us. I mean, we can we can fantasize, we can read books, we can watch TV, we can masturbate, but then that's it. When you're a six or seven-year-old, that's all you really got. You know, sorry, the masturbation thing doesn't usually happen at that age. That was so funny. I was like, ooh. Yeah, we're going to keep fast. You know, it's good for me because sadly I had sexual abuse in my past. So that's a big T trauma that a lot of emotional leaders do have in their past. And therefore, I was kind of like, you know, the faucet was turned on fat, you know, like early at a young age. And that is, you know, it is to be like when you have sexual abuse, you do like compulsive sex behaviors follow that, you know. So I had that. But my point in all this is that whatever happens as a kid, you're looking for something to take away the pain, you know, and food is an amazing painkiller. But my real point in sharing all that is that it's not the one thing. So, okay, let's go, let's go to therapy, Trish, and deal with the sexual abuse. Well, the problem is when you have dysfunction in your home, you also spawn other dysfunctional behaviors besides feeding it with food. You also become, if you have a raging parent, you become a people pleaser. Like, let's make sure there's peace in the home at all costs. And that cost can be our own soul because we're just like like trying to settle everybody down. Or let's become a caregiver, right? Because mom is an alcoholic and I need to, you know, be the adult as a child. I'm the adult taking care of my siblings. Um, let's like, let's not say anything. Like, let's make sure that we keep the peace. So let's be super quiet and just read our books, you know, and so we we don't know how to use our voice and say how we really feel. So these are personality traits that are spawned at a young age on account of the dysfunction in the home. So my point saying all that is there's a web of personality traits. I call them the anatomy of the emotional eater. These are traits that we have that have nothing to do with food, ostensibly, that if we don't put the spotlight on those traits, no food plan, no diet, no exercise plan is gonna keep you from overeating or keep you from from like overeating for very long. Because people are always like, give me the diet, like show me what to eat. Like everybody wants to know, right? You know this from your own work. Like, like, hand me the diet and I'll be great. It's it gives us a false sense of control. Like, oh good, I got the diet. This is gonna fix me. No, it's not because you're not even gonna follow it for very long. Because you're gonna I'm sure, I'm sure the diets you give people don't have brownies included in them, you know? An occasional one. Like we're yeah, we we're all about having the treat, right? Yeah, not the whole pan, you know. And so, and so the thing is, and so we crave those things. We crave our goodies, we crave the sugar and the carbs, and those aren't conducive to healing your gut, healing your autoimmune issues, you know, healing your depression. And so we're falling down the rabbit hole time and time again. And so the diet itself isn't gonna fix us. What's really gonna help us follow the plan, whatever it is, and diet is a very generic word. It can be a really healthy plan for healing your body. But if you're snacking at night because you need the emotional support of carbs and sugar, you're never gonna reach your health goals. And so, what I really specialize in doing is helping people focus on the living problem, not the eating problem. Because that's also what my coach told me. He's like, Trisha, you got a living problem. I was a people pleaser, I was a caregiver, I didn't use my voice, I ate, I ate what I wanted to say because I was afraid people wouldn't like me. You know, comes with people pleasing. I was uh not only an overeater, I was an overdoer. So I could do circles around everybody. If you want to get something done, give it to an emotional eater because we're looking for the validation. And so we were always saying yes. You know, we don't know how to say no. So these are the things to me, this is like the meat and potatoes of how to heal our relationship with food. Take the focus off the food. We all know salads are better than pizza, like we're not stupid, you know, but let's focus on the personality traits that are that are causing self-sabotage, you know, overdoing, keeping a lot of noise and a lot of chaos in our lives, never putting boundaries on our time, never saying how we really feel. That's the real problem. Ah, I love this. This is so good.

Michele Folan:

This is really it is good. It's really good stuff. And Trisha, we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back. I want to touch briefly on your journey with alcohol. Quick pause because if you're here, you already know this isn't just a health podcast. Yes, we talk about nutrition, strength, and taking care of your body and midlife, but we also talk about life, relationships, energy, boundaries, and what really matters in this season. This isn't about perfection or shrinking yourself. It's about staying strong, curious, connected, and actually enjoying the years ahead. If this resonates, share the episode with a friend who'd appreciate the conversation and follow us on Instagram at asking for a friend underscore pod. Okay, we are back. You have shared that your emotional eating began as a child, but that it expanded into binge drinking. When did you realize this wasn't about willpower or discipline?

Tricia Nelson:

Oh my gosh. So I started drinking at in high school, and I was I I was an immediate, I took to it very quickly. I loved, I loved alcohol. I loved being drunk, to be honest. I loved, I loved being buzzed or drunk. I mean, I maybe I didn't love being drunk. I loved being buzzed, but I could I couldn't stop there. And I I like I went, I blew right past buzzed to drunk. And by the end of high school, I uh I had earned the name that my friends named me, which was Trish the Fish. Ah yeah. Okay, so so people noticed I was often at a party, I was over drinking, and so I was embarrassed that people call me Trish the Fish. Um, but you know, anyway, that's what happened. And so I I started to be embarrassed that I was drinking so much, but I couldn't really pull back. Like I had a hard time pulling back. And so, well, the other thing is I was a blackout drinker, so I would I would lose my memory of I would lose conscious, like not consciousness, because I could be conscious, but I wouldn't remember what was going on. And so that was a big problem for me. Like I would black out, and so it was just like the writing was on the wall. Like, Trisha, you can't drink safely. You're like, you know, and you do things you're embarrassed about, people tell you about it because you don't remember. So anyway, I stopped drinking at age 21 because I was like, you know, it was curtains for me. I was like, who am I kidding? Especially the blacking out. Like, if I'm losing, like that's that's a serious allergy to alcohol. Like that is that's no joke. And I can't, like, I could cutesy my way out, like, oh, it's just a phase, or oh, you know, I'll get out of it. But having your cells like react that way, I couldn't cutesy my way out of that.

Michele Folan:

So I was like, fine, no, you know, first of all, I'm very proud of you that at 21 you gave that up because that's in the prime of young partying culture, you know you are finally of age. And the reason I want to talk about alcohol, because we we do talk about alcohol quite a bit because I think it's something that really holds women back in midlife. And I often think we use it as a reward, kind of like we do with food.

Tricia Nelson:

Yeah.

Michele Folan:

When did you tie in that the alcohol was kind of like food and in the reward center?

Tricia Nelson:

Well, yeah, I don't, I really don't take credit for having that experience because it was my it was the person who was helping me, my mentor who is helping me with my food issue. He also Uh had stopped drinking. And so he drew the connection for me. And it was, you know, it was really on account of addressing my food issue, which by the way, like I'm I'm a super sugar addict. You know, when I start to eat sugar, sugar's all I want to eat. And so alcohol is the most refined form of sugar there is. And so the fact that I had trouble like uh, you know, moderating how much alcohol I drank, it was really no surprise when you realize it is sugar in liquid form, basically. It doesn't taste like it, it's not nearly as delicious as sugar, but what it's doing in your body, you know, and I was allergic to it. I mean, it was I had a strong reaction to alcohol where I just wanted to keep drinking, you know, and then I forget what I was. I mean, most people don't blackout. That's super severe, but it was definitely a clue. And it, but it was because I was trying to heal my food problem that I realized, you know, being out of control of alcohol isn't going to be conducive to not overeating. Because then when you drink, you lose your inhibitions and you like you just think you can eat, you know, with no no consequence.

Michele Folan:

And then you've got the you get the hangover the next day, and all you want is carbohydrate. I mean, yeah. Hello, college. That was that was that was the thing, right? It was like going out for tacos at 11:30 in the morning on a Saturday. I would love to define what is emotional eating and what is it not.

Tricia Nelson:

So, my very non-clinical definition of emotional eating is eating to feel better or eating to change how you feel. And you, of course, you want to feel better, not worse. So, we're eating to like feel better. We don't like how we feel, which is usually not liking an emotion that we're feeling, and we want to escape it. So, I have something called the PEP test because a lot of people might be listening thinking, like like I did. I just like food. I'm not an emotional eater. So the PEP test is a way to kind of dig into this a little bit. So PEP is an acronym, P E P, and the first P stands for painkiller. So we use food to kill uncomfortable emotions. Painkiller, you know, is is a word, but it's anything that feels uncomfortable. Like you get a bill in the meal you weren't expecting, or you have to change jobs, and all of a sudden that brings up all your insecurities because you're not going to know what to do in a new job or how to, you know, excel yet. Or somebody breaks up with you, or your kid is dysregulated and there's stress around that. So life's got plenty of pain to serve up. And what we do as emotional eaters is we lean on food to get us through because it does feel good in the moment. It works, it works, we love it, you know, in the moment. And then we have to pay the price after we we are hungover, talk about hangover, sugar, sugar and carb binging, you know, will create a hangover as well. So we eat to feel better and then we feel worse. So that's the first P in Pep. The the E stands for escape, which means we're, you know, my experience is overeaters, we're also overthinkers. And it's one of the traits of the anatomy of the emotional eater, you know, which is there's 24 traits that I've named in my book, but uh in the anatomy of the emotional eater, having a racing mind is part and parcel with being an emotional eater. Like our we overthink everything. What does she mean by that? Why did he look at me that way? Why didn't I get an invitation? They must hate me. It's like we exhaust ourselves with our racing mind, our overthinking everything, you know, and so uh we eat to shut down our mind. We eat because most of the things we overthink on are negative. Like we're we're thinking worst case scenario all the time. I call it awhalizing, you know, and so when we offalize, it's like it's a terrible place to be in your in your mind. And so we get our favorite binge foods and we front sit in front of our favorite bingeable TV show, and it's like like relief from our brains. And so we use food as an escape. And the third letter in PEP, P, stands for punishment, which seems counterintuitive because, like you said, with alcohol, it's also true with food. We use food to reward ourselves after a long day, after a hard week, after doing something really, you know, big. We're like, oh, I deserve this, I deserve this. So we're always going to get our reward in eating. But I say if you lose control and then you go overboard, do you feel rewarded? Not really. You feel kind of beat up. Yeah. You know, sugar and carbs beat you up. I mean, they did me because I went overboard. I was stuffed, I felt sick, you know. I didn't want to hang out with girlfriends or go to brunch with the girls afterwards and the next day. You know, I do sheet therapy, pull the covers up over my head. And so that is not a reward. That's a punishment. Why am I punishing myself? What's that about? So I use uh PEP as a way for people to start, again, like I did originally, start observing our eating and asking some questions like, hmm, what's going on? Like, why are you looking in the refrigerator when you're not hungry? What's going on? Are you feeling uncomfortable about something? Is your mind racing about something that you're worried about? Are you are you kind of awfulizing? Or are you feeling guilty? Because we do punish ourselves because overeaters are overfeelers and we feel guilty about everything. So we literally, even though food is a reward going in, when it's a punishment on the backside, we have to think, huh, am I am I trying to beat myself up? Like I'm doing this to myself. Nobody's forcing me to eat. So why would I why would I beat up my body this way? And that just gets us asking some deeper questions that I think we need to ask if we're gonna get out of this eating loop.

Michele Folan:

Does emotional eating fall under the umbrella of disordered eating, or is it something different?

Tricia Nelson:

Yes, I I like the term disordered eating. I mean, emotional eating when you're a binge eater is technically uh eating disorder. But that, you know, it's easy for us to say, oh, I don't have an eating disorder. Like that's really severe. Like I have a job and I've been hospitalized, blah, blah, blah. So I like the term emotional eater because whether you're overeating or under eating, and there's a lot of people who are perfectly normal weight, you know, or a little bit thin, like too thin maybe, and they're eating if they're under-eating or restricting, you know, or like eating a Lara bar throughout the day, one Lara bar, like that's emotional too. Like when we're doing weird things with food, it's driven by our need to change how we feel. So back to emotional eating, we eat to feel better or we eat to change how we feel. And so, and that's overeating, under eating, restricting, you know, over-exercising because of what we ate. It's all disordered eating. Yes. I just find emotional eating to be a pretty apt name, which is it's driven by something going on inside. And you might not, it's not like you're like, where's the chocolate? I need to emotionally eat. No, you're like, I love chocolate. Give me some of that, right? So we don't connect it. And hopefully, by people listening, maybe people will start to connect it.

Michele Folan:

And then one last question on the disordered eating piece of this. So if you were, you know, 21 years old and you were you were binging, did you ever purge? I tried and it didn't work out for me.

Tricia Nelson:

Thank God. All right. That's a whole nother layer, right? It is, it's a whole nother ride. I do find that a binge eater, you know, anybody who's binging and purging, bullying bulimic, again, it's emotionally driven, but it does take you on a terrible, terrible ride. And that's why I'm grateful I wasn't able to. Like I put my finger down my throat several times because I felt so sick. I wanted to purge, and I just couldn't make it happen. And so I just what happened for me is I just packed on pounds. You know, everything I ate ended up on my ass. So which was motivating. You know, sometimes it's really sad when somebody can cover up the effects of their eating with secretive purging because sometimes the hell can continue longer. Uh, I mean, the worst thing in our culture is to be fat, you know, and if you aren't fat, sometimes you can keep the secret longer, which is hell.

Michele Folan:

All right. Why do emotional eating patterns often intensify in midlife, especially during menopause or maybe even major life transitions?

Tricia Nelson:

Yeah, I mean, it's to me, there's three reasons why we overeat, not overeat, but feel compelled to eat. Okay. And so if somebody is like they've sworn off a sugar and they're like they can't stop themselves, that compulsion is driven by three things. The first is emotions, you know, and and in midlife or with hormonal changes, we can have a lot of emotions, obviously. But also, midlife's not easy. That, you know, we're we're becoming empty nesters, that's emotional. Our relationship might be on the rocks, that's emotional. You know, it's just there's a lot of things coming at us, and and the hormones don't help, right? The hormonal changes don't help. Um, so emotions are one, like like we we have a lot of emotions going on and we're not finding the proper place to put them. So we're stuffing them with food. Stress is the next thing. Okay. So again, when we tend toward emotional eating, we also tend toward people pleasing. And the reason why people pleasing leads to overeating is because when we say yes to people, because we're trying to please and we're trying to, it's what we're it's not really about them. We want the validation, we want the atta girls. Like, oh, I don't know how she does it. She gets so much done. You know, like we love the the accolades we get from being superwoman, you know, and but the problem is it comes with a price because we're not only exhausted and maybe exhaust exhausting our adrenals, right? And and um our like stress during our hormones, but also nobody's ever as pleased as we plan on them being. And so, right?

Michele Folan:

Like never, right? I know, and welcome to the season, because that is exactly what Christmas is.

Tricia Nelson:

Yeah, yeah, totally overdoing, want to have the best pie, the best party, the whole thing. So we're overdoing, and then nobody's like, we're not getting the the payoff that we're expecting, especially because people get used to us being the overdoers that we are. They get a big payoff too. It's like, give it to the overeater, she'll do it. Like, she'll never say no, you know. So we're kind of pissed off. So we're stressed out and pissed off and resentful. And that just leads to the like, screw them. I'm gonna go home and reward myself. And we have the I deserve it binge. Like, you know, I'm gonna reward myself with these fabulous chocolates or whatever. So that's how, again, it's our living that's informing our eating. And we have to take a look at that. Like, you can't lose weight and keep it off if you don't start addressing the people pleasing. You also can't be happy. Like, you can't be truly happy if you're compelled to say yes to everybody and don't know how to say no. And it doesn't have to be a mean no, it can be, let me check my schedule and get back to you. Like give yourself a pause because no is really hard for the emotional eater. We're like, oh, they're gonna hate me and oh, like uh, you know, I'm gonna lose friends over this or judgment, whatever. No, just let me let me check and see. Like, or say, I have a lot on my plate right now, which is never a lie for an emotional eater. I have a lot on my plate right now, you know, I I can't do it right now. Like, no is okay. Because guess what? There's always another sucker. Yeah. There's always somebody else who says yes and does it. Like you think you're so indispensable. Like, I nobody can plan a party like I can. Like nobody can entertain like I can, you know, nobody can lead the the meeting like me. No, they absolutely can. You're not as important as you think you are. Let somebody else do it. Take a break, you know, stop saying yes to everything because it's hurting you. It's like you're paying a dear price. I love boundaries.

Michele Folan:

We could we could do you and I could talk for a whole hour just on setting boundaries and how it is your God-given right in midlife to set boundaries. But you've you've been studying addictive personality for decades. And what do most people misunderstand about addiction when it comes to food?

Tricia Nelson:

Well, the that it is an addiction. Like, how can you be addicted to food? You have to eat. Well, you know, I actually have a um a quiz on my website. It's a free quiz that I welcome people to take and it will tell you if you are addicted. So it's, I call it the emotional eating quiz. It'll tell you if you're an emotional eater or a food addict or somewhere in between. So when you take the quiz, it's like it takes like two minutes to take and it's free. But when you take the quiz, you'll get a personalized score, and that score will tell you where you are on the emotional eating spectrum. And my experience is we're all on the spectrum. Hello, everybody's an emotional eater. And so point is the like where you end up on the spectrum is uh determined by two things primarily. The first thing is the level of control that you have, okay? So when you go on a cruise and you prepay for everything, and your head's like, well, I paid for it, I might as well eat it, you know, drink it. So you go overboard, you come home, your pants are tight, you're like five pounds heavier, and you're like, okay, that's it. I'm gonna like cut out the sweets now. I'm gonna jog extra for a couple weeks, you know, an extra 10 miles each week. Fine. Within, you know, a couple weeks, maybe a month, the five pounds are off. Your pants are feeling good. That's someone with a lot of control and also with very few consequences. So control and consequences are are the two main determinants of where you end up on the emotional eating spectrum. Whereas somebody like me, once upon a time, if I went on a cruise, I'm like, whoa, I'm so eating and drinking all this. So I do that. I come home, my pants are tight too, I've gained five pounds. But what happens for me is I feel like, oh my gosh, I'm gonna get back on track, but I don't.

Michele Folan:

Yeah.

Tricia Nelson:

Because I've turned on, like the spigot has been turned on and I'm addicted to sugar. And I just keep eating the sweets. I have trouble stopping. So I don't have the same kind of control as person number one, you know? And so that five pounds turns into 10 or 15 pounds. It could be months before I feel like I'm back on track. Okay, that's the difference. That's somebody who's more in the addictive realm of the emotional eating spectrum than the run-of-the-mill emotional eater realm. Everybody emotionally eats, like eating feels good. Carbs and sugar feel good in the moment. They hit our, like they give us a serotonin, you know, hit, a dopamine hit, you know, and so it feels good, it works, but what you do with that, how much control you have or how what the consequences are, that's what determines whether you're addicted or not. So that's the first thing is people don't realize they can absolutely be addicted. Now it's not like you're addicted to all foods. I mean, I rarely will like like sit up at night wishing I could have steak, you know, like or chicken. So it's usually like, you know, cookies and ice cream and you know, ooey gooey, chewy foods, because those are the ones that do give us that dopamine hit. Those are the things that come in pretty packages. They feel good, they taste good, and they numb us. They numb us. Salads don't numb us. So I'm talking about being addicted to processed foods, you know, foods that are highly processed, they're they have a lot of sugar in them, you know, and carbs do metabolize as sugar. So if you're if bread's your thing or pasta is your thing, it's sugar. When, you know, when it hits your bloodstream, it's sugar. And so really important for people to know that you can be addicted, but it's not like addicted to all foods. It's and you do have to eat, you know, but it's addicted to the highly processed foods. But also, I think that's why this is so hard for people to wrap their head around, is because you have to eat. So we we we dog ourselves for being like out of control with food. Like, what's wrong with me? It's just cookies. This is so stupid. And so we feel like we have to like fix it on our own because it's just cookies. It's not like I'm putting a needle in my arm, you know. So we downplay it and dismiss it, even though it's killing us. Like people die daily of diabetes, you know, and most like a good number of people in our, you know, in in our country are pre-diabetic and don't even know it, you know. So it's a big problem. And if you die from diabetes, at first you, you know, you get your limbs cut off.

Michele Folan:

Yeah.

Tricia Nelson:

Right? You get amputations. You don't just die of diabetes, you you try to save yourself with amputations. It's bad. It's really bad. And we just we we're in denial. Like a big, you know, indicator of or a telltale sign of addiction is denial, which stands for don't even notice I am lying. You know, so we fool ourselves. It's just cookies. I say it's one of the worst and hardest addictions overcome because you have to eat. And you're likely not going to overcome it on your own, uh, like no other addiction you can typically overcome on your own. And this is one of them.

Michele Folan:

And so, yeah, and again, I could go on for days if you take me down this road about diabetes and insulin resistance and metabolic disease. And then we've got the number one killer of women is cardiovascular disease, which is part of that whole metabolic syndrome. And so anyway, I and I hear you, but I guess you know, I would want to know then once an emotional eater, always an emotional eater. Do you ever get to drop that name?

Tricia Nelson:

So, well, here's the thing I think we all can emotionally eat. I think those who are on the lower end of the uh Spectrum, you know, if you take the quiz and you you're like on the low end of the spectrum, chances are it's you know, you're not going to be in a big danger place. And it's not, it's it's really again the consequences, the consequences and control. If you have control to course correct after a cruise or vacation, good on you. Like consider yourself lucky, you know. And it's always, you know, our relationship with food is like a relationship with money. Anybody can overspend, anybody can overeat, you know? And so it's like, are we using money or food for to enhance our lives? Are we using it to punish ourselves, you know, subconsciously? Like, because you can get in a lot of trouble overspending, you know, or you can course correct and you know, tighten your belt and that kind of thing. So it's a relationship and it's a relationship we will always have. Like you just like money, it's a relationship you can't get away from. You'll always have a relationship with food and with your body, you know? And so I would say if you have disordered eating, if you're on the high end of the emotional eating spectrum, more on the addiction part of it, you can always fall down the rabbit hole. I don't consider myself cured. I'm freer than I've ever been around food on most days. You know, like you look at me and you're like, I'm normal weight, I eat normally, you know, it's like I don't binge, I'm not drawn to sweets anymore. So, so I seem normal, but it's only because I'm highly aware, like I'm vigilant and I take my own medicine that I prescribe to my clients. So I prescribe, not literally prescribe, but I I have a whole system for people to heal emotional eating. But it's a system that I still do as well. So I didn't get to some point where I'm like, I'm good. No, I've learned from bitter experience, you can fall down the rabbit hole. You can relapse, you know, just like alcohol with alcoholic with alcohol, you can fall down that rabbit hole by thinking you're cured. And I've done it. So I know it doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't, you know, farewell, like bode well when you think you're cured and then you start eating all kinds of things that are slippery. Like there are foods that are slippery for me, and I don't wanna like I don't want to ignite that crazy in me, that that craving for those things. So there are foods I sidestep, you know, but I don't crave them anymore because of the emotional work that I do and the work on my stress. Remember, I said, oh, I didn't even finish that. I said emotions, stress, and habit. These are the three things that create that compulsion. So we have to address the emotions, we have to address the stress, but we also have to create new habits. And that's the part that I do, you know, uh, well, all three of those things I do on a daily basis. Those are the things that my clients are doing to heal. And so um I'm just not, I don't have to eat sweets anymore. It's not a, they're not calling my name, but that's because I'm addressing my stress and my emotions and I have new habits of how to deal with life on life's terms.

Michele Folan:

Can you share a client success story that really illustrates what's possible even after decades of struggle?

Tricia Nelson:

Yes. And most of my women are in midlife. You know, most of the women I help are in their 50s, 60s, and 70s. I have a few in their 80s and a few in their 30s and 40s. But, you know, most of my women have been dieting for decades, literally, you know, 40, 50 years of roller coaster ride dieting. I will have so many cool stories, but Hazel's one person, she was obese, morbidly obese, I think um is the awful term. And she uh was super unhappy because of it. I mean, it's just you know, when you walk around with X a hundred extra pounds in your body, it makes life harder. Yeah. On every possible level, you know? And so she's lost close to 100 pounds uh through my program. And she's speaking, but she didn't do it through diet, like she doesn't diet. So my ladies lose weight without dieting. And some people think that's absolutely impossible. It's really not. It's we do it like it's what we're doing, it's what I did, it's what what I teach. And it's through changing, you know, the way they're living. So she meditates on a daily basis, she journals her feelings, she's in community with other emotional eaters. I do a lot, a lot of my program is done in community on Zoom, you know, because we need people who get us, you know, who understand what it's like to feel powerless over cookies. So she's engaged in the community. And over, I'd say about a year, maybe a year and a half, she's lost close to a hundred pounds and she's still losing. And at some point she plateaued and so she dug into what that was about. And it was fear. Like she was her body was changing. People's responses to her were changing, and so she had to get underneath that. So I'm really teaching people how to deal with the underlying causes of their emotional eating. Pat is a woman, she's 82, I think. And she came to me about uh six or seven years ago. She's now a coach in my program, and she came to me, Finn. She was, you know, a lifetime Weight Watchers person. So she had lost 50 pounds, but she was about to put it back on.

Michele Folan:

Yeah.

Tricia Nelson:

You know, and this is a problem with people on GLP ones now, is it's like, okay, I lost the weight. What now? What am I gonna do now? You know, am I gonna be on medication for the rest of my life? And so Pat came to me not wanting to put those 50 pounds back on, and her life is so different, but it's all through changing the way she's living. She has three kids, adult children who have families, and her holidays are different. Like she doesn't run around like a crazy woman, you know, perfectionist trying to make the holidays perfect. That's that's when she came to me. She just felt crazy, you know, because she was such a perfectionist and had all this pressure on herself. So now her kids each take a night, they cook the meals. They, she's like, Trisha, sometimes they serve like the holiday dinner on paper plates. And she's like, I would never do that. But she's like, but I let it go. I let it go because I don't want to be a crazy person. I want to, you know, share in the responsibilities, which means I get to let go of how it's done. And so she's adjusted, like, okay, we're eating on paper plates. Like, that's how we're doing the holidays. And so, but that's big, right? Like, because emotion, yeah, emotion leaders are control freaks. Like we want to, and we create our own stress that way. So much of our stress is self-created by being a perfectionist, by needing it a certain way. So she let go of that and she's like, I don't have to worry about it. And they put the, you know, the sweet, yummy, goe gooey chewy foods. They have a, there's a cupboard assigned for them, you know. So I don't have to look at it. But she's changing how she's doing life, you know, and her relationship of over 50 years of marriage, her relationship with her husband's better than ever, her relationship with her kids are better than ever. And she swims three days a week at the senior Y. Like she's like so healthy and happy. And she's like, I didn't want to go out continuing to struggle with food. She's, you know, I didn't want to end my life never having figured this part out. So those are a couple stories. No, this is great.

Michele Folan:

And you know, this also tells me one that there is hope you can resolve this and get a handle on it. And it's not too late. You if you have someone that's in their 80s and they're they're they're just figuring this out now, yeah, but now she's she's getting herself healthy. And I that's such a great example of hey, you're 55 right now. It now's your chance. Get get a handle on it now because you've got so many wonderful years ahead to live fully. Amen. Yeah. What inspired you to write Heal Your Hunger? And who'd you have in mind when you wrote it?

Tricia Nelson:

I mean, the book is is my work. I mean, that's the I codified what I used to do with my mentor when we helped people in our living room. You know, we used to have people one at a time in our living room, and I'm just like, this is not scalable. We're not helping enough people. And so I codified the work and I put it into a step-by-step process. So it's super clear, step-by-step system. It's not nebulous, like mindful eating or intuitive eating. It's like, no, do this, then do this, then do this. And I laid it out in my book called Heal Your Hunger: Seven Simple Steps to End Emotional Eating. And that's what I teach people. You know, it's it's the only thing the book doesn't have is the community. I mean, it doesn't go super deep. It's a hundred and like 20-page book, but uh it's a it's an easy, fun read because that's cartoons that are kind of funny. But anyway, my program is based on that. And the book can't give you the community. And the community is vital to healing because, you know, our heads are talking smack to us every single day. And uh, and if it's just us and our heads, our head is gonna win, you know. Whereas if you have a community of women who are cheering you on and telling you good things, you know, and we're celebrating the wins, oh, it makes it so much easier to treat ourselves with love and respect.

Michele Folan:

You know, that came up at my podcast that is out right now. So it was 12, 15 or so when I dropped that podcast. And we talk a lot about the importance of community, whether you are working on your emotional eating or it's uh your weight loss journey, or you want to learn how to write and publish a book or whatever, having those people around you that are like-minded, that you realize I'm not alone in this and I'm not strange or weird. There are other people just like me, and uh they're there to help you as well.

Tricia Nelson:

Absolutely. So it's invaluable. And we, especially as most eaters, we tend to isolate because we're embarrassed and ashamed of our behaviors. Um, and a lot of them are done in secret, and so we have to come out of the shadows and accept help and have just, you know, uh positive reinforcement so that we can change how we think about ourselves.

Michele Folan:

One last quick question about this if we have someone in our life that we know who is an emotional eater, how can we push them to have that awareness and get help?

Tricia Nelson:

Yeah, so that's a great question. What I recommend is my book to somebody. And the reason, oh I mean, it's a good book. I'm not gonna lie, I think it's great. Um, and a lot of people have gotten so much help from it. But the point about the book is that the book focuses on the underlying causes and it really helps people shift their thinking around this. Most people think diet and exercise is the only solution available to them, or now it's diet and exercise and medication. Like those are the options. And I offer a different option, which is taking that deeper journey and healing the underlying causes, healing the living problem, which uh the eating problem just naturally follows. And so people don't know that. And so they're so defeated and demoralized by the dieting roller coaster ride when they and they're like, oh, that like I've tried everything. But when they read my book, they're like, oh, I didn't know there was a different tack you can take. And so the book might be a just a hopeful thing for them to realize, oh, okay, I don't have to do all that restriction and pain and you know, binging again and all that. That's that's like set me back time and time again. Like there's actually a little trapdoor where I can exit that and then have a whole new path that I can take to success.

Michele Folan:

Oh, I love it. So, Trisha Nelson, where can the listeners find you, your programs, and your book?

Tricia Nelson:

Yeah, uh the best place is my website, which is healyourhunger.com, H E A L, healyourhunger.com. My TEDx talk is on there. It has close to three million views. Um, my book is on my there, my podcast, uh, Confessions of a Binge Eater is on there. So this is in the quiz. Take the quiz. Go to the website, healyourhunger.com, and first take that quiz, and then you can find the other things as well. Okay, all that will go in the show notes.

Michele Folan:

We didn't even talk about your podcast, but we've had so much to talk about.

Tricia Nelson:

Trisha Nelson, thank you so much for being a guest today. Thanks for having me. It's been so much fun. It's really, I really appreciate you and your amazing questions and thoroughness. And I appreciate you and all that you do to help people heal. Oh, thank you, Trisha.

Michele Folan:

Before you go, thank you for being here. If you want to go a little deeper, make sure you check out the show notes for this episode. That's where I link anything we mentioned, resources, partners, or tools I actually use and trust. And if you're not already on the Asking for a Friend community newsletter, that's where I share practical midlife tips, favorite finds, recipes, and the things that don't always make it onto the podcast or Instagram. You'll find the link to join in the show notes. Take care, and I'll see you next week.