Healing Your Hunger with Tricia Nelsen
Transcript
Ericka Thomas 0:00
Welcome back to The Work IN everyone, today I have a very very special guest, her name is Tricia Nelson. Tricia is an internationally acclaimed author transformational speaker and emotional eating expert, she lost 50 pounds by identifying and healing the underlying causes of her emotional eating. She's spent over 30 years researching the hidden causes of the addictive personality, Tricia is the author of the number one best selling book Heal Your Hunger, Seven simple steps to end emotional eating now. She also certifies health coaches so that they can get better results, referrals and revenue by helping their clients overcome emotional eating. Tricia is the host of the popular podcast the heal your hunger show, and is a highly regarded speaker. She's been featured on NBC, CBS KTLA, Fox and Discovery Health. So let's start our work IN today with Tricia Nelson.
Hey Tricia. Hi, Ericka so good to be here. Welcome to the program. I am so happy to have you. Thank you. You have such a compelling story, and it really shines a light on the far reaching effects of stress and trauma that I think a lot of people can relate to.
I'd love to hear your story. Can you share that with us today?
Tricia Nelsen 1:27
Of course, Yeah, oh my gosh traumas, a big part of being an emotional eater. I was an emotional eater. I think from the get go. And so, food is a big highlight for me I love to eat, I love to cook, I love to go out to dinner and, you know, I'd have a little heart palpitations as a kid when I knew we were going out to dinner because I just love, you know, steak and baked potatoes and. So, anyways, it's kind of just the way I rolled. I was super into food, and so, which you know isn't a bad thing, except that I also gained weight easily, you know. And so I by age 21 was 50 pounds overweight, and really, really obsessed with my weight and, like, I hated being overweight I absolutely hated it. I was not okay with it, you know I would try to hide it.
I tried to, you know I did lots of different diets and exercise and pills and potions and lotions and things to try to fix my weight issue. You know, I could lose weight for a period of time. You know, I was kind of a yo yo or so I’d lose like 30 then gained 20 then lose 10 And as a teen I had about 5 Like about five different sizes of pants in my closet because I never knew what size I'd be.
So it was just this constant obsession, constant struggle. And I even went to 12 Step programs. I went to an eating disorders therapist at one time. So I was digging, you know, I was really digging, so anything I tried, you know just ended up not working for me. So I mean I could, I could lose weight but I couldn't keep it off in a sustainable way and that was really what was so frustrating. So I got to the point Ericka where I just felt hopeless. Like I felt like wow, this is going to be my life. Like I'm going to be yo yoing up and down, you know 50 Who knows 75 pounds forever. And this is trying. Like this isn't just me sitting back and eating bonbons. This is me putting in a really good effort, but always I'd always lose control with food.And so it was really frustrating.
And what happened for me, by the grace of God, is I met somebody who was a spiritual healer who had been obese and really, he healed through really just clearing out the things in himself that were blocking him emotionally. And so emotionally and spiritually, I suppose. And so, he showed me what he did and he helped me. And it, like it changed everything for me, it's a real game changer. And then we worked together for several years to help other people and this was with all addictions, because it was really the same root problem and solution.
But about four and a half years ago I founded Heal Your Hunger because I wanted to do work specifically with emotional eaters because that was my main addiction was food. And so I'm going to add other addictions, you know if it was worth over, if it was worth doing was worth overdoing. So I had some other, I had a few other things going on, you know, but, um, but food was always my go to, you know.
When I was stressed out when I was unhappy when I was, you know, needing energy, I always turned to food and I was also a sugar addict, so I was always turning to sugar like it wasn't celery sticks I was turning to, you know. I was turning to heavier carby carb heavy sugary foods that gave me that hit, you know, and also kept me from feeling. And so that was really what my problem was.
I had to learn how to feel. And so, feel and process stuff that I was bearing, obviously, so that's really what Heal Your Hunger is about is it's really about helping people heal the underlying causes of their out of control, eating and food obsession. Because you don't have to be a binger to be an emotional eater but you definitely, you know, need to start facing the things that you normally are just stuffing with food.
And so it's been wonderful for the past four and a half years to be helping people all around the globe who have this emotional eating issue because it's so common, and yet we think we're the only ones, right. So it's been amazing and I'm so grateful because you know I healed, and I'm, and I know how hard it is to heal so the fact that I have this very predictable system for healing just makes me want to get up every day and share it.
Ericka Thomas 6:10
Well, let's dig a little deeper. I have so many questions... hopefully I will be able to bring them all out today. Okay, but I do. I want to start with your book. I want to start with Heal Your Hunger, because it's really a very practical guide that can kind of walk people through the process of healing from this emotional eating. But let's start kind of at the beginning. So, what do you mean what does it mean to be an emotional eater? What makes someone an emotional eater?
Tricia Nelsen 6:48
Yeah, well, you know, my experience is it's really about using food for reasons beyond nutritional need, you know, we eat, we need to eat, you know, that's a fact. And we need to nourish our bodies but I used food for many other reasons; for entertainment you know for boredom, for companionship, for solace or comfort for, you know, you know, just stuff, anger, to deal with feelings that I just wanted to pretend I didn't have. So it's really a way of just anesthetizing or stuffing numbing, if you will, feelings that are uncomfortable.
And as emotional eaters, we tend to start this pattern very young in our lives, you know, very early on because of trauma, you know, trauma is a big part of emotional eaters lives, and it's usually the thing we have access to like we don't have access, access to a lot of tools to deal with trauma and so we use what's available in foods available you know for me it was food, it was fantasy, TV, masturbation, you know like I use things that I had, you know, already at my fingertips as a, as a kid. And so, but the problem is, even though it helped us as a kid, we take it into our adult lives and then it becomes, you know, a very destructive habit that causes all kinds of physical and emotional issues but that's really my mind is just like using food beyond our nutritional need.
Ericka Thomas 8:25
Yeah and, and what I hear when I what I'm hearing you say is that food can become your external regulation that, that, that external thing that helps your nervous system, calm down something that feels good on the inside, for bringing it in from the outside it's the root of most of our addiction, or most of our addictive behaviors and the thing about a food addiction is that you have to face it every single day because you still have to eat. Yeah,
Tricia Nelsen 8:59
yeah, it's much harder, you know, people always think, oh drugs that so heroin, cocaine, you know, alcohol so hard. Well no, I mean, yes, of course, very hard if you're an addict, you know, drugs and alcohol. But, but with food you do you have to take your addiction out every day and deal with it and I always say it's like taking a you know a roaring tiger out of the cage petting the kitty and putting it back in without getting your ass torn off three times a day, you know, like, That's tricky. It's really tricky and it takes some, you know, it takes some management and so it's it is a different kind of addiction when you have to deal with it every day when you need it, you know, but you, you know you don't want to go overboard with it, but you're obsessed with it, it's it's tricky and that's where the emotional, you know, really digging into the emotions and getting more regulated emotionally can help you have food, you know, be in its proper place instead of your be all and end all.
Ericka Thomas 9:58
Yes, yes. So, can you take us through the anatomy of an emotional eater.
Tricia Nelsen 10:08
Yes, thank you for the question. In my book and in my programs, I talk about this regularly because you know so much of the time people think emotional eating is just about eating ice cream when somebody breaks up with you or you know just that kind of thing. But it has so much to do with our personality and how we show up in the world which has nothing to do with food. Food is the symptom of that.
Okay so, so how we eat is a symptom of how we live. And, you know, and I always say I said it's, I always tell people it's a living problem not an eating problem. And so, what's important about that message is that we're so focused on food and controlling food and going on diets and measuring and weighing and, you know, getting our ketones, you know, figured out and all that. But all that focus on food is keeping us, we're focusing on what drives us to food in the first place and if we just focus on the symptom, we will never heal. You know, that's why 90% of all diets fail is because we're focused on managing and controlling a symptom of this living problem. So the anatomy of the emotional eater is really about the way we've developed, you know as from children.
So like I said we have very few things available to us as kids to deal with trauma, and my experience is, we have ways of kind of dealing with a raging parent or with sexual abuse or, You know, just a lot of dysfunction in our life, you know, mental illness, whatever it is. And so we develop these patterns of being that again we bring into our adult life, which become very dysfunctional ways of being. And these ways of being creates stress for us, and the stress that we stress eat over. And so what's really important to know and what's good about that, you know, is the fact that we're actually creating our own stress, you know that we stress eat over. Which means we can do, we can act differently, and kind of uncreate it or not create any more of it. And so that gives, that empowers us to heal.
Because I used to think cravings, food cravings just happened. Like I just was bowled over by it, like, you know, like a Mack truck or just like a lightning striking. Like it just I didn't know when that urge for chocolate was gonna hit me. You know, when I was just kind of a victim of it.
But what I learned is that, like, I'm co creating these cravings, you know. The cravings are coming from this stress that I am playing a big part in. And so, that means I can do, I can take a new course, you know.
And so the anatomy emotional eater are 24 personal personality traits that I've identified that are very common to the emotional eaters experience. And my clients are just, you know, they're kind of like, oh my god, like you just read my mail, how would you do that, you know. But I, you know, I know my clients well because I am them, you know. And it's through my own journey of healing that I've identified these traits. These weren't my traits you know and they were my dysfunctional ways of coping with life, that were creating more stress. And so my healing journey had so much to do with healing these things.
And so to give you an example of what you know, what a coping tool is that has nothing to do with food but leads to food. The top trait of the anatomy emotional eater, is people pleasing. Yeah, so I've never met an emotional eater that wasn't a people pleaser, you know. It's so endemic to our experience. In part, again going back to our childhood because, you know, people pleasing served us. You know if you have a raging parent if you have a shortage of love, and if the better you know, the better person you are growing up, the more you know you act right or do right and please, you know, the less pain you're going to have. You know, it worked as a kid, it worked to people please, it worked to keep mom or dad from going into a rage or hitting us or abusing us in some way. You know, but as adults, the people pleasing doesn't work for us.
Because what happens is, we typically knock ourselves out people pleasing, you know, and being, you know, doing being all things to all people. So we stress our adrenals, you know, we get exhausted, burned out, but not only that we also get resentful because nobody's ever as pleased as we plan on them being. So we're like, Screw them like I just like, like I get a thank you. A thank you? Like I spent all night baking those cookies for the soccer team or I did you know I just finished that project, you know, single handedly you know and I should get a lot more than a thank you. But we end up because we're so tired and resentful, we end up going home and having the ”I deserve it binge”. Like Screw them, you know, I’ll please myself, I'll reward myself because I'm not getting it, I'm not getting enough of it.
You know, and that's another thing is when we grow up with the lack of you know, without this, the sense of self that we should have gotten, you know, and I didn't get it. You know, I was very insecure. I felt really bad about myself, lacked self esteem, nevermind that I went to a you know a top college. I was president of my school. I was, you know, very accomplished. You know, in my career, but I didn't have that sense of self and I compensated by those atta girls, you know, by overdoing and showing people how fabulous I was, you know. But it came with a price, you know. Like I got my sense of self from outside of me.
But you have to keep it going, like any good addiction like you have to you know you get filled and then you get you get empty really quickly so you have to keep it up, you know, and but it does lead to overeating when we're constantly, you know, overdoing overworking, you know, and trying to please people, so that's a good example of something in our lives that we can change.
You know we can realize hey the payoff is not, you know, the, the juice is not worth the squeeze. You know like, we got to do this differently, because, you know, we have to learn how to please ourselves. You have to learn how to validate, you know, seek that validation from within instead of from without, so we don't have to work so hard and we don't have to be so obsessed with what people think of us, which is a huge obsession for emotional eaters, you know.
We're so dependent on being liked and being loved and being approved and validated so none of that has anything to do with food but it's a way of being. Ericka that has to change because it just sucks our time and our energy and our life force, you know. And so, so much of my work is about helping people build that from within, you know, we have to build that sense of self from within so we aren't dependent on what people think of us. So we don't really care whether they like us or not. We have to like us, you know, and there are very definite concrete ways to do that, you know. So it's not, I'm not talking all ethereal here it's like, you know we can build self esteem from within by doing self estimable actions, you know. But we do have to realize that, you know, there are diminishing returns in this whole, this whole drama of people pleasing, you know, and so that's just one example of how we can live, you know, I tell my clients, you have to live your way into right thinking instead of thinking your way into right action or right living.
Ericka Thomas 18:11
Absolutely, absolutely. So it's less of this top down approach where you're just telling yourself to do something differently and actively incorporating it into your life on a daily basis.
Tricia Nelsen 18:25
Precisely. Yeah, and it's really great because, you know, self care is a big part of what I teach people because we, we don't have very good skills at taking care of ourselves, you know we're typically as people pleasers as caretakers as over doers. We're constantly giving, constantly doing for others and not taking that time for ourselves, you know, hence the stress. Hence the burnout. Hence the needing food for quick energy.
So we have to, you know, we have to dial that back and we have to start taking care of ourselves. And as we do, we're building into our consciousness that we're worthy of time, we're worthy of that morning routine of quiet, or that walk in the woods, you know, that meditation practice we're worthy of taking that time, and everything else will fall into place when we do, so it's really, really retraining, our ideas about how to get by in life, you know how to succeed in life it's really from the inside out.
Ericka Thomas 19:27
Yeah, and that self care principle comes up a lot in in what I do as well, and with the, with friends of mine and fellow entrepreneurs in the wellness space we talk about self care quite a bit, and almost too much, I think, like the phrase self care I think gets confused because if I were to say to a male client that he needed to work on some more self care he would just laugh and be like, I don't know what that means. But really what we're talking about is establishing boundaries. Boundaries around our own health and wellness,
Tricia Nelsen 20:06
Yeah, no question. We just don't prioritize ourselves, you know, we don't prioritize our health, you know and if nothing changes nothing changes, you know. So we're not going to lose weight, just automatically. It's not, you know, I had client tell me the other day, you know, she's like, well, I you know I start work at seven, and I work till five and then I go visit my mom and I'm in the nursing home for an hour, and then I come home, and I usually have skipped a few meals. So I eat, and then I worked till midnight. And I'm like that, you know that dog won't hunt. You got to change that. Like what, what is this? Like, what am I like a magician? Like I'm not going to, you're not going to change your eating habits. You have to change your living habits. Like you cannot work till midnight, and go to sleep, you know, on a full stomach because you forgot to eat breakfast and lunch, you know, it's like that's just, it's not gonna work. Like I like if nothing changes nothing changes you have to change how you're living. And she's like, wow, nobody ever told me that I can't do that. No one has ever been that blunt with me.
I'm like, but um, you know, it's it's not rocket science like we have to change how well it's a living problem not an eating problem, and we have to have boundaries on our time, and we have to start the day by getting still in quiet and kind of putting money in our spiritual bank account that we can draw on later otherwise the stress will drive us to stress eating, it's really, it's a pretty simple equation. But you know, we can't usually see it it's right in front of us, but we can't see it, you know, and that's why we typically can't heal on our own, we have to have a coach you know. Who can point these things out to us so it's so you know the way we live is so inextricably linked to how we eat, you know, and so that's really where we have to put the focus but yeah, you know, taking a look at, you know, where, where there's a lack of self care is a great place to start.
Ericka Thomas 22:12
I love that. I love that it's really really an important distinction about change instead of changing your eating habits, changing your living habits and then those eating habits will change, kind of, maybe on their own. If you change how you structure your day. I want to talk a little bit about the specific, one of the specific steps in your book, one of the seven C's is clean eating. And I, this stood out to me because I get a lot of questions about about clean eating clean, like there's a lot of clean diets out there you know we're all doing cleanses or doing things like that but I'm curious to get your take on, on the role that our standard American diet plays in the, in our addiction and overeating habits that can kind of develop over time.
Tricia Nelsen 23:24
Yeah, I mean when I talk to my clients, I mean my program has very little to do with nutrition, straight up. Because a lot of people they know, they have a general you know, typically people come to me after they've tried a lot of diets, you know. And most diets offer roughly the same advice, you know like, eat vegetables yeah okay got it check. You know, eat good protein, check. You know organic’s better than non organic, check. You know good oils, olive oil, coconut oil, whatever, you know. So, there's you know, low sugar obviously low to no sugar.
Typically you know nowadays grains aren't all they're cracked up to be, you know. So, limit the grains, the bread, that kind of thing so it's all typically known already.
And what, what, what people. The problem like the rub is, how do you follow through on what you know like you know this but, but you don't do it, and we don't do it because of our emotional connections to food.
But I want to just sort of spotlight the reason why we love sugar. The reason why we love carbs, is because they're heavier, they're dense, they give us a quick hit and quick, you know, serotonin hit. They do feed the reward centers in our brain, which creates an addiction, you know like a need for more.
And so but but but but why we love those foods not only because they're yummy and I'm the first one to love an ooey gooey chewy food. Okay so, but why we love them is because they are doing something for us not only to us but for us.
So let me give an example of this, Ericka and that's what I call the pep test and PEP is an acronym P, the first P stands for painkiller. So, the heavier denser food, you know, kills the pain it numbs us and anesthetizes the pain. Okay and so and that's, that's what emotional eating is is let like take me out of this pain. What kind of pain? Any kind of pain like taking care of a sick parent that's kind of painful and stressful, you know, taking care of you know a dysregulated kid trying to get a dysregulated kid to settle down, you know and do his schoolwork or stop overeating or whatever. I mean there's, you know, a marriage that's kind of been over for a long time but we're slogging through it, you know. A job, that's no longer a fit. There are so many painful situations in life, and food just kind of numbs that pain softens the edges of life. Okay, and so that's why we love those heavier, denser foods.
The E in PEP stands for escape. So food is a great escape. I used to love to get my ice cream and my brownies and my, you have to have salty with the sweet so my chips, you know, and I'd sit in front of my favorite TV show, and I would just check out. You know, I’d be so sick of you know just being responsible. And so tired of my overthinking mind that was just worrying about everything and managing everything. So food is a great escape, you know, especially the heavier foods that take us to a whole nother world right when they're so yummy.
And the last P in PEP stands for punishment. Which is a little counterintuitive because we think of food as a reward, you know. But when we overeat, when we stuff ourselves, when we feel sick, and gross, and the next day we're bloated and our pants won't, you know, won't button. We don't want to hang out with friends because our, you know, we've got bloat on our face, or whatever we take the video off a zoom like we don't want to be seen. No, that's really that's a punishment, no that's a form of punishment.
And so it begs the question why would we do that, like why would we punish ourselves that way. And the reason is because we have deep underlying guilt. Okay so this is again we don't talk a lot about this, this is really what people are overlooking but overeaters are over feelers and we feel guilty about everything, you know. We really do. And so it's really important to realize that there is stuff in there that's unaddressed, that, you know, especially going back to trauma.
You know I was sexually abused as a kid and I felt really ashamed of my body, like I felt ashamed of myself and my sexuality so I carried that around. So I had a lot of self sabotage, because of my trauma, you know, and so that's just a whole other element of why we use food in a destructive way. And so the PEP test is a good way to just start making this connection.
You know, are you using food as a painkiller as an escape or as a form of punishment, you know. And so I like to offer that to people to see that that's why the denser heavier foods do the job. You know that that's what we're drawn to and so just making that emotional connection can help people understand why do you love potatoes and not broccoli, you know. Why they'd rather have a banana rather than an apple, because it's heavier, it's more carbs, it's more sugar.
You know and so just, I just offer that as a way for people to who, might start off the show saying, well I just like food, I'm not an emotional eater, you know. Which is what I thought too, I started out, you know, maybe it's hard to unhear this stuff. So when I first heard about emotional eating. And I was like that's not me. I couldn't unhear it. So then I started observing what I was doing, you know, and with food and started realizing you know what, there is definitely an emotional attachment there.
Ericka Thomas 29:09
Yeah, that's, it's interesting that you bring that up. So can you be an emotional eater without necessarily being overweight?
Tricia Nelsen 29:19
Absolutely, absolutely. You know, it's a myth, thinking that you have to be overweight. I have clients who are, they don't have a weight problem. But they have an escaping problem, you know they escaped with food. In fact, one client I was talking to yesterday and she cried the whole call because she was so grateful for the changes in her life she said,”Tricia, I was constantly chemically dependent, I was chewing Nicorette gum. I was eating sugar. I was drinking wine…” you know, I was, she's an award winning director and she's like,”I couldn't stop medicating, like I couldn't stop checking out.” You know, so there's many, as I said, many ways to check out.
But it's really about slowing down and starting to be present with ourselves and our emotions and integrating with that and realizing it's not so bad to be present with ourselves, you know. And giving people new tools to do that with. But she's not overweight, you know, but she was a runner, she used food to medicate her feelings. So you don't have to be overweight, you don't have to be binger either. You know some people are like, “oh I don't do that eating at night thing”, or, you know, which I did, I was a major binger. But not everybody is. So it's sometimes just people's food choices. They eat like larger quantities than they need, they're sort of padding with excess food, and they're making choices that are carby and sugary and you know they're they're not into salads, they don't want to eat veggies veggies are too light, they won't do the job of numbing us.
Ericka Thomas 30:51
Interesting. Yeah, that's interesting. Now that you say that it makes complete sense. Yeah, absolutely. So what was the most challenging thing that you had to learn in your process of healing emotional eating?
Tricia Nelsen 31:13
I think it's just learning how to feel. And not like, realizing it wasn't going to kill me. You know, I was so allergic to being present with myself, you know, the idea of meditating for 20 minutes which I've done for 30 something years now, twice a day. I mean I have a I have a, I have a very steady, consistent meditation practice that would have been impossible, and for most people listening to that, it's like well I could never do that. But the thing is, when you address your feelings, you realize it's not so bad. You know like the feeling, they're just feelings like we're so scared of feeling. Because, you know, I thought you would kill me to feel like I thought if I was present with how I felt it, like it would ruin me or I'd be locked up, you know.
I had so many crazy thoughts in my head I just thought, man, if any, anybody knew what I was thinking they would lock me up. The thing is they're just thoughts, they're just feelings, they're not as terrible as we think they are and we're not the terrible people that we think we are, you know, I was afraid Ericka that I was actually bad I believe that was bad and a lot that goes back to the sexual, you know, trauma that I had, you know, I just thought it was fundamentally bad, you know, gross perverted whatever, and I just, you know, had to come to the fact I mean I had the, you know the coaching that I had, and my, my mentor used to say, you think you're bad, don't you? And I would say I know I’m bad. Like I would say I know I'm bad and I believed that. So I had to clear out that stuff that made me think I was bad and I'm not bad, you know. I just had an experience and had feelings that go along with it, but I don't want that I cleared that stuff out. And I didn't need 20 years of therapy to do it either, like it can happen very quickly for somebody, you know, and so that's the good news.
It's really, there's a very simple process that I've, you know, that I learned and that I teach for really just coming to make peace with ourselves, you know, with who we are, warts and all, you know, and just realizing another thing my mentor would tell me is, he would say ‘you're not that good at being bad,” None of us are. Like we're fundamentally good, like that's the truth, but we don't feel it, we don't believe it. So, coming, coming into that, you know in that process that's, you know, that's some work. That's some work but not nearly as hard as people think it is gonna be. So I'd say that's, that was, that was, you know what I had to do but it's so doable and I try to do it. I try to help people do that in a really fun and engaging way so it's not all hard work, it's not a veil of tears.
Ericka Thomas 34:10
That's, it's beautiful. That is beautiful. So, what do you, what can you tell people who are right at the beginning of their path. Maybe starting off in a similar place where you were, what, where can they, where would you say was the best place for them to begin the process?
Tricia Nelsen 34:32
Yeah, well I would just say that, you know, starting to have a little time where you're not busy. So starting to not be so busy, is a good way to start. Start with a morning practice, even just getting a meditation book that has a daily page that you can read. That's, you know, just reading a daily spiritual message. You know about the goodness, the goodness of God the goodness of you, you know, just what something that speaks to you is just a good way to start because this is a relationship with ourselves that we're now embarking upon. It's, you know, food’s a symptom, as I said it just gets our attention. But it's really our inability to be present with ourselves that makes us run run run all the time, in so many ways. So having just a little morning routine, you know, even just sitting with a cup of coffee you know in a beautiful place in your house like on a couch that you like and, you know, close the door don't have all the kids running around, you know, just give yourself the 10 minutes like just 10 minutes of quiet time, you know, taking in a spiritual message, you know, we have to begin developing this relationship with ourselves, so I'd say slowing down and just having a little sweet time with yourself is really important. You know, so that's just, that's a simple stuff people can do.
Ericka Thomas 36:02
Absolutely, and they can start right away, they don't have to wait for a particular moment in time for them to begin. yeah absolutely. Yeah. And you also help health coaches and trainers and people in the wellness industry to kind of bring these concepts to their clients. Can you tell me a little bit more about how you do that?
Tricia Nelsen 36:22
You bet. I was so eager and passionate about getting this message out that it's not about the food, that it's an inner journey and that there's very simple steps you can take to tap to be on the inner journey that I want, I want help to carry this message. And so, I do have a program for people to become certified as a heal your hunger emotional eating coach. And I do I have people who are psychologists and trainers and, you know, athletes you know trainers slash athletes and health coaches, life coaches, you know, people of all nurses all kinds that are developing their own business, and especially when they have clients that want to lose weight, you know they want to help them get over the finish line. And my experience is it's really not likely to happen unless this emotional piece is there and part of the picture.
And so I do teach people, my system, you know, they learn it and they get certified as an emotional eating coach. And then because they typically have businesses already, you know, I show them how to kind of fold this into what they already do so they don't believe what they're doing, they just literally hybrid it in and add it to their kind of, you know, kit of tools that they have to offer their clients but it helps.
It helps so much to understand what emotional eating is and what their emotional eating clients are thinking, because we think a lot, you know. And oftentimes, part of what we think is, you know, we look at our coach or trainer who looks fantastic and we think well, they can't possibly know what I'm going through. You know, they can't possibly understand me so they separate themselves and then they turn, they tune out, you know, part of what the trainer is telling them, because they feel like oh, you wouldn't understand me. So it just helps people, you know, in that, that place of helping their clients to understand what their clients are really thinking and understand what it's like to be an emotional eater.
And, you know, typically, a lot of people in health are in health because they've got their own stuff, you know. And it really sucks to be telling somebody how to be healthy when you're not exactly practicing what you preach, you know. Right. And so there's this little bit of, you know, imposter syndrome going on. Which does energetically obstruct you know your ability to really shine as a coach. You know, to really get out there and promote yourself when you have this little, you know, dark closet that you don't want to open and you feel embarrassed about either your weight or the way you eat or, you know, again, not, not doing, as you say.
You know, so, so just cleaning that up and so my people go through my program, they not only get help for their own, level up their own relationship with food, and then they have a personal experience to share with their clients you know in transparency. It's, it's, you know clients don't want you to be perfect, like they just want you to be real. They want to relate to you. They want to feel like you get them, you know, so having your own issues with food doesn't, you know prohibit you from being a good coach it actually enhances your being a good coach when you've sought some, you know, help for that and you feel, you know, more knowledgeable about what that journey is about.
Ericka Thomas 39:48
Absolutely. That's awesome. That's awesome. So, Tricia, how can people get in touch with you to either work with you as a client or work with you as a coaching client. Yeah. Where can we find you?
Tricia Nelsen 40:02
Best place is my website which is healyourhunger.com I also have a quiz on the website that's free and people can learn where they are on the emotional eating spectrum because I feel like we're all emotional eaters, to some degree but it's really a spectrum and and the low end is mostly eating on the high end is food addiction. So you can actually take the free quiz and learn where you are on that spectrum really easily in like three minutes, but also if someone's interested in learning more about the coach training program. They are welcome to, you know they can find that on the website as well and also I'm on Instagram at Tricia Nelson underscore (@tricianelsen_) and I post a lot on Instagram. That's great.
Ericka Thomas 41:17
Tricia I learned so much from you today. This has been a fantastic conversation, and I am so grateful to bring you to The Work IN.
Tricia Nelsen 41:25
Oh, thank you for having me and thanks for your amazing work I absolutely, I love what you do and it's so needed in this world so it's been a pleasure.
Ericka Thomas 42:35
Thank you so much Tricia.
And thank you for listening today on the work in. If you or someone you know is struggling with emotional eating. You are not alone. You can find health and hope in Tricia’s book, Heal Your Hunger, wherever books are sold. And if you like what you heard today, and you want to know more, head over to elementalkinetics.com, where you'll find the show notes with links to everything we talked about today, as well as free resources to help you shake off stress, tension, and trauma.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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Ericka Thomas
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