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We believe everyone has the right to love their food and feel proud of how they choose to eat. Join the coaches at Confident Eaters as they share their insights and advice to ditch diet culture and step into your power. They've guided thousands of people out of emotional eating, compulsive overeating, and stressful relationships with food. With science based tools and inspiration, what awaits you? Body confidence, food freedom, and joyful ease with eating.
Chelsea It's not like I need a cookie because it was a crappy day
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Georgie: [00:00:00] When I first met Chelsea, it became apparent that she was eating for all sorts of reasons, boredom, busyness, wanting to avoid a task, having a lousy day because someone offered her food because someone else wanted a chai latte and she didn't want them to partake alone or because she was tired or because she was upset.
I bet these are sounding pretty familiar to most listeners. If you are nodding your head like, yep, that's me. I want you to listen carefully to this real life session with Chelsea because it is gold. She realizes that those things don't actually lead her to eating anymore, and it's not because she's exerting a massive effort to resist food.
It's actually become a natural response to seek other, comforts, other ways of having fun or other ways to restore herself when her energy is low. If you wonder whether people are actually able to change or if people just have these sort of emotional eating issues for the rest of their lives, I could say yes, of course people change.
I see it all the time, but I don't think my words are as powerful as hearing it straight from the person themselves in the middle of succeeding with this change. So settle in and let's learn from Chelsea./ Welcome to the Confident Eaters Podcast, where you get proven methods to end overeating, emotional eating, and stressing about food. We are heading for harmony between your body, food and feelings, hosted by me, Georgie Fear, and my team at Confident Eaters. How's your day?
Chelsea: It's been, it's been pretty good. I will be honest. I feel like I've been half asleep all day. But that's okay. And going on like last minute, sort of vacation tomorrow.
Georgie: Oh, where you heading?
Chelsea: Disney.[00:02:00]
Georgie: Oh, okay, cool.
Chelsea: Yeah. So yeah, just like a lot of scrambling and trying to do things before I'm out of the office basically.
Georgie: Yeah, I bet. So today will be a busy day for you.
Chelsea: Yes.
Georgie: All right. Do you have a nice weekend?
Chelsea: Yes, it was lovely. I had friends over for a crafting party and the day before was out with a friend just like getting ready for that. And yeah, it was just like a nice weekend of good company and fun times and a nice way to like kind of segue into like taking time off and having leisure time.
Georgie: Great, great, great. Let's see. Your tracker's looking very colorful, which is nice.
Chelsea: Tiz, tiz.
Georgie: How do you feel like things are going? What color's your scale too?
Chelsea: It's been green. It's been green the whole time.
Georgie: Okay.
Chelsea: It's funny, I, I didn't actually fill, fill that in, but I can,
Georgie: that's okay. Just trying to get the big picture anyway.
Chelsea: Yeah, totally.
Georgie: All right. Let's see. So tell me, what are the best things going on in the last couple of weeks nutritionally? Anything feeling easy or particularly successful?
Chelsea: Definitely been better about like, putting food away when full and like sticking to meal times or if for like some reason there was a snack. It feels like a very like discreet event versus being a really amorphous thing that's hard to keep track of, which is like definitely how it was before.
Georgie: Yeah. That's good. That's good. So it's a discreet event that happens occasionally. It's not like we spent the afternoon snacking.
Chelsea: Yeah. And oftentimes I noticed it was for reasons like very practical reasons versus I just like couldn't contain myself kind of a reason. Or like I just had such a stressful day, I like needed a snack or something like that. I feel like that [00:04:00] isn't really coming up. It's more. Oh, I was running between stuff and this was like the one window I had, or I started eating and I had an appointment coming up and I had to cut the eating short and you know, would finish something later.
But those were pretty few and far between and that's definitely like a big improvement from like feeling like, oh my God, I need a cookie 'cause today sucks.
Georgie: Great. Great, great. Have you had some days that were kind of sucky?
Chelsea: Thankfully I feel like I've actually been in a pretty decent place, but this is definitely a trend that's been building for a while and yes, they've absolutely been like stressful, sucky days in there where I like did not fall back to that like soothing mechanism.
Georgie: Great. How did you, how did you manage those really rough days?
Chelsea: Oh, it's funny 'cause I don't have like a, a specific day in mind.
Georgie: Yeah.
Chelsea: So it's hard to like conjure a specific example, but I think, I think it was much more just like, can I confront whatever the thing is, head on and like, figure out what would be most soothing? Versus, I forget where I heard this, I think it was like Brene Brown was talking about like shadow comforts, which is something someone else had coined, I think. And it made me think of your work and your book.
I was like, oh yeah, like this is absolutely a shadow comfort. It's not like actually addressing the thing. It's kind of just like slapping a bandaid on it and like numbing around it.
Georgie: Sure.
Chelsea: Or that thing like soccer players with like the lidocaine spray.
Yeah. Like what you actually need is to rest if you've gotten hurt, not to numb it so you can play the rest of the 90 minutes.
Georgie: Yeah, good point.
Chelsea: Yeah,
Georgie: that's a good name for it. Shadow comfort. So yeah, I think that's how a lot of people use food is like, I need [00:06:00] something to be pleasant because I've had a crappy day, as you said.
Chelsea: Yeah.
Georgie: And you described confronting the thing head on, sort of like meeting your needs as opposed to like lidocaine spraying it.
Chelsea: Yeah.
Georgie: What might that be? What sort of things might you need if you're having a crappy day?
Chelsea: A break, socializing, potentially a better night's sleep. Water a thing that I need right now, I realize there's a lot of time where I will like desperately crave like a melon, and I'm like, am I actually hungry or am I deeply thirsty?
Georgie: That's exactly what happens to me. Like if I'm thirsty, a lot of times I'm like, I want fruit or a bowl of cereal with the milk. I'm like, you're not hungry, you're just thirsty. Try to drink some water. A break. Socializing a good night's sleep, water.
Chelsea: Yeah. I've done more like candle lighting and other like sensory comforts.
Georgie: Okay.
Chelsea: But that's kind of less of like an in the moment thing. In the moment. It's usually can I take a break and stop running from thing to thing or can I talk this out with another person to kind of de-stress?
Georgie: Hmm. Okay. So that is sort of like what I'm needing is just to feel a little more organized in my thoughts and like I've got a grasp on this.
Chelsea: Yeah, yeah. Usually it comes from being too, too harried to like just not having enough of a break or enough of a backup. And it's typically like work related.
Georgie: Yeah. I think we all have our, common things like our, our needs that tend to go unmet. Like if we're going to get into a, a deficit of some kind, whether it's food or water or rest or
Chelsea: yeah.
Georgie: Anything like that. Knowing our habits that can help us meet them more appropriately, like actually fix the, the problem itself. okay. Looking over that list a break, socializing a good night's sleep, water, to talk through something. That's wonderful. That is wonderful. And when you're not [00:08:00] doing things like snacking or eating treats to meet those needs
Chelsea: mm-hmm.
Georgie: Then they can take a place where they're just like a tasty diversion.
Chelsea: Yeah. Yeah. And I did have a win this week. The same friend who keeps coming over and being like do y'all want Chai?
Georgie: Chai lattes?
Chelsea: She was over yesterday when I had people over and she asked actually, I think. Maybe this happened twice in the past week, but she asked if I wanted one and I was just like, no, I'm, I'm good, but like, help yourself.
And I just like genuinely wasn't tempted by her making one, which was really cool and nice to have like worked through that because I didn't really like being in this place of, oh, if I'm seeing people eat something I want around me, I will want it just for fear of missing out versus
Georgie: Right.
Chelsea: I genuinely want this thing. And I, I had kind of a similar moment, like somebody brought donuts to our get together yesterday and they weren't like super special donuts, like the worth, itness wasn't there. And I was like, actually I would like rather have cantaloupe and they were eating donuts and I had cantaloupe and I did have a snack in between meals, but I was like, I had been craving the cantaloupe for a while actually and I knew I was kind of at the mercy of the group as far as when we ate.
Georgie: And you still got hungry for dinner? I can see you noted in your tracker.
Chelsea: Yeah. Yeah. So and that just felt nice too.
Georgie: Great, great, great.
Chelsea: Yeah.
Georgie: Another thing I sort of like an indicator for me is when people are eating treats for the reasons that we've sort of agreed upon as fitting within your values.
Chelsea: Mm-hmm.
Georgie: Small portions work. You know? And I can see like a tablespoon of sorbet, half a scoop of ice cream, like a, a small piece of dark chocolate. It's like a little bit of here, a little bit there.
Chelsea: Mm-hmm.
Georgie: That's not the behavior that we see when somebody is like trying to remedy a broken heart with treats, for example.
Chelsea: Yeah.
Georgie: Or make [00:10:00] up for a really frustrating career.
Chelsea: Yeah. I just remembered something as you said that, and this week I had that cake again, but I did the thing where I divvied it into thirds and got to enjoy a third of it.
Georgie: Ah,
Chelsea: over three days. And like,
Georgie: which cake was this?
Chelsea: So technically it's not like my most favorite cake from this place, but whenever I get this cake, I don't actually eat the frosting.
Not for like nutritional reasons. I just, the cake itself is the part that I like the best. The frosting makes it like really sweet to me.
Georgie: Too much? Okay.
Chelsea: Yeah. But my favorite is this Boston cream cake. I know technically Boston cream is considered a pie, but they make it as a cake. So it's just like, you know, the vanilla, like yellow butter cake with the custard and the chocolate ganache.
They only have that one sometimes. So I got a different cake that has the yellow cake base and I just eat the cake out of it and leave this husk of frosting, like a little gremlin,
Georgie: a little skeleton of the cake.
Chelsea: Mm-hmm.
Georgie: So you said you divided it up and just had a, a small piece over several different days?
Chelsea: Yeah.
Georgie: Nice.
Chelsea: I wanna make it clear it is a big piece that they serve you, but I had like a third of the big piece.
Georgie: Okay.
Chelsea: Yeah,
Georgie: well managed, well managed any times this week where you felt over full?
Chelsea: I think there might have been one. Yeah, so on the 12th we, we went out fine dining and had like a four course meal and I was there for the souffle at the end.
Like the whole reason I wanted to go was for the souffle, but everything was really tasty. And I was in that situation of like,
Ugh, I just need to hold out for the dessert.
Georgie: Yeah,
Chelsea: there is a little bit of when I'm eating in a place that's like really nice and really special. Feeling some kind of way about leaving food on my plate, especially when it's like the fine dining, like tiny portions. So I noticed that [00:12:00] coming up during that meal a little bit.
Georgie: Mm-hmm.
Chelsea: But honestly, I think I could have avoided that if I just hadn't opted for the bread. But I went into the meal hungry because like, you wanna be hungry.
Georgie: Yeah. If you don't wanna show up not hungry to a meal like that, so,
Chelsea: right. But then I was like hungry enough that when they came by and they like offered bread multiple times.
I was like, fuck. So yeah, that was a time where like I was definitely full by the time I left. I probably had bites like past full, but it wasn't like problematically so. I feel like there was also a time, like maybe one other instance in the past month where I remember thinking like, oh, I am. Full and I don't like it. Like, I don't like the feeling.
Georgie: Mm.
Chelsea: So I guess probably past full. And I remember having the thought of, of like, this really doesn't happen often. And I was surprised that it happened. But because it happens rarely and we took it off the tracker, I forget like which day it was or why that might have happened.
Georgie: And it sounds like your response to that sensation was, you just reflected like, wow, I don't feel this way very often, which I think sounds like it would be kind of reassuring if you were feeling upset in that moment.
Chelsea: Yeah. Yeah.
Georgie: So that's good
Chelsea: for sure,
Georgie: that's a really, really good way to handle it. I think anybody who finds themselves in that like, oh no, I've done it again, a sort of thought, if you're like, I haven't felt like this in a month or more.
can help you feel better, like nobody's going to gain weight or sabotage their weight loss efforts because once in a blue moon
Chelsea: mm-hmm.
Georgie: They slipped and they ate a little bit of extra food. So,
Chelsea: yeah.
Georgie: I have certainly found myself in that position. I also intensely dislike it. I try to keep, keep calm and say, okay, we ate some extra food. Let's look and just see if there's anything I can do to avoid a repeat performance.
Chelsea: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think in that case, like reminding myself that I am hungry so that I can enjoy the treat at the end, or like the main reason I'm there for [00:14:00] that meal. I can always take bread and eat it later in the meal if I am still not full versus like I'm so hungry that I need to eat this thing now.
Georgie: Okay. So at least in terms of like the fancy restaurant, yeah. You could game plan slightly differently with the accepting and timing of bread consumption.
Chelsea: Yeah. Yeah,
Georgie: I completely understand. I mean, being a hungry person, somebody offers like nice warm bread. What are you going to say no?
Chelsea: Especially when they're like, this is our house made artisanal. Like, you wanna try everything they hand you?
Georgie: Yeah, sure. I wonder about possibly sort of pre visualizing going in.
Chelsea: Mm-hmm.
Georgie: And knowing what, you know, I'm going to wanna try everything they give me.
Chelsea: Yeah.
Georgie: So I probably shouldn't eat a number of slices of bread.
Chelsea: Yeah,
Georgie: Because yes, the bread's gonna be very good. I don't wanna pass it up, but I'm also not gonna wanna like leave behind bites of other things that I want to try.
Chelsea: Yeah.
Georgie: And then maybe even visualizing, like let's say I'm getting really full and they give me a plate and there's stuff on it that I don't want to eat. Like I can see myself just scooting the whatever off to the side and just letting it go. Because going to this restaurant is the experience of them serving you delicious food and more than you actually need to eat.
Chelsea: Yeah. I think especially with the example of like the nice chocolate souffle they give you at the end, just remembering that the best bites of this will be the first few. Actually in this case.
Georgie: Hmm.
Chelsea: Each of us got one. I finished mine 'cause I was so excited about it and hadn't finished hers. And I was like, I want yours. Like I want to finish it.
Georgie: Yeah.
Chelsea: I want to have like every morsel of this. And I don't think that finishing hers really added anything other than the feeling of like I didn't have this taken away from me, which is a very different feeling than I will enjoy eating this.
Georgie: Mm-hmm.
Chelsea: And this will make me feel good.
Georgie: [00:16:00] Yeah. Loss aversion instead of like, actually like approach, motivation.
Chelsea: Yes, exactly. So maybe just remembering that, hey, we're here for like if I am nearing the point of full and I'm not eating to just get that base nourishment which with treats is probably the case that I want to be maximizing for the worth it ness of those initial bites and the worth it ness is gonna drop off as I go. And. honestly, I've been excited to try the recipe for this souffle myself.
So it's not like it's going anywhere. Like I can go back to this restaurant. I can learn how to make it myself. It's not the depression. This isn't my, my one chance to eat dessert.
Georgie: Yeah, that's a really helpful reminder. I can come get this again. This isn't the last one. On the face of the earth, I can also make my own. Yeah, I think all of those thoughts, they help quell the fomo.
Chelsea: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Georgie: What did you actually do when you were looking at the leftover and being like, I want that. Did you eat it? Did you pass on it? What'd you do?
Chelsea: I did eat it, but like, I felt myself kind of slow down and pay more attention to, I really liked the texture of like the crystallized sugar on the edges of the souffle versus the like softer interior. And so I just kind of prioritized the pieces that had like the nicest sensory experience and then just let the feeling kind of fade and.
Georgie: Nice
Chelsea: left some of the souffle. Yeah.
Georgie: Yeah. And that's a way you can eat other dishes too. Like if I have roast veggies or something, I want like the crispiest bits.
Chelsea: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Georgie: So I might let some of the less toasty green beans, you know, go and you don't eat the crispier bits. So yeah, I think that's a good technique to just slow down, check your motivation. Recognize that you're allowed to do anything. You're allowed to send it.
Chelsea: Yeah.
Georgie: You're allowed to let it go. You're allowed to eat it. You're allowed to ask for a third, you're, you're not putting pressure on yourself. I think a lot of times helps us make better [00:18:00] decision making. 'cause then we're not operating from this place of scarcity, which is like, we only get one because it's not true.
Chelsea: Yeah. Yeah, and I did find it kind of reassuring to be like the dessert police aren't coming for me for eating mine and then having some.
Georgie: Nope.
Chelsea: But then I could kind of step into the like, yeah, but do I actually want this thing mindset a little bit more easily?
Georgie: Yeah. Yeah. it's a bit of a transition for years and years of you thinking like, am I allowed to have this? Am I allowed to have this? Can I have this? To really stepping into the place where you're like, I'm allowed food, period.
Chelsea: Yeah.
Georgie: I'm allowed to eat all this food. You know, I'm not taking other people's food off their plate. It's like this food we're paid for.
Chelsea: Yeah.
Georgie: But that doesn't mean we want to eat all of it.
Chelsea: Mm-hmm.
Georgie: And so that sometimes is the harder question. Once people realize, oh, I'm actually allowed to eat as much food as I, I want.
Chelsea: Mm-hmm.
Georgie: How much do I actually want? Is sometimes a little more poorly defined and contextual and changing by the minute.
Chelsea: Yeah.
Georgie: But it's nice to also know that you're not gonna get it wrong in any catastrophic way.
Chelsea: Yeah. And it's funny the past two weeks, every morning I would wake up and I, I knew the scale would be green and it's, I'm not quite sure how to articulate, like, why I knew that, whether it was like a feeling of hunger levels or reflecting on like certain habits versus others, or if it was just the feeling in my body 'cause sometimes you wake up and you can just tell that you are so much less bloated that you're like, that scale's gonna be blue. Yeah. And so it's funny that like I, I kind of knew the scale was gonna be the same for all of the past two weeks, but that was with treats every day. Yeah. I'm actually kind of curious.
I don't really know the answer whether [00:20:00] it's the periods where the scale has been blue, I think related to potentially longer time being hungry, but I, I think it's less about the willpower of that, and it's had more to do with what was my schedule like and what was my activity level like. Like if I just had a busy day and had to go dance and I knew I wouldn't be able to eat till later, it would be like hours of me being hungry and then if I, prioritize having veggies and all that other stuff it would just kind of work out. And I would know, I was like, oh yes. Like the scale is going to go down if I have enough of those kinds of days. 'cause that's just the season I'm in.
Georgie: Yeah. Yeah. And, and you can feel when your body's getting into a calor deficit.
Chelsea: Mm-hmm.
Georgie: There's like that more sh hunger showing up like clockwork, like very regularly before each meal i'm feeling hungry in advance of it. And then I eat and it goes away and it stays away for a number of hours, but it never gets to mealtime and me not, you know, ready to eat again.
Chelsea: Mm-hmm. And I, think that for feeling hunger, I think that is maybe where this has been like less consistent.
Like, I might just be like, yes, I am hungry. Versus I have been hungry for 15 minutes, or I have been hungry for 30 minutes or an hour. I think that's maybe part of scale being green is just not having that longer threshold of hunger.
Georgie: Mm-hmm. Sure.
Chelsea: But I also think some of it is just, there have been treats a lot in the past week, not for like one particular reason or another. There's
Georgie: yeah. All right. What is the next week looking like for the next two weeks?
Chelsea: Oh I'm gonna be at Disney all of next week.
Georgie: Okay.
Chelsea: Which last time we kind of planned that out and I was like a little worried the scale would go up and it stayed the same, which was kind of remarkable considering we had a lot of food on the [00:22:00] agenda.
Georgie: Mm-hmm.
Chelsea: So. I know last time we talked about like just continuing to make sure that there was hunger and there was like a worthiness to the treats. So my intention is to try and go into this the same way. I also like asked if we could plan our food around places. I think this is the challenge with Disney is like, it's so kid focused that it feels very UPFE, even though I don't technically know what's going into the food.
Georgie: Sure.
Chelsea: So I was like hey, can we plan around going to places where like for breakfast instead of tater tots and like Mickey waffles, there is like avocado toast. Or like they have yogurt everywhere. But I don't know what's in the yogurt.
Georgie: Right. Probably heavily sweetened.
Chelsea: Yeah. So we planned accordingly. We have actually we have a good lineup of meals where they should be like pretty dang nice. Epcot doing their food and wine. So there's gonna be a lot of little small bites that we'll just be able to kind of pick up throughout the day.
Georgie: Okay.
Chelsea: We're doing like a tasting menu at one of the Japanese restaurants.
We're going to another like the Animal Kingdom Lodge has like an African, like fine dining restaurant.
Georgie: Oh wow. Nice.
Chelsea: So yeah, excited about that. And just it'll be a week without my scale, so I'm just gonna be going off of like how things feel.
Georgie: And you walk a lot in the last time you were there, you a ton.
Chelsea: Yeah. That was, I think that was the big thing is it's so much more walking than I get. It's like probably five times the amount of walking I normally get that I was really actually surprised at like just how stable my weight was before and after last time. So I'm hopeful for this time.
Georgie: Excellent. All right. And then after you get back, they'll be getting back into regular work.
Chelsea: Mm-hmm. Yep.
Georgie: Anything else going on [00:24:00] that week?
Chelsea: No, there shouldn't be. It should be kind of like a week as usual. One thing I would love to talk to you about, but next time when it's closer to like I've been back home. I don't think it makes sense to talk about it today.
Georgie: Okay.
Chelsea: Is maybe more strategies for cooking vegetables at home because I'm not doing enough of that.
Georgie: Sure.
Chelsea: Yeah. There's still a good amount of just like ordering Chipotle or True Food Kitchen or like other DoorDash places that I think are decently safe.
Georgie: Mm-hmm.
Chelsea: But like it's gonna be a lot more cost effective, convenient. Like probably much better nutritionally to just be cooking stuff at home.
Georgie: Agreed. Totally. Yeah, we can definitely talk about that next time. I usually break it up into like we talk salads.
Chelsea: Mm-hmm.
Georgie: Then we talk oven.
Chelsea: Mm-hmm.
Georgie: And we talk stove top.
Chelsea: Mm-hmm.
Georgie: And then other would be like possibly the grill or possibly soup. as like,
Chelsea: yes please, that's ugh, all of these sound great. The only thing is I don't have a grill hooked up at the moment. But other than that, this sounds awesome and honestly, I was inspired by one of your recent Instagram posts and it just like looks so colorful and I was like, this looks beautiful and delicious and I want it.
And I would've talked to you about it today, but I would've talked to you about it and then promptly forgotten about all of it. 'cause I won't be doing any cooking for the next eight days.
Georgie: Yeah. Awesome. Well, enjoy the trip. I've thrown it in the notes here and highlighted it yellow, so when you get back it's a date. Great job, Chelsea. I'll update your tracker.
Chelsea: Thank you.
Georgie: A couple more weeks here if you don't wanna track while you're away. Totally understandable. But hop back on as soon as you can.
Chelsea: Got it. Yeah, I'll, I'll do my best. And I, I'll check in on my laptop at the end of every day and make sure nothing's on fire so I should be able to log. No problem.
Georgie: Okay. Awesome. We'll keep up with great work and have a lovely fun time.
Chelsea: Thank you.
Georgie: All right. Thanks so much.
Chelsea: [00:26:00] You're welcome Georgie.
Georgie: Talk to you soon.
Chelsea: Bye
Georgie: Bye