How do you develop a healthy, empowered relationship with food?

Dr. Melissa McCreery joins us on the podcast to talk about emotional eating and overeating.

She is a psychotherapist who has helped thousands of women transform their relationships with food for over 30 years. Her approach centers around uncovering “Hidden Hungers,” dissolving self-sabotaging beliefs, and creating sustainable freedom from emotional eating and overeating. As the creator of the Your Missing Peace program and host of the Too Much on Her Plate Podcast, she guides her clients to take their power back from food – and from the emotional cycles that keep them stuck.

She has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Good Housekeeping, Women’s Health, Fitness, Self, CNN Health, and Weight Watchers Magazine.

See more about Dr. McCreery at https://toomuchonherplate.com

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About Dr. Liz

Winner of numerous awards including Top 100 Moms in Business, Dr. Liz provides psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, and hypnosis to people wanting a fast, easy way to transform all around the world. She has a PhD in Clinical Psychology, is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) and has special certification in Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy. Specialty areas include Anxiety, Insomnia, and Deeper Emotional Healing.

A problem shared is a problem halved. In person and online hypnosis and CBT for healing and transformation.

Transcript

Dr. Liz 0:00
Hi everyone. My interview today is with Dr Melissa McCreary. She has been working in this field of overeating and emotional eating for over 30 years, a really long time, and so she has a lot of wisdom to share with us. She runs some online programs for women around overeating and emotional eating, but really the goal of the programs is to make peace with food and create freedom, a sense of freedom in your life, instead of feeling like run by food, feeling like you really do have choice and you’re not stuck in cycles of guilt and shame and self blame and self recrimination. That’s often what I see in my practice as well when I work with people around overeating and emotional eating as we beat ourselves up about it. So how do we get out of that cycle? How do we create a sense of freedom around eating and food in our lives? So let’s jump into the interview. I hope you’re healthy and safe. Peace.

Hi, Melissa, welcome to the hypnotize me podcast. Hey, I’m so glad to be here. Thank you for having me absolutely. Your email came across my desk, and I thought, Oh, she has such good information, probably for all of my listeners, can you tell people some of your background and how you got into the area of helping people with overeating?

Dr. Melissa McCreery 1:36
Sure be happy to so. I am also a clinical psychologist. I have spent my entire professional career, which goes back over 30 years now, helping women with food and weight and eating and their bodies and just, I think every single way you could tangle that up, and we all have been taught to tangle that up. Yes, that has, that has been my career. And when you’re the person who does that, and for many years, I was in private practice as a psychotherapist, I’ve been online, working with women, coaching women around emotional eating and overeating full time since 2014 now. So I’ve been doing this a long time. I get to work with women all over the world, which is so cool, as, you know,

Dr. Liz 2:22
I was going to ask, did you start in the eating disorder area?

Dr. Melissa McCreery 1:36

like originally, you know when I started working with eating disorders, and then this thing happens, as I’m sure you know when, because I had a general practice, but I also worked a lot with eating disorders, but when your biography says that you are somebody who has this specialty, what happens is, just about every woman who comes into your office, no matter what they’re coming for, says, starts to talk about their issues with food. Yes, we have been. And you know, our culture teaches us to have issues with food from practically. You know, it’s sad how young it is, and over time, working with women, helping them, like, end these struggles, be free of these struggles, what I saw over and over again that just made me heart sick and actually led to me doing what I do now is I would sit across from women who were incredible, capable, strong, amazing women who were doing all sorts of undoable things in their lives, and they would sit across from me feeling hopeless around issues with food, telling me, you know this is always going to be a struggle for me, or I know I’m just going to have to be really strong. This is something I’m always going to have to control. I’m going to have to be vigilant about this. This is an issue for me, like it was a part of their character, right? And it just it made it’s not true. And the longer you know, what surprised me when I got into this profession is that so much the professional training is that that’s the truth.

Dr. Liz 4:01
Yes,

Dr. Melissa McCreery 4:03

we teach control and we teach discipline. We don’t, but that’s what that is, what women are taught is necessary, and that is so different from freedom and peace, which is absolutely possible, and so, I mean, I could get on a soapbox about that for a very long time, but it’s so important, and women are putting so much energy into fighting with something that they’re going to have a relationship with with the rest of their lives, their food and their eating. Yeah, and it’s so possible to do it differently, so that’s what I help women do.

Dr. Liz 4:35
Okay, okay, so then you move from, let’s say, private practice into more of the the coaching realm, like you were about the same age, I think, and so when we went through grad school, I mean, I went through in the 90s, the coaching didn’t exist, right? Like the coaching profession didn’t exist. They came online, really, is like the internet took off, really? So, um. Um, so at some point, did you give up your license and just do coaching? Then you moved into that?

Dr. Melissa McCreery 5:04
No, I still have my license. You know, I think coaching is a kind of sticky profession. It’s a label that just about anybody can adopt. And I approached coaching as you as I’m just going to make some assumptions about you, because you went through the whole PhD process. But we feel like learning is important and and I probably over learned with coaching. I went through a very formal certification program, I took oral exams, and had to coach my instructors and, you know, all sorts of stuff, and coaching is really different than psychotherapy, right? I really loved being a psychotherapist. I burnt out on the healthcare industry and the health insurance industry, yeah. But what I love about coaching is it, the way I think about it is really, we’re not pulling you’re not helping someone get out of a hole and just get back on level ground. You’re helping somebody really go where they want to go, and particularly with food and eating. And that’s another thing. I’m really glad you asked this question, because I hadn’t put it into words before. But I feel like so many women don’t think about where they really want to go with food and eating. They think about what I’m gonna have to do, oh, yeah,

Dr. Liz 6:23
what they have to do, or what they don’t want to do, like, what I’m gonna have to do this, or I don’t want to gain weight, or I don’t, you know, vast majority,

Dr. Melissa McCreery 6:36
I call it deprivation, thinking deprivation, right? Yeah, and, but to really think, what do I want, right? What do I want my relationship with food to feel like, how do I want to eat? Not, well, I know if I’m going to achieve my goal, I need to do this. And there’s these macros, and there’s this like, you know, no, wait a minute, what do you want? This is your life. This is we eat every single day, hopefully,

Dr. Liz 7:05
yeah, you know, it’s, it’s very rare to hear someone ask that,

Dr. Melissa McCreery 7:07
yeah, yeah. And it’s, I think it’s confusing for a lot of women, because I think diet culture kind of teaches not kind of to get what you want. You have to live in deprivation, and you can’t have what you want with food. I hear so many women who first, when they come to me say, I know this goal is important to me. I’m willing to work really hard. I mean, they set up this path for misery. They know that they’re ready to do it, and I know I’m going to have to give up the things that I love the most. Like, Oh my gosh. How sad is that no, no, no, no,

Dr. Liz 7:43
okay, so then you’re not a fan of, it’s an overstatement, but you’re not a fan of, like, special diets, low carb, keto. I mean, a lot of those are you give up, right? You give up high carbs, you give up desserts you give, like a lot of those Weight Watchers, like you’re not a fan of a particular way of eating, then, well,

Speaker 1 8:08
here’s the thing. First of all, the I think the one thing I know for sure in all the years of doing this, is that there is no one way of eating that works for everybody, okay, that I’m absolutely certain about we can and it’s really important. And okay, there’s about four things I want to say at once here, yeah, part of the problem here is that diet culture has taught women to lose their confidence in themselves and to stop listening to themselves. When we listen it’s only when we listen to ourselves, is only when we filter all that information out there through our own wisdom. Because you’re the only person who’s lived in your hope, in your body, your entire life, right? You are the only person in there. That’s when you start to figure out the way of eating that is right for you. And so in my programs, we start with, we start with the psychology, and we start with the mindset. Because, like I like to say to my clients, you and I can turn anything into a secret diet or a deprivation plan. We can take anything and find a way to have it make us miserable, right? And you can take many of these same approaches from when you come at them from a place of feeling empowered and confident and hey, I’m going to do what’s right for me, and I’m listening to my body, and wow, when I eat this way, I feel really good. So I want to do more of that, that that sets you on a completely different path. You might be doing some of the very same things. Did I say that in a way that makes sense?

Dr. Liz 9:43
Well, you’re saying that you come at it from a place of empowerment versus deprivation. Absolutely, I have to empowerment, meaning like, all right, if I make these choices, it does feel good, actually. And so I want to keep making those choices, versus, I have to keep making these choices.

Speaker 1 10:05
Yeah, if you come to me and say, I really want my macro

Dr. Liz 10:09
say, or, yeah,

Speaker 1 10:11
if you come to me and say, I know I need to eat, you know, do a Keto plan that I know that I’m asking you why? Like, why do you know that? How do you know that? Well, my doctor said, or, well, you know, that’s what they say on Instagram, or what you know, okay, but what do you know? The art of listening to ourselves is, first of all, it’s one of the biggest, most powerful tools that that we can leverage. But it’s, it’s interesting how, in this one area, it doesn’t occur to women to do it. I was talking to somebody, a client who had had some really successful experiences with hypnosis, very successful in other areas of her life. And we were talking about these struggles that she has with with food and and I said, well, so how does that work? How does that work in this area? And it was like this light bulb went off. It had never occurred to her that she that her thoughts and and what was going on in her mind. And it had never occurred to her that this could be influencing things she was so focused on. I know I eat too much sugar, right? I know I need to, like, cut back on this. I know I need to. It was so focused on the food, she was missing like 90% of the picture. And she had this

Dr. Liz 11:29
tool, a tool for her that had worked in the past.

Speaker 1 11:33
Yeah, using a tool that worked for the past. But also coming at this from, how does, how do all these other parts of me, how are they affecting my eating and my relationship with food? Sugar is not creating my relationship with food. So I work with what I call hidden hungers, the reasons that food has the power. What are we using food for? And if you’re a busy a busy woman, you’re using food maybe because you’re tired or you’re too busy, or you’re stressed, or you have tough emotions that you either don’t know how to deal with, or you are just out of bandwidth, and they are the last thing you want to deal with, right? You’re not getting enough me time. You’re being too hard on yourself. There’s all these different places that we use food as a band aid to kind of patch ourselves up so we can keep going. And it doesn’t occur to us to think about that because, because we look at the macros.

Dr. Liz 12:29
Yeah, I was working with someone the other day who’s full time teacher, and she, we’re talking about how she went by and got fast food, and she’s beating herself up about it and and I said, Okay, let’s look at that day. What happened? Well, she’s a teacher. She lives in South Florida, which has a shit ton of traffic. She had to drive across town after teaching and go to a medical appointment, and she really didn’t have energy to cook that night. And so I was like, okay, when we look at it like this, does it make sense that you went through a drive through, like, you’re out of energy? This was, like, your resource really like this. If we see it as Okay, a choice I made in the moment for myself because I was so tired, because I knew I would get home and I didn’t have energy to cook like that changes the picture there. Can we let some of that guilt and beating yourself up and you know, all of this self recrimination that happens, it gives you a whole

Speaker 1 13:32
different problem to solve, self self blame and shame and self recrimination. It they back you into a corner. There is no room for curiosity, because once you’ve decided it’s my fault, I just should have gone home and made dinner anyway. Yes, I should have had more energy. I shouldn’t have not a bandwidth, all that stuff that you’ve probably been taught, right? Once you decide that, then, then all you the only answer is, I need to push myself harder. You need to push myself harder. I need to be meaner to myself. I need to have more discipline. And it puts you on that hamster wheel, because it’s inevitably you’re going to fail, you’re going to eat. We tend to overeat and emotionally eat when we’re lowest in bandwidth. And if, if you follow it for that myth that you’re just supposed to beat yourself up to get more bandwidth. It’s a vicious cycle. But if you can say, like you said, okay, so what happened here? Yeah, why did this happen? There’s some, there’s an absolutely reasonable reason that I used food, or that I went to the drive through, or that I ate what I you know, what I hadn’t planned on eating, then you can start to tackle, okay. How could it be different, right? It’s completely it’s just takes you in a completely different direction.

Dr. Liz 14:45
Yes, yeah, and we had discussed like it, there’s nothing morally wrong with that choice, right? That’s often where women will go. There’s something wrong with that choice versus this is a choice I’m making, and so how about what happens if. I enjoy this food because I’m making the choice here, right? So, yeah, it does come up into all right? Maybe I don’t know. You can brainstorm all kinds of different choices too, if you want right to problem solve tiredness and what are choices that make me feel good around that? And you know, lack of bandwidth and emotionality, and you can problem solve all kinds of stuff. So what are the tools in your program that women use to do that, like, what? And what are they doing in there?

Speaker 1 15:36
Oh, absolutely. I have a, I have a 30 day self guided program. It’s called the peace with food, and it really is about how to there’s a lot of there are a lot of tools in there, but we start with, how do you slow things down? Back off, exactly what we’re just talking about. Back off from the self blame, right? Take a beat. And how can you use curiosity to art to start to understand what’s going on, right? How can I, how can I begin to see? How can I decode the the hunger and the cravings? What are they? What are they standing in for? What are they taking the place for? That’s the first thing. And then all the mindset traps that we’ve also been talking about, like, I have to get this perfect, or I just have to push myself harder, or I shouldn’t have run out of energy. Or, you know, if I’m not going to eat, I really should be going and doing a workout, when really what you’d probably need to do is just go take a nap, right? How do you the mindset piece decoding why you are eating, there is always a reason that you’re eating, and it isn’t that you’re lazy or you don’t have enough discipline. And then figuring out from that place, what are the strategies that would be helpful to me, right? What are the things that I need in that moment that actually match where I am in that moment? Because that’s a huge mistake people make. Everybody, I bet everybody listening to this can make a list of 10 things they think they should have done instead of eating the last thing they ate that they think they shouldn’t have eaten, right, right? Most of those things probably are completely not a match for what you are really needing in the moment. If you, if you take the belief that, okay, I’m eating for a reason, and I’m overeating for a reason, or I’m emotionally eating for a reason, then what you want is some something, some way to address that reason or acknowledge that reason. And so much of the time it’s like, well, I should just go do a yoga workout, or I should really go organize. I should do a load of laundry instead of sitting here, you know, eating popcorn and drinking wine and watching Netflix. Well, you’re eating popcorn and drinking wine and watching Netflix for a reason. What is, what are you needing not to do laundry?

Dr. Liz 17:55
Right? Yeah, usually, right.

Speaker 1 17:58
And then I think, and the last piece of things that I think is so important that we don’t talk about is where I started getting your confidence back, getting your sense of power, feeling in charge, like because that’s the other thing that happens if you’ve been through this cycle of eating and weight, if weight is a part of it, weight gain and weight loss, and then gaining the weight back and telling yourself you will eat a certain way, And then by the end of the day, it’s blown you, you’ve you’ve got this cycle of making promises to yourself that you haven’t kept, and so over time, you don’t believe yourself anymore. You do feel ashamed, and you do feel guilty, and you fall into all of that stuff, and it really takes a toll on confidence. Yes, yeah.

Dr. Liz 18:41
Well, how have the emergence of the GLP ones affected, like, your thinking on that? Because often, you know, confidence, we’re also saying, like, underneath that, I hear often women say, I don’t have the willpower, versus Yeah, I don’t have the confidence. Yeah, I think, yeah. And we know it stops the food chatter, which is, you know, I’ve shared pretty openly on the podcast my own history of overeating and worked with this area a long time more through hypnosis and a deep like core healing technique, which actually I do ask, like, how do you want to feel, which often people don’t even address, right? Like it’s time for them to come up with that. How do you want to feel? That’s what we’re we’re working with in the hypnosis. But it’s, it’s the GLP ones are very, very interesting in terms of stopping that food chatter, yeah, and people gaining confidence, but also, yeah, I’ve had clients go on and off of them because of insurance issues paying for them, and it’s like, immediately the food chatters back, and they’re like, Okay, now I’m struggling. Like, what’s going on here? So I would love your take. Speak on it.

Speaker 1 20:01
It’s an important topic to talk about, and it’s only going to be more of a topic to talk about. I think that. And I’ve talked to a number of people in various medical specialties, you know, they’re, they’re absolutely is a place for GLP ones in for different health conditions. Okay, there is a place terrified of them, by the way.

Dr. Liz 20:26
Yeah, I am not the majority who are like, yay. Don’t be. I mean, I hear horror

Speaker 1 20:30
stories about so I do too. I then, but I’m not going to give medical advice about a GLP, yeah, to do that, and I think there are some potential medical benefits to taking one yes, not gonna say there aren’t. There is not long term data on these drugs, because they haven’t existed and been used in this right? So we don’t have the longitudinal data. And there are a lot of people who are saying very blithely, well, I just feel so great. I’m going to stay on these forever. Well, we don’t know what that looks like. First thing the food Chatter is interesting. I actually had somebody who I was working with who was a physician, and she was on, she took GLP once for a while, and she said, You know what? It was very interesting to me, because the food chatter stopped, but it didn’t stop. I didn’t want to eat, but I still did want to eat because of, because of, back to, there’s a reason you’re eating, and for so many women use it. We use food as a coping strategy, as a numbing strategy, G as a way to stop and take a break as all those hidden hungers. And if you want to know more about hidden hungers and how they’re impacting you, there’s a free quiz you can take on my website, and I’m happy to share about that. If that’s

Dr. Liz 21:51
helpful, awesome. I love free quizzes.

Speaker 1 21:53
They’re kind of fun, but, but so you have a relationship with food that has that has to do with your biology and you have a relationship with food, that has to do with your way of thinking and your habits mindset. And yes, those things interact, but GLP, ones do not change all of those things. So again, there’s no one way of eating. I would imagine there’s not going to be one perfect plan for everybody with GLP ones. But I know when you’re dealing with something like food that is multi sensory, that is a nutritional, you know, it’s an it’s a fact, something that we need for nutrition, but it’s also got emotional components and psychological components, and it’s a thing we’ve learned to use for comfort and for stress relief and for numbing and all these things, if you don’t address this, and this is the same thing that has happened for an for bariatric surgery patients. Is not going to be a permanent solution for you? Yes, yeah, right.

Dr. Liz 23:00
You know Peter Attia in me, he runs a very popular medical podcast. He’s a medical doctor, and he does talk about this like, doctors really need to give a song a dance around these drugs, because it when people don’t stay on them forever, which they’re finding maybe they shouldn’t because of the muscle loss, right, particularly women, as they age and go into menopause, like women in their 40s and 50s, losing massive amounts of muscle, right? Which is and also muscle quality Anyway, yes, all this stuff where we need to really up our protein. And, you know, he says they should really come with like, how to use them, how to eat, all these measurements, and doctors aren’t doing that. But also, when they stop them, then there are psychological consequences as well. Actually, they’re finding psychological consequences to them. So they’re calling it ozempic personality, where people lose empathy, they turn mean, irritable, they don’t, you know, care about friends anymore, like they lose feelings. They get that’s a potential quote, unquote, side effect of that drug too, in terms of psychology there. And then they lose their support. They’re getting ozempic divorces, not because of weight loss, so because of the personality changes, like they don’t actually care about their partners anymore. And that, to me, is really like the psychological area that not a whole lot of people are talking about.

Speaker 1 24:36
Well, I think it’s a parallel to one of the things I say a lot is that overeating and emotional eating are not about food. They’re not about the food, and you can play around with food all you want, but that doesn’t change the reason that these patterns and habits exist in your life. Yes, that’s where Curiosity comes in, and it’s really interesting, because these GLP. Ones. All the focus is on it, on weight, and all the benefits that go with weight and and there’s so many other pieces to

Dr. Liz 25:10
this. Yes, yeah,

Speaker 1 25:12
but you’re right. It like, I think that for so many people, the questions don’t even it doesn’t even occur to them to ask the questions or to look at these things, yeah, right. Because it’s about weight, it’s about weight, it’s about food. It’s about okay, we’ve, we’ve the food chatter, we’re or the appetite has changed, or the, okay, so the problem is solved. That wasn’t the problem.

Dr. Liz 25:33
Yes, right? So

Unknown Speaker 25:34
many people that wasn’t the problem,

Dr. Liz 25:37
yes, right. So how do you address food chatter in your program. That’s that is. And I asked this because that’s like, the number one thing that people who I help with eating and weight and that type of thing with hypnosis, that’s the number one thing that they talk about. I do like hypnosis to reduce food chatter like that. Yeah, you’re listening to this, and you don’t know what food Chatter is. It’s a voice that comes up like, as soon as you’re done eating, sometimes it’s like, what am I going to have next? What’s going to be for lunch? And I think it’s often timed with hunger cues. But it’s like that people on GLP one say that almost always, like, disappears, like they’re no longer thinking all the time about food. And it’s a very common experience for people who are overeaters?

Speaker 1 26:25
Well, here’s something I think that is really important. I think that oftentimes that food chatter shows up in some kind of transition. So you get off, you get off a zoom call, and you automatically head to the kitchen, right? Or you come home from work and you go open the cupboard, or you get out of that meeting and you walk down the hall of the break room to see what’s there, or you open your desk drawer to get a piece of candy. And you don’t even think about it so often, one of the ways that we use food is to slow ourselves down, to give ourselves a break, to procrastinate, and I’m going to put that in air quotes, because it’s so judgmental, because we’re trying to do too much, because we’re overlapping. We have lives. And this got really bad, even worse, I think, during covid, when everybody was working virtually and on Zoom, and we went from going from thing to thing to thing to thing. We don’t even have transitions anymore. Everything overlaps, yeah, and meeting and you’re already late to the next meeting, and you wouldn’t get me it just like you’re so part of the food Chatter is actually our system trying to take care of ourselves when you’re trying to change your eating. It’s the small things I always talk about, the eye roll effect. It’s the things that make you roll your eyes when I suggest them, because you’re like, okay, but that’s not enough. That’s not right. I mean, what I need is a 30 day plan, and I need to do a fast or a cleanse, or a give up sugar or something, but it’s the little things, and beginning to integrate simple pauses, where you take a breath, where you actually instead of moving into reacting to the food cravings, which is either going to the pantry or getting mad at yourself, or, you know, having this whole set of thoughts that come when you have the food chatter, taking a meat beat and recognizing I’m having it. It’s happening. Okay? What do I know about what I’m feeling? What do I know about what I’m thinking right now? What do I know about what I need, right? What do I know about what I want? Not, What am I because that just there’s a whole psychology. You know, your brain tends to focus on what we don’t know. And you don’t know a lot of things. And if you knew exactly what you needed, you’d be doing that instead of going to have chocolate chip cookie. But what do I know? Right? What do I know? And again, everybody, and everybody out there who’s rolling their eyes are thinking, okay, but when are you going to tell me what we really

Dr. Liz 29:02
do? What’s the sneak secret?

Speaker 1 29:06
What’s the secret? It’s not getting mad that I have the food chatter. It’s like, oh, okay, so what’s what do I know about? What’s going on here? I am a smart, amazing, capable person who does amazing things in my life, and I got this thing that keeps coming up. There’s a reason for it. What can I learn about it? It’s, it’s, it’s so persistent because it’s trying to tell you something,

Dr. Liz 29:33
yeah, okay, yeah, okay, so you’re looking for what’s the message underneath? What’s it

Speaker 1 29:39
trying to tell you, what’s the hidden hunger? What do you need? What do you want? And and, okay, so here’s the other thing that happens after the eye roll effect, is that what, what happens is people say, Well, I know what I want. I need a break, but I can’t take a break right now. Or I need the stress to go away, or I need the, you know, the political situation to change immediately. Or I need like it. They can’t do. Anything about that, right? Okay, we that’s reacting to, what do I do? What do I do? What do I do? What do I do that’s reacting. That is your brain and your nervous system, just like trying to make it go away, yeah, trying to take care of you. But, but actually, the very first step after I pause is acknowledging and having compassion, compassion for what is going on, right? Yeah, oh my gosh. Maybe I’m having an incredibly stressful day and I can’t do anything about it, and the hits keep coming, and it’s just one thing after another, and I’m totally overwhelmed and I’m tired and I’m fried, and all I want to do is feel differently. Okay? That’s different from I’m just this person who has this unstoppable craving for chocolate that is beyond you know, that is out of control. Two different things, two different two different ways to approach things. And one of those, there’s a even if you can’t change it, you can care for yourself.

Dr. Liz 30:58
Yes, yeah, yeah. Absolutely right. So it’s one of my questions. You said there’s the 30 day self guided program, right? Like they’re not meeting with anybody, and then do you have other programs too?

Speaker 1 31:17
So it’s an interesting question. We just closed enrollment for a group coaching program that I ran for many years, and that is that is going away, at least for a while. I do one on one coaching, so I do that as an option. What I’m hearing from more and more women is sometimes that personal support is something they really want, and I’m absolutely I mean, I love working with people. Individually. I work with so many women who are just overloaded. And honestly, even the idea of a 30 day program is stressful. So we’ve called it a 30 day program, but it’s really you can open this thing and you can work through it at the pace that you want, and play with it that nobody, nobody encourages you to play with food and you’re eating and your thoughts and what works and what doesn’t work. And that is true.

Dr. Liz 32:09
Man feels very serious. It’s

Speaker 1 32:11
also serious. No, let’s, let’s, let’s play around with things. And the other piece we haven’t talked about, can I throw in one more? Yes, this

Dr. Liz 32:21
whole place is perfectionism.

Speaker 1 32:23
Oh yeah, uh huh, right. Like, I have to get it perfect, which is why a 30 day program stresses people out. I’m behind. I didn’t do day five, or I was I took a week off or, but also the whole food thing. And there are actually, I mean, we all know there are programs out there that tell you, if you didn’t get it perfect, you have to go back to day one. Yeah, it’s, it’s ridiculous. Nobody’s gonna get this perfect. We are human beings who are interacting with the world and with life, and there is no perfect, yeah. So that’s, that’s one of the biggest tools that I forgot to mention, that we always cover in any work I do is how to do this beautifully and imperfectly. Oh, yeah, right, how to be fantastically imperfect and still feel confident and powerful with food. Yes. How to how to have a relationship with food where you do not need cheat days, as one of my clients so beautifully said I wouldn’t have a relationship with anybody you know, with a partner that I needed to cheat on. Why should I? Why should I work really hard to build a relationship with food that I had to cheat on once a week?

Dr. Liz 33:35
And that’s a great, great insight. Yeah, yeah. It’s true. So when you said the group part is going away, you mean like you’re not going to offer it again, or there’s enrollment, like dates, and then you do another one at

Speaker 1 33:51
this Well, at this point, we just closed the last session of it. Okay, so you’re not very sad, and so you’re making me sad to ask. Oh, it’s been a hard goodbye, but I’m, I’m kind of making some changes in how much I’m working and so, okay,

Dr. Liz 34:07
so it’s a 30 day self guided and if they want extra support, they can do that one on one with you, one on one coaching. Yeah, okay, got it.

Speaker 1 34:14
And I’ve got a number of little like, there’s a seven day Quick Start Program, and I’ve got a mindset program, and so there’s a number of tools at my website. My goal is to try to make it easy, to give people things that fit with their life, to give you simple steps that you can start to practice consistently and imperfectly and see results and get start to feel like you’re running the show again, because so many women don’t, yeah,

Dr. Liz 34:43
yeah, right. I think that’s such a good point. They feel run by food, run by work, run by kids, or like all kinds of stuff, except themselves. Often, yeah, uh huh. So wonderful. Well, we are coming close to the end of. Our time here. Can you please tell people how to find your program and how to work with you as well? Absolutely.

Speaker 1 35:06
Okay, so I’m pretty easy to find. My website is too much on her plate, too much on her plate. T o, I have a podcast which is also too much on her plate, where we talk about all of this stuff. It’s a great resource. If you go to the website, you will find links to my programs. You will find a link to take the free hidden hungers quiz, which, that’s really what I recommend. I would start with, you know, check out the podcast and take the quiz. It’s free. What? It’s a series of 30 some multiple choice, not multiple choice, yes or no questions. When you take it, what it will give you is your primary hidden hunger. Don’t worry, we all have some of all of them, but, but where is the place to start? You know, it’ll give you that, and it’ll give you some simple steps and some free resources like, like, start to pay attention to this. Start to play with this. They’re like over, I forget how many 1000s of 45,000 people have taken this quiz or something. It’s pretty fun. How exciting? Yeah, so it’s all at the website.

Dr. Liz 36:15
Very cool. All right, great. Oh. How long have you been running your podcast?

Speaker 1 36:21
I We’re on episode 202 Whoa, that’s a lot. Yeah, been around for a while. I can’t remember what year we started. I don’t know. They blend together. Yeah, they do

Dr. Liz 36:35
great in the podcast as well. It’s called, too much on her plate. Too much on her plate. Yeah? Okay, fantastic. So good resources for everyone again. Thank you so much for being here and sharing some of your wisdom with us today.

Unknown Speaker 36:48
Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, bye.