The Unf*ck Your Fitness Podcast

126. Understanding Overeating: Emotional and Mental Challenges in Weight Management

• Kristy Castillo

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As a health & fitness coach, I've worked with a variety of clients over the last several years, and I've learned that every single woman I work with has a desire to change her body in some way! Typically, my ladies are undereating when we first start working together. However..that’s not the case with everyone. Whether you’re undereating or overeating, it often comes down to your lack of awareness and mentality around WHY you’re eating the way you are.

Many people think overeating means that you’re just eating a ton of food, all the time, but that’s not necessarily true. If overeating becomes a consistent habit for you, it can lead to disordered eating, which unfortunately, changes your relationship with food. Undereating or overeating isn’t something you set out to intentionally do - it’s usually because you’ve experienced a major life change or stressful situation, and you turn to food to cope with it. Your mindset and emotions REALLY come into play here, and if you don’t choose to get trusted support from someone who can actually help you, you will stay stuck in this cycle.

While your workouts, macros, water intake, sleep, etc. are important, your mindset and self-esteem is what truly matters. You’ve got to take ownership of your situation, put a plan in place you’re excited to commit to, and work with someone who has your best interest at heart. Ultimately, I hope this episode is a valuable reminder for ALL OF US to be less judgmental and more empathetic towards others and their bodies, too!

In today’s episode about understanding overeating, we cover:

  • The 3 types of women who come to me for support with their fitness & nutrition
  • The lack of awareness and mentality that comes with both undereating and overeating
  • What overeating actually means and how this can impact your relationship with food
  • The key role that cortisol plays in overeating + what tends to lead to overeating
  • Factors that contribute to both undereating and overeating
  • Understanding that even when you know what to do, you won’t always follow through with doing it
  • The crucial role your mindset & emotions play with overeating + why you will continue to struggle if you don’t get trusted support
  • 5 tips to help get you into a better & overall healthier place if you’re struggling with undereating or overeating 

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Un-Fuck-Your-Fitness Podcast. I am your host, Christy Castillo, and I'm here to give you real talk and cut the BS so you can actually enjoy building a body you love. I'm a personal trainer obsessed with giving you simple action steps to take you from feeling stuck to feeling sexy. Let's go. Hey guys, what's up?

Speaker 2:

Welcome to today's episode. It is alarming how fast August is going. I don't know if you guys feel the same way, but I, looking at the date today and just like there's, my daughter actually starts her college classes next week and my son starts his sophomore year the following week. And it's crazy and I love summer so much that entering the fall season kind of depresses me a little bit. I know that's kind of pretty opposite of, I think, the rest of the world, pretty much everyone I meet anyways, like I'm so excited for fall and for the leaves to change and for sweatshirt weather and I hate that. I like fall. I just I love summer. Anyway, I'm kind of starting to get a little sad. So I need to stay positive in my mind anyway and just like focus on summer. Anyway, I always struggle with like do I just jump right into the episode here or can I talk a little bit about like myself and my life? So maybe drop me a DM whether you follow me at Christy Castillo Fit or whether you're following the podcast at Unfuck, your Fitness Podcast on Instagram. Drop me a message in either place and let me know if you kind of like hearing about my life or things like that, because I like to listen to podcasts where they're talking a little bit about themselves and their lives and what they have going on, and I always do that. I just usually weave it into fitness segments. But anyways, we'll see. We'll see where I decide to go with this. You guys are very, you're very good about letting me know on Instagram and messages and just like hey, I love the podcast, love this, this and this. You answer my questions, so thank you for that.

Speaker 2:

But I'm going to just let you know that last week my husband and myself took my two children and three of their friends along with us just a couple hours north to this beautiful area, and I just want to let you know that, vacationing with five kids teenagers three of them were 16, 117 and 118, I believe. I mean, I know the ages of mine, but the other ones I'm kind of second guessing, but anyways, it was really crazy, like they're so busy and they're just teenagers and four of them were boys. My daughter was the only girl. It was so fun, but I was really tired afterwards and like I'm kind of entering this stage of life where you know vacations are different and they happen for a while Don't get me wrong, but like vacationing with my teenage children and their friends and it was so fun. It's just the things they like to do are different and they like to do things without us and everything is just like so different. So it was great.

Speaker 2:

I actually took a lot of the time off of work. I did the first day we got there it was raining or no. The first day we got there it was really evening. The second day it was raining. So I did do some work that day and then I took the rest of that week and the weekend off of work and which always leaves me a mess when I'm coming back to checking with clients and getting back to work and getting back into the groove. I also didn't work out the entire week. We left on a Monday, we got back on Friday. So I did work out actually Friday, saturday, sunday, but while we were gone Monday through Thursday, I did not work out.

Speaker 2:

I did not go for a walk, I did not track a single macro. I did drink a protein shake every day and I did take my supplements with me, but I ate so many Oreos I'm not even kidding, I ate so many Oreos and it was so good, but I was starting to feel sick from them. But anyway, and I survived. So you can go on vacation and you don't have to track your macros and you can live it up a little bit and you can kind of skip some workouts. And I planned on taking my 12 pound dumbbells forgot them. The gym was about 30 minutes away and that was just like not going to happen. And I was going to go for a walk every day. I took my walking shoes and I plan on going for a walk, but we were staying at a lake and so it was just walking around the lake. I just didn't want to be walking and looking for cars and fearing for my life, to be honest, so I decided to just take the time off. I did get 10,000 steps in every day just because teenagers, but it was really, really fun. Anyway, I just kind of wanted to say that's what happened last week, that's where I was, that's what was going on. If you're on my social media, on Christy Castillo fit page, that's where I shared a couple photos. But yeah, it was a very good vacation, kind of a good way to say goodbye to summer, even though I technically will never say that I'll never say goodbye to summer because I love it, but it was really fun. And now kind of getting back to all the things, jumping back into work and jumping back into coaching and yeah, it's nice to get back to work and I miss talking to my ladies and I miss coaching and I miss having a routine a lot. So it's been nice to jump back into my workouts and jump back into all that stuff and get the kids ready for school. So, anyway, that's what I've been up to. So let's jump in to the topic.

Speaker 2:

I have actually been getting some messages from you ladies asking if I only work with women who under eat. Because that's pretty much when I talk about clients who come to me, I'm usually saying clients who come to me. I'm usually saying clients who come to me are not eating enough, they're not fueling their body properly. You know they're not eating enough protein, they're not eating enough calories in general, really a lot of under eating and that is very true. A lot. Most, by far most, of the women who come to me for one-on-one coaching or even just Fit Club and any of the programs that I'm ever offered, really most of the women who come to work with me are severely under eating at the moment. That doesn't mean that they've always severely under eaten, obviously, because a lot of them are coming to me to lose weight and to change their body composition. So at one point in time, obviously they were overweight or they still are overweight and they're just under eating, you know. So that's not always been the case for them, obviously, that they've always under eaten.

Speaker 2:

But I've been getting some messages lately asking if that's if that's kind of all I work with is ladies who under eat, because that's what I talk about most and it's interesting because I seriously, like one week I got like five messages like I'm really overweight and could you maybe talk about that in your podcast. Or I do not fear food. I actually love food. I eat too much food and I have these other habits and tendencies and mindsets around food right where I eat too much rather than too little. So I've just been kind of getting some messages asking if I could talk about that a little bit. So that is what I am going to be talking about in this episode.

Speaker 2:

I kind of struggled with like where am I going to go with this? You know, like, what exactly do you want to know? What do you want to talk about what you know? I guess in these messages from these ladies I'm like, yeah, absolutely I'll talk about that. I've been getting that message a lot. And then when I sat down to actually kind of write some notes and kind of get my head in the right space, like what do I want to convey in this episode, I struggled a little bit with like what do you guys want to hear? Right, like what do you want my thoughts on as far as overeating or women who are overweight, or that kind of thing. So I had to dig a little deep and I did, of course. So I'm excited to talk about it and I hope that you really get a lot out of it.

Speaker 2:

So I want to go back and talk for a second about what I was, what I was mentioning. So most of the women that I work with well, every single woman that I work with wants to change their body in some way, shape or form form, whether that is like I'm happy with the weight that I am, but I don't like my body. I want to gain muscle, I want to lose fat, or I'm severely overweight and I do want to lose a lot of fat and I also want to build muscle and I also want to understand my body and I want to learn macros and I want to get a better lifestyle and I want to. You know, there's a lot of things that women that come to me want to get out of the, but a lot of them, when they come to me, are under eating and that's why I talk about that. But that's not to say, like I already previously briefly mentioned, that at one point in time we've all overeaten, we've all went crazy with food, right, we've all had, we all have had a toxic relationship with food in one way or another, and that's just, that's just as what it is.

Speaker 2:

So, in my opinion, there are three types of women who come to me, and those three types are one, women who are under eating and they know it. They'll come to me and say I know I'm not eating enough calories, I'm really really starving myself. My family, my friends, they notice I'm really really small, I'm really underweight and it's not good and I know it. Number two would be a woman, and currently I only have women clients. So that's why I'm saying this If you are a man listening to this, love that and this absolutely applies to you, but I can only say this because I literally am only training women right now, and this absolutely applies to you. But I can only say this because I literally am only training women right now, and this is how it goes. Have I trained men in the past? Yes, absolutely, and that is the same thing, but I'm just saying women, so forgive me. Number two would be women that think they're under eating. So I have a lot of women that come to me and they're like I'm not eating enough. I know I'm not eating enough. I need help with that.

Speaker 2:

Once we start to track their calories, it appears that they are eating enough, and usually they're overeating. But what they're doing is they're either just tracking during the weekdays or they're really, really under eating on the weekdays, like they're doing intermittent fasting or they're doing carb cycling, and so they're obsessed with the amount that they're eating. They're not eating many carbs, they're not eating processed food, they're not drinking pop. They're not right, they've cut out all these things and so they think I'm not eating enough. I'm hardly eating anything. But what they're not being honest about is the weekends, where you know you cannot be eating very much, but if you are drinking glasses of wine and you're drinking tons of White Claw and you're drinking, right, like a lot that you can absolutely drink your way over your calorie limit. And also if you're just kind of going out and not tracking your weekends or you're going to barbecues and you're not tracking your food or not tracking your snacks, you don't track your evening foods or you know things like that right. So that's.

Speaker 2:

Number two is women who come to me and they're like I think you know I'm under eating, I know I'm not eating enough, and when I have them track what they're eating, they're actually eating a lot more. They're just not tracking it and kind of taking that into accountability. Number three the third type of lady that comes to me is the ladies who overeat, and they know it. They're just like I eat too much, I'm out of control, I eat a lot of fast food, I eat all day. I don't know how to stop it's habits. It's a lot of different reasons that we're going to dive into, and so those are the three types of women that I get. Usually it's number one or number two.

Speaker 2:

A lot of my clients will not come to me and just say I am a severely overeater. A lot of them are like I'm probably right about where I'm supposed to be calorie-wise. I try to be careful. I try to eat healthy. That's what most of my ladies will say. I eat healthy and I work out. I just don't know how. Eating healthy and eating the right amount is not the same. So, anyways, those are the three types of women that I get, and usually the women that come to me like I've said a million times in this podcast are under eaters and we have to reverse, diet them up to where they're supposed to be.

Speaker 2:

What we're going to be talking about in this episode, a little bit more so, is for my ladies who overeat and or are overweight, because that's a completely different topic. But honestly, it's a lot the same and the mindset is the same. The tendencies are the same, the reasonings are kind of the same, and so I want to get into that too, and this is why I can coach either one. I can speak on either one, because a lot of it is so mental, it's so habitual, that for me it's the same things to get you out of.

Speaker 2:

You know, under eating would get you out of overeating, but typically for my clients who are overeating, this comes down to being unaware, and this can go into that second category that I just spoke about. You think you're under eating and you think I'm not eating enough and I probably need to reverse diet and I'm, you know. But if you're not tracking your weekends, you're just literally unaware of how many calories you're eating. If you don don't track your food, you think, well, I'm eating really healthy, all I eat is fruits and vegetables and whole foods and salads and all the things. But yeah, if you're eating high calorie whole foods all day, you're still overeating. You're just unaware of it. So that's one thing is that they just are unaware of how much they're eating because they're not tracking and they don't know the difference between healthy and you know. Healthy, yes, but how many calories are in it, how many carbs are in it? Right?

Speaker 2:

Or a lot of the ladies that come to me in that situation where they're overweight or they're overeating and have this more relationship with food, this opposite kind of end of the spectrum, unhealthy relationship with food, is this mentality of I can exercise more so I can eat more, like the outwork, a bad diet mentality, and that's kind of where that comes in. They're like I know, I eat too much. I'm, you know, I know I eat too much, but I do go for a run every day and I do go for a walk every day and I do. Maybe I work out twice a day, or I go for a run and I work out every day, or I'll go to the gym for three hours a day, but it's so. It's that outwork, a bad diet. It's that I had, you know, extra Oreos tonight with dinner, but I'll work it off, I'll go sweat it off. That is the kind of mentality that will usually come with that.

Speaker 2:

Or it's the mentality of I don't know how to fix it. I'm an overeater, I'm overweight, I am the bigger person in my friend group, I'm the bigger person at the party, I'm always the bigger person and you've just kind of settled into that. You don't know how to fix it. So it just is what it is. It's not that you don't give a shit, you are aware of it, but you don't necessarily even have that exercise more to eat more mentality. You're just like. This is how I've always been right I'm big boned, my family is overweight. Maybe you grew up in a household that just said we're big boned, we're bigger people. This is how we are, this is how we look. You've kind of settled into that, or maybe you grew up hearing that, so you just kind of know that.

Speaker 2:

But there's so many different reasons why and I hate to kind of bring this so heavy, but that's kind of the way that my mind went to. This is kind of like what I felt like you guys needed to hear was some of this, and a lot of it is just like being seen Like I want you to know that there are reasons why this is happening and I wanted to get into that in a moment. And there's reasons why people under eat and there are reasons why this is happening and I wanted to get into that in a moment. And there's reasons why people under eat and there's reasons why people overeat. So I'm not calling anyone out. This is literally like, just it is what it is. This is just the facts.

Speaker 2:

Ok, overeating would technically be described as eating past the point of fullness or eating more than what we technically need for functionality. Right, if you're overeating, you're just like can't get enough food, or you're bored, or you're eating your emotions, or you're literally just unaware, like you're just grabbing food and then you're like, oh my God, I eat the whole container without even thinking about it or you know. The definition would be just like you're eating past the point of fullness. You're eating more than what your body needs. Obviously, when you eat more than what your body needs, your body stores its fat. That's why we become overweight, right, when we eat even though we're not hungry.

Speaker 2:

If it becomes a habit, obviously, if that happens, quite a bit right, like I overate on vacation, I ate too many Oreos, I ate the things and, yeah, I did gain probably about four pounds when we were gone. Between the week leading up and the week that we were gone, I overate, I didn't have the right groceries in the house, my appetite was shit. If it becomes a habit, overeating can lead to weight gain and it can lead to disordered eating because it changes your relationship with food. So, overeating every once in a while, like going over your macros every once in a while, whatever, like that's not really what I'm talking about. If it's a habit, if it's habitually happening, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, right, that does change your body and it does become a disordered way of eating because it changes your relationship with food. Your relationship with food becomes distorted because you now look at it as a crutch for maybe, like I said, eating your emotions, eating when you're stressed, things like that, instead of just looking at it as fuel. So, in association with that, overeating is very common, and it actually is biological.

Speaker 2:

When you are stressed, your body makes more cortisol, a hormone called cortisol. Increased cortisol is a fight or flight response that, among lots of other things, it does tell you that it's time to find food. It can make you crave foods that are higher in sugar, right, sweet foods and fatty foods and salty foods. When you're stressed, when you don't sleep well, when things are going wrong at work, when you're depressed, when you're anxious, right when anything in your body is off, that is a biological response for your body to create more of that hormone and that hormone causing you to want to eat. If you don't know that, though, you're just constantly just like I'm so hungry, I'm so hungry, I'm so stressed. On the other side of stress, though, there are those stressful moments where you don't want to eat anything. Okay, and that can also be a cause of under eating and being malnourished, but on the other side, we're kind of talking about this as well. So there are times when, yeah, we're just grabbing things to eat, we're like I'm bored and I'm watching TV and I want to eat.

Speaker 2:

But I do have a lot of clients who are overweight and who overeat, who are just like it's habitual and it's like this feeling where they can't stop doing it and a lot of times that's why is because their body is in that fight or flight response mode and it's telling them and making them crave and want food. So there are other factors here too that can cause overeating how fast you eat. If you eat super, super fast, your body doesn't recognize that it's full and so you will eat more. What you are eating. If you're eating empty calories, you will eat more when you eat. And what you're doing while you're eating. Right, if you're not focused and you're just watching TV and you're just grabbing in the bag, and grabbing in the bag and grabbing in the bag rather than am I even hungry, do I even need this? Maybe sit down, chew your food, relax, think about it, right? So all of those things can also contribute to overeating. So there's physical factors, there's mental and emotional factors, for sure, okay, but a lot of it is mental or situational, especially in times when. Okay. So this can go two ways.

Speaker 2:

There is a matter of just stopping. There are times where I've had clients and there are times for myself when I've been overeating these goddamn Oreos that I'm like stop, stop eating. I mean, there was a day over the weekend we got home from vacation. I'm still. My body wants these Oreos now because that's what I've been getting it, and so it just wants more and wants more and wants more. Right? I'm like you need to stop.

Speaker 2:

I mean, I literally will say this to myself Christy, stop eating the Oreos. Like, what else can you have? Can you have a rice cake with peanut butter on it? Can you have a rice cake with honey on it? Can you have? Actually, the other night I made a Kodiak waffle the thick and fluffy ones and I made two of them. My husband was laughing at me and I put cherry pie filling on it and I sprinkled some powdered sugar on it and it was so good and that was like it was a lot of. Instead of just emptying the Oreo container, I'm like, okay, this will at least have 24 grams of protein, because each one of those I think maybe it's 10 grams of protein each. I thought it was 12. But anyways, 20 grams of protein is what I had in those waffles and it was filling, it was carbs, it was a little bit of protein, it was more than just eating a bottomless pit of Oreos, right. So I was like what else? I had to stop the behavior. I had to say Christy, stop eating the Oreos. And then I had to figure out something else I could eat to fill me up and satisfy that craving. So that's a tip for that.

Speaker 2:

But sometimes it can be that easy of just like bitch, stop eating so much. I literally have to have that conversation with myself you don't need this, you just want it. You're eating, you're not hungry, you don't need it. Go for a walk, stop. There are some clients where I'm just like you have got to stop buying this stuff. You have got to stop having it in your house. You don't need it, it's just simple. Or after a vacation, or after letting yourself go a little bit, then your body wants it and without that awareness, to just be like just stop. Okay, that's very surface level, that's lacking a little bit of balance, that's lacking restrictions. Maybe that's lacking honestly, grocery shopping and having the right foods in your house, whatever. That's simple.

Speaker 2:

But there are other times when people who overeat and people who are very overweight it's very much mental. And to tell someone who's very overweight or even a little bit overweight right, like whatever category we want to put this in. To tell someone to just stop eating, to just stop and change your habits and just cut out all these foods that you love, like that's not okay. And to take it a step further for people who are very overweight every single time I've had myself working with a client who's very overweight, or even friends that I've had that are overweight, it never happened on purpose. It never happened because their life was in a good place and they had a lot of self-love and things were going really well. Like, let's just be real, if someone has gotten themselves completely out of shape and completely overweight, it's usually because someone was in a very dark place and this can be either way.

Speaker 2:

This can be severely overweight or severely underweight, because usually stress, life-altering events, low self-esteem, are something had to have happened. And yeah, I mean sometimes it is just like I got out of control and I didn't notice and I, you know, put on 20 pounds and whatever. But I mean for more severe cases, even that 20 pounds, though it's like what happened, like you fell off your routine, life got busy, right, you were stressed, you were whatever, like something happened to kind of throw you off to where you didn't go to the gym, you didn't count your macros, you didn't give a shit about yourself enough to do anything about it and you put that weight on like it is what it is. Is it always like a terrible thing? No, it's fine. You can get out of it.

Speaker 2:

But a lot of times for my clients who message me and even work with me, that are very overweight or are very underweight, it's because it's a stressful situation, it's because of life-altering events, it's because of some abuse mental, physical it's because of a death in the family, it's because they lost someone, it's because of a divorce, it's because of right Like, it's something bad. It's something that usually caused them to have very low self-esteem, to think very lowly, lowly, to think very low about themselves, less of themselves, to be depressed, to not want to get out of bed, to not care what they eat, to not care what they look like right, to not feel loved, to whatever. I can't get into, like all the reasons, of course. Reasons, of course, but I've worked with enough women to know and I've had enough friends to know and conversations with people in the DMs in real life that I know that it's not a matter of just knowing what to do and getting out of it, and I think that's the struggle is for people who are overweight, who do overeat, or for people who are underweight and who do severely undereat and have, you know, this really disordered way of eating where you're just eating your emotions, you're stressed out and you're eating. You have these habits. Whatever it is, even if you know what to do, you won't always do it, and I think that's frustrating because a lot of you know in this situation we're talking about overeating and being overweight A lot of those clients that come to me, or a lot of those ladies that I've known, are like I know I under eat, I know I eat too much, I know I binge eat in the evenings, I know that I'm not full after dinner, but I always eat an entire container of ice cream after dinner, whether I want it or not.

Speaker 2:

I always do it. I know I shouldn't, but I can't get myself to stop, and I think that is the situation that we really need to talk about. It's not just a matter of me saying, hey, that's not good for you, stop doing that. Well, no shit, I know that, christy right, it's a matter of emotions, habits, lifestyle, having no support, procrastination, self-sabotage, fear, lack of patience, lack of confidence. Those are the reasons that you can't stop doing those things. Okay, and it's deep, those things are deep and that's honestly the reason.

Speaker 2:

Like, yes, I talk a lot about macros and I talk a lot about tracking and I talk a lot about the tactical and the technical things. I guess you know walking and workouts and water and macros, and those are, yes, the absolute basics, right Of what will work to change your body, absolute basics, right of what will work to change your body. But, when it comes down to it, if you are struggling with your emotions, like I talked about healing out loud a couple weeks ago if your habits, if your entire life for 43 years I've been on this earth and if those entire 43 years I've had this lifestyle where I didn't work out, and if I don't have any support, if I am scared to death to do anything good for myself, if I don't think I'm worth it, if I don't want to put in the time, you know, if I have all this stuff kind of working against me, then what is my purpose, like? What would get me out of bed, what would make me change my habits? Right, you have to look at it differently, and this isn't just a matter of doing it yourself. Sometimes isn't enough, and that's kind of what I want to talk about.

Speaker 2:

Lastly, is that I want to acknowledge that I don't want you to feel seen and heard if this is you, because, well, I want you to feel heard even though you haven't said anything, but I've, I know enough to know that, if you are an overeaterater and if you are overweight, people have probably said rude things to you and said, well, just stop, don't eat as much, figure it out, go to the gym, blah, blah. And it's not that easy, okay, I want you to know that it's hard and, honestly, even if you're underweight, and, honestly, even if you're me and you're just at a good, healthy weight, still my emotions, my habits, my lifestyle, the support that I have, my own procrastination, my own self-sabotage, my own fucking fear, my own lack of patience gets in the way so much. So, even I struggle with this. And if I struggle with this, I'm not saying that I'm freaking perfect, but if I struggle with this at a healthy weight and I have these habits and I, you know, shit is not optional for me If you don't have really any of those habits and mindsets in place, I know it's 100 times fucking harder for you. So I know that and I want you to know that. That's why it's not your fault. It's just that you don't have the right tools, and maybe no one's even seen you in this kind of light. You're just like maybe no one gets it right, maybe you have the wrong support, you have no support. So I want to wrap that up, and then I want to move on to talking about how to get yourself into a better place, and this is, honestly, just my five thoughts on how you will be able to get out of the situation, and this is if you're an overeater. Most importantly, I want to talk to you. And if you're an under eater, though and I mean severely underweight, not just an under eater like oh, I kind of under eat, and watch what I mean severely like if you have some situations that really make you stressed and if you, you know, eat food and you want to throw it up because you don't like the way that you look and you've, you know, any kind of bloating in your stomach makes you feel less than and you're scared to put on muscle and become bigger. If you know, if someone said like you have to be small, you have to have a thigh gap, you have to see bones, kind of a thing. I'm talking about very small, okay, and yes, you can be somewhere in the middle as well. But I really want to reach to these people who are on these extremes.

Speaker 2:

Okay, number one talking to someone about your situation. What is the truth about your situation? And be honest about it. Why do you overeat? And this is going to cause you to dig deep. Okay, who told you you need to be too skinny? Who told you that? You know you're not worth it? Who told you something bad about yourself? What emotions you know. Habits, lifestyle, procrastination got you to where you are. Be honest about your situation and talk to someone, whether that be a therapist, whether that be a coach, whatever. Be honest about what is the truth of the situation. Be honest with that.

Speaker 2:

Number two is being honest with yourself about whether or not you want to change, because you have to be ready to change. No one can do it for you. You can't just buy a program and be like, oh, I'm just going to start tomorrow and cut out everything and change my whole life. You're not, because you have to be honest with yourself about whether or not you actually want to change, okay. Number three is gaining the knowledge about your background, the why, why do you overeat, why do you undereat, why do you think you need to be so skinny? Why do you think you're not worthy of being healthy? On the other end, right, gaining the knowledge about that, because if you don't understand what got you to where you are, you can't fix it.

Speaker 2:

Number four putting a plan in place that you feel good about following. Like I just said, you can't just start a program and cut everything out one day. You have to work with someone who understands what would make you feel good. Right? I start with a lot of clients who are overeating. We start by doing very, very simple things tracking your food and trying to get closer to the macros that I've set for you, and then increasing your water intake, and then, maybe a week later, trying to hit a certain amount of steps. And then we do that for a couple weeks and we get some motivation, we get some confidence under our belt, we're getting some understanding, we're getting some knowledge right. That's a plan in place that you feel good about. If we start to go too fast, my clients are always like I don't feel like I can keep up with this, I feel like this is too hard. We'll go back to the drawing board and figure out something that they feel good about. It's not a plan that I feel good about only. It's a plan that I feel good about for them and that they feel good about doing. And we go at a pace that's really good for them, because I can give you so many things to do, but you're not going to do them if it doesn't fit into your life and if you're not okay with it. Right, so just go slow. There's no rush to any of this.

Speaker 2:

And then number five would be to work with someone that you trust. A lot of times, in these situations severely under eating and severely overeating, severely underweight and severely overweight situations it's not something that you can always do on your own, and it's honestly not something that you can always do with your spouse or with your parents or someone you know holding you accountable, because they don't always say what you need to hear A lot of times people aren't there with your best interests at heart, so you have to work with someone that you trust. It's less about the procedure, the macros and the workouts, honestly, and it's more about the communication and the trust when it comes into these situations. And I've gotten a lot of messages, like I said lately, that are people asking like do you work with, you know overweight women who overeat? And they will go on to say like that was me and now I'm working with a coach and I'm doing a lot better. And I love that for them because it really is a lot of work and why not speed up the process and do it in a way that's really, really healthy? And you're going to learn a lot about yourself, you're going to learn a lot about the situation, you're going to learn a lot about how to maneuver out of it and you're going to learn a lot about the macros and the workouts and stuff too. So it's a win-win either way. But those are my five tips on how to kind of maneuver through it if you do fall on one of the extreme ends of these situations and, as always, if you're just in the middle and you want to body recomp and you're like I just need to lose like five, 10 pounds. These same things apply to you Talking to someone about it. What is your actual goal? Be honest with yourself. Are you ready to maybe stop doing so much cardio? Are you ready to start lifting weights and building muscle so you can see muscle on your body? You have to gain the knowledge about why are you obsessed with cardio. Why, in the past, have you not been willing to do the things necessary to change your body? Put a plan in place that you feel good about following, and work with someone you trust. These five things do work in pretty much any scenario.

Speaker 2:

Obviously, in this episode, I wanted to talk about the extremes the one overeating and overweight extreme, the one overeating and overweight extreme to mostly. I want to talk about that, but I do want to honor the fact that overweight and underweight they do have a lot of the same reasons, right, stress can cause some people to overeat. Stress can cause some people to undereat. Anxiety, depression, can cause some people to eat themselves you know sick and it can cause some people to ignore themselves sick and work harder. So a lot of these things, though, are mental, they are emotional. They do have to do with that low self-esteem. They do have to do with the stress or a really life-altering event happening.

Speaker 2:

No one chooses to be severely overweight and unhealthy. No one chooses to be severely underweight and unhealthy. These aren't things that people want for themselves. So let's also keep that in mind when we're going out into the world and we're being judgy. Let's just take a step back and think that's not my body.

Speaker 2:

I don't need to fucking say anything. I don't need to think anything For me. Personally. If you come to me for help, I'm all in. I am all in, but I am not really going to judge someone. I don't know them and I know that shit is hard and life does really take its toll on us physically. So I hope you really enjoyed this episode. I hope I did you all justice. For those of you who jumped into my DMs and kind of asked for this topic, I mean, please jump back in my DMs and let me know what you thought. Did I do a good job? Did you like this episode? I hope so. As always, leave a rating and a review, and I do love hearing from you. So leave me a comment or a DM somewhere on my pages and I will talk to you next week.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for listening to today's show. Go ahead and leave a rating and a review and, of course, follow the podcast so you don't miss out on any future episodes. And I would love it so much if you came to connect with me over on Instagram at Christy Castillo Fit. I will see you next time. Bye.