The Unf*ck Your Fitness Podcast

197. Food Noise: Break Free from Food Obsession and Build a Healthier Relationship with Food

• Kristy Castillo

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Ever feel like your thoughts about food are nonstop?


Like… you’re constantly thinking about what you should or shouldn’t eat, even when you're not hungry? 


That’s food noise, and those unwanted, intrusive thoughts about food that can seriously mess with your day-to-day life.


I’ve had plenty of my own experiences with food noise (especially my early mom years when I chose to regularly dig my son’s pizza crust out of the trash - yep, true story)!! Diet culture really created shame around food for me, and I felt like I needed to fear (and avoid) carbs all together if I wanted to be “healthy”.


The truth is, we shouldn’t be putting a “bad” label on certain foods - it’s total BS! 


We SHOULD fuel our bodies effectively and consistently, and get curious about what’s really behind our cravings.


This isn’t about more willpower - it’s about more awareness, intention, and compassion. You’re NOT broken, and it is possible to heal your relationship with food!


In this episode, we cover:

  • What food noise actually is + how it’s different from food cues
  • The truth about willpower (*hint* you’re not “failing” around food)
  • My personal story w/eating my son’s pizza crust out of the trash
  • How learning about macros & “fuel” helped me quiet the food noise
  • Simple ways to start shifting your relationship with food
  • Why healing food noise is SO much deeper than food


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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.

Speaker 2:

Hey guys, what's up. Welcome to today's episode. If you don't already know, I have another podcast called the Soul Fit Podcast with my friend Erin, and we recorded an episode recently about the topic of food noise. It was a really great topic, so go listen to that. I will link it in the show notes so you can go check it out. But I definitely thought afterwards I need to go ahead and do an Unpuck your Witness podcast about this topic too, because it is something that I still struggle with at times, my clients still struggle with at times.

Speaker 2:

I think we will always kind of struggle with. It's similar to the body dysmorphia episode that I just recorded on, where it's something we will always deal with, maybe not struggle with, just deal with. Food is something we need to survive. So it's something we have to think about and really quickly. Let me tell you what the definition of food noise is.

Speaker 2:

So food noise refers to the persistent and intrusive thoughts about food that can interfere with daily life and eating habits. So food noise, I would say, is more of a negative connotation with food. Right, it's persistent, it's an intrusive thought and it interferes with your life. So when I say that food noise like I struggle with it. Sometimes I don't know if it's food noise, like I don't know that it really interferes or that it's an intrusive thought. It's just we're always going to be thinking about food. Right To go a little further into the definition of food noise, it's a preoccupation with food, meaning it's constantly thinking about food, even when you're not hungry. It's intrusive thoughts, so it's unwanted and automatic thoughts about food that are difficult to suppress where you can't get rid of it. Increased food cue reactivity, so a heightened sensitivity to external cues that trigger food cravings, such as smells or sights or advertisements or a certain environment that you're in. For example, when I go to a fair, I always want an elephant ear. That would be like cue reactivities. Right, it's not really an intrusive thought, but it's there.

Speaker 2:

And then also maladaptive eating behaviors, such as overeating, binge eating, or that feeling that you're unable to stop eating, even if you're full, you just have to keep eating. And there's so many different factors for this. It can be stress, it can be dieting, it can be disordered eating, which I have an entire episode on from a while back, and certain medications. Of course it can be an underlying medical condition, such as obesity, type 2 diabetes. It can be, you know, just dealing with like emotional eating, hiding feelings, things like that, like there's so much that goes into food noise, but again, food is something that we freaking need. So it's not like you can just not think about food or not have it around you or not eat, right.

Speaker 2:

So Aaron and I were kind of diving into the dopamine part of food noise where sometimes, again, there's so many different factors, like I just mentioned. But sometimes you're just bored, sometimes you just think you want the food that's sitting out on the counter, or the cupcake or the Oreo, when really you're just kind of bored and maybe you need to ask yourself, you know, am I really wanting that or am I just kind of wanting? I kind of just have this urge really quick that I want to fulfill with said snack or meal, right? So there's different ways to kind of look at food and how we respond to it, want to make that a very clear distinction and ultimately, what this is going to boil down to is you deciding for yourself whether you have food noise as in a negative, like an intrusive thought, like I'm feeling super stressed about work so I want to go get a drink, or I'm feeling super busy and overwhelmed at home, so I just want to sit down with my Oreos or have a bowl of cereal or have some ice cream. I know a lot of people at night are like I just like to chill out and have my bowl of ice cream. That can be a way to. It's like a habit, it's something that you use to calm yourself down.

Speaker 2:

All day long you're like, oh, I can't wait until I'm done with the day so I can sit down and have my ice cream, right? Is that intrusive and is that negatively affecting your day? Or is that just I like ice cream and I want to freaking have some, right? So there's just a lot of different thoughts around it, and what I want to encourage you to do is think for yourself, think for your fucking self. And what I want to encourage you to do is think for yourself, think for your fucking self, imagine, but seriously, because you're going to see a lot of things on social media talking about your willpower. You know, if you're not strong enough to say no to snacks or certain foods, then you'll never see success in this journey. And if you can't, you know, don't have the foods around. If you can't control yourself around them, don't buy the food, don't go around the food, and I feel like that is specifically talking about you not being able to control yourself around it, which sometimes I've been there where I'm like, yeah, no, I just restricted it for so long and I thought it was.

Speaker 2:

I thought carbs or processed foods or cookies, whatever, were bad. For so long I thought that I couldn't have them and make progress or be fit or healthy or whatever. I thought I couldn't have them. I thought they would make me fat. I thought they'd make me gain weight. I thought they'd make me sick. I thought they were so bad for me. Anything that wasn't clean, a clean food, I thought, was bad for me. So there's different negative thoughts that I had around food. Those were intrusive because I would think about them all the time, because I wasn't allowing myself to have it. So way, way early on in the podcast I talked about when I first started having a negative relationship with food, I wouldn't let myself have anything during the day that was quote unquote bad.

Speaker 2:

I had to have salad, I had to have smoothie. I don't remember because this was a long time ago. My son was very, very little and now he's going to be 17, very, very soon, perhaps the day that this episode comes out. Actually, I'm not sure. That was a long time ago, but I would pick his pizza crust out of the trash can because he would eat his little pizza that I got from Walmart. Every single day I'd make him a tiny little pizza Again. He's just a little baby Okay, not a little baby, but a little toddler and he would not eat the crust.

Speaker 2:

And so I would be faced every single day with cleaning up my toddler's mess and I would look at this plate of crust and that was my intrusive thought was I really want this crust because it's bread and it's off limits and I shouldn't have it, but I don't want anyone to see me eating it because I said I wouldn't, it's not good, I shouldn't have this, and I said I'm not doing bad things anymore. I probably told my husband or told everyone I don't know, and I said I'm not doing bad things anymore. I probably told my husband or told everyone I don't know it was bad, it was a bad. I associated it with bad things Bad, bad, bad right, bad food, bad feelings around it, bad results, all the things. So I would hide that I was eating it. That was food noise.

Speaker 2:

Because constantly, every single day, I would make him this little pizza, literally every single day. Don't judge me, but I'd make him this little pizza every single day, for lunch, whatever, and every single day I was faced with God. I really, you know, yesterday, I ate the crust and I felt like shit afterwards mentally. I felt like I failed, I suck, I can't do this. And then today, what am I going to do? What am I going to do? Am I going to keep a promise to myself and not eat it, or am I going to give in Because it's something that I can't ever have? So of course I wanted it and of course I couldn't just have one piece of crust. I would say that, oh, I'll just have one piece. I would eat all four. And that was food noise. That's an intrusive thought. Sometimes it's just like you want the food because you're wanting to stimulate yourself.

Speaker 2:

Aaron talked a lot in our episode together about dopamine, and so it's like, yeah, you might just be like I'm bored and I've seen on social media before and stuff like if you think you want a cookie, go for a walk instead. Or if you think you want a cookie, go work out and it's like, well, that's not really helpful, that's kind of ignoring the process, it's kind of ignoring everything that goes along with it. Then it's no wonder you still want it because you didn't deal with. Am I actually hungry? And am I actually hungry for two Oreos? I don't need the whole package, but am I actually hungry for two Oreos? Because, if so, have the freaking Oreos and shut up about it. Right, they're not that bad for you. They're calories, they're carbs. It's fine, fit it into your day and move on right.

Speaker 2:

You don't need to have this negative relationship with Oreos, for example, but the more you kind of restrict those things, the worse they come. And so if you're just like I want Oreos, but I'm weak-minded and I don't have any willpower and I suck and I'm a loser if I have them, so instead I'm going to go for a walk, and then after your walk, you're like, I still want the Oreos that would be me. I used to do that and be like, well, they said to go literally do anything else. Go for a walk, specifically is what I remember hearing. And so I would get up, go for a walk, move away from the item, just do something, stimulate your mind, do laundry something, and then you won't want the Oreos anymore and I'm like no, I still want the Oreos.

Speaker 2:

I don't know if that's food noise necessarily. I feel like it falls under a category of like food noise, where you're just thinking about it all the time, but it's not necessarily negative. In that situation I probably just should have said, okay, have two Oreos and move on. But there are times in my life when I couldn't have had just two Oreos there. I definitely would have had the entire you know package or at least a row. So I think food noise is something that has a bad rap and it definitely, you know, in the actual definition it is something that is negative and ruins your day and ruins your progress and, yeah, it definitely impacts you in a negative way.

Speaker 2:

Some things that have helped me with that are understanding macros. I think a lot of times when you are having food noise about something in a negative way, let's continue to say like carbs, processed food. We'll say like breads and cookies, but some people are even afraid of rice and things like that. I was too. So if you're kind of like afraid of something and it's like an intrusive thought of like oh no, we're going over and I hear this a lot from my clients. We're going over to my mother-in-law's house and she always makes meat and potatoes and or tacos or whatever it is, and it's always something like that Like that's food noise, where it's like, oh my gosh, I can't go there because I will. Either I either can't have it, it's off limits, or if I do have it, I'm completely overeating it and you know I'm going balls to the wall and it's like everything was ruined at this point.

Speaker 2:

Something that helped me me, something that helped me and that helps my clients a lot is understanding fuel, understanding calories, understanding food. A lot of times when people or when clients especially coming to me, when you are nervous about eating a food or you think about the food negatively, it's because you don't understand that it is just a carb or just a fat or just a protein. It's calories, it's fueling your body, and so I do a lot of coaching and talking about that in the podcast episodes because that to me, like that knowledge of, okay, carbs aren't bad. You hear that a lot. You grow up thinking that, for whatever reason, a lot of people cut out carbs and they lose weight. So they think, oh, the carbs are the problem? It's not you were in a calorie deficit when you cut out the carbs. You could have literally cut out anything, right, you could have cut out the good food and you still would have lost weight because you would have been eating less. But we don't think about it logically. We don't understand, we just do, we don't think about it, we just do it or we copy what someone else is doing Instead of researching. Are carbs bad? No, they're fuel for your body. You need them. We just talked about this in a recent episode. You need them.

Speaker 2:

When I started to understand, okay, carbs are good. Carbs give me energy, they help my metabolism, they help my hormones, they help my body run. My body freaking needs them by not having carbs. I'm not saying Oreos are super great for you, okay, but I'm just saying carbs in general is what I was afraid of. Once I understood that they're not the devil and I can have them within reason in my macros, in the amount that my body needs, I started to understand for myself and not listen to what everybody else said, but listen to myself and realize that carbs are okay and I actually need them.

Speaker 2:

So I need to start implementing them into my diet, my nutrition. How am I gonna do that? I had to figure that out for myself. And am I gonna have some Oreos? Yes, and how many am I gonna to do that? I had to figure that out for myself. And am I going to have some Oreos? Yes, and how many? Am I going to have Two. And I'm going to have them with some Greek yogurt, some vanilla Greek yogurt not plain, by the way so that I have a protein and some sugar, so that it's going to balance my blood sugar and I won't feel like crashing, I won't feel like I want more, I'll feel satiated. So I learned to kind of balance these things out and then it was like well, now I'm not afraid of Oreos anymore, so I don't think about them constantly. In fact, I don't even need them anymore. I like them, but I don't need them anymore. I'm not obsessed with them like I used to be, and that's because the food noise is gone. The food noise around Oreos for me is gone. The food noise for me, negatively is gone. Yes, I still have food noise.

Speaker 2:

As far as like thoughts, I should say like about hitting my macros and how am I going to hit my macros and all those things. But that is different. Food noise is negative Thoughts about food and planning your food and trying to hit your macros and being kind of like obsessed with it in a good way is not bad. So we have to know the difference. So let's talk about a couple different ways that you can deal with food noise, and I'm going to talk about it in a sense of kind of the negativity. Okay, I'm not just talking about hunger and I'm not talking about planning your macros. I'm talking about food noise.

Speaker 2:

So, in the sense of guilt for eating too much or eating the wrong thing or eating something bad that you were told is bad for you or you were told you shouldn't have, I'm talking about anxiety about what to eat next, like, oh no, I already messed up, so now I might as well continue the downhill slope here. Or what am I going to have? What am I going to have? It's just this negative cycle. I'm talking about overthinking every single bite or every single macro, like not being able to be like okay, I'm going to hit my macros, it's fine, it doesn't matter what I hit them with, it's not, it's not a big deal. Like, I'll deal with that later. It doesn't need to consume my every thought when it consumes your every thought. That is what I'm talking about in food noise and then also just feeling out of control around certain foods, particularly those that you restrict and that you were told were bad. Right, so this like dieting, restriction, labeling foods as good or bad though that is what causes this food noise, so kind of simply, before I kind of dive into like eating enough things like that, like technical ways, when I start to as far as the macros, like overthinking every bite or every macro, I do think of that as food noise because it is negative.

Speaker 2:

Sometimes people will start to track macros and before they understand macros and they're used to it, it can be negative and it can be obsessive and they can think about I didn't hit them perfectly within one single gram. I didn't hit them perfectly. I suck at this. I went over my fats or I hit my protein, so I went over my fats and I'm not perfect.

Speaker 2:

What I have my clients do is, for a couple of weeks when they're coming to me, I just want you to track your food. You're just going to track what you're currently eating so you know what you're eating. You can't know your starting place unless you track your starting place. So I want you to just track and find out what you're eating. Then, from there, set some macro targets that are not perfect and not maybe where you ideally should be in the long run. But where are you right now? What makes sense for you right now?

Speaker 2:

To just improve a little bit and then start to hit those macros with any foods Oreos, bread, whatever kind of food, protein shakes, protein bars, I don't care. Hit those macros so that you feel like, okay, this is possible. Then, over time, clean it up. Is there a cleaner version of the protein shake? Is there a cleaner version of the protein bar? Can you take out your Oreos every other day and add in oats or something a little more healthy? How can we swap things to be a little healthier within those macros? So that's a way that we gradually work our way out of this food noise as far as macro tracking goes.

Speaker 2:

So another way to kind of work through this is to eat enough. A lot of food noise comes far as macro tracking goes. So another way to kind of work through this is to eat enough. A lot of food noise comes because you're freaking starving all the time and you've cut out all your favorite foods and you're on a diet and you're constantly thinking about shrinking and being smaller and I need to almost feel hungry to feel like I'm making progress. Not true. When you learn to fuel your body, especially proteins and carbs, that will heal your food obsession.

Speaker 2:

Undereating is the number one trigger for food obsession. You rarely see someone in a maintenance phase or who understands food, understands their body, understands fitness, understands this whole cycle. Those types of people are not having food noise because we already get it. We understand food, we understand macros, we understand workouts, we understand our body. We have a plan, we're going to follow it. We have a coach we trust. We don't give a shit about food noise because we're like I'm good, I know what I'm doing. Right, it's under eating. And not knowing what's going on with your body, not knowing these facts, those are the number one triggers for food obsession. So hit your maintenance calories consistently. I harp on maintenance calories all the time, but it is the most healing mentally phase of your fitness journey that you will be in. Hit your maintenance calories consistently. Think about health, hormones, metabolism, health, health, health. Okay, your maintenance calories are the best place to be as far as healing your relationship and like fixing a food obsession. Don't skimp on carbs. They regulate your serotonin. They give you energy. You need them. Fuel early in the morning and fuel often. Okay, this is something that helps too.

Speaker 2:

If you wait too long and then you're like oh my god, I'm instantly starving and now I have to go to fast food, or I don't have anything with me or I forgot my snacks. Don't let yourself get so hungry and start early in the morning. You don't need a fast. You don't need to wait till noon to eat. Please, freaking, stop doing that. Ladies, I'm so over that. Honestly, start early in the morning. Your body has already fasted all night while you were sleeping. It needs some food now. Okay, we need some fuel. How the fuck are we supposed to get through a day with no energy If our calories are energy? We can't start our car if there's no goddamn gas in it. How are we supposed to start our day if there's no fuel in it? Put some food in your body. Waiting too long starts your cravings. You're wanting food. You're freaking starving. Don't do that. Okay, eat every couple hours. Start early in the morning, like let's have a healthier relationship with food. Okay, we are. We are grown. We need to start treating our bodies like it. Next, slow down and regulate your nervous system. This is so important to food.

Speaker 2:

Noise can be a symptom of stress, so try deep breathing before your meals. Take a walk or stretch instead of impulsively snacking. That's kind of where I get into if you want something to snack on. Ask yourself am I really hungry or am I just bored? Can I go mess around with some makeup? Can I go read a book? Can I go for a walk? Can I just stretch Like am I physically hungry? Am I emotionally overwhelmed? Am I bored? What am I Really? Get in touch with yourself. That's really important. The deep breathing is a really good tactic too, because a lot of times we're just like go, go, go, go, go, go go and we need to slow down, get in touch with ourselves and figure out am I hungry? Am I just going crazy? Am I stressed out? Take a couple deep breaths, get in tune with yourself again and let your brain drive the decision and not your stomach.

Speaker 2:

No-transcript replace. I can't have that with. I can have this whenever I want, but do I want it right now? I can have a couple of Oreos, but do I want them now or do I want them later? Can I fit in my macros? Give yourself full permission to eat and you'll stop thinking about food 24-7. When it doesn't rule your life, when there's not so many rules with it. If it's not like I can or I can't, it's like I can have it. I'm grown it's fuel, nothing's wrong with it. But do I want it now? Do I want it later? Do I want it at all? Do I want it at all? If it doesn't have that control over me, do I want it? It's just all about kind of ditching those all or nothing rules.

Speaker 2:

Also, mindful eating. This is really important too. I've started doing this lately. Sit down for your meals. I've started putting my phone away and my distractions that I have even like I've been trying to not even like watch TV or anything while I'm eating. Slow down when you're eating. Taste your food, think about it, slow bites, chew it all the way up. That'll really help with digestion and experience it. Just sit there and think, slow down, breathe a little bit. I know that sounds crazy, but like we never slow down and all of this matters. Okay. Next I want you to think about challenging the thought loop. So some of this is just acknowledging that this is happening. It's just when you want something. If you stop and think, okay, this is food noise and you acknowledge that, then you can ask yourself what am I actually feeling If I eat this? Will it solve that feeling? And have I been restricting something emotionally or physically? Literally? Ask yourself those questions. I do that as well.

Speaker 2:

I gave an example on the podcast with Erin where just last night I wanted some zucchini bread. It was there, it would be there the next day, but I thought I kind of want that but it might hurt my stomach. I don't know if I'll regret it after I gave myself a little. If I eat that, am I going to be satisfied hunger-wise? No. So I ended up having a Greek yogurt bowl. After that I was still kind of hungry and I still wanted it. So I asked myself, what if it hurts your stomach? What if you have to go to bed with a growly stomach and you're gonna be pissed? Are you still hungry? Do you need it? Can you wait till tomorrow? And I thought, no, I do want it now, and if I have it now, I won't want it tomorrow. So I ended up having it and that was a really good choice, but some of the I could have been like, yeah, I'm actually full after that Greek yogurt bowl.

Speaker 2:

It wasn't even about the zucchini bread. It's about like am I hungry? Do I want to enjoy it? What do I need? Did I hit my macros, kind of asking myself that Will eating this solve the feeling that I was having? And the answer was yes. So I had it and I felt really good about it. But there are other times where I would have had that and thought you idiot, don't do that again. And then next just repeat and be patient.

Speaker 2:

Honestly, if you've spent years dieting, then you've probably spent years with food noise. And if you've spent food or years food tracking obsessively, if you are someone who has to track every single morsel of food I'm talking for years I want you to do that for a little while, okay, and and be obsessive with it, but you don't need to do it for years. But if you've spent years dieting and you've spent years obsessively tracking your food, thinking this is really helping me, tracking my food obsessively and it taking over my entire life is really helpful, it's not. That's also food noise. If it's intrusive, right, and if it's not helping your life. It will take intentional practice to quiet that noise and it will take time.

Speaker 2:

Healing your relationship with food is a process, because it's also healing a relationship with yourself. A lot of people don't realize it that it's not about the food. It's about yourself and emotions that you're having and thoughts that you're having about the food, about how food makes you feel, about how food makes you look. You can't have one without the other. So, nourishing your body, thinking about health, restricting less and trusting yourself more and if you need support, I am here, I have got you.

Speaker 2:

My ladies work their way through this, not easily, but very seamlessly. Once they're ready, ready, ready, ready. You have to be ready to do things that are uncomfortable not extremely uncomfortable Okay, it's not going to kill you, you're going to be okay. But it does turn the volume down on that food noise and that's what it's all about. It's not an overnight switch. You're not just going to wake up tomorrow and say, okay, I'm going to do, you know, these five things that Christy mentioned and my food noise is going to be gone Absolutely not.

Speaker 2:

I said I still struggle with it sometimes and get obsessive about things and I have to stop and ask myself. Are you doing these other things that I mentioned? Am I slowing down? Am I being conscious with it? Am I asking myself questions? Because it's deeper than just food, so much deeper, okay, but the quieter you make the food noise, the better your life is, because now you can go out and enjoy things with friends, you have more control, you have more confidence, you trust yourself and the whole journey, the whole experience becomes whole because, as we are unfucking your fitness, we have to have that mental peace and I've said this, I think, just in the last episode.

Speaker 2:

I have said this a million times you have to heal your relationship with yourself, you have to heal your relationship with food. You have to heal your relationship with your body. You won't intentionally do that. Like I've said before, when you start a fitness journey, you're not thinking I want to heal my food noise and I want to heal my body. No, you're thinking or my relationship with my body. You're thinking I want to lose weight, I want to change the way that I look, I want to fit into these jeans, I want to look freaking good and sexy yourself. You're going to learn to love yourself, you're going to learn to fuel your body and you're going to fix all of these things in the meantime. But if you're aware of that, honestly, I think that makes it easier. And that's exactly why I wanted to start this podcast in the first place, because I did all of these things and it wasn't until probably years after I healed my relationship with food that I noticed it.

Speaker 2:

I didn't know it was happening in the time. In that moment, I didn't know and I didn't set out to do that. I just thought I'm so sick of being afraid of Oreos, I want to have them in my life. How can I do that without eating an entire sleeve every time I sit down? I had to figure that out for myself and I had to put the work in and I had to be ready, and up until that point I wasn't. I just thought, okay, I'm just going to have a couple of these, like I said, with my Greek yogurt or at the end of the day. So that way I put it off, because if I start eating Oreos in the morning, I'll eat them all a freaking day, because it was like, well, I can't have them tomorrow, so I have to have the whole package today, and then I just won't buy more, which is not true, but it's a lot when you think about those things. So I encourage you to do that too Think about your thoughts around food, your thoughts around you know I have people that come to me that are like I am an emotional eater.

Speaker 2:

You know, when I feel stressed or when I feel certain triggers, I eat, and then I, of course, regret it, and they're aware of that. I have others that are just not aware and they're like I cannot stop eating, I cannot stop thinking about food If I cut out this food group, that's all I want. So they're aware that they want the food, but they're not aware that it's food noise. They're not aware that that's mental and emotional. They're not aware that you can fix it. They just think like, oh good for you, christy, that you don't have food noise. But I do and this is why and this is just how I am and it's not that way.

Speaker 2:

Erin and I also talked on the SoulFit podcast about some medications depression, if you're feeling depressed, if you're feeling anxious, if you are experiencing. She talked about her ADHD symptoms anything like that that heightens everything as well. My friend Erin talked about how she's struggling. She just got put on ADHD medicine and her food noise is disappearing, and that's kind of where our thoughts on it stemmed from. If you are on depression medication, I actually just had a conversation I didn't even think about this until now right before I started recording this someone had DMed me and said hey, how can I start to do the basics while being on depression medication? Because it makes you hungry and it makes you gain weight, and medications, like I said earlier in the episode, can absolutely hinder this or affect this.

Speaker 2:

So you have to take all that into account. It's not that you're weak, it's not that you're stupid, it's not that you suck, it's not that you can't do this. It's that you have some situations around you that are causing you to feel this way about food. And you have to be curious. You have to be open, you have to be willing to have these conversations with yourself of like, honestly, like sit down and say, christy, you are not stupid, but I want to work through this with you, with act like you're not yourself, right? It's kind of what I do. I want to work through this with you and figure this out. We have got to figure this out.

Speaker 2:

What is going on? What do you feel when you want Oreos so badly. I feel stressed, I feel sad, I feel overstimulated and I just want to freaking eat. Why are you feeling overstimulated? Then start asking questions.

Speaker 2:

If you eat the Oreos, is that going to help you feel less stimulated? Maybe in the second, but then afterwards you're going to feel overstimulated, stressed, tired and pissed that you just had all these Oreos right. So what instead, would help you? Maybe, if you're feeling overstimulated, you go do some deep breathing and you go for a little walk, or you meditate for a second. If you're feeling overwhelmed, maybe you make an entire list of all the shit that's in your brain and get it on paper and then you have a couple Oreos. I guarantee you'll feel like, ah, this calm about you, of like, okay, I can still have the thing I wanted, but I also dealt with it a little bit. And doing that over and over and over is the way that you're going to be able to see progress with this, and again, it's not going to happen overnight. But these are some really really good tips and tactics to be able to combat this, and I think it's really important that you do so, because this is a really food is everywhere. A lot of people just ignore it, like I just won't deal with it, I won't eat it, I won't buy it. Food is everywhere. We celebrate with food, we interact with food, we need food and so the more you understand it and can be around it, the better off you will be.

Speaker 2:

So I hope this resonated and I hope it was very, very helpful. Please leave me a comment on Spotify. I love reading comments. I really, really, really do. Leave me a comment or a message to an Instagram, but the comments on each podcast episode. I get a weekly email saying how many comments I had and I try to go in and at least like them and hopefully respond if I'm depending on if I'm on my computer or my phone and I can, but I read each and every one of them and I'm really, really grateful. It really helps me to be able to know your mindset and know if these topics are helpful. So it's really awesome and, plus, I just feel like you're all my friends and I like hearing from you and chatting with you. So I hope you enjoyed this episode and I will talk to you in the next episode.

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. So much If you came to connect with me over on Instagram at Christy Castillo Fit. I will see you next time, bye, bye.