The Salted Truth: Confronting Binge Eating and the Quest for Balance - S1E3

I still remember the moment when I realized my love for salty snacks had turned into a struggle I couldn't tackle alone. That's why I'm opening up about my journey and the hidden complexities behind binge eating and salt addiction. In our latest episode, we're peeling back the layers of why these foods seem to have a hold on us, from their tantalizing flavors to the emotional ties they can bind. I get personal, recounting how my own battles have mirrored those faced by our guest, Jenny, whose story of seeking comfort in the crunch of potato chips during life's rough patches will resonate with many.

As we unpack Jenny's story, we recognize the power of identifying food-related coping mechanisms and the necessity of finding healthier alternatives to fulfill those same needs. We present actionable steps and share how incremental changes in our eating choices can lead to significant, positive shifts in our overall well-being. Listen in and arm yourself with the knowledge and encouragement needed to confront and transform your relationship with food. This isn't just a conversation about eating habits; it's a heartfelt sharing of tools and insights for anyone ready to make that brave leap towards a healthier, more authentic life.

https://pixabay.com/users/sergepavkinmusic-6130722/ Thank You Serge Pavkin for the preroll!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:17

Hey, I'm Coach Mickey and I'm so glad that you've joined me, and if this is your first time joining me, come on in and make yourself comfortable, and if you join me on a regular basis, I'm so glad that you do and I'm so proud of you. I know binge eating is not an easy task to get through each and every day and, as you know, I like to share not only my journey of binge eating, but also other people that have shared their stories with me, and I truly hope that these insights and stories that I share with you really give you a little bit of information to be able to help you get over binge eating. I know it's an everyday occurrence but, as a disclaimer, I want you to know that I am not a physician, so anytime you're making any kind of changes to your eating, lifestyle, exercise or anything else, please check with your doctor, healthcare provider or whoever you seem to be seeing at the time to help you with your health issues. Anyway, with that being said, I would like to share with you today a story about salty foods. Why are we so addicted to salty foods? The last podcast we talked about, we talked about sugar, and we know how sugar can cause and trigger dopamine within our brains and we have that satisfying feeling, that rewarding feeling, and it drives us to constantly go back to sugar, to keep binging on it, so we can constantly feel those feel good emotions.

Speaker 1: 1:46

So with salty foods, any different? And if you're like me, I am the person that will go to salty foods way over sugar at any time. To be honest, I have always had a bag of either pretzel sticks or potato chips or some kind of salty snack that was in my car. When I worked in San Diego, I'd have to drive all day, every day, and I would drive for almost four to six hours going from one location to another, and my best buddy and companion always seemed to be a bag of chips that was next to me and that probably explained why my blood pressure was extremely high at the time, because I was in taking all this salt and it was just a no-brainer to constantly reach over as soon as I got in the car and grab a handful of chips or pretzel sticks.

Speaker 1: 2:34

So where do these attachments come into place? Who doesn't enjoy a good burger? And fries and shakes I mean fast foods again are salty and they're just as addicting. And let's find out. Where are the triggers? What happens?

Speaker 1: 2:50

Where do we get that pleasure in our brains? Well, first of all, they're very highly palatable and they're engineered to taste good and to trigger the pleasure in our human brains. They're also very high in fat and sugar and salt and, as we know, these contain all the pleasurable sensors to that. We want to have to experience this amazing feeling and taste and that's why we find it so appealing. But it's like a holy grail of dopamine dump and it's very convenient, it's accessible and it's affordable and it's convenient and that's a great attachment for when we're having an emotional meltdown. So, other than the taste of salt and fat, when we associate with this pleasure, we like the crunchy sound. I mean that is another sensor that we have, that we realize. I mean, who doesn't like the crunching? And that in itself is another stimulus because it helps identify not only the motion but also the senses you're hearing and then also the taste. So you're combining all of those and you're getting all these sensations that are going to help you get through with the emotional situation that you're in at the time.

Speaker 1: 4:04

So let's take a note about relying on these foods. They are our primary source of emotional comfort, but we do know they negatively affect our body. They also do all kinds of things that we know, which is either we gain weight from them, it affects our blood pressure, we have all of these other factors that feed into our health, and let alone the actual nutrition value is just minimal. There's probably more nutrition in the container they came in than they actually have. And if you go to the binge on life YouTube channel, I have got a couple breakdowns and couple shorts on there that I'll show you the difference between just packing a turkey sandwich for your lunch compared to stopping by a fast food restaurant and grabbing a burger shake and fries and the amount of calories.

Speaker 1: 4:55

And you know, after talking to many of you and if you've seen me speak and you've read my books, you know I am not about counting calories. I'm all about being aware of what you're eating and being on a healthy journey, and we'll talk about why diets don't work. That'll be in a later podcast but you know for a fact that I'm just not about counting calories. However, when you look at these calorie contents of these one meals, whatever you are eating in one meal, which consists of a burger, fries and a shake or a large soda is really equivalent to a full day's meal, full day's worth of calorie count, not only with carbohydrates, but the fats, the sugars, your large times, your sodium. The sodium is just their salt content that you find, you know, even in sodas, is extremely high and we're not aware of these because we don't realize it's happening because of what we're eating, and right then it's just a quick fix. Well, where does salt connect with us? Why does it have that grasp? Well, salt is just like sugar whatever we are drug of choices, and you've heard me say that before. You know, sometimes we pick sugar, sometimes we pick salt. The reason I say it's our drug of choice is because we're using that as a coping mechanism to get us through whatever emotion that we're dealing with, although we do know that when we have these attachments, they are attached to whatever may have happened in our past or something that's happening currently.

Speaker 1: 6:26

So I want to share with you a story of my friend, jenny. Now again, you guys know I change my client's names, you know, and any name I use is just coincidental. Let's talk about Jenny. So Jenny had an extreme addiction to potato chips. She would binge on a large bag of plain potato chips almost every single day. One day she had come to one of my seminars and she she approached me and we were talking and she said I am a binge eater. Well, first of all, that takes a lot of courage, as we know. To even identify or accept as being a binge eater is the very first step. And if you identify and you know you're a binge eater, then that tells you and me that you are also on the track to getting healthy, because you now are aware, you know I cannot tell you how many people I have seen and will never even imagine or even contemplate the fact that they would accept the fact that they're binge eating. So I gave her a lot of credit for that and I thought that was very brave on her end to approach me and admit that. So we would meet once a week and on that once a week what we would do is we would go over and we talk about a lot of different things for eating structure. You know, again, her journaling, like we've talked about. You know always keeping a journal. You know the date, the time, what's happening, who are you with. You know the emotions that you're feeling that is driving you all towards the comfort food that you're having.

Speaker 1: 7:56

So as we went through all this, we discovered over the past year she had gone through a lot of stressful situations, such as she went through a separation, she had a new job, she had moved to a different state, her one of her children had graduated and moved on to college, and these were a lot of life-changing events that had happened through her life and which it made sense why she had a lot of stress. Attachment to the food and that was one factor, and we always look at what's happening now. But then we had to dig a little bit deeper. So we talked a little bit more and we started digging back a little bit and just in casual we were talking one day and it just happened to be on the anniversary of her mom's demise and it had been three years since her mother had died and we just started discussing the relationship. I said let's visit that a little bit today. So we started talking about that and I said tell me some of the best things about your you remember about your mom and what are some of your best stories and what were the things that seemed to affect you the most.

Speaker 1: 9:01

So as Jenny started to share with me her stories. She did tell me how close she was with her mother and how much she had really missed having her around, especially with all these things happening in her life. But then it had her and she said, okay, okay. So I remember every day throughout my childhood, every single day, for lunch my mother would make a point She'd pack our lunches for us and every day in our lunch she would put a little sandwich bag with a handful of potato chips, every single day, with a little note saying I love you. And she remembered that and she said, without fail, there would always be a bag of potato chips and a little note.

Speaker 1: 9:48

And then, even on the weekends when her mother would make lunch or sometime at least on one of the meals that they had, there was always a handful of potato chips. And she stopped for a second and I just listened and it hit her. She realized she got it. See, jenny missed her mom and she needed her so much during those trying times of her life, going through the separation and a new job and a move and the change in her life with her kids, and she had always turned to her mom for help all those years any time because her relationship was so close. But see, with her mother being gone now she didn't have her anymore, but the closest thing she had to her mom, with those potato chips, and she realized that she was using that to fill that void. And during the timeframe all these things were happening, that's when she noticed, subconsciously, she started getting bags of potato chips and using those every time she felt stressed and she would eat them pretty much every day just to fill that void.

Speaker 1: 10:58

Now, that's a pretty close, tight resemblance of what was happening and identification and attachment. It may not be chips that you use, maybe it's pretzels, maybe it's Cheetos whatever your choices that you use for a salty fix. Identify the feeling and think back. What did we have that brought that memory or that attachment? Maybe it isn't, maybe it's just the fact that that is your go-to because you feel stressed or lonely or sad or anxious or whatever angry, whatever the feeling is that you're feeling. There could be something that is triggering all of these, these reasonings for you to go and grab with there. It's a fast food, whether it's the chips, but it gives you that attachment to be able to use that as a coping mechanism.

Speaker 1: 12:02

We have these things that we do and we don't realize that we're doing them A lot of times when we are addicted to a certain or a specific food we're like okay. So what am I supposed to do? How do I change this? What can I do to get that feeling or to satisfy what? I need A couple of things. One is identify it, identify why you're eating it Again, go back to the journaling, write it down the date, the time, whom you're with or what you're doing. What is the feeling? How strong is that feeling? What are you eating? Or what did you eat Then? What could you have done differently? Then, on top of that, three things that you really like about yourself. This is all a journey. This is for you to recognize these patterns and to help you with this. Now, what can we do to be able to change and satisfy us?

Speaker 1: 12:58

For salty snacks, well, for me, I started getting almonds. I love almonds, so I'll have those, and I had other nuts, but I had to be careful because, again, you don't want to use those as a coping mechanism and eat more than you need. But what I did start doing was I started cutting up vegetables like carrots and celery and cucumbers. Even so, I would put even a splash of salt on. Putting a splash of salt on it is just going to give you that salty taste. It's also going to satisfy that crunching. So you get that crunching. And eating carrots and celery and cucumbers, you're going to still get that satisfying crunch and it's going to help you, but it's not a much healthier choice.

Speaker 1: 13:42

So the takeaway from today is we still need to determine what the underlying reasons are for the binge. That's your good starting point. Identify the triggers and recognize the situations and then take one thing, one thing this week. After you've listened to this, I would like you to replace one salty binge food that you use with something healthy and try it. Give yourself the opportunity to make that change. Just one small step makes a big, huge difference. All right, until next week, please, please, please, take care of you, and I will look forward to seeing you. Remember, the most courageous thing you can do is be yourself. I look forward to seeing you next week. Until then, see ya.