Defiant Health Radio with Dr. William Davis

Decoding Emotional Eating: My Interview with Life Coach Molly Zemeck

June 04, 2024 William Davis, MD
Decoding Emotional Eating: My Interview with Life Coach Molly Zemeck
Defiant Health Radio with Dr. William Davis
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Defiant Health Radio with Dr. William Davis
Decoding Emotional Eating: My Interview with Life Coach Molly Zemeck
Jun 04, 2024
William Davis, MD

In this episode of the Defiant Health podcast, I interview life coach, Molly Zemek. Molly comes from the unique background of having worked as a Le Cordon Bleu formally-trained French chef for 10 years. She is also a certified sommelier. But, with this intensive background in food and wine, she found herself falling victim to uncontrolled eating and drinking impulses. She then turned her attention to gaining control over her eating and drinking impulses and now, as a life coach, helps others deal with their temptations and impulses. She does so through her new book “Decoding Your Emotional Appetite: A Food Lover’s Guide to Weight Loss” and her podcast “Weight Loss for Food Lovers” where she brings the lessons learned from her own journey and that of her coaching clients. 

We also dive into the complexities of managing alcohol consumption, especially from the perspective of a trained sommelier. Molly shares her insights on mindful drinking, including techniques like keeping a diary of alcohol intake and planning intentional choices. Discover how to appreciate the art of wine and food pairing without excess and find new ways to relax and connect without relying on alcohol. Molly's unique blend of culinary expertise and life coaching offers a holistic approach to achieving balance and healthy living. Don't miss this enlightening conversation that can help you develop a healthier relationship with food and drink.

More from Molly Zemek: 

MollyZemek.com

Molly’s new book: Decoding Your Emotional Appetite 

Molly’s podcast: Weight Loss for Food Lovers

________________________________________________________________________________

For BiotiQuest probiotics including Sugar Shift, go here.

A 15% discount is available for Defiant Health podcast listeners by entering discount code UNDOC15 (case-sensitive) at checkout.*
_________________________________________________________________________________

Get your 15% Paleovalley discount on fermented grass-fed beef sticks, Bone Broth Collagen, low-carb snack bars and other high-quality organic foods here.*

For 12% off every order of grass-fed and pasture-raised meats from Wild Pastures, go
here.





Support the Show.

Books:

Super Gut: The 4-Week Plan to Reprogram Your Microbiome, Restore Health, and Lose Weight

Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight and Find Your Path Back to Health; revised & expanded ed

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Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

In this episode of the Defiant Health podcast, I interview life coach, Molly Zemek. Molly comes from the unique background of having worked as a Le Cordon Bleu formally-trained French chef for 10 years. She is also a certified sommelier. But, with this intensive background in food and wine, she found herself falling victim to uncontrolled eating and drinking impulses. She then turned her attention to gaining control over her eating and drinking impulses and now, as a life coach, helps others deal with their temptations and impulses. She does so through her new book “Decoding Your Emotional Appetite: A Food Lover’s Guide to Weight Loss” and her podcast “Weight Loss for Food Lovers” where she brings the lessons learned from her own journey and that of her coaching clients. 

We also dive into the complexities of managing alcohol consumption, especially from the perspective of a trained sommelier. Molly shares her insights on mindful drinking, including techniques like keeping a diary of alcohol intake and planning intentional choices. Discover how to appreciate the art of wine and food pairing without excess and find new ways to relax and connect without relying on alcohol. Molly's unique blend of culinary expertise and life coaching offers a holistic approach to achieving balance and healthy living. Don't miss this enlightening conversation that can help you develop a healthier relationship with food and drink.

More from Molly Zemek: 

MollyZemek.com

Molly’s new book: Decoding Your Emotional Appetite 

Molly’s podcast: Weight Loss for Food Lovers

________________________________________________________________________________

For BiotiQuest probiotics including Sugar Shift, go here.

A 15% discount is available for Defiant Health podcast listeners by entering discount code UNDOC15 (case-sensitive) at checkout.*
_________________________________________________________________________________

Get your 15% Paleovalley discount on fermented grass-fed beef sticks, Bone Broth Collagen, low-carb snack bars and other high-quality organic foods here.*

For 12% off every order of grass-fed and pasture-raised meats from Wild Pastures, go
here.





Support the Show.

Books:

Super Gut: The 4-Week Plan to Reprogram Your Microbiome, Restore Health, and Lose Weight

Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight and Find Your Path Back to Health; revised & expanded ed

Speaker 1:

In this episode of Defiant Health Podcast, I interview life coach Molly Zemeck. Molly comes from the unique background of having worked as a Le Cordon Bleu, formerly trained French chef for 10 years. She's also a certified sommelier. But with this intensive background in food and wine, she found herself falling victim to uncontrolled eating and drinking impulses. She then turned her attention to gaining control over her eating and drinking impulses and now, as a life coach, helps others deal with their temptations. She does so through her new book, decoding your Emotional Appetite A Food Lover's Guide to Weight Loss, and her podcast, weight Loss for Food Lovers, where she brings the lessons learned from her own journey and that of her coaching clients.

Speaker 1:

And later in the podcast I'd like to tell you about Define Health sponsors Paleo Valley, our preferred provider for many excellent organic and grass-fed food products, and Biodiquest, my number one choice for probiotics that are scientifically formulated, unlike most of the other commercial probiotic products available today. Welcome, molly. Thanks for joining me on this podcast episode. You and I have kind of gotten to know each other because we share an interest, of course, in healthy eating. But you know, I like having you on my podcast because you fill a gap that I don't fill at all, or at least not very well. That is this notion of emotional eating. Could you tell me how you fell into this?

Speaker 2:

Well, I identify myself as a lifelong food lover and spent a lot of years really pursuing that passion for food and then later my passion for wine. I became certified as a chef, certified as a sommelier, and spent a lot of my free time just pursuing this love of food, really just enjoying different flavors, traveling around the world, cooking. But I got to this point when I was in my 40s where I really just felt kind of powerless around food, almost like I just couldn't really control myself and I wondered why other people were able to kind of manage how much they ate. But I felt like I just always wanted more time. Also that I was trying to lose weight because since I had such a big appetite, an emotional appetite for food, I wasn't able to really lose weight the way I did as a young person. I couldn't really follow the same diets and see the same results. So I knew that I needed a different approach and I really wanted to get a better handle on kind of the sensational appetite that I had for food.

Speaker 2:

And so I spent a lot of time, you know, really trying to figure out the root reasons behind my eating and drinking, because it really wasn't making me happy.

Speaker 2:

I felt like I was less and less satisfied the more I ate and drank, and I just started to just kind of differentiate between my physical appetite for food and then what I call kind of an emotional appetite, which is the desire for food.

Speaker 2:

And so I was also going through training to become a life coach, and so I was really just learning a lot more about mindfulness and body awareness and I realized, you know, a lot of my passion for food was driven by emotional reasons, not by physical appetite.

Speaker 2:

And so that's kind of how I started this, this journey of self-awareness to sort of understand, okay, if I'm not eating for physical reasons, what are the emotional reasons why I'm eating? And from that place of awareness I was able to identify oh okay, I'm using food to fill a void either in, you know, personal relationships and wanting to connect with people, because I'm not feeling creatively satisfied, and so food is a way that I just experienced momentary pleasure. And anyway, I began connecting the dots, like all the emotional reasons that needed to be satisfied in other ways, and once I began satisfying those needs, it completely changed my life, because I felt much more in control around food, much more aware of my body, and I was more deeply satisfied because I was really satisfying the needs that needed to be met without food and alcohol.

Speaker 1:

So if I hear you it came through a process of self-examination, self-reflection, I hear you it came through a process of self-examination, self-reflection not 10 years of psychotherapy or Prozac, no, no.

Speaker 2:

It also, I think, happened as the result of the coach training that I was going through at the same time. So I became a lot more familiar with the role of our thinking and our emotions, in terms of what motivates us to act the way that we do and how to really start to observe typical thought patterns you have that drive actions that you don't necessarily want, so that you can change those thought patterns, and how to just be a lot more connected to my body. So it was sort of the confluence of all of those things and as a result I wrote a book that just came out that's called Decoding your Emotional Appetite, where I really help people identify the emotional reasons why they might turn to food and how to start solving for some of those needs without eating and drinking.

Speaker 1:

So you've seen your experience pretty much mirrored in other people with similar struggles.

Speaker 2:

Oh, absolutely Absolutely. I mean, there's just some universal reasons why we mindlessly turn to food or many of us overdrink, and you know, based on sort of those patterns, I put together a list of emotional appetites that people can start to identify in their own lives as reasons why, you know, they might feel out of control around food and alcohol.

Speaker 1:

Could you give some specifics? Are we talking about such things as childhood trauma, an overbearing mother, a passive father? What sorts of things are we talking about?

Speaker 2:

Certainly those can be potential reasons, although situations like that are certainly better suited for therapy when it's dealing with past trauma or issues in the past that make it hard to really function now and move forward. But in coaching we really sort of look at okay, if I'm turning to food in this particular moment and I'm not physically hungry, what else might be going on? What happened before I decided to show up in the pantry and start, you know, raiding the cupboards and eating, or you know what was going on the day before or how was I feeling in that moment? And what I noticed is that oftentimes people will turn to food if they're bored, so they will turn to food as a way to cope with stress. They will use food as a way to connect with other people, which, as you know, is super common.

Speaker 2:

But when we feel obligated to eat as a way to connect, that can often feel overeating and over drinking for many people, and then also just for the sheer pleasure of eating. You know, out of that desire to just experience more pleasure and offset the discomfort, that happens when we feel emotions that we're not used to managing, and that's another thing that happens with a lot of people is when they're not really taught the skill of how to process emotions or how to just validate how they're feeling and, like me, they probably didn't learn how to do that as a child, and so food is just the convenient go-to as a way to just try and feel better in the moment, and over time that turns into a bad habit.

Speaker 1:

Have you found that the strategies to reduce emotional eating are pretty much the same as that for excessive drinking, at least in some instances?

Speaker 2:

It's very similar, although it's slightly different, and you know a lot about the nature of different kinds of foods and how certain kinds of foods can almost be addictive in terms of the way that our brains respond to them and in terms of sort of the physical response we have when we're eating them and we feel compelled to eat more or to compulsively eat them because of how they're made or the ingredients in them. And so that's another kind of thing that we consider when we're talking about changing over drinking is that you certainly can bring mindfulness to the reasons why you might be drinking more than you want to, but you also have to factor in the role of alcohol and its effect on your brain, and that you know, by its very nature it will, you know, obviously affect your consciousness in the moment, affect your ability to really think rationally and also create a lot more desire to have more. Now, that's not to say that you can't still be in control and have a moderate amount. It's not possible for everybody, but for a lot of people. Just bringing awareness to you know, how much do I ideally want to be drinking? How can I make a plan for myself ahead of time and say, okay, tonight I really just want to have one glass of wine, not three, and here's how I'm going to stay fully conscious while I'm trying to drink it. You know, really notice kind of how I'm feeling, really pay attention to any urges that come up and have a plan for how I'm going to transition away from drinking when I'm done and just have it be a much more focused experience. And so people find that when they bring that high level of focus to it, they can be in control.

Speaker 2:

So it's similar with food, but food and alcohol are slightly different in terms of how we approach it.

Speaker 2:

But it's all about making intentional choices and then noticing how our bodies respond when we eat or drink these things and then really prioritizing feeling good above all else. So recognizing you know what, when I eat this way, when I drink this things, and then really prioritizing feeling good above all else. So recognizing you know what, when I eat this way, when I drink this way, I don't feel that great. I don't know that I truly want this, even though my brain, saying that you absolutely have to have this, this is going to make you feel good. My result, my physical results, has something different, so I want to be aware of that after the fact and then make a more intentional plan for myself and do it in a way where I'm staying fully present as I'm eating and drinking and trying to you know, notice when I reach that point of just enough where I don't feel too much discomfort in my body but I'm still able to enjoy the pleasure of the food or the alcohol.

Speaker 1:

You know, you bring such an unusual, distinctive background and therefore a very unique skill set as a trained formerly trained chef and sommelier. So what does, what does eating in your house and your family look like as a trained French chef?

Speaker 2:

Well, I have three young boys, so we're not eating fine dining and I, you know, have. I have a business that I run and a house and all of the other stuff that comes along with being a parent. So, you know, I would say that my training influences the way we eat, in the sense that I really prioritize high quality ingredients, simple cooking but utilizing good flavor combinations, and I really believe that good food doesn't need a lot to make it taste good and you don't need to overcomplicate the cooking process, and so this is what we do in my home. I have an advantage because I am good at time management in the kitchen. I have a lot of years of experience as a chef.

Speaker 2:

I know how to combine flavors, but I often tell the people that I work with if you want to really maximize the pleasure in food, start with really high quality ingredients, know where they're coming from, buy things in season, utilize primarily whole foods at the peak of their flavor and just be very thoughtful in the way that you season them so that you can really just appreciate the pure flavor and get used to the way that things are supposed to taste. As you know, dr Davis, when we start including a lot of processed foods or man-made foods. It really distorts our palate. We're no longer, you know, fully satisfied the way we can be with whole foods, both you know, physically and I also think, emotionally, in terms of the emotional satisfaction of eating. So I really emphasize kind of simplicity and high quality ingredients when it comes to food. You don't need to be a chef to do that. You just need to have a little bit of awareness of where to find some of those ingredients and how to combine some of those flavors.

Speaker 1:

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Speaker 1:

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Speaker 1:

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Speaker 2:

Well, I have never believed in needing my family to come along with the way that I eat. In fact, that doesn't go very well when I try and micromanage everybody else's plate. Most people don't take well to that, and so I've never, you know, tried to get my husband on board. Now I do. You know, I, with the sort of the example that I give my kids is, you know, I want them to taste a variety of different foods, but I also believe if they're hungry enough, they will eat what's in front of them. They will give you know, if they're not bombarded with a ton of processed snacks, they will have a healthy appetite for whole foods. So we don't do a ton of processed snacks. I mean they're kids, so sometimes they will. I mean I don't completely restrict them because I don't think that's healthy either, but I primarily have healthy snacks available fruits, nuts, vegetables, things like that hummus and then when it's time for meals, they're ready to eat, and so they're pretty good eaters. They don't love everything, but they'll eat the things that I put in front of them and I make sure that there's a pretty big variety of options, and then I really just try and lead by example in terms of mindful eating, and so I will sort of talk about the fact that I'm not eating if I'm not hungry, or you know what? I've had enough. So it's okay if there's food left behind, like I'm satisfied, and so, you know, I think that they absorb some of that.

Speaker 2:

My husband has really absorbed a lot of those habits without me necessarily telling him this is the way you need to do it. It's like oh, you know, you seem to be getting good results with this, you're feeling great. You know you're looking great. I'm going to try and learn from you and do some of these things. Or I noticed mom isn't really like snacking a lot, like she's primarily just eating her meals and she can easily kind of stop without finishing the whole plate. I wonder what she's doing, and so I try and tell people you don't have to have the whole family come along with you, you just need to be in charge of you and kind of set an example. And if people ask questions, great, you can talk about what you're doing. You can be an example of what's possible to people.

Speaker 1:

Molly, how much did you have to break with traditional French rules on cooking in order to accomplish all this?

Speaker 2:

You know I didn't really have. You know, here's the fun thing about this, which I think you can relate to, is that traditional French cooking relies a lot on full fat utter, you know, cream, I mean all of the things that you talk about as being, you know, a healthy way to eat, a satisfying way to eat, and so I incorporate all full fats into the way I cook and I find it's very satisfying, it heightens the flavor. I tell my clients this too. I'm like listen, just don't be afraid of fat.

Speaker 2:

Julia Child is one of my favorite chefs of all time and she was a big proponent of fat and she had a healthy appetite, but she wasn't overweight. She lived into her 80s and she just believed all things in moderation, and so for her it was like using full flavor ingredients, high fat, and so I certainly incorporate that into my, into my cooking, and I haven't really had to kind of break with that French tradition at all. I just don't do a ton of I don't know highly complicated, complex cooking and I just don't think it's necessary. I think that you can make simple food taste really good if you're using high quality ingredients.

Speaker 1:

How much pushback do you get from people? Because we all know that most Americans have been brainwashed and had this idea of cutting your fat and saturated fat and cholesterol and, of course, organ meats and other things into their heads. You try to persuade people that this is all wrong, but how much success are you having in persuading people that adding back fat's a good idea?

Speaker 2:

well, that's where the coaching comes in, because breaking a diet mindset is really difficult. I mean, so many of us haven't ingrained that no, certain foods are bad, or I should be just counting calories, or these foods I should just eliminate automatically, and so I can talk about these ideas. But people have to really live the experience of noticing like when I'm restricting these things, I find that I'm like not that satisfied, or the food doesn't taste good or I'm just hungry more often. And so through the coaching, we really work to kind of pull a lot of those old beliefs you know to the surface and really question them. You know, how do you know that's true?

Speaker 2:

What if it's not true? What if you could actually, you know, enjoy food even more and be at your ideal weight? Because you're not, you know, cutting out all the things that make it taste good. Be at your ideal weight because you're not, you know, cutting out all the things that make it taste good. You know what if you get to redefine what this looks like for you and how you feel? And so it is a process, it's a process of unlearning a lot of those diet rules, which takes time for a lot of people and they have to build trust. You know, I allow people to kind of go through that learning process and to kind of discover for themselves that they really can enjoy highly flavorful full fat you know foods and actually lose weight in the process, and that's just such an exciting thing for people to discover.

Speaker 1:

That's great, molly. You know when that happens to me. Of course people say I did your program and my cholesterol went sky high and my doctor says that program is killing you. So I have to remind them total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol are false gods, it's garbage. You should have crossed them out with a black magic marker and then tell your doctor hey, buddy, learn how heart disease is really caused and do the real tests, not the fake tests that are supported by the pharmaceutical industry. What have you encountered? When people have their cholesterol values Say Molly, you're eating this way makes my cholesterol go high.

Speaker 2:

Well, you know, interestingly enough, I had a client you know in her 70s. She just went through a shoulder replacement, she went through a knee replacement but she had her blood work done before that and actually the results were great. I mean, over the course of losing 40 pounds over a year, her test results, like her lab results, actually came back much better. So and I've had just I've had that happen with a number of clients where their cholesterol isn't necessarily going up. I think maybe once or twice that's happened.

Speaker 2:

But you know, we really try and think about you know how you're feeling and sort of the feedback that you're getting from your body, because, as you know, so many people are just like overly focused on calories or focused on the scale and try, I try and get people thinking about kind of the lived experience of eating differently, of you know incorporating more foods, of noticing what it's like when you're not extremely hungry and you don't need to eat as much and you don't have to think as much about food and just how much that feel, how much better that feels emotionally, how much better it feels physically when you're lighter and you have more energy and when people realize that.

Speaker 2:

It usually takes about two weeks, and I know that you've talked about this with like the withdrawal process that you have to go with when you cut out wheat, when you have to cut out grains and sugar and all that, and for the people I work with, you know it's usually about two weeks and after that point they just the exciting thing is like they realize how good they can actually feel, you know, even in their 70s, even if it's like, wow, I feel amazing. And I think, once you experience that, it's hard to be motivated to turn back to some of those foods or to turn back to overeating, because you realize what's possible when you're honoring your body and you're eating foods that actually allow it to feel good.

Speaker 1:

I'd be interested in hearing how you deal with this. So, as you know, modern people tend to get their food through a drive-through window, through a styrofoam clamshell, delivered by a food delivery service, or ultra-processed bagged foods, those kind of microwavable dinners, all that kind of stuff, and many people who I meet just getting started. They say they barely know how to make tea or boil an egg. Now we're talking about going back to the kitchen and making, you know, ribs and other kinds of dishes that they've lost the habit of making. Have you dealt with that?

Speaker 2:

Yes, and sometimes people are intimidated about working with me because they assume that it's going to involve a lot of serious cooking techniques that they don't feel either capable of or they're not interested in. There are many people who just don't enjoy cooking, and it's just not an excuse, because in today's day you can get so many things prepared that are good quality, that are simple, that are not, you know, processed foods, you foods whether it's at your grocery store, whether it's through Uber Eats or something like that. You can find pretty good options. Now, they're not always the most affordable options, but I think when you get somebody at least beginning to make better choices and they're feeling better, they get a lot more motivated to start cooking for themselves. That's that's. I don't know what you've experienced, but that's what I see is kind of.

Speaker 2:

The progression is like when people start to really feel better and they start to see results. They're like you know, what I'm kind of interested in cooking a little bit, you know, and this can actually be part of how I enjoy food is by, you know, learning how to cook and experimenting and trying new flavors, and that can be part of the fun of it, and so I really encourage people to, to see it as part of the creative process and see it as part of kind of the enjoyment of both, like eating and cooking and being in the kitchen. And I find that you know, more often than not that happens. I mean, sometimes I'm working with, you know, executives who are constantly traveling and so cooking meals is not always an option, but they are able to, you know, by kind of intentionally planning, make it work, by finding foods that fit and that really, you know, set them up for success in terms of feeling good. How often do you get to?

Speaker 1:

exercise your French cooking skills.

Speaker 2:

Well, I spend a lot of time on the weekend cooking. That's something that I do for fun, and so I've got a couple of favorite cookbooks. And let's see, this past weekend it was my son's. It was a party for my son's end of year you know baseball team and so I did some you know really nice desserts for that.

Speaker 2:

Anytime I can kind of cook for a large group of people, I'm finding fun recipes to experiment with.

Speaker 2:

It's not the sort of thing that I'm doing day to day for my immediate family, but if I can kind of entertain or go to a party and bring something, then it's a great chance for me to just have fun in the kitchen and to make something unusual that most people aren't used to eating. What really excites me is to be able to, you know, prepare something that just really delight somebody, that they're not expecting and that somebody can take a bite and say like this is the best thing that I've ever tasted, like that. I get so excited by that. And it's not even about like. In the past, dr Davis, it used to be like I would need to eat all of it. It was like I was so driven by my own kind of appetite for food and for sugar and things like that, and that's really shifted and I've really moved away from that and I will still occasionally eat some of those things in moderation. But it's more about just the act, the creative act of cooking and sort of delighting other people in things that they weren't expecting.

Speaker 1:

You know, I'm just getting acquainted with your work and I haven't had a chance to investigate whether you've done any recorded videos of you exercising your French cooking skills. Have you had a chance to do any of that?

Speaker 2:

I do so inside of my membership program. I have cooking videos where I make some really simple things that are in alignment with sort, with the types of foods that I recommend to people primarily whole foods and high quality ingredients, like I talked about and so I have some videos of making some very simple dishes and teaching people about seasoning and teaching people about how to sear a piece of fish to really maximize the flavor of the fish, how to create a basic vinaigrette for a salad and how you can kind of interchange different flavors. So, yeah, I have, I've done some things like that.

Speaker 1:

Great, great. I'd like you to at least give us a point in the direction of seeing those when we finish, when we conclude. So how does a trained sommelier deal with wine, now that you've kind of graduated to this point in your life where you're trying to control impulse and diet and be healthy?

Speaker 2:

Well, I've realized as I've aged that my body just doesn't react the same way to alcohol as it did, and so the amount of alcohol that I'm able to drink is a lot less and still feel pretty good. And so that's been a process of realizing that, yeah, if I have, you know, more than two glasses of wine, I'm not going to sleep, I'm going to deal with heightened anxiety, I'm going to feel irritable a lot of things that that really negatively impact the quality of my life and the quality of my relationships. And you know a lot of people that that I work with have this fear of not being able to control themselves of. Like you know a lot of people that I work with have this fear of not being able to control themselves. Like you know, I feel like I just can't stop drinking when I have some wine or maybe it's with you know, some other kind of food. I can't control myself. And I remind these people it's not that you don't have control, it's just that in the past you've done it in a very mindless, unconscious way. You were just kind of giving into sort of these impulses in the moment and you weren't really aware of the effect that it was going to have on your brain and on your body. And so, now that you know, and now that you know kind of the heightened desire that some of these, these things create, you can decide from an informed place do you still really want these things? And if the answer is yes, that's okay. But let's, like you know, have a more intentional relationship with them. And so for me, that might look like I mean, it's I rarely drink, but if I do, it might be okay.

Speaker 2:

I'm going to have, you know, one glass of wine, and it's going to be this particular type of wine, because I don't have the same kind of physical reaction to it. I'm going to have it do this time of day. I'm going to sit down and, like you know, and enjoy it, but without a lot of distractions. I'm not going to be sitting in front of the TV, I'm not going to be, you know, scrolling on my phone. I'm going to just like be bringing this is how I like to describe it to people, bringing all five senses to the experience of drinking or to eating, so that I can experience the maximum pleasure from it without needing to have as much.

Speaker 2:

And then the other thing you know I work with when people, in terms of scaling back their drinking, is keeping a sort of a diary of, okay, how much do I want to drink, planning the drinks and then, if they're not following the plan, writing down how much they actually did drink.

Speaker 2:

And it's interesting, like how much awareness this creates for people when they realize the amount that they're drinking over the course of the week that they didn't even realize.

Speaker 2:

That helps people to kind of shift into wow, like I don't know that I really want to be drinking that much.

Speaker 2:

And then also to just realize when I'm making an intentional choice and I'm creating I'm setting some boundaries for myself, I'm able to really stop, you know, after one or two drinks and to actually feel a lot better than I did before. And if I'm not, then that's another piece of information that I'm going to bring towards creating the ideal relationship with alcohol, where maybe two drinks is too much, or maybe it's only on this particular day, in the middle of the day instead of at night, or maybe I just don't really love the way I feel. I need to just rethink whether or not I want to drink at all and figure out how am I going to have fun in new ways? How am I going to connect with people in different ways? How am I going to decompress in new ways? What are some different lifestyle changes that I need to make so that it doesn't feel like a complete void where, all of a sudden, I've started drinking alcohol and, like you know, it doesn't feel like I'm having any fun?

Speaker 1:

I'm not able to deal with stress. We need to sort of build in a lot of those skills at the same time. Does this mean you've had to completely abandon the notion of pairing? So anybody listening who doesn't know what that is? I'm referring to the idea that Molly, I'm sure, knows extremely well this notion that certain wines and certain foods pair better. How do you manage that, molly? Certain wines and certain foods pair better. How do you manage that, molly?

Speaker 2:

Oh, I haven't abandoned it. I feel like I'm still fully aware of the right pairings and if somebody asks for my advice, I know exactly what to tell them. And if, for some reason, I'm in a situation where I've decided I want to have a glass of wine and I know what I'm eating, I'll know exactly how to pair it. But I have really released this idea that wine is the perfect complement to food Because I discovered that that just wasn't a helpful thought for me. I don't want to be drinking every single time I eat. I don't want to feel like I need to have wine every time I'm sitting down for a fine dining experience. I want to feel like I can appreciate food for the sake of just appreciating the flavor of food. So that is something that I have let go of, that that wine is an integral part of the dining experience.

Speaker 2:

But I don't really judge other people for it. You know, people can have whatever relationship they want to. As you probably know, alcohol affects people differently, and so for one person, you know, they might not be affected by it and they can just take it or leave it. Another person, you know, has one cocktail and just can't stop drinking, and so it's really about figuring out for you what's your ideal amount, and if it's not drinking at all, we can help you get there. If it's drinking a little bit less, you can do that too. It doesn't have to be an all or nothing approach there.

Speaker 1:

If it's drinking, a little bit less, you can do that too. It doesn't have to be an all or nothing approach. So if someone wants a little bit more of Molly Zemeck's wisdom and maybe some cooking videos, what's a good place to start?

Speaker 2:

Well for wisdom, my podcast Weight Loss for Food Lovers is a great place to start, and my website, mollyzemechcom, has a lot of different videos, some meditations, a lot more information about my book and things like that.

Speaker 1:

Terrific. Molly, thank you very much. I don't recall ever bringing someone with your background on a trained French chef I'm a formerly trained French chef, like Julia Child, and a trained Sully. It is fantastic, but all the lessons you took from that unique, it's priceless. Thank you, molly.

Speaker 2:

Well, thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed being here.

Decoding Emotional Eating With Molly Zemeck
Healthy Eating Habits and Family Dynamics
Health and Cooking Transformation Journeys
Navigating Alcohol Consumption and Food Pairing
Alcohol Effects and Healthy Choices