[00:00] Welcome everyone to another episode of Your Soul Transformation podcast.
[00:13] Today, our expert is Amber Romaniuk.
[00:17] She is an emotional eating, digestive, and hormone expert helping high-achieving women create a level of body confidence, intuition, and optimal health through powerful mindset healing, self-care, and overcoming self-sabotage with food.
[00:36] So today, our topic is about emotional eating that causes hormonal imbalances.
[00:43] Welcome to the show, Amber.
[00:45] Thank you so much for having me.
[00:47] I'm so excited for our chat. This is like what I talk about all the time.
[00:51] So yeah, I love it.
[00:53] I love the work you do.
[00:55] Her Instagram is super fancy.
[00:57] So I'm definitely gonna add a link on to our podcast page.
[01:01] So you guys can definitely check her out. She's all about women and health and digestive tract and I know so many women suffer from these issues.
[01:12] My first question is, can you explain Amber, what exactly is emotional eating and why does it seem like women are more affected by it?
[01:22] Yeah, this is a great question.
[01:24] So like 90% of the female population is impacted by some form of emotional relationship with food, some term an eating disorder.
[01:32] I like to use "emotional relationship with food" because to me it doesn't feel so permanent.
[01:37] I don't feel any kind of emotional eating, binge eating, binge per cycles have to be permanent.
[01:42] We can heal and overcome and gain full freedom from them.
[01:46] So I like to detach any kind of emotional charge to the words.
[01:49] And so emotional eating is any reason for eating other than physical nourishment.
[01:55] So you eat because you're bored, you're tired, you're sad, you're happy, you're celebrating and there's nothing wrong with eating because of celebration, but it's the overdo it and the justification of like, well, I'm celebrating.
[02:06] So I'm gonna have three pieces of cake or I'm celebrating.
[02:08] So I'm gonna drink more and then alcohol like skews your kind of, you know, judgment and then you overeat or binge anyway.
[02:17] You eat because you had a bit of sugar and now your what I call the ego mind is like you messed up.
[02:22] So you might as well eat whatever you want and now the day is ruined and then you go into the all or nothing mentality and completely lose control or I better eat the rest of this and get it out of the house because if it's not gone tomorrow, I'm gonna lose control again tomorrow.
[02:33] So there's many reasons that we can emotionally eat.
[02:37] There's emotional, emotional eating triggers, there's physical symptoms that fuel emotional eating and there are energetic and spiritual triggers as well.
[02:44] So there's so many things.
[02:46] So I think one of the reasons why so many people and women especially struggle with this is because one person can have dozens and dozens and dozens of triggers.
[02:56] And we're not taught about emotional eating or binge eating or food addiction.
[03:00] And you know how to build awareness of what our triggers can be.
[03:03] And maybe, you know, you eat because you're bored or you get sad.
[03:06] But if you don't understand and as an example that being an empath is an emotional eating trigger and when you take on everyone's energy and all their stuff and they dump on you and you don't know how to clear that and shift that.
[03:17] Now of a sudden you're upset, you're angry, you're frustrated.
[03:20] And now where's the food?
[03:21] Because I want to numb, suppress or shut down my emotions.
[03:24] And so most will emotionally eat or binge because they fear, feeling their emotions, they feel uncomfortable, feeling or processing through something, they feel, feeling as weak or they have to be strong all the time because of the way that they were brought up and where they just want to shove down numb and chase that reward, that massive dopamine high, that pleasure that we get when
we anticipate eating and when we eat the food, but we always forget about the after which is how bloated and puffy and brain fogged and guilty and ashamed and frustrated.
[03:55] We feel there after.
[03:56] So I think the biggest thing that I just want to touch on briefly is emotional eating and binge eating and food addiction and just the brief difference.
[04:04] So emotional eating can look like a trigger comes up and you eat a few pieces of chocolate and a handful of chips.
[04:10] Emotional eating can also look like where we get into binge eating, where you say you eat a doughnut or a cookie and then you essentially go into that all or nothing mentality where it's like I've messed up my day.
[04:20] I've messed up my clean eating or my diet.
[04:22] Whatever that mentality is so screwed.
[04:24] I'm just gonna eat what I want for the rest of the day and I'll try again tomorrow or I'll try again Monday.
[04:29] Right?
[04:29] And so it's binge eating is really where we get into full loss of control and, or we eat until we're so full, we're sick and then food addiction is just as complete asphyxiation with food.
[04:39] You're either obsessed and constantly thinking about what you're gonna eat on your diet, your new meal plan, your new eating style and obsessing about like the perfect amounts, weighing and counting calories, all of that.
[04:51] Or you're completely obsessing and thinking about your next binge and planning your next binge and what I'm gonna go and get at the store or what I'm gonna eat at home.
[04:59] And some people will binge or emotionally eat on healthy foods.
[05:02] Like I went through a phase because everything I'm talking about, I went through, personally myself, I went through binge purge.
[05:08] I went through food addiction, emotionally eating and binge eating.
[05:10] And I was binge eating on like processed sugars and fast foods and chocolate and all the stuff first.
[05:17] But as I started to heal, I was now trying to like not have those things.
[05:22] And then I was binge eating like 10 bananas in a jar of peanut butter.
[05:25] So I was like, oh my God losing control of healthy food.
[05:27] So it's not just about the food.
[05:29] It is about understanding your triggers if you really want to overcome this.
[05:33] Wow.
[05:35] OK.
[05:35] I've never ever, ever heard someone explain it so well and so fast.
[05:41] Like damn girl like you speak, you speak as if you are the, I should say digestive tract encyclopedia.
[05:49] That's even a word.
[05:50] But OK, can you break down how emotional eating messes with a woman's hormonal balance?
[05:58] Yeah.
[05:58] And it does 100%.
[05:59] And I will tell you in my almost 11 years of practice, I've never had a client, not have some kind of hormone issue and that's thousands of women and that's 100%.
[06:07] So the odds are not the greatest.
[06:09] Sadly, but essentially what ends up happening is I see this trifecta of imbalances and I went through these as well and I was in my early twenties and I was flagging post menopausal, had hypothyroid and severe adrenal fatigue, which I'll explain what those all are right away because of my cycle of binging yo yo, dieting over exercise and trying to chase the number on the scale and put my worth into that.
[06:31] Right.
[06:31] So it completely messed up my hormones.
[06:34] Rest assured ladies, you know that you're listening, you can balance the stuff.
[06:37] It doesn't matter your age, we can always regulate our hormones.
[06:40] So the first thing I see is through the stress of overeating restrictions, diets, undereating too much exercise, right?
[06:46] All of these trying diet foods like aspartame and all these things that are made in a lab, it stresses out our cortisol.
[06:53] So cortisol is our stress hormone and the the hormones can be off just from overbooking your schedule, right?
[07:00] Being a perfectionist,
they have to do everything perfect mentality, not sleeping, well, let alone throwing emotional eating into the mix.
[07:06] And so anytime you do anything that stresses out the body or you have negative thoughts about yourself, negative self talk, you feel the shame and guilt after you emotionally eat, you're producing a stress response, your body doesn't feel safe.
[07:17] She's like fight or flight.
[07:18] And so the Amygdala which is the stress center of the brain starts going, oh my gosh, we need to flood cortisol and adrenaline through her body to keep her safe from a bear that isn't there.
[07:27] And so the problem is, is with, you know, today's society and then emotional eating and fighting with the body and weight and all this stuff is we're constantly stressed.
[07:36] And so cortisol levels go through the roof.
[07:38] And when cortisol levels go through the roof, we have brain fog exhaustion and really low energy, afternoon energy LS.
[07:45] And this doesn't help increased cravings for refined sugar, refined carbohydrates and salt, low mood, low libido, irregular cycle, infertility troubles, getting pregnant cycles are disappearing.
[07:57] Menopause symptoms are a lot more intensive abdominal weight gain, troubles losing weight and more sensitive digestion.
[08:04] There's more symptoms, but those are some of the most common ones.
[08:07] And so then all of a sudden, even you can just hear me from some of these symptoms.
[08:11] These a lot of these symptoms are emotional eating triggers because if you're fatigued, you're in the I don't care mentality, I'm tired.
[08:18] I don't care what I'm going to eat.
[08:19] And when we're fatigued, we have increased production of ghrelin, which is the hunger hormone that makes us hungry.
[08:24] So you feel like you could just eat all day.
[08:27] So our hormone imbalances can fuel emotional eating and emotional eating fuels our hormone issues.
[08:32] So then what I start to see next is if we don't address this, the adrenal glands which produce your cortisol, start to get fatigued of producing it.
[08:40] And all of a sudden your body is like we have to keep her functioning in this high stress state.
[08:43] So let me steal other hormones to convert into cortisol.
[08:47] So now we have the progesterone steal where your body is stealing progesterone, one of your sex hormones to convert into cortisol.
[08:53] And I see a lot of women with too low of progesterone.
[08:56] So they are having missed cycles, fertility issues, low sex drive brain fog weight gain.
[09:03] and they can't get pregnant or again, they're having a lot of like hot flashes and breast tenderness through menopause and things like this and it feels really hard to lose weight.
[09:12] You don't feel like yourself, your mood is off, you can have more anxiety, things like that.
[09:16] And so then what I also see is either the body steals estrogen to convert into cortisol or sometimes if the woman has a lot of candida overgrowth, fungal issues, mold issues, a lot of inflammation in the body and she's using a lot of toxins on her skin and is eating a lot of soy and estrogen rich foods.
[09:35] We will see that estrogen skyrocket and she'll end up in an estrogen dominance, which is where estrogen is far too high.
[09:41] Progesterone is far too low.
[09:43] And when we have elevated estrogen, we're going to feel more warm, more puffy, more night sweats.
[09:47] Even if you're not in menopause, I would, I would sweat like crazy.
[09:50] When I was in this picture, my breasts were always tender like two weeks before my cycle.
[09:54] You can have heavier periods.
[09:56] Again, the mood is really impacted, it feels next to impossible to lose weight when you're in an estrogen dominance picture.
[10:02] And then the last piece of this trifecta that I see is when your body is in a state of fight or flight and your body is constantly in too elevated of a cortisol production, it overstimulates and overwhelms the pituitary, which is kind of in the area of our third eye.
[10:20] And the pituitary is responsible for
producing thyroid stimulating hormone or TSH.
[10:25] And so what ends up happening is the pituitary produces too much TSH.
[10:31] And then we start to see an underactive hypothyroid picture where the thyroid can start to get more sluggish and the thyroid and the metabolism are best friends.
[10:39] And so if there's too much TSH in the body metabolism starts to slow down all of a sudden, you don't feel hungry, your stomach's not growling, your hair loss, your eyebrows are thinning, cold hands and feet, you get constipated.
[10:54] And all of a sudden you are gaining weight more easily because your metabolism is slowing down.
[10:59] And so then the last piece of this trifecta with the thyroid is not only this overstimulation of too much TSH, but the thyroid produces T three and T four, which are important for our health and, and many functions of the body and your adrenal start to steal these hormones to convert into cortisol and or the thyroid has trouble producing enough T three and T four.
[11:20] And so now we have this full hypothyroid picture for some people, it can transmute into hashimoto thyroiditis, which is the autoimmune.
[11:28] But it all to me starts with this cortisol adrenal issue.
[11:33] , so those are some of the most common things I see with my clients and that I went through myself and it is a vicious cycle if you don't know how to look at any of this because all of a sudden you don't feel like yourself, your moods off your appetites all over the place, you feel really disconnected from your body.
[11:50] And when you have a lot of symptoms, it can feel really frustrating.
[11:53] And what do we want to do?
[11:54] We want comfort.
[11:54] So we go to food, but that whole cycle just makes all of what I just shared worse.
[11:59] Wow.
[12:00] Damn.
[12:00] Ok.
[12:01] So are there certain foods that can trigger emotional eating and lead to hormonal imbalances more than others?
[12:09] Oh, yeah, for sure.
[12:10] So anything that's made in a lab and anything that isn't found in nature.
[12:13] So, the things that I see to be the biggest things that fuel hormone issues and trigger emotional eating.
[12:19] Number one is refined sugar because for a lot of people, unfortunately, it's so processed.
[12:24] 10, it's 10 times more addictive than cocaine and it provides the same kind of a dopamine high as doing a hard drug and it's in everything.
[12:32] And so people's taste buds are so numbed and they have to eat more to get the same dopamine pleasure response.
[12:38] So, and that used to be my biggest issue.
[12:40] I was a huge sugar addict like so bad and my cravings would drive me crazy and it would just feel easier to give in to them than to try and fight them off.
[12:48] So that's a huge trigger.
[12:49] MS G monosodium glutamate is a huge emotional eating trigger because it increases your appetite level.
[12:56] It's a flavor enhancer that increases your appetite level.
[12:59] You want to eat more.
[13:00] You don't feel full, it shuts off your body's ability to produce leptin, which is the hunger hormone that helps you feel full and it fuels inflammation and same with sugar.
[13:08] It fuels a lot of inflammation.
[13:10] It's the sugar causing a lot of the autoimmune and heart disease and stuff.
[13:13] It's not the salt, it's the sugar because it's causing so much inflammation.
[13:17] and then things like aspartame which is dubbed, oh, it's better than sugar, but it spikes the blood sugar more than sugar.
[13:23] It's a neurotoxin.
[13:25] It's giving people neurological issues.
[13:28] It's, it's increasing people's appetite level.
[13:31] It's empty calorie and it's suppressing the metabolism and because the body can't break it down, it's storing in your fat cells as formaldehyde and you're pickling yourself from the inside out.
[13:40] And so many health issues can arise from it.
[13:43] So this
is where even just those three ingredients, let alone see, oils, canola, vegetable, cotton seed, peanut, soy, all these highly processed oils are extremely inflammatory and so to back up to your question about what you know, really fuels the hormone imbalances.
[14:00] Well, it's the processed nature of these kinds of ingredients that the body has to try and expend so much energy G to break them down and that starts to deplete us of things like vitamin B 12.
[14:12] Our energy, vitamin, vitamin D are precious minerals like magnesium, potassium, chromium, calcium, which are vital for helping keep us slightly alkaline and optimal health.
[14:22] And so many functions in the body, iron ferritin.
[14:26] And so the more stressed and inflamed, the body, the more acidic she is.
[14:30] And so she's pulling all these precious minerals and vitamins and nutrients to help us try to get back to optimal.
[14:36] But oftentimes because we don't know what's going on.
[14:39] We're innocently just like staying in these behaviors and habits, not looking at the roots, trying to get on another diet.
[14:44] And another weight loss plan to quick fix it, but we're just depleting everything more.
[14:49] And so the last piece with the hormone stuff and the, the food and the ingredients is the more processed your food, the more inflammation.
[14:55] Yes.
[14:56] The more stress it's harder for the body to break it down.
[14:59] The other thing is that the more inflamed the body, well, this just shoots our cortisol a lot more because inflammation is a stressor, right?
[15:05] And then if we're eating a lot of processed things that are messing with our gut bacteria, it's a stressor.
[15:10] So the more stress the body, the more off the hormone state is gonna be and inflammation is horrible for everything, including the thyroid.
[15:17] It suppresses the thyroid.
[15:18] It's not good for our, you know, reproductive organs.
[15:21] It's not good for our adrenal glands.
[15:23] And so, so many people have a high level of inflammation, but instead of going to the roots, which are the foods, the emotional eating, the hormone issues and the self loathing, we're like, oh, I'll just go on an elimination diet.
[15:36] I'll just add in, I'll go on an anti inflammatory diet.
[15:39] But it doesn't work because at some point you fail because it feels restrictive or you didn't address the roots.
[15:44] Hm.
[15:46] Ok.
[15:47] So what are your top tips on managing emotional eating?
[15:53] So to me the first, there's a few important things.
[15:57] Number one, try to have compassion for yourself.
[16:01] If you are going through this, it's not your fault.
[16:04] It's not because you don't have willpower or you suck at your diet or you're not doing good enough.
[16:09] It is so deep and multi layered and complex as you're probably hearing me share.
[16:14] Even just what I am on this podcast, it's not your fault.
[16:17] So I think the first step is have compassion for yourself, try to kick the guilt and shame that you feel about the habit and then it's kind of admitting, you know what I think I am struggling with emotional eating or binge eating and just, just being with that and, and being, you know, in the space of ok, this is happening.
[16:33] I just want to admit it because the longer we stay in denial, the worse the habits get, the worse our health gets.
[16:38] And then from here, what we want to start doing is we want to start gathering resources considering getting support because often many women have been struggling for years or decades and a diet is not going to fix this.
[16:50] A hormone test and a supplement isn't going to fix this.
[16:53] This is emotional, physical and energetic.
[16:55] So for some women getting support is finally going to be the thing that's gonna help them shift as a, you know, awareness building at home.
[17:03] First three things start a list of your emotional eating triggers.
[17:07] If you
're not sure what your triggers are after you do give into a trigger pause for a few minutes, try to forgive yourself and then go OK.
[17:14] Well, what happened was I tired?
[17:15] Did I not drink enough water?
[17:17] Was I overbooked?
[17:18] Was I bored?
[17:18] Did I feel lonely?
[17:19] Did I get on the scale?
[17:20] I didn't like the number I saw but start to reflect and ask questions because I never used to know any of this.
[17:25] I did not go to school for this.
[17:26] I did not, this was like a life experience and I had to pause and start writing down my triggers and figuring out what they were because I had no idea what they were and that kept fueling the behavior.
[17:37] So building awareness around your triggers.
[17:39] The second thing is before you just go to food, try to pause.
[17:43] I know it can be tempting in the moment because it's like all you want and we forget to ask these questions in the moment because the brain is so focused on the dopamine high.
[17:51] But get out of where the food is, take a deep breath and ask yourself, is this physical or emotional hunger?
[17:58] Do I actually need to eat?
[18:00] Or is this emotional?
[18:01] Because nine times out of 10, it's emotional.
[18:03] And if you do need to eat, can you grab something that's gonna nourish you balance your blood sugar, satiate you and then ask again, do I still want something?
[18:10] Is this emotional hunger?
[18:12] OK.
[18:12] And then the third thing is what is so important is that we start to dedicate time for ourselves.
[18:19] One of the hugest triggers for self sabotage of food is the lack of time we're giving to ourselves.
[18:25] Most of the women I work with are on the back burner.
[18:27] They're their last priority.
[18:29] They feel guilty thinking about making themselves a priority or claim they don't have time, right?
[18:34] And I get it, everyone's busy, everyone has a different lifestyle.
[18:37] However, there's always a way and there's always time.
[18:40] But when you're a people pleaser and you're afraid of saying no to others and yes to yourself or whatever the reason.
[18:45] Right.
[18:46] It comes to an unworthiness.
[18:48] I don't feel good, good enough.
[18:49] And that's what fuels our behaviors the way we show up in our lives, you know, the way we prioritize our schedule.
[18:55] And so I think really starting to go, you know what, in order for me to not only overcome emotional eating or binge eating and also balance my hormones, I do need to make some time for myself.
[19:09] You're not a robot.
[19:09] You don't put sand in a Ferrari.
[19:11] You know, we don't ideally don't want to treat our bodies that way.
[19:14] So with the self sabotage and the hormones, what we want to do is ideally starting like a 10 or 15 minute self care practice like a few days a week, we're just starting small and from there you, you're going to fall in love with it.
[19:27] And so you're gonna want to increase your duration, right?
[19:30] But starting to get familiar with things like meditation, breath, journaling, EFT tapping, getting out into nature, mindful movement, practice making your favorite cup of tea like things that are going to help to ground you because the more grounded you are, your energy comes out of your head and goes into your heart where the tree really lies and and lives and the more grounded you are, the less likely you're going to be to want to self sabotage this food, the more healthy coping mechanisms you have, you're going to use those instead of food.
[19:56] , so that's where to start.
[20:00] And if you do all of that and that doesn't work, then I would encourage you to get some support and any foods that you recommend for people who are already so used to, you know, eating emotionally.
[20:11]
Is there a certain way that they should eat or any sort of foods that they should incorporate into their diet that they can really help balance their hormones.
[20:20] Yeah.
[20:20] So in order to balance the hormones, we really have to see the individual specific person's picture because each person's picture is going to dictate more of what they need as an example if I just said to someone.
[20:31] Oh yeah.
[20:32] So it seems like you have a thyroid issue.
[20:36] So let's or sorry, maybe we'll go to estrogen.
[20:39] Oh You have high estrogen, eat a lot of broccoli, cauliflower, raw brassica vegetables because they're gonna pull excess estrogen out of the body.
[20:47] But if that person also has a thyroid issue, raw brassica vegetables are gonna inhibit thyroid function.
[20:52] So it's gonna be very specific to the person.
[20:54] I think more on the answer to like overall optimal health, reducing inflammation, helping with emotional eating.
[21:01] The biggest myth I see for people is they're not eating enough protein and fat.
[21:05] We need to eat enough protein and fat for blood sugar regulation and to feel satiated and satisfied for more than an hour or two.
[21:13] And so this is where your chicken fish, eggs, beef pies and elk turkey, like whatever you want to add in.
[21:19] Some people are more plant based which I do find can be a bit more of a craving for sugar.
[21:24] Carbs emotional eating sugar because carbs break down more quickly.
[21:28] But you got to make sure you get your fats, your avocados, your nuts and seeds, your healthier, anti-inflammatory oils like avocado, all of coconut oil.
[21:38] Maybe you do go goat butter or grass fed butter or ghee.
[21:41] But we need good fats with proteins to help regulate blood sugar.
[21:45] And we also need to eat enough carbohydrates.
[21:47] But I'm talking about whole foods, carbohydrates, like fruits and vegetables, root vegetables, whole grains like brown rice, quinoa buckwheat.
[21:55] A big miss and a big fad over the last few years has been like the keto and the low carb.
[22:00] The sad thing is though, when you have high cortisol, you need more carbohydrates to repair your adrenals and people are going keto and low carb and it's making all their hormones worse, right?
[22:08] And they're self sabotaging with food because it's too restrictive.
[22:11] So I don't believe any, any kind of restriction because it just triggers more emotional eating and can hurt the hormones.
[22:16] So we really want to try to ditch the diets, deal with our food rules and food fears and actually really get to know our bodies so that we can tune into what feels best for us.
[22:26] But protein and fat and we do need carbohydrates.
[22:29] They are your friend.
[22:30] It's just about whole foods, not processed made in a lab.
[22:34] And then my last piece is moderation.
[22:36] So it's not about I have to eat perfectly and I have to only eat clean.
[22:39] That is not a healthy mentality.
[22:40] It is about balance and finding balance with food, which means enjoying and desiring to nourish your body with beautiful foods that are going to support health and vitality.
[22:51] And when I go to an event or here and there, when I want to give myself permission to enjoy a more indulgent meal or a dessert that I can do so and then eat it slowly.
[23:02] Enjoy it.
[23:02] Give yourself permission and that there's no guilt or shame afterwards.
[23:06] It doesn't trigger you to lose control.
[23:08] You're not, you're not gonna, nothing bad is gonna happen with mindful balanced indulgence.
[23:13] It's when we start using food to cope and to self sabotage that that's when it's hurting the body, but that's the ultimate goal.
[23:20] That is amazing.
[23:22] Thank you so much Amber.
[23:23] And where can our audience and our listeners reach out to you?
[23:27] Yeah.
[23:28] So thank you for having me.
[23:
30] You can find me at the website.
[23:31] It's Amber approved dot C A.
[23:33] And if you're wondering if you're struggling with binger emotional eating, I do have a free emotional eating.
[23:37] You can take as well.
[23:39] You can book a 30 minute complimentary body, freedom consultation.
[23:42] If you want to connect and talk more about food and body freedom, healing your relationship with food hormones, all the stuff we talked about today and the podcast, which is called the No Sugar Coding podcast.
[23:51] We have almost 500 episodes.
[23:53] And if you'd love this conversation, you will love diving deep into all the episodes where these are the topics and a lot more.
[24:00] And that's available on any podcast app and the website.
[24:04] Thank you so much, Amber.
[24:05] And to all our listeners always remember metamorphosis, not medication and then must stay.
[24:11] So listen, if you're struggling with something, all you need to do is book a call with me and I promise that I am going to provide a lot of value to you.
[24:23] You'll probably believe that this is the best thing that you have done for yourself in a very long time.
[24:29] All you need to do is click on the link below and book a call.
[24:33] And if we are not a good fit for each other, at least you have gained some value from speaking to me, which I promise I will deliver.
[24:43] So go ahead and book the call with me right now and let's talk and I'll see you on the other side.
