Why is Compulsive Eating So Challenging to Heal?
One of the biggest challenges women can experience is obsessive eating. Eating to feel good, to take away the pain or in some cases to add weight as a protective layer.
If I had struggled with food instead of alcohol, I’m not sure I would have experienced thirty-one years of recovery.
Simple fact, food is tricky. You need food to survive and being mindful of your intake is not easy.
So why do women eat too much? I believe it is to take away the pain they feel. Food can be a band-aid for low self-esteem, feeling unlovable and unworthy.
Eating too much is more about emotional wounds and less about physiological needs. Sadly, most methodologies or programs work on minimizing intake and not addressing the pain that fuels the desire to eat.
Eating too much is equal to drinking too much. Both are used to self- medicate your painful feelings. In full transparency, I drank excessively because of my own negative thinking. Thoughts of not being good enough and unlovable kept me in the throes of alcoholism.
Once I discovered I needed to change the way I thought about myself, I was able to embrace the necessary tools such as a supportive community and multiple spiritual practices to support me in my recovery.
I did do therapy; however, the conversation was never about how I felt. It was always about what I was doing.
I’ve learned that very few people really understand the motivation behind the abuse of alcohol and food.
I am over the moon this week to introduce you to Rachel Foy, a pioneer in eating psychology.
She resides in the UK and is highly regarded for her Food Addiction Recovery Method.
This girl knows the struggle with food intimately and it has inspired her to find transforming solutions.
This show is such a powerful conversation on the pain of food addiction and has numerous tips on how to heal from obsessive eating.
I am dedicated to supporting all of you in healing old wounds and releasing those behaviors that are robbing you from experiencing true joy in your lives.
I spend hours researching and reading books to find powerful guests like Rachel Foy to come on the show.
I would greatly appreciate it if you could jump over to Awakening Divine Wildness on Apple Podcasts and give the show a great rating. HINT: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ It only takes a minute and really helps me reach more women and attract more powerful guests.
Listen to the Awakening Divine Wildness podcast by clicking the play button on the audio player below.
Subscribe & Review Awakening Divine Wildness
iTunes l Spotify l Google Play l Stitcher l TuneIn
Read the Full Transcript
Mal: Well, today’s guest is a household name across the pond and she’s all over social media. And I’m so excited to have her on Awakening Divine Wildness today because she’s a leading authority on food addiction and I know addiction. Thirty-one years of recovery, I know addiction and I had alcoholism. If were food, I don’t know if I would’ve had the same success.
[00:00:36] So I’m thrilled to have this conversation today with our amazing guests, Rachel Foy, who’s an internationally acclaimed expert in eating dysfunction. She’s an author and a podcaster and an advocate for health at every size. With over 12 years of experience, both in the UK and Dubai, she’s a clinical and cognitive hypnotherapists, nutritional therapist, homeopath and NLP and EFT Practitioner, along with being a pioneer in eating psychology and the creator of the food addiction, ‘We Comfrey Method’. Rachel is the author of ‘The Hungry Soul’, I love the name of that. And a passionate speaker on all topics related to food dysfunction, diet culture, body image, female empowerment and addiction recovery. She founded soul fed women in 2017 to help professional women overcome addictive eating and food obsession through free workshops, resources, and her group program, which opens several times a year. Soul Fed Woman has gone on to become a training Academy where professional coaches can become certified in the food addiction recovery method. Rachel, thank you girl for being here today.
Rachel Foy: Thank you for reading. Can you just walk around and friends me mile and just announced that to the world wherever I go?
Mal: We’re going to lady, we’re going to.
Rachel Foy: Yea. Thank you.
Mal: This is such an important conversation because women struggle with food. Some, it’s a full-blown addiction. Others, it’s a sense of comfort when they become challenged and upset. I have many friends that battle food.
Rachel Foy: Yeah.
Mal: I mean I feel blessed when I hear about food. I say, “thank God I had alcohol” because I don’t know if I would’ve been able to manage food. So, let’s get right into understanding food addiction and how we can resolve it.
Rachel Foy: Yeah, it’s like one big, big conversation. It’s like where do we start. But just to kind of carry on to something that you mentioned, and I think it’s really important for everyone kind of listening.
[00:03:01] This is actually really common, and this is not something that, you know, we kind of used the word addiction and naturally there’s an, immediate association to it. And we do tend to think of alcohol. We do tend to think of like drugs and gambling. But actually, food addiction, from my experience, I perceive it to be the biggest issue when we talk about addictive and compulsive behaviour. Because it’s something that’s so socially acceptable. It’s something that we don’t kind of see as being as serious as of the kind of addictions in many ways, “oh, it’s just food”. And actually, it’s a very, very common issue particularly, and I do particularly work with women. Well, I would say this, it’s more common than what we realize and I just kind of want to mention that before we kind of delve into it.
Mal: I agree with you totally. I think it is so commonplace that women struggle with food.
Rachel Foy: Yeah, absolutely.
Mal: Emotionally we look to food for comfort.
Rachel Foy: [00:04:00] We do indeed and there were many aspects and like addictive eating and like why we do it and why it happens and therefore how come you overcome it? And from my, I mean from my experience I actually was a food addict in many ways, particularly around sugar and I was your very typical like yoyo dieter. I tried to lose weight in my teens and twenties and that was like a 14-year journey, I guess into the slippery slope of eating dysfunction, eating disorders and addictive eating. It’s only rarely true that person experience. I fully understand in many ways what a lot of my clients and my audience are actually struggling with because there is a lot of them, there’s a lot of secrecy around this as well. You know, what you’re getting is something that I’m so grateful for you inviting me on this show because the more that we can almost normalize it, that’s also going to help people because there were so many people right now that do struggle with food and they think that they’re somehow fundamentally like broken. That they’re the only person that’s doing it. That there’s something wrong with them. And I just, again, I want to reassure everybody that that isn’t the case. And certainly around the kind of the addictive eating part, which obviously we’re talking about, there are many, many, many reasons why somebody can become emotionally attached to food. I often use the expression more than addiction that we become emotionally attached to that particular thing. And I’m sure we’re going to delve into it now, but the emotional attachment is one of the biggest things that I work with, with my clients and with my origins. Because when we can understand that there is an actual positive reason there, I say this, there’s a positive reason why we can feel addicted to something and in this capacity, it’s food. We can start to take our power back, because we do often judge perceived negative behaviour as being somehow wrong and we shouldn’t be doing it. And it’s the mindset shift of realizing there’s some positive in that behaviour, although you might not like it at the time.
Mal: I agree with you 150% because it’s the same way with my alcohol.
Rachel Foy: Yeah, absolutely.
Mal: I was really addicted to it. I needed it to kill the pain.
Rachel Foy: Yeah.
Mal: I needed it to feel better about myself. And once I understood that my own thinking was what was causing all my suffering, I didn’t need alcohol any longer.
Rachel Foy: Yeah. And I would say that’s true with food. I do talk about food addiction and addictive eating. And it’s very controversial for me to say what I’m about to say, but I truly don’t believe that food is addictive. What is addictive is the emotional dependency to food because we can take a thousand people and feed them all donuts and feed them all the same kind of food and everybody will end up feeling addicted to that particular food. It’s the emotional aspect that we become addicted to. And something that you just said then, which is really important is particularly around any kind of addictive behaviour. But if we focus specifically on food, that can be quite clear reasons why somebody would use food in that capacity.
[00:07:10] And it can often kind of come down to two categories where we are either using it as a way of escaping and numbing out, which is really common. You know, we’ve had a bad day, we’ve had an argument, I’m just going to reach for the candy and the chocolate and that kind of thing. Or it’s the opposite. We’re actually running towards pleasure because particularly with food as well, there is an element of pleasure where we’re eating candy bars and we’re eating ice cream or eating like you know, things that we don’t often allow ourselves to eat. So those two reasons behind addictive eating again is something that anybody that feels that they’re struggling with this, that’s where they need to start looking. Now we saw they actually using it as escapism and numbing out. So moving away from something or are they choosing to use it as a way of moving towards something. And the pleasure aspect is actually one of the big things that I love to work within this field because, we often do have hungry cells syndrome, which is the name of my book and kind of the hungry soul aspect of and where food is actually filling that void, is actually quite fascinating in many cases.
Mal: Do you think that sugar is a almost like a drug when it comes to women in eating and wanting to feel good? I know even after giving up alcohol, I still had a very high need for sugar. And to this day if I get really bummed out about something or I have a really crappy day, I’ll say, “Oh, you know, I’ll have a little fudge Sunday” or “I’ll have a little piece of key lime pie”. Those are my two favorites. So sugar to me is as addictive as any drug out there.
Rachel Foy: [00:08:57] There’s a lot of difference schools of thought with this. And you know, there’s often the conversation about sugar is as addictive as like cocaine. And you know, there’s a lot of like class A drugs that get connected to sugar. My personal experience with this is still around the emotional triggers. So if we look at somebody who kind of is in a situation where you said you’ve had a bad day or you’re feeling stressed or you’re feeling annoyed or whatever it might be, our brain is actually wired to try and change that emotional state as quickly as possible because it’s about survival. And if we’re in a heightened state of stress, so our cortisol levels are going up and our nervous system is wired and we all know what that feels like. Our mind is trying to protect us by moving us out of that state as quickly as possible. And we do know that eating certain types of foods, sugar be one of them, so carbohydrates in particular. There was a momentary release off the happy hormone, it increases serotonin in the brain. Now that’s not to say that the sugar is therefore addictive, but what you can become addictive is actually needing to feel different. So the changing of emotional state is a big part of food addiction. It doesn’t happen in the same way as other kind of addictive behaviours. But certainly around like eating, because there’s a physiology, there’s a physiological aspect to food obviously when we’re conceiving it. This is something that we can’t ignore. So often in that situation, if I were working with you or working with someone that’s has a very sort of similar story, we’d be looking beyond the fact that you need to eat sugar and actually starting to get deeper down into the reasons behind why you need to sugar. It’s not about the sugar, it’s not wrong. There’s nothing wrong with it.
[00:10:40] But why is it that you are craving that serotonin hit. So therefore, we’re talking stress, we’re talking stress management, we’re talking triggers, we’re looking at maybe patterns of thoughts. We’re looking at maybe certain things within your world right now that may be are creating like anxiety or panic or fear. They’re the things that need addressing. It’s not about resisting the key lime pie. Does that make sense?
Mal: Absolutely. So walk us through how you work with one of your clients, helping them to identify that they’re in a situation now that’s gotten out of control. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about and I’m all about removing the stigma from addiction, from eating. There is nothing wrong with somebody who is overusing a substance because they’re doing it for emotional relief. That’s my feeling and they need help. They don’t need to be scorned and criticized. So I love that you point that out that we’ve got to get rid of this stigma. How you get someone to get comfortable, open up, admit how much they’re consuming and then what kind of path do you take them down?
Rachel Foy: [00:12:01] So obviously everyone’s very different. So one person to the next can be a completely different approach. But generally, one of the first things that we always kind of start looking at is actually the shame that can be attached to this behaviour. And certainly moving forward in any kind of transformational process, that client has got to be able to let the shame go because there is a lot of shame attached to sneaker eating and overeating and binging and kind of feeling guilty for it. And there’s just so much emotion, anyway. So we addressed the shame to start with and in terms of addressing it, that’s where my tool kit has been very useful. So it can be hypnotherapy, it can be therapeutic coaching, can be NLP, it could be EFT, it depends on what I feel is appropriate for that individual.
[00:12:46] But then moving forward, one of the other aspects, which again is not the same when it comes to other addictive behaviours is we actually start exploring food rules because the one thing that we can’t avoid being a human being is we can’t avoid food. Like food is part of who we are like. We have to eat it. It’s always going to be there. We can’t completely abstain from it and that would not be my suggestion either. We actually really delve into the food rules that an individual has because 99.9% of the time, a lot of addictive eaters and compulsive eaters, they have a lot of diet coacher into woven into their mindsets. So therefore they perceive some foods as being good, some foods are bad, therefore they are already categorizing food. And when anybody starts to bend your overeat, they never do it with the perceived good food. They always binge on the perceived bad foods. So we have to understand why, you know? And that comes from diet culture. It comes from the plans that we’ve been told we should be following. It comes from the food rules that we’d be conditioned to believe as being the truth. And a big part of my work with my clients is really starting them to start recognizing that many of their food rules that they’re trying to follow are actually creating the circumstances for food addiction to develop. It’s creating the circumstances of food obsession to really start to grow. And therefore they are in control of that because they can choose to let those rules go.
[00:14:14] So we acknowledged the rules and then following on from that, it’s about connection, which is kind of, you know, I know that you’re familiar with, you know, connecting to ourselves and all of this magical stuff that we often just don’t do. So connecting to our body through what I call body wisdom. It sounds very kind of abstract, it’s all about there. But it’s really, really fundamental in overcoming addictive eating. Like women need to learn to listen to themselves. They need to learn to be able to trust what they’re hearing. They need to create a relationship with their body, which is coming from a place of if it’s not acceptance and love, then at least neutrality, where it’s not complete like judgment and hatred. So that kind of the three major steps with obviously are the things in interwoven and trauma work can also come up quite a lot for my clients.
Mal: Do you encourage women to get into a program like an Overeaters? I mean I went to AA, I did 12 steps. Here in the States we have over eaters, do you encourage that or do you think its necessary? I think like a group setting, you like minded souls.
Rachel Foy: [00:15:29] Yeah. I think the group support is actually quite crucial I would say. And certainly from my experience, it’s quite interesting that you mentioned this. I’ve always worked one-to-one with people for like many, many years. I’ve also done group programs for many, many years and I’m slowly starting to move predominantly over to fully group work because there’s so much magic when women come together in that space of healing, you know. And actually having that kind of camaraderie of where the women going. I get that. I understand that. That’s how I feel. And also having that space to be vulnerable. You know, not everybody wants to open up immediately, but this so much magic in hearing another woman share her story for someone else to then recognize an aspect of themselves that they hadn’t acknowledged. So certainly the support aspect I think is very important. Not everybody wants that and that’s totally fine. But that’s obviously something that I do facilitate in the program that I offer, for sure.
Mal: I think when women get together, we create a sacred container.
Rachel Foy: Oh, absolutely.
Mal: Where we can honest. We can be vulnerable. We can talk about our fears. Talk about that shame, that guilt in places where, you know, you can’t do that anywhere else. Except in a place where we’re being held.
Rachel Foy: [00:16:51] And it’s so, I was going to say it’s so important. It’s beyond nice, so necessary, you now. That ability to be able to speak completely free with no judgment, with no nothing, it’s a completely safe container, as you said. This, I keep saying the same with much magic in it, but there really is. There’s so much magic in that, in that kind of ability to do so. And if we bring like the addictive eating back into the conversation, it’s amazing how those kind of support networks of just being able to share what’s going on or share our deepest fears or share kind of my day is and come up for me. That in itself can start to help that person move away from addictive eating because as we’ve said already, addictive eating serves a purpose. It’s numbing out the pain. It’s pushing things down. It’s not actually acknowledging the truth of what’s really going on. So if you’ve got another outlet in order to express that, you might not turn to the candy bars and the ice cream as much. It might not disappear overnight, granted, but that ability to just speak so freely is just, it’s really powerful.
Mal: I know when I went to my first AA meetings, the only way to describe it was I felt I was home. I felt I was with people that truly knew me, understood me, and did not judge me. I felt completely safe.
Rachel Foy: Yes.
Mal: And I never felt that way anywhere else.
Rachel Foy: [00:18:19] Yeah. And it’s so incredible to me, you know, even after all this time to hear women who will say like, “I’ve never told anyone this before. You know, I’ve been a secret eater. I’ve been a binging too. I’ve been an over eater for like a decade, two decades, three decades even and nobody knows. Like my husband doesn’t know. My partner doesn’t know. My kids don’t know.” And for someone to actually feel safe enough to open up and say that, that already is like they’re on that path now to overcoming it. Because they’ve actually acknowledged some of the thing that they’ve not perhaps wanted to. And I totally understand that concept of people get it, you know, and that’s why I will share my story a thousand times a day if I have to, for another woman to go, “Oh my God, she gets it. That’s what I’ve been doing as well.” You know, there’s, power in our story
Mal: And when we can say, “I have a problem, this is what it is.” That is, that’s the beginning of real recovery. When we no longer are denying, hiding. I mean, can you imagine hiding overeating or binge eating or purging, whatever for years and years from a partner or a loved one? The stress, the strain that that causes emotionally. I just can’t even imagine. I mean, my drinking was very public. I didn’t hide it.
Rachel Foy: Yeah. And as we said food is just so socially acceptable. So it’s not often something that people might be suspicious of or think, “Oh, I think maybe she’s got an issue with it” because it’s so easy to hide it. Like it is so easy to hide it. But you’re right, like the emotional, the emotional bandwidth that it takes up for anybody to maintain that is huge, you know? And in terms of the passion I guess that I have for helping women overcome it is because when you get to that place where food is just food and it doesn’t really have that attachment anymore, you’re free to live the life that you desire, where food doesn’t fill you up, like you’re filling yourself upon a different level. And yet there’s that. Yeah, absolutely.
Mal: With food, correct me on this if I’m wrong, that the difference that it may have with say an addictive substances, with food, it may not be so much quantity as the patterns that you use in the consumption, the negative patterns, that make it uncontrollable.
Rachel Foy: [00:20:51] It can be, it can be both to be fair. Like some people can obviously, a significant large amount of food in one setting. So if we’re going to use labels, which I’m not a fan of, so kind of binge behaviour is very much that it’s like a big amount of food and won’t go. But yeah, I mean patterns are very common as they are for a lot of compulsive behaviour to be fair. But you tend to see that pattern with the, either the emotional connection, so people eating as we’ve already said, to numb things out or to seek more pleasure because they’re not getting it from other areas. But also like, that diet mentality that I mentioned earlier, you know, that diet mindset of “I’m trying to be good. You need that that I’m trying to eat perfectly.” That can also be a very big part of this conversation because that can trigger the binge behaviour. It can trigger the addictive tendencies. If anyone listening that is perhaps they chronic diet to which I used to be, I’m sure that they understand that you can try and be good all week long and then weekends hit and then there’s a party and then there’s a celebration and then you feel like you failed. And if that pattern keeps repeating itself, which it will do because we know that diets long-term don’t work. That starts to erode on our self-belief. It starts to detach us from our body wisdom. We start to believe that we’re at fault. We then start to stigmatize and turn food into a moral issue. So there’s all this stuff that’s feeding into food addiction. And that’s why it’s a big part of the conversation. Like we have to have it.
Mal: Another big question for you. What do you think the success rate is in recovering from food addiction?
Rachel Foy: [00:22:27] I believe it’s possible for anyone and I openly say this in my workshops and podcasts and et cetera because I was that person. You know somebody had said to me when I was at the peak of my dysfunction, that at some point in the near future you will not be obsessed, you will not feel addictive, food will be very neutral, you’ll enjoy it, but it no longer takes up headspace. I probably would not have believed them if I’m honest. But now being where I am, I know that it’s possible and I know that if people want to overcome it, it is possible with the right kind of help and support. And I would suggest anybody that is curious about this, obviously there are many different ways that anything can be changed and overcome, but really start to get into the depths of the behaviour. It’s not about staying on the surface. It’s not about trying to abstain from it or limit it or self-control it because long-term, that’s not going to work with food because it’s all around us.
[00:23:26] It’s about understanding the depth and the triggers and the reasons why somebody eats the way they do. Because when you understand why you can start to change that, heal that, rewrite that, work through that, whatever it might be. But I believe that anybody that truly desires to waiver, commit with the right help and support and they can do.
Mal: I love that. And you know what? I love the fact that you have walked this path and you have figured it out. You’re totally transparent that, “Hey lady, I’ve been there, I know your pain and now I know a way how to get out of it.” Rachel, you have a fabulous free gift for the audience and I’d love you to describe it to them and tell them how they can get it.
Rachel Foy: [00:24:09] I would love to, thank you. So I run every couple of months or so alive, five day program. It’s completely free. I don’t charge for it. And it’s called ‘How to Overcome Addictive Eating and Make Peace with Food’. And this five days, if anyone’s really new to this kind of conversation and I would highly invite you to start there. So you can register over soulfedwoman.com, forward slash freedom. I believe the next one is starting end of January, beginning of February, but it’s really powerful five days. All about eating psychology and mindset. We delve into food rules. I give you some really practical things and it’s absolutely worth your time in giving me the five days because it’s powerful.
Mal: And it’s all lodged. Is there anything recorded? So if somebody should sign up afterwards, they could listen to a replay or anything?
Rachel Foy: It’s all done live because I like to be live in my community, then I can engage and answer questions, but there are loads of extra bits on the website anyway, over at soulfedwoman.com. So there’s loads of bits and pieces that you can get access to immediately, but the five day program is definitely worth keeping your eye unregistering for.
Mal: Oh, it sounds wonderful. I’d love to close the show with a nugget of wisdom that you love to share with women.
Rachel Foy: As soon as you said, that the first thing that comes into my head is does it matter about your past? It doesn’t matter what you’ve done. Doesn’t matter what you’ve tried. It doesn’t matter what you’ve tried to, you know, do to fix yourself. We know we don’t fix ourselves anyway. But none of that, none of that has got any influence over your future. Okay? This is all about recognizing that the past is the past. So understanding that you can make decisions and you can make choices every single moment of every single day that will completely change the path that you’re walking on. But that lies in your power. That’s got nothing to do with anyone else. And just realizing that the past has gotten no resemblance to who you can be in the future.
Mal: I love that. I often say to women when we release all that old suitcase that we’ve been dragging around with us for years, just let that sucker go.
Rachel Foy: Absolutely!
Mal: Free ourselves up. I mean, God bless us. We’re such divine beings and at the same time, we can be so hard on ourselves. One of those things is judging ourselves and holding onto the past. And I can’t think of a better way for women to kick off 2020 then to free themselves from an unhealthy attraction to eating.
Rachel Foy: Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more and change can happen really quickly. That would also be my other nugget of wisdom. Is it doesn’t have to take a decade to overcome decades worth of food dysfunction. It can happen really fast and I’ve seen it happen really fast. So yeah, change can happen as quickly as it as it can happen.
Mal: Rachel, bless you for this. This has been really powerful. I know women are going to love this and I can’t thank you enough for taking time and sharing this with me today and our audience.
Rachel Foy: Thank you very much for having me.
Mal: You are doing beautiful work. It’s just wonderful. It’s, so needed.
Rachel Foy: Thank you. Thank you for having me. And thank you for inviting this conversation as well, because it’s a very important one to have.
Mal: My honour. Thank you.
NOTES
[00:00:35] Introduction of Rachel Foy.
[00:03:01] Rachel emphasized that eating addiction is very common.
[00:04:00] Rachel tells of her experience with her eating addiction and uses the word expression instead of addition.
[00:06:38] Rachel highlights that the problem is not being addicted to food but the emotional dependency on food.
[00:07:10] Rachel highlights the two categories of why women have eating disorders; a way to escape and numbing a feeling.
[00:08:57] Rachel explains the different schools of thought and changing of emotional state is a big part of food addiction.
[00:10:40] Rachel highlights why women are addicted to food; stress, stress management and triggers.
[00:12:01] Rachel lists the path to overcome foot addiction. First step is let the shame go.
Because there is a lot of shame attached to sneaker eating and overeating and binging and kind of feeling guilty for it. And there’s just so much emotion, anyway. So we addressed the shame to start with and in terms of addressing it, that’s where my tool kit has been very useful. So it can be hypnotherapy, it can be therapeutic coaching, can be NLP, it could be EFT, it depends on what I feel is appropriate for that individual.
[00:12:46] Second step is exploring food rules.
[00:14:11] Third step is connecting. Creating a relationship with their body.
[00:15:29] Rachel agrees that group support is very important.
[00:16:51] Rachel states that you can overcome food addiction too by speaking freely with no judgement.
[00:18:19] Rachel admits that women who have eating disorders are very secretive and will hide their problems from their families and close friends.
[00:20:51] Rachel talks about stigmatizing of the victims and the effect of dieting.
[00:22:27] Rachel explains her success rates.
[00:23:26] Rachel talks about understanding the depth and the triggers and the reasons why somebody eats the way they do.
[00:24:09] Rcahel talks about her upcoming event ‘How to Overcome Addictive Eating and Make Peace with Food’.
