I bet that title opened your eyes a bit wider. Did it also make your blood boil? Mine certainly did when someone actually said those exact words to me at a restaurant I was at for a friend's birthday last weekend.
I was standing with a group of people chatting when a man approached us and handed each one of us his business card. Before we could respond that we weren't interested, he began to launch into an unsolicited sales pitch about his nutritional supplement store. After about 5 minutes of a boring lecture about how "carbs are bad" I interrupted to let him know that I also work in the health and wellness biz and he needn't lecture me about carbs. This was my tactic to get him to go away, but unfortunately, it had the opposite effect. The man became agitated and began quizzing me on my knowledge and schooling.
After a few go-rounds about good carbs and bad carbs, I asked him about the psychological side of eating. I stated that maybe it's not just about whether you eat or don't eat carbs (and by maybe I mean it definitely is NOT just about eating carbs). I told him that I work with people on the psychological side of eating and exercise and how it's not just a matter of telling people what or how to eat but helping them understand why they are eating in the first place. That some people deal with binge eating disorders and emotional eating on a regular basis which makes it incredibly hard to stick to diets like the one he was lecturing us about.
He immediately came back with, "Oh please, there's no such thing as the 'psychological side' of eating!"
(Record skip noise) Wait whaaaaaa? Did he really just say that?
I just looked at him and said, "There absolutely is and if you choose to ignore this fact, you have no business working in the health and wellness field."
I started to get up and walk away from this hazardous person, but he followed and yelled as I walked away.
"People who can't follow a simple low-carb diet are just fat, lazy slobs who use emotions as an excuse to eat all day!"
I could've turned around and spewed some facts about how 75 percent of overeating is linked to emotional eating [1]. Or, that our fight or flight response to stress triggers a hormonal reaction in our brain to seek carb-laden foods in order to replenish the stores that we used to combat that stress [2], or that there are thousands of skinny people who eat carbs all day and don't gain a pound and don't necessarily do anymore exercise than people with more fat on their body [3], or that people who berate themselves or are berated by others about WHAT they eat are more likely to increase their instance of overeating. [4]
But alas, it's best to deal with these in-your-face, confrontational people by just walking away, which is exactly what I did.
After reflecting on this situation several times, I realized two things:
1. Some people are pure assholes.
2. Much of our culture doesn't recognize that there is so much more to eating/exercise than just following a prescribed diet.
Do you recognize that? Do you realize that you might be a victim of some deep-seated issues around food and exercise that go way beyond having the "willpower" to follow some ridiculous diet? That's why I wrote my recent blog post about emotional eating and the steps you can practice to help you squash it out for good.
I'm not saying you'll be able to follow a low-carb diet effortlessly after reading it (because personally, I find low-carb diets crush my soul and I would never ever tell someone that they need to follow one if I can't), but you'll become more aware of what emotional eating looks like for you and when you are doing it. Awareness, after all, is the KEY to improving many compulsive behaviors.
Also, I want you to know that there are people in the world who spend hours researching your deepest fears and pain points so that they can use those to sell you a boatload of BS supplements, fad diets, or whatever product they're slinging. Don't buy it -- physically or psychologically. These people usually have nothing good to sell anyway (if they did -- they wouldn't need insults and fear mongering to do it).
So, if this post resonates with you, I'd be thrilled if you checked out my post on emotional eating (which absolutely DOES exist and is a huge issue for many many people) and I hope that it helps you with your eating and exercise journey moving forward.
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