Uncovering the Reasons for Overeating and Drinking w/Molly Zemeck

Jennifer Francis (00:00) If you're like me and some food like ice cream is your weakness, or if you feel that you may have an unhealthy relationship with alcohol, maybe this episode is for you. Today's guest is a professionally trained chef and author of the book, Decoding Your Emotional Appetite, A Food Lover's Guide to Weight Loss. Molly Zemeck is also the host of Weight Loss for Food Lovers podcast.

My guest today is Molly Zemeck. Welcome Molly. Thank you for coming and speaking to us and Solomons talk. Well, thank you so much for having me, Jen. I'm excited for this conversation. Sure. Before we get into what you do, could you tell us who is Molly? Well, I am a daughter and a mother and a sister and a food lover and a coach.

And I am just on a journey of really becoming the best version of myself and really helping other people be empowered to do the same. All right, thank you for introducing yourself. I always like to dig into that a little bit. All right, you talk about weight loss and as it relates to food, eating.

And drinking, but drinking alcohol, right? Yes. Okay. That's correct. All right. So how do we uncover why we eat and drink too much? Well, this is a topic that I have explored for the last five years because I was somebody who really turned to food and drinking for comfort. Often I'm

a professionally trained chef and a certified sommelier. And I spent 10 years working as a chef and studying wine and eating and drinking was really a pleasure for me at the end of the day and a way to manage stress. And so as a way for me to kind of end habits of mindless eating and drinking so that I could begin to feel better, I had to really start listening to my body. And this is usually the first step in uncovering reasons

why we're turning to food maybe beyond what we need or drinking in a way that's not making us feel good. By listening to just the feedback of your body, for me, I was just really physically unwell. And my body was starting to tell me that alcohol was interfering with my sleep, it was affecting my mood, and that the way I was eating was creating digestive issues was

robbing me of energy, was robbing me of time. And so I began this process of listening to my body and then also retraining myself to only kind of respond to hunger at first. So instead of just always focusing on eating for the sake of the pleasure and eating, I started just listening more to my body. And when my body wasn't hungry, but I was thinking about food,

Then I had to ask myself, OK, what is it that you really need right now? Because if hunger isn't the problem, food is not the solution. And that's how you start to discover what the reasons are. You're turning to food. It's like, I'm tired. And I think that eating will give me energy, or eating will help me feel better. Instead of, I'm tired, I should probably lie down and rest. That's what I need. Or, I'm lonely.

I'm not actually hungry. I'm lonely and I need to connect with somebody. How can I start to do that in ways that don't involve eating because food can't solve that problem either. Right. Yeah, it's true. A similar thing happened to me because I realized that I recognize that when I was stressed, you know, or downed, I wanted ice cream and I'm not lying. I could eat

a pint of ice cream like that, but I don't even notice that I'm eating the ice cream because it's satisfying that whatever is in my head, that emotional stuff that's going on. So I can totally relate to that. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. But you had awareness at some point that you had just eaten ice cream for reasons other than physical hunger. And so

I think that that's a great starting point is to just notice like, wait a minute. I just ate this whole pint of ice cream and I wasn't hungry. So what's going on here? And then just begin asking those questions. The beautiful part about going through this process, Jen, is that you really start to understand yourself at a deeper level. Yes. Is that you start to kind of understand the emotions below the surface, what it is that you're really.

you know, where you feel like you're kind of missing something and what those deeper needs are. Right. But it isn't easy. It's not an easy thing to, it's even when you become aware, right, why you're eating. As mothers, we tend to stress ourselves out and all kinds of things. And it's when we get to that point where we either blow up like a balloon or

you know, we're getting more and more depressed because unfortunately I never had to deal with the alcohol part, but I can tell you I did with a lot of ice cream, right? Which has the same effect, right? So, but, but how do you navigate that? Like, like what brought you to that full awareness? Did you feel like you were unhealthy and you thought back to why you were unhealthy or?

What was it? Well, you know, our bodies change and our response to food and alcohol changes. And so I, you know, when I was in my twenties, I, you know, could eat and drink more and really not feel a lot of the negative side effects, right? I can miss out on some sleep and feel fine. I also was able to sleep better because, you know, my hormones were different then.

But then when I was in my 40s and I was a mom of three boys, I still am a mom of three boys, my body had changed and my stress level had changed. And all of a sudden, my relationship with food and alcohol was changing, too. And I realized that, you know, it was having a worse impact on my body. And so that was kind of the turning point for me was realizing, like, wow, like my nightly habit of having a couple of glasses of wine.

is just psychologically making me feel a lot worse. My mood was affected, my sleep was affected in a way that it hadn't been in the past. I became aware that it affected my ability to show up as the mom that I wanted to be, which hadn't been an issue before. And then my eating, I couldn't eat the same way I ate in my 20s and 30s and be able to just go on a diet and lose the weight. And I was developing digestive

issues, which I hadn't had before. So it was kind of that, you know, that feedback from my body at that point that made me realize like, something's got to change because I just don't feel great. I'm not motivated. I don't have a lot of energy. My sleep is suffering. And, and I knew that something needed to be different. Right. Yeah. Cause your body really is that is, is the expert.

Right? All right. Your body knows what makes it feel good and what doesn't. Yes. And it will give you signals. Yeah, for sure. Okay. Thank you. What are some of the main reasons that people struggle with drinking less or avoiding drinking altogether or eating less? I think that people struggle with figuring out how to eat less and to drink less because, you know,

the only approach that maybe they're familiar with is going on a diet or a detox program. Those plans typically don't address what's motivating the person to eat or drink. You could go on a diet and eliminate foods. You could go on a diet and stay within a certain calorie range, but you're not actually changing the habit so that when the diet's over and you've lost the weight,

You're you're going to go right back to eating the way that you used to and you're going to regain the weight and then you're going to feel defeated and you're going to make it and a lot of people often make that mean that there's something wrong with that. Like, OK, well, there must be something wrong with me that I wasn't able to keep the weight off. It's like, no, there's nothing wrong with you. You just only dealt with the symptom and treated things on a surf on the surface level. You didn't actually get to the underlying cause of why you're eating. And so until you address the cause and you start to really

manage your feelings differently and you start to find new ways to address your needs, that habit will persist and people feel frustrated because they don't understand that missing piece, which that's kind of why I wrote my book, Decoding Your Emotional Appetite, was to help people make sense of that so that they realize like, like this is the piece that I need to figure out so that I feel more in control. Right. Okay. So tell us about the book and

Moving on from that, tell us what you do, what you do for your clients. So the book is called Decoding Your Emotional Appetite. And it really is the story of my journey of physical transformation, of losing weight and drinking less. And really on a deeper level, just uncovering a lot of my emotions that I hadn't dealt with and learning how to heal my relationship with food and myself.

And then stories of all of my clients that I have coached inside of my private coaching business. And then a lot of the concepts that I teach in my business is a way to help people feel more empowered around food and alcohol. And I wrote the book as a way to just get this information into the hands of more and more people who are struggling, who need a different solution other than dieting. And so it's kind of a reflection of what I do in my coaching business, which is

a private program where I take clients through a 12 week private program of customized food plans and one -to -one coaching where we kind of navigate the obstacles that are making it hard for them to commit and stay consistent. And then really addressing the underlying reasons why they might be eating or drinking in ways that aren't helping them feel their best. Right. Okay. All right. Thank you. And now can we get in touch with you?

the best place is my website, www .mollizemek .com. But I also have a podcast that's called weight loss for food lovers. So there's a ton of free information on both of those places where people can kind of learn more about what this process is like. Right. Okay. And we'll put those links in the show notes so people can get to it. All right. Thank you. What are the three biggest obstacles?

to someone being able to successfully lose weight and keep it off. That's something I struggle with quite a bit. I've kind of given up. But what are some of those things that people struggle with? I think the biggest obstacle is really believing in themselves. I think that's what prevents people from really taking the initiative to change.

I think there are many people who want to change their relationship with food or who want to be able to drink less, but just don't think that they'll be able to do it. And so because they lack that belief in themselves or they feel defeated because they've tried diets and then the diets don't really work long -term and they just think like, what's the point? I'm not going to be able to do it. They give up and they stop trying. That's the big obstacle. And what I want

to say to that is that just because those approaches didn't work in the past doesn't mean that there isn't a way that you can figure it out. So don't give up hope, like continue to be an advocate for yourself and really lean into the possibility that you can feel better. It could just be that you don't have all the information you need to really make a permanent change. Another obstacle is that people think that, well, in order to be at my ideal size, I need to kind of give up the food that I love.

I have to like eat in a very restrictive way and nobody wants to do that. I mean, I don't know a lot of people who want to do that. And so most people just will, will put it off because they think that the only way they'll be able to kind of make a change is by giving up the food they love. And that's not true either. You just have to learn the skill of eating in a more conscious way so that you can enjoy more pleasure with less food.

Many of us just eat with so many distractions that we're not even really paying attention to the food and we're certainly not paying attention to our bodies. And so no wonder we just keep eating. Right. So it's just a skill that you have to learn. But when you do, you can incorporate food that you love and be at your ideal weight. And then when it comes to drinking, I think a lot of people think, look, I either have to just give up alcohol altogether or I might as well just like keep doing what I'm doing.

And those aren't the only two options. Like you can actually learn how to cut back on drinking. You don't have to give it up altogether. You can learn a mindful approach to drinking less. So I would say those are the big obstacles. And then I would say consistency. People, you know, even if they decide to make a change, might commit for a short period of time, but then they can't stay consistent. It's like,

like things get hard, life happens and they just give up. So that's, that's where coaching comes in is that I help people continue to commit to themselves every single day, continue to take baby steps in a way that it is doable. They're not making drastic changes. They're not restricting and depriving themselves. They're actually making doable changes that they can easily sustain for a longer period of time. Okay. All right. Thank you. But it's a conundrum, isn't it? Because you're suffering.

emotionally, most likely, and food or alcohol or both is your go to comfort, right? That's where you find comfort. And then the effects of overeating or drinking too much may drive you to feeling guilty, which kind of repeats the cycle again, right? So I'm going to ask you to give a solo mom a couple of tips.

to manage that scenario. Yes, I'd love to. I think one of the best things that you can do to heal your relationship with yourself and with food is to release the self judgment. Now it's a practice because a lot of us do this, you know, unconsciously, we just have this constant tape of self criticism, right? Especially when it comes to food.

And so start to notice that, start to notice like, okay, let's say it's a day where you do end up eating the ice cream and maybe typically you'll give yourself a hard time for it or you're like, you feel guilty or you'll reprimand yourself verbally for doing that. One simple way to change this is just by starting to talk back to yourself with love. One of the ways that I can do this is just by telling myself, no, that's not helpful.

That's not useful. We don't talk to ourselves that way anymore. And I started doing this over time because I realized like, I don't have to talk to myself that way. Just because that's been the habit in the past doesn't mean that I have to accept that. And so anytime that thought would come up unconsciously, like, you did something wrong or that was bad. You made a mistake. I was just like immediately respond and say, no, that's not useful. We don't talk to ourselves that way.

The other thing that I will tell myself when this happens or that I recommend to clients is that we just tell ourselves, this is just food. This is not a big deal. As a way to neutralize it, it's a wonderful opportunity to just accept yourself. And from a place of acceptance and just acknowledge, OK, I did just eat that bowl of ice cream. I wonder why I felt like I needed that tonight. Because clearly, I felt like

this was the right thing to do. Now, I don't love the way I feel. Like, I don't really love the effect it has on my body. I don't feel that great. That's good to know. But I really want to kind of understand myself in this moment and figure out why did I feel like I needed the ice cream? What was going on for me that I felt like I had to eat that much?

What do I think some of my underlying needs were and use it as an opportunity to have a positive conversation with yourself from a place of compassion. Okay. All right. Thank you. Yeah, it takes practice, but just be willing to do that. Be willing to change the dialogue that you have with yourself. Yeah. So do some positive self -talk allowed. Yeah.

All right. Thank you. I appreciate you coming and talking to us today, Molly Zemek. Any parting shots? I would just encourage solo moms out there to really lean into the possibility that they can feel better, that they can change some of these habits, that it is possible for them, but they need to really believe in themselves. They need to imagine

you know, their future self who feels better or who maybe looks better and maybe has a different way of coping with stress, a different way of taking care of herself. And to start to just practice thinking that it might be possible, it might be possible that I can figure this out. And then what are some small changes that I could make today? I don't have to do a drastic overhaul, but I'm just going to make like a couple of small changes and just be a little bit more mindful of my body. Okay. All right. Thank you. I appreciate it.

All right, well, thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity. Yes, for sure.