Sept. E-news: You’re Being Manipulated

Hello!

I have added quite a few of you to my email list this week. Please know how glad I am that you’re here.

I welcome and appreciate your sharing with people you think may appreciate this newsletter, or who may also appreciate…

My new Facebook group!  It’s called “Janet Frank Emotional Eating FB Group.”

Here’s the link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1280463526308573

This group is a safe, supportive, educational, and hopefully fun place for women only. Please join us! This newsletter may sometimes focus on things beyond emotional eating, although that is a real passion of mine. 

My biggest goal for you all regarding emotional eating is to help you eliminate the shame around eating.

The food industry and the diet industry are not your friends. They’re full of misinformation and cookie-cutter strategies that may be appropriate for only a tiny fraction of us, if any. We judge and measure ourselves against standards set by industries driven solely by profit.  I will go into this more over time.

I loosely lump the struggles we have with food and emotional eating into three buckets:  Learning, Loving, and Living. The food and diet industries fit mostly in the Learning space.

One important nugget of Learning: Did you know that the food industry (and we’re generally talking processed food here) employs food scientists to come up with a “bliss point?” This is a scientifically researched and manipulated point of perfect flavor (usually sweet or salty combos) to get us coming back for the maximum portions.

Yep, they’re deliberately manipulating you so that you CANNOT stop eating this stuff.

For this reason alone, shame does not belong in your eating struggles. It needs to start with knowledge. You deserve to know that your brain is being deliberately hijacked. The goal is to override any system in your brain that would say, “Stop, you’ve had enough” so that you keep eating. The more you eat, the more money they make. Plain and simple.

We all know that Big Tobacco got in trouble for concealing the fact that cigarette smoking was addictive, right? Guess which companies own lots of the processed food companies? You got it. See more here:  https://lsa.umich.edu/psych/news-events/all-news/faculty-news/many-of-today-s-unhealthy-foods-were-brought-to-you-by-big-tobac.html

So of course, this new knowledge doesn’t magically erase your cravings, I know. The process of overcoming emotional eating or food addiction takes time, and it’s not easy. But nothing worth doing is usually easy, right? I am here to support you. We’ll talk much more about this over time.

You are always welcome to contact me with questions. My email is [email protected], and you can schedule a free consultation through my website at janetfrankcoaching.com. If none of the available times work, just shoot me an email and we’ll find one.

To close, a juicy tidbit!

Did you know that you can eat the skin of a kiwi? We all fall short of the recommended amounts of fiber we’re supposed to get. Fiber does all kinds of things for us at a cellular level, which are critical to good health and disease prevention.

It seems like it would be gross and hairy, but the skin is actually really thin, dissolves to almost nothing with 3-4 chews, completely unlike what I expected.

Feeling adventurous?  I literally just bite into it like an apple. The only parts I don’t eat are the little buttons on the end. I dare you… report back! I’d love to hear how you found it!

I watched a video of a nutritionist I like to follow who shared this kiwi tip, and he also ate the skin of a banana!! I haven’t ventured that far yet. I mentioned it to my husband who shot back, “Even monkeys peel bananas” but then he second-guessed himself and looked it up. Apparently if they’re starving, they’ll eat the whole thing. (Consider this entire paragraph as hearsay and not scientific fact! )

Thank you for reading! Please feel free to contact me, and I hope you’ll join the group.

I love to do presentations, and can speak about emotional eating as well as work-life balance. If you belong to an organization where these could be helpful, there is no charge. Employers, church groups, a women’s group, a neighborhood group, all fine. Please feel free to get in touch. All virtual unless you’re local, in which case I can be in person.

To Your Good Health,

Janet

Janet Frank, Ph.D., A-CFHC, NBC-HWC, PFAC

National Board Certified Health & Wellness Coach

ADAPT Certified Functional Health Coach

Certified Professional Food Addiction Coach

janetfrankcoaching.com

(also on LinkedIn)