BEE #127: Navigating Grief and Emotional Eating

Welcome to a deeply personal episode of the Breakthrough Emotional Eating Podcast, where I invite you to join me on a journey through the intricate connection between grief and emotional eating. As I share my own experiences of profound loss, I offer insights and strategies for navigating the complex emotions that accompany grief.

• Understanding Grief: I delve into the multifaceted nature of grief, sharing raw and authentic stories of loss and its impact on both body and mind.

• The Physiology of Grief: Explore the physiological responses triggered by grief, from the activation of the fight-or-flight response to the phenomenon of broken heart syndrome.

• Empowering Choices: Discover the power of choice in the grieving process as I discuss the importance of reclaiming agency amidst loss.

• The Three C's of Grief: I introduce the Three C's of grief—Choose, Connect, Communicate—as essential pillars for navigating the journey of grief.

• Transformative Healing: From regulating the nervous system through mindful breathing to embracing vulnerability in communication, I offer tools for transformative healing in the face of grief.

Join me as I extend a compassionate hand to listeners grappling with grief, illuminating a path of resilience, healing, and self-discovery. Tune in to gain profound insights and practical strategies for navigating the journey of grief and emotional eating.

Connect with me online:

1. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/breakthroughemotionaleating/
2. You Tube channel, Kristin Jones Coaching: https://www.youtube.com/@KristinJonesCoaching44
3 . Website: https://www.kristinjonescoaching.com

If you want to learn more about a non-diet approach to weight loss, get my FREE Stop Dieting Guide. Go to https://go.kristinjonescoaching.com/stop-dieting-guide

Needing more specific and direct support for your emotional eating and overeating? Check out my online course, Stop Dieting Start Feeling, and my personalized coaching program, Breakthrough To You.

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Transcript

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Do you want to lose weight but are tired of the restrictions and deprivation that accompanies a diet? Does food provide you comfort when you are lonely, bored, angry, or sad? If so, you are in the right place. My name is Kristen Jones, and I'm a life coach specializing in emotional eating and weight loss, and I'm also a lifelong emotional eater. I want to provide you with information, motivation, and support. So you too can learn to manage your emotion and thoughts and develop a healthy relationship with food and yourself. Welcome to the Breakthrough Emotional Eating Podcast. Hi, and welcome to the Breakthrough Emotional Eating Podcast. My name is Kristen Jones, and I am especially happy that you are here with me this week. today's episode of my podcast is going to be something that is unfortunately so near and dear to my heart right now. And, that is the topic of grief and grief and emotional eating. And so what a little, a little background. I did a little bit of background when I promoted This episode and that was that in the last well, it's been more like nine months, but in the last Two months in the month of January I lost two very significant people in my life and that had been over the course of about ten months of of illness and Just you know, just I was losing, losing, you know, gradually going through, the process of losing two people in my life. And I felt that it was really important because I have been trying to deal with my own grief and deal with the way it, it just hits me out of nowhere. I mean, I think that I'm, I'm doing well. I think that I can, I'm handling things and then all of a sudden I don't have a clue. That's it. I don't have a clue. I can't focus. I can't think about anything. And so it's, it's, it's been so baffling to me. And so I really felt like I needed to do some research. I needed to figure out what was actually going on because I didn't understand it myself. I didn't understand what was happening and why I was, you know, Having these types of experiences. So just a tiny bit of background, probably 10 months ago, probably in April of last year, my dad was diagnosed with, it was actually probably before that, but my dad was diagnosed with stage four, dementia and. You know, when your parents, my dad was 87 years old and, or at the time was 86 and you know, when, when you, we all know our parents are going to die at some point and you know that that's, you know, when they get to be a certain age, that that's going to happen. And so I had kind of been preparing myself for that to happen. And I had been spending a lot of time with my dad and it had been really amazing. And I had felt very, connected and very, good about, the amount of time in the interactions that I had had with him. And, but it was, but it was still really challenging. It was really challenging because my dad was really unhappy. My dad had been a very, very active, active person and very, very proud. And his life had changed considerably, not only in the, in the last 10 months, but in the last 10 years. But when, you know, when you have somebody who's older, you kind of, you kind of start to mentally prepare yourself for like, okay, I know what's coming. I know this is, I know this is happening. just about a month after that, my 33 year old niece, Elisa was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer that had metastasized to her brain, to her spine and to her liver. And that. was not something that any of us were prepared for. I don't, she wasn't prepared. None of us, you know, you don't, you don't, nobody's prepared for that. And, so, and we almost lost her about three weeks after she was diagnosed. Her cancer had already obviously progressed significantly and, and we almost lost her. But we didn't. And she was making a really, amazing recovery, recovery to the extent of the recovery that she could make, because her cancer was already very advanced. And the blessing was we got six more months with her and that was amazing. But if you've been around anybody with cancer, if you know anybody who has cancer, when, when cancer is present, your life can change. In hours, and that is what happened. And, in the beginning of January, she got sick and, and within, you know, he had already had a, a one hospital stay and we had gotten her home for Christmas. And then she went back in after New Year's and, Never came back out. And so we lost her on January 6th. And then, 16 days later, we lost my dad. And so that was a lot. It was a lot to deal with and a lot to take in. And so one of the things that I, Wanted to get out of this podcast was kind of letting people know like what? What first what happens with grief? What what is grief because we hear about it, but we don't really understand Like how does this what is it? And how does it happen? What is it? What does it do to our bodies? What does it do to our brains and then how does it? How do we, how do we get our, it's not even how do we get ourselves out of it. It's just, how do we allow ourselves to go through it? How do we allow ourselves to go through it? Because nobody knows. There is no prescribed length of time. There's no prescription for you should be sad for a certain amount of time. You should cry for a certain amount of time and then you should be past it and you should be done. Cause that's not how this works. So, I have a lot of notes and, and I want to make sure that I, that I really give grief and grief and how it relates to how we respond to it. And in our case here on this podcast, how it relates to emotional eating, and it's really not even just emotional eating. It's just our own. Responses to grief and it could be emotional eating. It could be, falling into a depression. It could be, starting to drink more. It could be starting to spend more money. Any of those things, any of those responses that we oftentimes do, In relationship to and why we do them because I think part of the problem is, is that people get in their minds that, well, it's been a certain amount of time and this person is no longer here. And also, I want to, I want to specify that grief is not just about someone dying. Grief could be. The loss of a job. It could be someone moving away. It could be the loss of a friendship. It could be, the loss of a pet. All of those things are, are totally significant and can create the grief response. And they're all equally important. They're all valuable and they're all things that we, that we need to address. And so I think, the first, you know, the first thing that, that I want to address is that grief. Grief will do a number of things to our bodies and to our brain when it happens immediately. It's sometimes it's, it's sometimes it's immediate, but it also has this ripple effect. And so I want to start off by talking about the impact that grief has on our bodies as well as our brains and then how that kind of manifests itself. So the, When, when someone has a loss, the first thing that happens is they can be, they, it activates in their bodies. It activates the flight, the fight, flight, or freeze response. And that causes. It will cause physical things to happen to our bodies and it will cause an increase in blood pressure, in respiration rate. And again, that happens immediately, but it also, so let me go back through it. It increases, respiration increase, increases our blood pressure. It increases our response to our stressors, our natural stress responses that we have. And so. Those things start to happen to our bodies and when that fight or flight, and we know about fight or flight anyway, but when that happens, it happens not only immediately after someone dies, but it can also happen repeatedly when. Someone goes into a restaurant or a place that reminds them of that loved one. They can be swept up in that same response. That grief response can happen at any time. It could be two weeks after the person passes away or leaves. It could be six months. It could be two years. It's that, that can happen and it can come out of nowhere and what happens is when people aren't prepared for that, they think that there's, there's something wrong with their grieving process or they're, they're weak and they have a tendency to isolate themselves and that makes the situation even worse. So our bodies go through all of these, these responses and those are all very, very normal responses, but our body sees them as a threat. And so when our body feels, when our brain sees us as being threatened, it is going to do what it needs to do. And it increases that stress response of what are we, how are we going to respond to that? And most people will turn to something to alleviate that stress. That stress and alleviate that stress and oftentimes and bring their their Regulate their nervous system because their nervous system has become dysregulated It brings their nervous system back into regulation and one of the most common things that people do in order to bring their Their, system back into regulation is to eat. And that is a very, very common response to any kind of stressor, but especially a stressor such as, such as grief. So our bodies will, our bodies will do that. So that is, that is one thing that can happen immediately, but it can also happen over the long haul. Thank you. There's another thing that happens to our bodies physiologically that there has been shown. There's been research shown that in 2014, they did a study. And when a person had experiences, grief experiences, especially the loss of a loved one or a loss of a spouse in this, study, it was the loss of a spouse. There is physiologically something that happens to their heart that changes. They're, they're the, the working of their heart and it's called broken heart syndrome. And what it actually does is it makes a person more inclined to have a heart attack after a loved one has died. They have shown there's an increase in the, heart rate. In the occurrence of heart attacks, 30 days after a spouse has died in people who are 60 and over. And that is, I mean, that's really significant that we are more prone because of this, because of this impact that grief has on our bodies. And if physiologically has on our hearts, that we can actually have that type of response. Another thing about grief, and I think this is really important to know there's, there's three different types of tears, but the type of tears that a person, cries when it's grief related is are called emotional tears and emotional tears actually contain a painkiller and a painkiller that lessens the. feelings of pain that a person is actually experiencing. So when people hold that in, they're not allowing themselves to get that relief from the emotional pain that they're in. And so when people want relief from an emotional pain, what are they going to do? They're going to turn to one of those stress relievers. that regulates their nervous system because their nervous system has gotten out of control. It regulates it and that can be drinking, doing drugs, spending money, and eating. And in our case, we're always, we're always more interested in that eating response. So crying and allowing yourself to process and allowing yourself to feel those feelings is so very important, whether it's just related to the grief process or it's related to the grief process and really directly addressing the emotional eating aspect and emotional eating component of it. Another thing, and I experienced this firsthand is grieving and the grief process dramatically impacts your immune system and your immune system becomes weakened. The day after my dad died, I tested positive for COVID. And so there, you know, there's, there's an incredible connection between our immune system and what that does, how our immune system becomes so weakened. It also becomes weakened because oftentimes there's a disruption in our sleep patterns. We're not able to sleep as well. We're not able to sleep in a way that is, going to create a, the ability for us to be able to, respond to. different things in different, different occurrences that are happening in our lives. And the last thing, this is so interesting is there is an actual phenomenon called grief brain and grief brain is what happens to our brain when we're depressed. Are and again that goes along with that, that stress response that we get when our, when our, when, when we are presented with grief and we are feeling threatened that, that, that, that grief response is the emotions are so overwhelming that our brain almost our brain does disassociate and it. Prevents us from feeling that emotional pain and it, what it does is it creates a lack of concentration, a lack of focus, it, it creates a, an inability to be able to make good decisions. And all of those things are a response to our bodies wanting to avoid that emotional pain. When we know that's happening. And we start to experience that fogginess or that lack of concentration. We have to acknowledge that and know, Oh, okay, this is a grief response. It's not that there's something wrong with me. It's not that I'm, I just can't do it. I don't need to try harder. I actually need to be more compassionate with myself. And so that is, and, and, and really the, the. The belief is, and I think this is really important, is that when people can understand, they understand what they're feeling and why they're feeling it, they can then be more apt to allow themselves to feel it instead of feeling like, Oh, there's something wrong with me. I have to be really strong. I have to be strong and I have to, I should be past this. I should be done. There must be something wrong with me. I just need to toughen up. No, because that just creates more of that stress response. And then we go through that whole cycle of it's the stress response. We then have to find a way to regulate and bring ourselves, our nervous systems, calm our nervous systems back down. We then do something such as overeat. Then we feel guilt. We feel shame. That causes another type of stress response. And then we have to regulate that again. So it creates all these vicious cycles. And so understanding why this kind of thing happens to you when you're in those states of grief. And again, grief can be for a variety of reasons. It doesn't just have to be that loss of a loved one. And it but it we have to start understanding and start normalizing that this is a process and the process Is going to be different and a different length of time for every single person. No person has the The the roadmap for how grief is going to process through their bodies and how it's going to actually present itself So we have to remember that All of that is going to, all of that is going to, it, it, it all has to be taken into consideration and we have to be kind and gentle and gracious with ourselves. That's really, that's, that's really what I got out of my research that I did is that we just have to start being kinder to ourselves when it comes to this process. So there are, there's, there's something called the three C's of grief. And I hope that by presenting these three C's to, to, to all of you, that you'll, you'll be able to take these and you'll be able to not only help support other people while they're going through their grief, but also you'll be able to support yourself when you are going through grief as well. So the first C of the three C's of grief. Is choose. And what that means is that when someone is in a, a, a state of grief and grieving, they feel like they have no choice because all of their control in their lives has been taken away because this, this person or this thing is no longer there and they don't have a say in. And so they then translate that into they don't have a say in any aspect of their lives. So it's important for people to remember that we always have a choice and we have a choice about what's going to be best for us. So it's, it's oftentimes, and I know it's family members, best intentions to try and guide a person and let them know what they think is the best grieving process for them or the best thing for them to do. It's really important for somebody who is, who is in the, in the, in the eye of the storm of grief to be given permission and be allowed to make a decision about what's going to be best for them, regardless of what anyone else thinks, because they, people need to feel empowered and that they do have a say in their lives. So, I'm going to give you two examples of that. The first example is, is my sister who, who lost her daughter, her oldest daughter and my niece. And my sister made the decision pretty quickly after my niece passed that she did not want To have a memorial immediately after my niece had passed away. My sister's a caterer and she had experienced, she'd done plenty of celebrations of life. And she knew that she had watched and she had seen when people had done them immediately after someone had passed. And then when they had done maybe two or three. A month, two months or three months after a person had passed the difference in how the spouse, the children the parents dealt with it and how they were able to present themselves and how they were able to feel during the ceremony. And my sister made the decision and said, I don't care. I don't, I want to give it a couple of months. I want to get in. So we are my niece passed away on, on January 6th and we are having that's in 2024 and we are having her memorial on March 10th, 2024. And so that gives us, gives everybody in the family a couple of months and all of her friends and all, you know, she was very, very loved. And it gives everybody an opportunity to be able to make arrangements to be a part of things, but to also not have those emotions quite so raw and quite so exposed. The second piece of choice that we, that I had to really give my mom after my dad passed away was my mom decided that One of her very dear friends invited her to go to Mexico. She has a house in Mexico and she decided, asked my mom to come in and, and visit her and, and just give her, you know just, you know, just get her, get a change of scenery, give her a break. And so my mom currently is in Mexico. She's in the middle of a three week trip where she is spending time with a very dear friend and her husband. And And at first I was like, I don't want my mom to leave. I don't want my mom to travel. I don't want her, I don't want her being anywhere, anywhere away from me. And I had to allow my mom the freedom and the choice to decide what was going to be best for her. And I might not have necessarily agreed with it initially, but I do now. And I'm so happy that she's doing it, but it, it really is an important thing to allow people to have that choice. The second thing is. To connect. So the second C is to connect and that kind of kind of parallels kind of goes along with that first thing of choice is that when people are trying to, when they're in grief and they're trying to make choices, oftentimes they do need to connect with other people who care about them and love them and, and kind of run things by them. Grief can be so isolating and oftentimes people want to isolate themselves because they don't want to be a burden. And they don't want to, they just don't feel that they're even in a place to even communicate and connect with other people, but it's absolutely what we need. We are not ever meant to go through a journey like grief on our own. We need the support of people around us who love us. And we need to be able to communicate and share and talk about our feelings and talk about what is important to us. And that leads. To the third C, which is communicate and communication is really sharing openly and honestly what you need when you are in that grieving process, what you need, what's going to help you, what's going to support you. And really communicating that to those people around you. So they can better support you. I also feel that that communication is really important. It's important to share how you are feeling to others who are going through the same process. So one of the things that I have been doing with my, I, I, I, when my niece got diagnosed and I always went up and visited my parents again because my dad wasn't doing well. And so I would always go up and visit my parents every weekend. And when my niece became sick and when she came back home after being in the hospital, There wasn't a weekend unless she wasn't there. There wasn't a weekend that I didn't go up and I didn't see her and I didn't spend time with her and I didn't spend time with my dad. And so I still go up and see, you know see my sister and see my mom. And my sister and I were together. It was two weekends ago. And. It was just the two of us and I, I was sitting in my niece's chair on the couch and I just became overwhelmed with like this, this, this feeling of kind of anger of how it was just so wrong. And I was sitting there and there for a moment I was like, I don't know if I should say something. I don't know if I should say something to my sister. I don't want to upset her. And, but I, I finally just said, I finally said to my sister, I said, gosh, this is just so wrong. And we started talking, we both started crying. And we both started talking about just, just how we were feeling and it relieved everything. And it made me feel like, okay, all right. I shared that. And she, she got, you know, we both got to cry and then it was, we were done and we got back to our day. And it wasn't that, you know, it wasn't that we didn't think about it or we didn't, it wasn't important, but it was that, it was that ability to be able to know that I could share with her how I was feeling and, and that it was okay. And then it was okay to cry and it was okay to feel that way. And. Again, this last weekend, we kind of had the same thing where we talked about we talked about her, uh, what were we talking about? I think we were talking about the memorial and we were kind of prepping for the memorial and talking about different things. And, and then she was sharing with me some, some messages that she had received from some of her friends. And, And we both cried and it was, and it was okay. And it was, and it was, it was, it was so good to feel comfortable with communicating in that, communicating that and being able to share how I was feeling and not feel like I had to keep it inside because, oh, I had already cried initially. I don't need to cry anymore. And that's just not the case that we, we have to go with our feelings and we have to allow our feelings to be there and to be present. So one of the things that I want to kind of leave you with is that idea of that stress response, that stress response that we get, and it can be any kind of stress response. But in this case, we're, we're talking about that stress response as a, as a result of grief and, of grief. What happens when we start to get that stress response, whatever triggers us to start thinking about that person or start feeling ourselves getting upset is we need to regulate our nervous systems to bring our nervous systems back down to a calm level. And I'm going to tell you the easiest and most simple way to do it. And it seems so easy. Is we just need to breathe and so all I can tell you is when you start to feel those overwhelming feelings of, of, of that stress coming in, and it can be whether it's, you know, your boss yelling at you. It can be the stress response of, of, of talking about, you know, a person who's passed and you start to feel yourself get upset. You just give yourself. Like two minutes of just taking some nice, slow inhales through your nose and then exhaling out through your mouth and really allowing yourself to breathe and to calm down and to let yourself just calm your nervous system down. And you'll be in such a better place to then make a decision about Do I want to eat something? Am I hungry? Do I want to eat something? Or do I want to just respond with food? Or do I want to have a drink? What? But you're making an informed decision. You're not just responding because that's the way you've always done it. We need to learn to listen to our bodies, listen to our nervous systems, and then calm them down and then make the choice that's going to be the best one for us. So I hope, I hope that by talking about grief and about talking about grief responses and talking about the things that we do during the grieving process, I hope that has kind of demystified it and normalized it. And just for anyone, there's not a person listening to this podcast. There's not a person on this earth that is ever going to be able to avoid losing somebody. It's the cost of loving people and we're never going to be able to get away from that. But we can be okay with the grieving process and grief and being okay with it and not feeling like we have to hide it. We have to be ashamed of it or that we have to be strong. We just have to let it happen and ride it out. And there is no, there's no prescription. There's no. amount of time that we need. We just have to give ourselves the grace we need and allow ourselves to feel exactly what we're feeling. So I hope that this has been helpful to anyone who's in the midst of grieving and in the midst of this process. And I hope that I. Have shared some things that maybe you didn't know and that it will help you be able to move through this grieving process. So, a little bit about me and I get a little bit of a reminder about what I do. I am a life coach. I specialize in helping women address issues with emotional eating, but Emotional eating and, and the stress response and stress in our lives, it impacts all of our lives. So it doesn't matter if you're an emotional eater, if you're not an emotional eater, we all have stress. We all need to learn ways to regulate ourselves, to learn about our responses, to rewire our brain, to process our emotions and to feel our emotions. And if you feel like you maybe need some help, with processing emotions and feeling those emotions and allowing yourself to maybe have a new reaction and a new response when Things go sideways. We need to talk. So again, please go ahead and set, you know, you can leave a comment in the in, in the where my podcasts are listed. I always ask at the end of the podcast, you will always have a Q and a, that will ask the question of what resonates with you. If you want to connect with me, please do. I am on Instagram at at breakthrough emotional eating. Send me a DM and let's connect in that way. All right, take care, have a great rest of your day and I will see you next week. Thank you for listening to this week's episode. To take your first steps towards never dieting again, get my stop dieting guide, go to www. kristinjonescoaching. com. That's Kristin with an I N and learn a sustainable way to lose weight and develop a healthy relationship with food. I'll see you next episode.