The Breakthrough Emotional Eating Podcast

BEE #152: The Brain Science Behind Meal Planning and Emotional Eating

• Kristin Jones

Share episode

Message me with comments or questions

Your brain makes over 20,000 decisions a day, and by evening, decision fatigue sets in. That’s when it feels nearly impossible to make healthy food choices, especially if you’re tired, stressed, or emotional. But what if you could bypass that mental exhaustion and set yourself up for success?

In this first installment of the Back to Basics series, we’re diving into meal planning—not because it’s a cliché “diet tip,” but because it’s scientifically proven to work with your brain’s natural wiring. When you have a clear plan, your brain perceives safety and order, allowing your logical prefrontal cortex to stay in control. Without one, your brain interprets restriction as a threat, triggering panic and poor decisions.

Meal planning isn’t about rigid rules—it’s about giving your brain the structure it craves. It reduces the constant chatter around food, frees up mental energy, and even provides a natural dopamine reward that reinforces positive habits. By working with your brain, not against it, you can break free from emotional eating and build habits that actually last.

Connect with me online:

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

3. You Tube channel, Breakthrough Emotional Eating Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@breakthroughpodcast-44
3 . Website: https://www.kristinjonescoaching.com

If you want to learn how to stop nighttime eating, get my 3 Day Nighttime Snacking Reset: https://go.kristinjonescoaching.com/nighttime-snacking-reset

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.

If you found this episode helpful, don't forget to leave a review on the platform you used to listen and share it with your friends on your Instagram stories. Also, be sure to follow me on Instagram @breakthroughemotionaleating, and don't hesitate to slide into my DMs to share your thoughts ...

Speaker 1:

Do you want to lose weight but struggle to stay committed to a meal plan because you constantly feel hungry? Does food provide you comfort when you're bored, angry, lonely 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 issues with food and develop a healthy relationship with yourself. Welcome to the Breakthrough Emotional Eating Podcast. My name is Kristen Jones and thank you so much for joining me.

Speaker 1:

This week, I am starting a series, and the series is going to be Back to Basics the Breakthrough Method of Overcoming Emotional Eating and Losing Weight. So in this series and I'm going to have each we're going to address a different component of my program that I use and encourage people to use to overcome emotional eating and to lose weight at the same time, because we know that losing weight as an emotional eater can be. We know that losing weight as an emotional eater can be difficult because of the issues with deprivation and restriction and all of the mental stuff that goes along with that, and so what I do is I present all of these, you know these pillars of my program, and I definitely give people autonomy to decide what's going to work for them and what's not going to work for them. Um, I think all of these things together work really well. But if people say, you know what I, that's just not something for me. Okay, we can try that and we can see if you're, if that just doesn't jive with you. Everybody's different. So I don't think that, um, a program is you're not entering prison. It's not like you know, when you work with me, it's like it's my way, or the highway, because for some people there are certain things that just don't work and so, but all of these, these things that I'm going to talk about over the course of the next five weeks, um, are all going to be important pillars of my coaching and how I coach people, and they are very, um, they're kind of the bread and butter of losing weight. But there's also this whole other component, um, that we go into as well and uh, and we'll talk about that. But the, these components that we're going to be talking about, these pillars that we're going to be talking about, are all going to be the pillars that will help you not only start to address your emotional eating but start you losing weight in the process that you are going through to kind of understand and address your emotional eating.

Speaker 1:

So today's topic, topic number one, is going to be all about meal planning. Now I want to be super, super clear that meal planning is not meal tracking, okay, and meal planning. I don't need you to plan your meals for the whole week. I'm talking one day at a time. But there is a scientific and brain-based reason for why planning your meals and following through on planning your meals is so important. And it's so important as an emotional eater, but it's also important for anyone who wants to develop a new habit, a new skill, a new routine, a new process that is going to get them to move towards an ultimate goal that they have, and I'm going to talk about that today. So this is just not like oh, you need to. You know, you need to meal plan, because that's just what everybody says to do.

Speaker 1:

These things, the things that I'm going to talk about today, are all backed by science. They're all backed by brain research, and I'm going to talk about today are all backed by science. They're all backed by brain research and I'm going to give you specific reasons as to why you need to, why meal planning is so very valuable and is so important. And I'm going to tell you it's something that so many people push back on and that's okay. Totally can push back on it and let me know how that goes. I always let people hey, if you don't think you want to do that, that's totally okay. But if we're not having success, then we need to look at the things that you're choosing not to do, why you're choosing not to do them, and then let's just try and see if it works, and nine times out of 10, it does so.

Speaker 1:

So the first thing I always like to talk about is something that my uh first business coach and longtime mentor, dave Smith, taught me, and it was what gets planned is what gets done. We don't plan for anything. Nothing gets done. So making a plan is really, really important, and that's important in weight loss. It's important in your work, as in weight loss. It's important in your work. It's in your job. It's important in housekeeping. It's important in just going about your day planning things.

Speaker 1:

You're much more productive when you plan things, because when you have a plan, there's a reason why it works. It's because it does something to your brain. The other reason it's important is that when you're an emotional eater, your eating is not driven by physiological needs. It's not driven by the fact that you're hungry. When you're an emotional eater, you eat for psychological and mental reasons, and so understanding how your brain works and why your brain tells you directs you to eat when you don't need to, but it does it for other reasons, why it does that? Understanding that the first step into changing a behavior is awareness, and part of awareness is understanding why something happens, and so we have to understand how our brain works. Understanding your brain is so important when it comes to making any sort of change, any sort of behavior change, and weight loss is a behavior change.

Speaker 1:

The end result of weight loss is a change in your behavior and a change in your pattern and a change in your habits, and I think that most weight loss programs neglect looking at how the brain works, and I think that is that they're making surface changes and they're not going deep, and y'all we go deep here. So we have a number of different things that we need to look at when it comes to why planning your meals ahead of time. Why that is so effective when it comes to you sticking to a meal plan and actually executing it and then getting the results that you actually want, which, in this case, would be weight loss and a management of your emotional eating. So number one, the first reason why meal planning is so effective and why it is and when I say meal planning, I really mean, like having a structure or having any sort of plan. So it could be meal planning, it could be writing down a to-do list, whatever, but it's giving your brain structure. So the first reason why it's so important is that your brain craves efficiency.

Speaker 1:

So our brain's number one job is to conserve energy and to keep us alive, and planning and organizing reduces the amount of mental energy that is spent on deciding well, what do I do next? What's my next step? Where am I going? What am I doing All of those things?

Speaker 1:

If we don't have those things laid out, our brain takes spends a lot of mental energy worrying about that or wondering about that, because if we don't have a plan, it's going to be like well, we got to keep. We're always planning for the worst case scenario, which is what our brain does automatically. We're always in that like I don't know what's coming next. So that creates a lot of anxiety, which creates, which is, which is a result of all that mental energy being spent on what's next, what's next, and so that is a poor use of your time and of your mental energy, your mental energy. And when we apply it to eating and we reduce that mental energy, that mental energy is really that food noise that people talk about all the time and it's that chatter and it's that those thoughts of like, well, what am I going to eat next, what's my next meal coming? When we plan, that goes away because we don't, because, because we don't have to, we don't, we've already made the plan. We made the plan, that's what we're committing to and we've moved on to something else. Our brain doesn't have to keep going back and wondering, well, what's the next thing, what are we going to have next? Because we've already made a decision.

Speaker 1:

When you plan, you are not engaging in that constant debating of, well is, which choice am I going to make? Am I going to, what are we going to do next? And that lowers your decision fatigue. We have to make over 20,000 decisions in a day. I mean decisions so much as I'm going to pick this piece of paper up, I'm going to you know something as small as. What's this pen doing here? Which lipstick color am I going to put on? I mean, there's just so many decisions that we make and so we have to by the end of the day, we're done, we're tired. We've made so many decisions. I don't want to make any more decisions. Well, that can derail us when it comes to your food. So you need to make decisions ahead of time. And then your decision fatigue. You don't have to fight yourself on. Okay, let me make the decision and let me make the right decision. And now let me stick to it. They've already been made ahead of time. That's done. So you've made the decision earlier in the day. Now your brain can focus on more immediate needs and immediate decisions that need your attention.

Speaker 1:

Second thing is it reduces cognitive load. So that means that we have a working memory, our working memory, in our prefrontal cortex, front part of our brain, and it can only hold a few pieces of information at a time. So without a plan, your brain wastes energy trying to remember tasks, details, things that you said, that you said to yourself oh my gosh, that's really important. I want to remember that disappears If we don't write it down. If we don't put it down on paper, then we spend all of this time trying to make decisions but then, at the same time, trying to remember what was the decision I needed to make. Now I can't remember what that was. So we have to give ourselves that opportunity to be able to not be so bogged, be so bogged down by all of the decisions that we have to make and that energy that we're putting into it.

Speaker 1:

So if food has always been what's top of mind for you, your cognitive load at work and with food is like compounded. It's so big, it's so heavy, and your brain, if it's always been on food, your brain's going to keep thinking it needs to be on food, and so planning and getting it out of your brain where you don't have to think about it anymore, takes all that load off. So now your mental focus and your cognitive load can be directed towards things, frankly, that really matter. Oh, I don't know, like you keeping your job, you doing what you need to do in your job, you having a conversation with your spouse or with your kid. That's meaningful because you're able to focus on just that thing, using lists and following routines. It takes away the burden of having to remember everything, having to be on top of it, and it frees up the mental bandwidth for you to be creative, for you to problem solve and for you to focus.

Speaker 1:

And so, instead of spending all this time trying to remember the things that I want to remember, write them down. Write them down and then you can refer back, you can do what you need to do with that list and in this case, when it comes to meal planning, you don't have to think about what you're going to have for lunch, because it's already been written down, decision's already been made. Now I just have to show up and I just have to eat it. That's it, and then I can get right back to what I need to do again after lunch, when we have something else that comes up that we need to work on. So, again, mental load, it gets taken off. We don't have all of that, that heaviness around what am I going to eat, and that just focuses our minds. We're able to focus on things that really matter.

Speaker 1:

Third thing is it provides predictability and safety. Remember, back at number one our brain's objective is to keep us alive and to keep us safe and to keep us having everything that we need. Remember that Maslow's hierarchy of needs, all those needs, that's our brain's first and foremost, and part of that is survival and survival. Food goes along with survival. So the brain doesn't like uncertainty, it doesn't like things that are unfamiliar.

Speaker 1:

When it, when it active, when, when, when we don't know what's coming, the amygdala that portion of our brain that is responsible for recognizing threats and then kind of deciding what we're going to do about those those threats that becomes activated and it creates stress and anxiety. That stress and anxiety then promotes us to be able to make irrational decisions about oh my gosh, I'm going to starve, I need to eat something and it needs to be this pan of brownies, whatever. But that's what happens is when, when we don't know what's coming, we go into this worst case scenario scarcity mindset and the scarcity mindset tells us oh my gosh, we have to panic, we have to, we have to figure out what we're going to do. And so when we to relate this to food when you wake up in the morning and you're like I really need to be good today, like I need to follow my plan today, but you don't make a plan. You're just like I need to be good today. Your brain doesn't know what good means. It just means we need to it just it just means that.

Speaker 1:

And if you say I need to be good today, so I need to cut back on food, well, cutting back on food tells your brain there's not going to be food available. Well, that's going to alert the threat center that we talked about. That's going to alert that threat center. To be like this is not good. We don't know where our next meal is coming from. And now they want to come back on food. Well, your brain is going to be become this, this crazed. Oh my gosh. We need to make sure that we have food. We need to make sure that we get food and you'll make some irrational, very poor decisions for yourself.

Speaker 1:

When you have a clear plan, it signals to your brain I know what's coming next, we got this, we know where our next meal is coming from. We can be calm, we can be peaceful. We can allow our prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for logic, for reasoning and for focus, we can allow that to relax and do its job and it can function at its best. It doesn't need to be in panic mode. So just by making those lists, planning, having that routine, it reminds us not only reminds our brain that we have everything we need, we don't need to panic, food's always available, everything's available to us, we have everything we need and nobody needs to stress. Once our brain knows that and there's a plan and it knows what's coming, then all is good and we can move about our day. And that's where we can really then see some changes in things that we need, changes in how we approach things.

Speaker 1:

Number four so many of us eat emotionally eat because we love that little hit of a dopamine that we get when we have something really high sugar, really sweet, really, oh, forbidden. We can get dopamine in other ways and we can get dopamine from making these lists and making these plans, because what our brain thrives on, what our bodies thrives on as humans, is that dopamine hit. But there are ways of getting dopamine that don't involve sugar, that don't involve food, and part of that is when we make a plan and we're able to check off what we've done like oh okay, I did my. I, you know, made my bed check, I did my journaling check. All of those things are all rewards that we give to our brain and we get that little bitty hit of dopamine and it feels really good and what that does is it signals to our brain. Oh wait, we made a plan and we followed through and we got a dopamine hit.

Speaker 1:

We want to do that more often, we want to keep doing that because that's what feels right, and so the more you can buy into the making of a plan acknowledging when you follow through and giving yourself that little pat on the back, that's a dopamine hit, that will then encourage you to continue that process, to continue to do the same thing, to build that muscle and have that habit become something so ingrained and so easy and so built in that you will then continue to do it and you'll get the result that you wanted. And your brain will also thank you for it, because it will be very calm and it'll be very relaxed and it will have the dopamine that it needs, and it won't be from escalating and having something higher in sugar or you know more of a risk or any of those things that we do when we need to up our game with our dopamine. So it definitely builds upon itself and the habits then that we are creating become a part of who we are and become a part of our routine, and we only benefit from those things. Number five is it aligns with how habits are built. When we make plans and we make routines, that is creating new neural pathways, new thought plans, new thoughts, new ideas, new beliefs, and if we believe that something is going to be positive and beneficial for us, we will keep on doing it, and so it creates those planned positive behaviors and positive actions that then serve our lives and we continue to do them. And if those planned positive things are around food and around eating and around making our plans for our, for what our day is going to look like, that is just encouraging us to continue to do that and continuing to make that a habit, continuing to make our good eating a habit, continuing to make following through on what we say we're going to do a habit. That's more dopamine and everybody's happy. So it really results in you making your plans, sticking to them, losing the weight you want and then keeping it off and feeling accomplished. That gives you another dopamine hit. So all of these things very natural ways of getting dopamine, as opposed to using the chemicals and food to get your dopamine Now. You're doing it because you're actually accomplishing things and you're feeling really good about it. It's a win-win.

Speaker 1:

So, in summary, plans result in less stress, provide more clarity for your day, especially meal planning in the morning, meal planning for the day less stress, more clarity for the day. It creates peace and calm that can help you sidestep emotional eating. When you make lists, there's less cognitive impact on your brain. You have more energy for more meaningful work. It stops the obsessive food thoughts that food chatter, and it allows you to feel in abundance. You move away from scarcity and from lack.

Speaker 1:

And then, finally, when you follow through on anything that is the ultimate in a dopamine hit that you can get that isn't from food, that is, it reinforces the positive outcomes that you are creating because you are the one doing the thing that's getting you that dopamine hit and that then serves to maintain your motivation, to keep you to continue to move in this positive direction and get you your ultimate goal, which in this case would be to have a managed control of your emotional eating and for you to be at the weight that you want. So all of those things all come about because of this one little habit. It's one little idea of planning your meals and following through on it, and, again, that that process is in alignment with your brain, that your brain wants it. It wants to be told what to do, it wants to have structure, it wants to have focus. So now is the time for you to give it to you, for you to give it to your brain and then get the results that you want to have, which in this case, would be a understanding and a control of your emotional eating and losing the weight that you want to lose. And that's ultimately what my job as a coach is is to guide you through that process and to help you decide what's going to be best for you.

Speaker 1:

And I always allow my clients to make the decisions that are going to be best for them, because they know themselves so much better than I do. But if something's not working, wanting to do something and needing to do something are two very different things, and so we get to. We get to decide what that, what that looks like for each person. And and that's the really exciting part is is, for me, it's important that clients have autonomy. They get to make their own decisions, but they also get to use facts to make those decisions and not make them out of emotion and not just because they don't want to do something. We try to use as many facts as we can because ultimately, I want to use those facts to get them what they want and to make them and to have them be their happiest and their most proud of themselves that they can be.

Speaker 1:

So I hope this explanation as to why meal planning is so important, I hope this has helped. I hope it's something that you will um, you will try and um and again. Meal planning is just writing down. You don't have to write down the exact amounts of food, but you do need to write down what are you, what are you saying that you want to be eating and you don't need anything that's not on that list? And then you honor yourself and you give yourself the gift of those things because they're in alignment with what you want and what your end result is.

Speaker 1:

So next week we are going to be talking about another aspect of mine. I'll tell you what it is. But there's another aspect of my coaching program and we will just take one at a time and unravel and unwind those pillars and by the time we're done with this series, you will absolutely know everything there is to know about how I help people lose weight, and then you'll get to make the decision of is this something that I think might work for me? And in the meantime, I'm going to have a special guest. Come on, uh, to next week's podcast and she will share her story about how it was, how it was a fit for her, and I look forward to you being able to hear from her.

Speaker 1:

And here's the other thing. This is the crazy part she lost all of her weight by merely listening to the podcast, so she is going to be my guest next week, so I look forward to you coming back and hearing that episode and learning a ton from her. All right, take care, have an amazing rest of your week and I will see you next week. Bye now. Thank you for listening to this week's episode. If you are interested in learning more about how I can help you understand and manage your emotional eating, including the use of hypnosis to uncover the root cause of your eating, go to my website, kristinjonescoachingcom. Thank you.