Emotional Eating with Megan Buer

Trevor:                    Hi, there. I’m Dr. Trevor Cates. Welcome to The Spa Dr. Podcast. On today’s podcast, we’re discussing emotional eating, sugar addiction, and emotional wellness tools. We’ve all been there, reaching out to snack or even overindulge in sweets or other treats that we know we don’t need, but we just can’t stop ourselves. So that’s why I asked today’s guest to come on so we can better understand why we do this and how to stop. My guest is Megan Buer. She is the founder of Harmony Restored, a company focused on helping individuals heal from the stress that is the root of their physical and emotional pain.

Megan is a certified emotion code practitioner, author of two books on healing, a reiki healer and mom of three kids. After suffering from years with anxiety, panic disorder, chronic stress, food intolerances, adrenal fatigue, and an autoimmune disease, she went on a journey to her health, spending over ten years researching, experimenting, and finally figuring out all the tools she needed to naturally heal herself. Now, she’s gone on to help other people about one on one and online.

On today’s podcast, Megan shares why we crave and sometimes overindulge, how to stop the pattern with a simple technique, and how to go even deeper to address underlying emotional issues. The trick here is to remember you’re not alone in this and there are solutions. Once you address these emotional issues, many other aspects of your health and wellness could actually fall into place. This actually might be your missing piece. Please enjoy this interview. Megan, it’s so great to have you on my podcast.

Megan:                    Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Trevor:                    Yeah, absolutely. We’re talking today about emotional eating and sugar addiction, and emotional wellness tools to help us with this. What got you interested in this path?

Megan:                    It’s such an interesting story about ten years ago. Actually, it was Halloween and I had a two-year old at the time and I was about eight months pregnant with my daughter, and had been out, we were trick or treating. It was really fun, and then put him to bed, went to sleep, and then woke up about a half an hour later. What I know now is it was a total panic. I didn’t know what was happening now when I thought I was dying, and I woke my husband up. I said, “I’m dying. I don’t know what’s happening. Wake up Seth or son, I need to say goodbye. Get me to the emergency room.”

I had no idea what was going on. My son had just been diagnosed with autism. I think looking back now, I can look and say, “I was obviously under a lot of stress.” I went to the emergency room that night and the doctor basically gave me some saline and said, “Here’s the number to a suicide hotline. This is all on your head. Good luck.” I went home and at that point, I was so determined to figure out what was going on and what that was. I went down this whole rabbit hole of the alternative health and really threw myself into healing my son and healing myself, finally realizing it was a possibility before I hadn’t realize that was even a possibility.

What was interesting though in this story was that the more I dug and the more I cut out my diet and the more supplements I took, and cutting out toxins and doing all these things, seeing doctors and naturopaths, and the more I did, actually I got worse. Turned into adrenal fatigue, turned into a full blown panic disorder, turned into a Hashimoto’s diagnosis. Again, the whole time I’m thinking, I’m doing everything right, what’s going on? It was really, really frustrating, and got to a point where I was just laying on the couch. My kids are playing in front of me and my life is passing me by, and I could not figure out what was wrong with me. That’s really when I found this emotional work.

It was the one piece of that puzzle that I had never really explored before, because I was doing the food, and I was doing the supplements, and I was doing all of that, but I was so stressed out, and I was so overwhelmed, and I was so anxious. I just thought that stuff would go away once I felt better, but I had to heal that to feel better. I found the emotion code and I started doing that, and I started doing reiki, and EFT, and all these different tools to help me release the anxiety and release the underlying reasons why my body was not functioning properly, and help my son.

Again, and this whole time, I was totally addicted to sugar. I would eat this beautiful healthy meal like salmon, and sweet potatoes, and Brussels sprouts and then I would be like, “Okay, where’s my Ben & Jerry’s?” Because that was my way of coping. That was my way of handling all the rest of the stress. Finally, once I healed the stress, then the sugar addicted lifted, the anxiety lifted, and then really after some deep mindset work and emotional work within three months, my blood work was back to normal and my diagnosis was gone, so.

Trevor:                    Yeah.

Megan:                    Yeah.

Trevor:                    I’m so glad you’re sharing this story. It is something that I see a lot in my practice too is if we’re not taking care of ourselves emotionally, if we’re not taking care of this emotional component, then that’s such an important key piece of our health. A lot of times, we try and look around it, overlook it, just try and keep doing things with medicine or even like you said, you tried naturopathic medicine, but if you’re not addressing the emotional issues, you’re still craving sugar. You’re still going to be eating sugar. You’re still going to be making unhealthy choices, and that type of medicine is not going to do the magic it can if you haven’t addressed the emotional issues, because it will keep you spiraling into negative thought patterns, and imbalances in your neurochemistry. Then that all impacts your lifestyle choices.

It’s really great to have this conversation, because it reminds me back to why about, I think it was about six years ago, I was working and seeing patients you know, have naturopathic practice, and I would make recommendations for a weight loss program. I noticed that there were some people, most people, they did great on it, but there were some people that really struggled. They couldn’t give up their comfort foods, or they would say, “This is just so stressful for me.” I realized that there was this emotional component that if I couldn’t address that, these people were never going to get better.

What would happen is they would do better for a little while, and then they’d rebound and they gain the weight back, or they would start just binge-eating the food that they had been avoiding. That’s actually why I went back to school and got a master’s degree in spiritual psychology, because I kept seeing that in certain people and it’s not everybody. When there is an emotional component, it’s so powerful. We’ve got to address these things. It’s part of why I included in my book the section on clean mind of what can you do to manage your stress and address these mindset issues, the emotional issues. We have to talk about these things, and because there is such a huge part of our health.

I’m really glad that we’re talking about this today. Anyway, it’s tough when we have a journey like this and we learn these lessons, but at least you’re here now to help other people so they don’t have to struggle the same way, right?

Megan:                    Yes, exactly.

Trevor:                    All right. Let’s talk about these tools. Now, you work in a doctor’s office, right? So, you’re providing support to the patients that are in the doctor’s office to help them get through these emotional issues, which I love to see that. We really need a health team of people, healthcare team to take care of us. I love that you’re part of that team in the doctor’s office. Let’s talk about what you do for these patients to help them shift out of these issues.

Megan:                    Yeah. Each of these people come to me with very wide range of physical, mental, emotional symptoms. Somebody can have a runny nose, or cancer, or anxiety, or depression, or whatever it is, and really the protocol is the same. My aspect of this team that I work on is the emotional aspect. We address diet with a different practitioner and movement with a different practitioner, and I am the emotional aspect of that, of that overall picture of wellness. These people, if it’s psoriasis or whatever, it’s anything, anything that walks through the door, they go through this protocol, if that’s skin issues, or autoimmune issues, or sugar addiction, or whatever, there are some emotional stress underlying that.

We can have a great diet. We can be exercising, and we can be sleeping, and we can be doing all these things, but if this one component isn’t in this bigger picture, then you’re really falling short. What I do is I mostly do the emotion code for my clients, which is just, it’s not my modality, it’s something I’m trained in, but it’s an energy healing modality that really just targets trapped emotional baggage that is triggering us. That’s why every night, people will go for the peanut butter cups, because they’re stressed out and they’re overwhelmed.

We have these patterns, these emotional patterns. When we can’t seem to get out of that, usually there is something going on in the subconscious that needs some shifting and so that’s what I do. I do that for my clients and I do a lot of mindset work, and just help them see their health journey in a different way as rather than something that’s happening to them that they have to fight against and they have to fix, but something that is an opportunity for them to dig deep and to really figure out who they are and what they value, and really help them see that this is an opportunity to radically change your life for the better. That’s the basis of how I’m helping patients in the office.

Trevor:                    I know there are a lot of different tools, emotional wellness tools out there, and so explain what an appointment is like with you, what you walk people through, how you started, how you complete the process, how long it takes. Then we’ll talk about what kind of results people get.

Megan:                    Yeah, usually that first session, it’s about an hour. I really just start where they’re at. I want to hear their story. I want to hear where they’ve come from, because I’ve been on the other side of that. I’ve been the patient and have had this story, and I would go to doctor’s and I would say, “These are all my symptoms. Here’s my laundry list.” Everybody would just say, “Oh, you must just be tired, because you’re a mom.” I felt very discounted and so I like to let that person really tell me what’s going on and how are you feeling and all this and validate that for them, because I get it and I understand how difficult it is to try and be, to be doing everything right, to be trying all these different things and really not making any progress.

After they tell me their story, then I will explain the emotion code on a little bit of a deeper level and then we jump into that. So, in one session, I’ll clear anywhere from about 15 to 20 emotions and this is just old stuff from our past. We don’t have to psychoanalyze it. It’s not therapy, so people actually really like it, because they’re not having to talk about everything, and it isn’t really heavy. We clear all that and then figure out if there’s anything else at play as far as nutritional deficiencies or if there are certain foods that would be helpful for them to add into their diet, or if there’s toxins that need to be addressed, or misalignments, or whatever comes up.

Each session is so personalized. No two sessions are ever the same. Then the coaching aspect is again very personal, but I teach them to do EFT so that they have this tool that they can use in their day to day life to help heal emotions as they come up in the moment. Then again, I do a lot of the mindset coaching. Then we go from there. I think the beauty of this work is this is not like a never ending process where it’s just like, “Let’s do another session and another session and another session for the rest of your life.” It’s more like, “Let’s get in there and let’s clear this stuff. Then let’s move on.”

Most of my clients are with me for anywhere from three to ten sessions and at that point, they’re feeling much, much better and that’s it. I know if I’m doing my job right, they’re not going to keep coming back.

Trevor:                    That’s right. Great. Can you explain to people what EFT is?

Megan:                    Yeah, so EFT is short for Emotional Freedom Technique. It’s a really simple tool that people can learn that really combines ancient Chinese medicine energy healing with modern psychology, where you’re tapping on specific meridian points on the body. The psychology aspect is you are narrating what you’re feeling at the same time that you’re tapping. What you’re doing is on a mental level, you’re acknowledging and validating what you feel. Then on an energetic level, you’re giving your body the signal that were safe to release this.

Say you’re a mom and you’re trying to get your kids out the door, and you’re feeling really overwhelmed and rush. You can take a minute to start tapping on these certain points and say, “I’m feeling really overwhelmed right now.” I feel like we need to hurry. I feel I’m frustrated with my kid not getting a shoes, whatever, just start narrating how you’re feeling. Then it’s really interesting to see how that can start to shift. I have lots of EFT scripts for my clients. Things on food anxiety, anxiety in general, panic, depression, anything, emotional eating. There’s tons of EFT scripts out there online that you can find for free, but also just the way to do it in your day to day life is to, it just gives you that moment to pause, and to breathe, and to acknowledge what you’re feeling, and just get grounded and centered, and then move on, so.

Trevor:                    Okay, let’s talk about emotional eating a little bit more. What you find in your practice with people with emotional eating and sugar addiction, it is such a huge issue. A lot of us, it just programmed in us and I think part of it is our society and like, “Oh, you don’t feel good? Here, have some ice cream.” Ever since we’re a little kids, “This will make you feel better. Just have a little sugar.” Then as adults, then it just becomes automatic that immediately we start feeling emotional, we go and see what kind of sweets we have. Then we’ll overindulge. This becomes, because we know how sugar works, sugar is an addictive substance.

There was a RODIN study looking at rats could choose between cocaine or sugar and they chose the sugar over cocaine when they were exposed to both. We know that sugar and there had certainly been a lot of other studies, and I’ve seen it in my practice of you start eating sugar, and then you crave more, and then you crave more. It goes does this ups and downs in your blood sugar and you get caught in this visual cycle. Then we know the long-term consequences of this impact our skin, speed up aging, there’s so many different issues that not to mention weight loss, right?

We know we don’t want to be eating sugar or the emotional eating, but yeah we get so stuck in it. What are you finding with people that is first of all, that gets them into this and then what kind of solutions are you finding?

Megan:                    It’s definitely, it’s a pattern that starts in childhood and then it’s really the emotional connection. I think where in my journey and what I noticed with my clients is that most people that come to me already know that sugar is bad for them. They don’t need to be told that they read it, they have all the diet books they know, but that’s not enough to get them to stop eating it. Obviously, more education is not going to work for these people and it didn’t for me. This was my life was alternative health. I was so into this and I could not stop eating sugar.

It didn’t matter how much I knew up here and I had to realize, I realized when I started doing the emotional work that this is my coping strategy. I think where a lot of times we’re presented with, “Well, here’s this list of foods that you can’t have,” but the thing that we’re not talking about is what is that list of foods to that person? That might be their comfort. That might be their best friend. That might be their joy at the end of the day. That might be the only good thing in their life. If we’re telling people, “Just cut this out,” and then all of your problems will be solved, that’s totally missing the mark.

What I had to realize for myself and what I tell my clients is, “Go get a notebook and write down everything that sugar is for you.” This can be sugar. This can be anything else that you feel addicted to. What is that for you? Is that again your way of comforting yourself? Is that your way of finding variety and joy in your life? Is that your companion? Is that your best friend? What is it? Write down all the needs that it fulfills for you and then realize that if you really want to cut out sugar, you have to find a way to fill those needs in a different way.

If that is going out and being social and finding a friend, or if that’s writing, or drawing, or playing the guitar, or going for hikes, it doesn’t matter what it is. What brings you joy and what brings you comfort so that the sugar doesn’t have to do it for you. That I think is just the awareness that sugar is not just sugar. Sugar is a comfort to people and they use it to cope with their stress, so we have to deal with the stress.

Then the sugar will just lose its appeal once your stress is gone and you’re able to … You have joy in your life, you’re changed your life in a different way then sugar is just sugar and it doesn’t matter. I’m to the point in my life where it’s like if I’m at a birthday party and I really want a piece of cake, I’m going to eat it. I have no physical reaction. It doesn’t bother me at all. Then I drop it and it’s done and I don’t think about it again, and it’s just not a big deal. I think that’s where and if we have to find a balance with it, because when I was trying so hard to not eat it ever, then I would not eat it ever and then I would binge on it.

I had to come to this place where it’s like, you know what, if I dealt with my emotions, I healed a lot of my stress, I created different self-care practices that provided what sugar used to provide for me. Now, it’s like whatever. If I want a piece of cake at a birthday party, I’ll eat it and then I’ll move on with my life and it’s just not a big deal. I think that’s where really coming to a healthy relationship with food, you have to get to that place of balance and that’s usually figuring out what sugar really is for you in the first place.

Trevor:                    Yeah, I really like that idea of yeah, what is sugar? What is the food that you’re craving? What is it for you? Because most of the time, when we’re snacking or we have sugar cravings, it’s not because that we’re eating because we’re hungry or we’re trying to give ourselves more fuel to get through the day. It’s because we’re missing something or we feel a need for something, and maybe we don’t even know what that is. Sometimes it could be hard to identify. I imagine that’s when it comes working with you comes in handy to help people identify that.

Sometimes they could sit down with a piece of paper and they’re like, “I don’t know what sugar is for me. I don’t know why I crave these things.” Then doing some of these emotional wellness tools probably really helps people pull that out of themselves. Do you find that to be the case?

Megan:                    Yeah, absolutely. That’s where a lot of it, people will heal to a point and then it’s like, “You know what I need? A little bit of more support in this,” and so then we can talk through it and I can give that person tools. Then I can work on that subconscious level, because again, we can try to mentally figure all this out, but if we’ve got subconscious stuff that’s triggering us and keeping us stock in these old patterns, there’s only so far we can go with that until we hit a wall and so that’s where I can come down in and break that wall down. Then that person can just really thrive.

Trevor:                    Let’s talk more about the EFT specifically with emotional eating. Can you give some examples of what that would look like? Yeah, specifics, because I think that would be really helpful. I’m not super familiar with this type of technique, so I’m really curious about it.

Megan:                    Yeah, so I have depending on what you’re feeling, I’ve got a script on my blog for free that’s about food anxiety. I know a lot of people in alternative health that have anxiety around food, and so that’s been really helpful for a lot of my followers, a lot of my clients use that script a lot. Specifically around emotional eating and sugar cravings, that’s where using EFT and going through and tapping through the points, and just narrating. If you’re sitting down and whatever your, it’s 3:00 and you’re done with lunch and all of a sudden you’re feeling tired, and it’s just that time of the day, and so we want to go grab a candy bar.

Then there’s that beast bear inside of you that’s like, “I need the sugar,” rather than just jumping up and getting the sugar, just take three minutes to start tapping through the points and start narrating how you feel. That’s where we’re just acknowledging, “Right now I’m really craving sugar. Right now, I would do anything to go get the ice cream. Right now, I feel a lot of anxiety and I’m trying to use food to settle it.” As you start talking, it will start to uncover like as you’re narrating what’s going on, all of a sudden you’ll think, “Oh, actually I’m feeling depressed and I’m looking for joy, or oh actually,” and it just starts to trigger once we start talking about it and acknowledging it. It’s really interesting how all of a sudden you’ll get these little insights of like, “Oh, this is why I’m doing it.”

Then after you have that insight, then you can continue to tap and just say, “I now release my need for sugar. I now find joy in a different way.” Just positive affirmations, giving yourself that support, and it’s really cool to see how once we can just jump out of that like, “Oh, I’m just going to go get sugar right now.” If we can just pause and breathe for a minute and just see what we’re actually needing and acknowledge ourselves and give ourselves that little bit of self-care, all of a sudden the sugar is just like, “Maybe I don’t need it.” Then we can go do something else that makes us feel better. Usually, the EFT makes us feel better, so it’s yeah, it’s a win-win.

Trevor:                    That’s fantastic. I’m trying to picture somebody being at work and doing this. Do you have to do it out loud or can you do this quietly?

Megan:                    No, you can do it quietly. Definitely, if you are not in a place where it’s socially acceptable to be tapping all over your body, just run to the bathroom for a second or jump in your car. You can definitely do it quietly as well. A way that I do tell people, if you’re in the middle of a grocery store, and you’re having a panic attack and you don’t want to tap all over, just right here, like right on the collarbone and start repeating what you need to, but just do one spot. That’s not the full effect, but it’s going to help calm your nervous system down. It’s going to still send that signal to the amygdala to, “All right, let’s chill out. We’re good.”

Even just finding one spot to tap on, when I always just say, “Go right to the collarbone is a nice easy place.” You can pretty and conspicuously tap on your collarbone without everybody thinking you’re a crazy person, so yeah.

Trevor:                    When in actuality we are crazy people. No, I’m just kidding.

Megan:                    I thought we really are.

Trevor:                    No, I mean I think these kinds of tools are fantastic. Partly, it works as a destruction and gives us a moment of thinking, “Okay, what is really going on here? Do I really need a sugar?” A lot of times, even if we just wait a take a few deep breaths, that can be a great thing, but having a technique that helps you shift out of that is fantastic. Having tools like this I think are so valuable.

I imagine then, if somebody is practicing EFT and they’re doing it regularly at home when they can and they can do it out loud and do it fully, that when they’re in the grocery store, if their body is used to that, the second that you remind your body and your mind, “Okay, I’m tapping and I know what this means,” and it brings, it’s like this, everybody whose familiar with the Pavlovian response of the Pavlov’s dogs, of the bell rings, and they’re fed with and they start salivating. It’s like your body just automatically when it has a signal, a queue, it will respond.

Megan:                    Yeah, absolutely. That’s where this quick thing in the moment is helpful, but going home and doing some of the longer scripts to really help heal some of that stuff that’s, because acute, the acute work is good too, but doing work when you’re not in the middle of a trigger is very, very helpful as well, because then it’s more effective when you are in that trigger moment of I’m having anxiety, I’m feeling depression, I want sugar, whatever it is. It just makes it easier to get to that place of stillness again.

Trevor:                    Right, because these kinds of things usually don’t show up when we want them to. They usually happen when we’re driving or what you were saying, when you’re out with your kids, they don’t usually happen at appropriate time. I’m using air quotes here for people who can’t see. Tell us, when could people do this on their own and when do they know that they need to see someone like you or to get outside help?

Megan:                    There’s a lot of free resources online, again that you can get online. EFT is pretty popular at this point. You can find EFT scripts on YouTube. There’s a ton of free resources on my blog. I always tell people, try it, but if you’re still not really feeling a lot, then it’s probably time to dig deeper. For me, I use EFT and I teach my clients to use that as their day to day stress relief, but to really dig into the old stuff, into the old patterns, into all the old traumas, that’s what I use the emotion code for. I always tell people like, “If you’re just having some little bit of stress here and there, then EFT is great,” but to really dig into the heavier stuff, I think working with a practitioner, doing the emotion code, doing some depot work like that is really beneficial.

Then the EFT is great for just let’s release the stress of the day. Let’s get rid of our stuff so that it doesn’t become baggage. That’s what EFT and that self-healing is good for, but I think it’s always great to have support team behind you in this journey. If you’re dealing with something physical, mental, emotional, it’s always good to have people behind your back and supporting you, and offering advice and helping you heal. The doctor I work for always says that healing cannot happen alone, that healing happens in a community, which is why he’s created this community of practitioners to help each of these people.

They have this whole team of support behind them because we can’t do it solo. That’s okay. We’re human beings and we’re hardwired to need support and community, so I don’t think if there’s any shame in needing help working through some of the stuff.

Trevor:                    Yeah, fantastic. Okay, so Megan, well, I know you have a free gift for our audience and we’ll have that link up, but explain what it is that you’re sharing.

Megan:                    This is a free video series that I created to basically help that person who is on the health journey, they’ve done the diets, they’ve done the supplements, they’ve done all of the stuff and they’re right where I was, feeling like I’m still stuck, I can’t figure this out, anxious, depressed, autoimmune disease, whatever you’re dealing with at this point, just feeling really stuck around it and needing help with the emotions, with the mindset, really understanding. In the videos, I really talk about how the body creates health and how it creates disease and how to stay in what I coined thrive mode and get out of stress mode.

I explained that, I really explained on the biochemical level what’s happening in the body when we’re healing and when we’re degenerating, and how to support healing, and how to keep your body in a place of a thriving and really simple tools that I provided. I talk about a lot of ways to support emotional wellness and how that ties into your physical health, so.

Trevor:                    Perfect. Thank you so much, Megan. Again, I’ll have that link up below your interview on my website. Megan, thanks so much for joining us today and sharing this information. It’s been great chatting with you.

Megan:                    Thanks so much for having me.

Trevor:                    I hope you enjoyed this interview today with Megan. To learn more about Megan and get the free gift that she mentioned at the end of the interview, just go to the spadoctor.com. Go to the podcast page with our interview, and you’ll find all the information and links there. While you’re there, I invite you to join the Spa Doctor community. You could also subscribe to the podcast on iTunes so you don’t miss anywhere upcoming shows. If you haven’t done so already, I highly recommend you go to theskinquiz.com so you can get a free skin assessment, find out what your skin may be trying to tell you about your health and what you can do about it. Just go to theskinquiz.com. It’s a free online quiz.

Also, I invite you to join me on social media on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and join the conversation. I’ll see you next time on The Spa Dr. Podcast.