Hey there. It's Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson, and today we're going to talk about hormones and emotional eating. This is such a topic. We don't talk about this enough. I get asked about emotional eating all the time. A lot of people identify as emotional eaters. Let's talk about it.
First of all, I think it's interesting to note that hormones drive so much of our eating. If you think about it, in this day and age, I think the stats are coming up on one in eight Americans have been on a GLP-1 or are on one now. What that means is that they're injecting with a needle about a cubic centimeter, like a tiny amount of a clear water-like liquid into their abdomen or their thigh once a week and it's all but shutting off the food noise in their brain because of hormones. It's wild, right? It's humbling. It makes me really reflect on how we're just a bag of chemicals.
I think back to when I was pregnant and this time when I was in the shower and the shower curtain toward the back of the tub wasn't closed all the way. I was worried that I was getting water out into the bathroom floor and I pulled on the shower curtain and the shower rod fell. I sat down in the tub, and I started to cry hysterically. It was not a big deal. David was right there. I called out to him. He came in and he's like, "What's going on? " And I was like, "A shower curtain." He just took the pole and put it back onto the little hooky cup thing that was on the wall. And he's like, "Are you okay?" And I couldn't stop crying. I was hysterical. It just felt like too much. Hormones. Hormones.
I think about when I was pregnant and suddenly, I couldn't eat stuff. I couldn't write down my food the night before. It made me feel nauseous. I'd get to the fridge at mealtime and I would just think, "Ugh, I couldn't bear to eat this or that. " I had to piece together these weird meals because it was all I could stomach at the time. I started eating raw tofu with tomato sauce on it. It was so weird. Then a couple months went by, my hormones changed and suddenly I could eat the house. I could eat anything. I could eat anything that wasn't tied down. Hormones.
I got to a certain point in my life. This was just a few years ago and I was crying in the shower all the time. I don't know why this vlog is all about me crying in the shower, but anyway, it's a theme. Every day I was crying in the shower. I was talking to my dad and he's like, "How you doing, honey?" I just said, "Not good, dad. I'm crying all the time." He said, "It's menopause, honey. It's menopause." I said, "No, dad. My periods are regular. It's not menopause." He said, "It's menopause. I'm telling you, it's menopause. Look into it. Talk to your doctor. Look into it. " Now, I was 46. What was present in his mind was his mom killed herself at age 46. My grandma, my grandma Stella, I never met her. She died before I was born. She went through a rough perimenopause and took her life. So, my dad was understandably extremely insistent. "Honey, I'm telling you it's menopause. Look into it. This is a big deal." I Googled, "What's the definition of menopause? What's the definition of perimenopause?" I got nothing helpful. What it said was, "It's when your periods become irregular." My periods weren't irregular. They were regular. But because he was so insistent, and actually it was a couple months later, I stopped sleeping through the night, I started having these big gaps from midnight to 3:00 AM where I'd be awake, and that has never happened to me before, so that I took notice of, and I started to look to get my hormones stabilized. The first thing I tried was I went on the pill. That didn't work for me like it did when I was a younger woman. Suddenly, it threw everything off. My cortisol went sky high. No, no bueno. I went off the pill and I found a new OB- GYN because my OB-GYN died and I found a new OB-GYN and she said, "Oh, I know exactly what you need. You need bioidentical hormones." Now, so far so good. This actually is true. I did need bioidentical hormones, but she put me on these pellets. She inserted surgically some hormone pellets into my glutes and the only hormone she put in there was testosterone. And it was a lot of testosterone. Now, once that pellet was in me, I was powerless to do anything. There's no getting it out once it's in. And so, I went on a four month ride of testosterone sky high, like up to levels that men have, completely irresponsible of her. And suddenly, I felt amazing. I did not want to eat emotionally. Nothing bothered me. I felt like I could conquer the world. I started making a lot of excessively bold business decisions, which was not that good. It was intense. And when I finally came down off the other side of that testosterone ride, I realized a couple things. Number one, no wonder men are just relatively unbothered compared to women. If that's how they feel all the time, wow. Okay. Testosterone is a thing.
And again, hormones are so powerful. Hormones are so powerful. I did get a new doctor and then I talked with them about, could we keep my testosterone a little bit not that high, but like, yeah, a little extra, extra would be nice actually. We talked about the pros and cons. Anyway, obviously talk to your doctor thoroughly before you go making any decisions about your hormonal health. Hormones are a thing. Hormones are a thing.
People ask me all the time, "Dr. Thompson, how come I want to eat everything that's not tied down right before my period? How come I get cravings for specific foods right in the last week before my period or during my period?" Here's what's going on hormonally. Estrogen is very impactful and estrogen has a curve through the menstrual cycle. It's low during the period and then during the follicular phase, it grows. It increases, increases, increases, increases, and you feel more confident, more energetic. Appetite is suppressed. Estrogen is an appetite suppressant. And a food craving suppressant. How does it do that? Well, it literally suppresses ghrelin, the hunger hormone. It also boosts the effectiveness of CCK, which is sort of an appetite suppressant hormone. It also increases the binding of dopamine. So when you eat and estrogen is high, you get more satisfaction after a smaller meal. You don't need to eat as much because it boosts the effectiveness of dopamine. And it increases the effectiveness of insulin, so it keeps your blood sugar more steady. This is why typically younger women find it easier to lose weight than older women. And why with Bright Line Eating®, we don't see that effect because we're helping people eliminate sugar and flour, which levels the playing field. You don't need your insulin to be as responsive and sensitive if you're not jerking with your blood sugar all the time by eating sugar and flour. Of your estrogen's going to be low, removing sugar and flour from the equation is a really good idea. During the early part of the period cycle, before ovulation, as estrogen is climbing, you feel better and better and better. At ovulation, estrogen is at the peak, and you feel amazing. That's mid cycle, a couple weeks after your period. Then you go into the luteal phase, and you start to feel worse and worse and worse. I'm laughing. It's not funny. That's why right before your period is when all the cravings come in, all the hunger comes in, all the food obsession comes in, and suddenly you're thinking, "Yeah, I just feel like eating addictively." And during the period, it's also very, very low and then it starts to climb again and you start to get some relief. So, if you're someone who's especially sensitive to hormonal fluctuations, you might have noticed that that's how the flow goes.
Estrogen is very, very powerful. Could hormone replacement help? Talk to your doctor. Maybe. I'm on it and certainly find it to be very beneficial for me. I'm enjoying it. I'm just saying that as a lay person friend, I'm not a doctor, but yeah, I find it super helpful. Ever since that conversation with my dad when I was 46 and he said, "Look into it, honey." I took him seriously and I did. I looked into it and I am definitely getting some hormonal support and I love it. It's helpful.
I want to say that emotional eating is a thing. And we haven't talked about it enough in Bright Line Eating and that's going to stop. We're going to start talking about it a little bit more and giving people a little bit more support for emotional eating. I'm going to start with a webinar that's this Thursday at 6:00 PM Eastern, Thursday, March 26th, and it's called, "The Hijacked Brain: the Neuroscience of Emotional Eating." Because emotional eating isn't just about hormones, it's also about relationships. It's also about life stressors. It's also about boredom and celebration and relief and comfort and these things that we eat over. There's lots of circumstances in which we eat emotionally or potentially could. In Bright Line Eating, just don't eat no matter what is like, well, okay, but how? If you're in a pattern of emotional eating, what do you do about that? I want to say that one of the things that you can start to do is shift the identity from, I'm an emotional eater too, I am learning emotional self-regulation skills. I am learning emotional regulation skills. That is an identity that's worth striving for and worth starting to inculcate in yourself. So, join me in that webinar.
We're also going to be offering a workshop on navigating emotional eating. We've got a framework that we're going to be teaching, and it's all about stabilizing the neuroscience, stabilizing the hormones, and then really going deep into what next? What do you do when you want to emotionally eat? There's a lot that you can do. There's a lot that you can do, but it starts with being aware of your physiology, your biology, your emotional state, and just being aware of your identity as someone who is impacted or resonates with these topics. People are really different. Some people are hormonally and emotionally stable and balanced. And some people, like yours truly here, are hormonally and emotionally volatile and intense. I always have been. I remember a conversation with my dad when I was probably 17 years old and he was just shaking his head and looking at me and he just said, "Oh, honey, this is an issue you've got. Your emotions are so big. It's something you're going to be saddled with your whole life." In a way he was right and, in a way, I don't know, I feel like I've learned a lot of tools. Maybe I've shifted my identity from I'm an excessively emotional being to, I have a lot of tools for handling my emotions. I wish that for you as well. I hope you'll join me for that webinar, and just sending you lots of love as you surf the wave of hormones and emotions. I'll talk to you next week. Bye now.
