Breaking Free from Binge Eating with Jane Pilger

When Not Yet Becomes Right Now (00:00)
Welcome to When Not Yet Becomes Right Now, the podcast where we dive deep into the moments of transformation, the times when not yet shifts into right now and everything changes. I'm your host, Jen Ginty and this podcast is all about those pivotal moments in our life journeys. You know the ones when the hesitation fades, when we take that first step, even if it feels like a leap. It's in these moments that growth and healing begins. Each episode will explore stories of resilience,

moments of clarity, and the sparks that ignite real change. From personal experiences to expert insights, we'll uncover how people navigate the complex journey we call life and come out stronger on the other side. Whether you're searching for that spark in your own life or just curious about how change unfolds for others, you're in the right place. We'll discuss the ups and downs, the breakthroughs and setbacks, and how to embrace the right now, even when it feels out of reach. Because sometimes,

The hardest part of the journey is realizing that the moment you've been waiting for has already arrived. So take a deep breath, settle in, and let's get started.

Jen (01:13)
Hello and welcome to When Not Yet Becomes Right Now. Today I have a wonderful guest named Jane Pilger. And Jane is a coach who empowers women to break free from the cycle of feeling out of control around food. Jane helps women, many who have struggled for decades, discover the missing link to move from fighting with their bodies to working with them. Whether you're a binge eater, someone who doesn't trust themselves around certain foods, or just confused by your own behavior.

Jane offers a trauma-informed, science-based, and deeply compassionate approach to building food freedom and body trust. Hi, Jane.

Jane Pilger (01:52)
Welcome. Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here and talk to you today.

Jen (01:58)
I know I can't wait to get your story out there. So let's get into it. What is your origin story?

Jane Pilger (02:07)
Gosh, you know, it's so hard to even figure out where to start with the origin story. But I think I'm gonna start with a memory that is just so vivid for me. And it was my first semester in college. I had gone away to college. I was in a dorm room by myself and I had received a care package from home that was filled with candy bars, like little kind of, you know, miniature sized candy bars. This was like October. It was...

kind of finals time, also kind of Halloween time. And this was this, this box of candy ended up being my, my first binge. And I don't remember the binge itself, but what I do remember is the aftermath. I remember sitting on the floor in my dorm room, just surrounded by the empty box and just candy bar wrappers strewn all around me and just thinking, my.

Gosh, what have I done? And I was mortified. I was terrified that anybody would find out. I very much, up until that point was very, I mean, let's be honest, even after that was very focused on what other people thought. I had kind of an image to portray of somebody who was smart, who was successful, who had things figured out. And here I was doing this thing that

just felt so incomprehensible and kind of like out of really it felt like out of alignment like who is like who is that what just happened there is no way that i'm ever going to do that again and nobody's ever going to know and that really was the start i mean if i look back it of course it started before the moment of that very first binge

But when I think about like the origin story of my binge eating, like that binge and that moment of just being surrounded by all of those rappers and just wondering like, what just happened? Really like that to me is kind of like the origin of my, like the struggle and the fight with binge eating that I would go on to have for 25 or more years beyond that time.

Jen (04:26)
Well, yeah. binge eating for a lot of people is very trauma induced, right? it's something that some people can grab onto as a way to make them feel better in the moment. But of course, the shame with trauma, but then you add on

the shame of the binge. said you didn't want anybody to know. No one was going to ever find out, how, in that moment, how, how did you believe, truly believe that, that, that, that it wasn't ever going to happen again?

Jane Pilger (05:05)
I think at that point, I was very determined. I've always been a pretty determined person. This is what I'm gonna do. So I was very determined it would never happen again. And then of course it did. the thing that when I look back, I have so much sympathy and so much compassion for that part of me who felt so, just...

almost like invaded by this part that felt like, no, I don't want this. I don't want to binge. I don't want this to be part of me. I don't want anybody to know. the things that she did to try to stop, to try to make sure that she would never do that again were really the things that were keeping her in the cycle. And of course she didn't know that. She was really doing the best she could. It makes so much sense, especially when we can look back with a different perspective.

But so I think I was, I was very committed. Like, no, that is not me. I will not do that again. And here's all the things I'm gonna do to make sure to kind of protect myself. I'm gonna be even more careful with what I eat. Maybe I can just stop eating certain things. Like all of these things that I tried to do to kind of protect myself, to keep myself from binge eating again, like really were the things that kept me in the cycle and kept me.

repeating the behavior.

Jen (06:36)
Yeah, that makes sense. So this binging, you continued through college and did you stop at some point?

Jane Pilger (06:46)
You know, it was really interesting. My whole journey was really interesting there and this is very common. going away to college is a very common, there are a handful of times in life that are common for people to develop disordered eating. One of them is going to college, being away from your kind of your primary caregivers, from a lot of your friends, a lot of kind of your support and connections.

that and you're, you're, you are, you kind of have your own decision-making, you're off on your own, you have your independence, all of these things are kind of happening all at once. And for me, I, we really didn't grow up doing emotions in my house, we didn't talk about our emotions, we didn't learn how to, how to deal with emotions. And so there's also a lot of emotions going on that I didn't know how to deal with. But because,

because for a whole lot of reasons, college is a prime time for people to develop disordered eating. Another prime time is at times of big significant hormonal change in your life and in your body. So that might happen for somebody kind of in the teen years, your body starts becoming, developing, you become more, if you're talking about a woman, her body starts maturing and growing and developing curves and all of these things.

And that can be really threatening. Sometimes people don't want to have the growth and the curves and all of that. So then that kind of disordered eating may come in trying to control the size of their body, the things their body's naturally trying to do. Now, what a lot of people don't realize is that it also happens at the other time, very significant time of hormonal change in a woman's body, which is during perimenopause.

and particularly in perimenopause, you when all of the hormones are shifting and our body, both when we are in our teens and when we're in perimenopause and we have these significant hormonal changes, our bodies are supposed to change. But in both cases, when we're younger and as we get older, we don't want them to change. And, you know, as somebody who is in post-menopause myself,

going through this transition and watching my body, it makes sense. We look at our body and it's like, this is not how it used to be. We start comparing it to what it looks like for some people 20 years ago and wanting that body back. And then it's like, well, what can I do if I can bring in more control, bring in more restriction, bring in more all of these things, which are the things that end up actually kind of exacerbating.

all of the behaviors. So it's just interesting to know if anybody is listening to this podcast and you have kind of your own, we all have our own journey, right? With food, with our bodies. Just think back, I love to really just make sense of, huh, when like, if you have a period of time, maybe when it started, how does it make sense? How does it make sense that your kind of challenges with food started around that time? So for me,

It was college, was being away from my primary caregivers. I had been on a super restrictive diet for over a year, kind of leading up to that point. So there were really a lot of different things going on. The person who sent me that care package, was some stuff there. So there was a lot of things, like, oh, okay. So you can start to make sense of it. If it was related to a trauma, oh, I learned in order to...

disconnect from my body, disconnect from myself, disconnect from my emotions, I learned that food would be a safe place for me. It was a place where I could go, I could get relief, I could whatever. So we can kind of make sense of it. Then what happens for some people, so you asked, you know, did you just keep binging the whole time? Did you have times where you weren't binging? And what happens for a lot of people is there will be...

of like phases, like these periods of time where, oh, that the binging was really, it was there, it was very active. And then for me, very specifically, when I met my husband, my now husband, I went through, I don't know, quite a significant period of time where my binging was just gone. I mean, I was in love. I was, you know, I just had so many other things that I was focused on that binging just wasn't

It wasn't necessary. didn't really need it for kind of other things. And then after shortly after we got married, it like very shortly, of shortly after returning from the honeymoon, it started to come back and then it started to really increase. And I didn't even tell my husband that about my binge eating until we were married. We had been married for, I don't remember how long, but we had been married

probably a year or two, at least a couple of years before I even told my husband about it. And at that point, I hadn't told anybody except for I'd seen a handful of different eating disorders therapists. And the therapist convinced me basically to tell my husband. And I was mortified. I was just convinced that he would not love me, that he was gonna leave me. He wasn't gonna love me.

I just, and I remember telling him I was laying on the bed in our, in our upstairs in our bedroom. And I had my arm over my eyes that kind of in my eyes were, in the crook of, in the crook of my elbow and I couldn't look at him. There was so much shame and I was just crying and I was telling him and he was, he was so kind and so compassionate. And I had this story that he wouldn't understand.

He's never struggled with food. He's never had a problem with his weight, none of that. And I just had this story that he wouldn't understand. And then I came to realize, well, he's never gonna understand if I don't tell him, if I don't help him, if I don't let him understand me, of course he's not gonna understand. And so he has just been an incredible, incredible part of my entire journey. But...

But yeah, so then I told him and from there, there really was, I would say like waves, times where when things got really stressful or really challenging or emotions were running high for whatever reason, my binging would ramp up. And as it would ramp up, I would also then be really worried about what it was doing to my body or was I gonna gain weight or were people gonna know?

You know, so it kind of would, it would all just end up exacerbating itself and kind of building on itself.

Jen (14:03)
Wow. Yeah, I can imagine. And I've never really ever heard the hormone response to it. You know, when I started perimenopause and I'm still in it, it is horrifying the way that my body has changed and that the things that I used to do for it that helped it to stay the way that it was, they don't work anymore. And I do find myself overeating because I'm angry.

Jane Pilger (14:31)
Yes. Yes. Yeah. It's so it is so common. And it's because we think that our body shouldn't be changing. But it should. The hormone it's just like we would never expect a teenager, we would never expect from a from a young girl to a developed teenager, we would never expect them to have the same body that they did when they were

Jen (14:31)
my body.

Jane Pilger (15:00)
as they do when they're 17, 18. But for some reason, we think that at 50, our body should be the same as it was when it was 30. It's the same comparison, we don't really see it. there are so many women who are in the midlife hormonal phase change of life who really are struggling with

and with disordered eating. And it's a lot of women who I have never struggled with my weight and my body before. And now all of a sudden I'm really struggling. And I think what ends up happening is there becomes this, it's a resistance to it. It's an, like you said, I'm angry, I'm frustrated, I'm angry. And so because of that, then I end up eating even more. So where there might normally, if we just let the body

do what the body's gonna do, there might naturally be some weight gain, some body composition shifting because it's what's supposed to happen. So there might be naturally some, but because we end up fighting it, we fight ourselves, we fight our bodies and we're like, well, screw it. Then we eat even more or we think, well, it's not gonna matter anyway. I'm gaining weight. I'm just gonna keep this. So then,

we end up doing things that actually kind of exacerbate it. Just like when I was in college, I was doing these things to try to stop, but I was actually exacerbating the very thing that I was trying to kind of overcome.

Jen (16:45)
Yeah, that makes sense.

Jane Pilger (16:46)
Yeah.

Jen (16:49)
the anger that I have with my body, I go back and forth on is it my anger at myself or is it my anger that I'm not socially acceptable anymore? Does that make sense?

Jane Pilger (17:05)
It does make sense. then, mean, gosh, which just opens up a whole nother conversation around who decides what's acceptable. it really truly that you're not socially acceptable or is it that I've bought the narrative that there is only one size or one shape that is acceptable? And the other thing that's crazy is if you put 30 women in a room,

you could be, they could be 30 women of all different sizes from the smallest of small to the largest of large. And there would be no correlation between the size of the woman and their own perception of acceptability of their confidence or like or dislike in their body. Like there's not a correlation. really isn't.

So many people think, oh, if only my body was smaller. If only I had less body fat. If only I could change my composition, whatever, then I would be okay. Then I would be acceptable. But there are so many women out there who have the quote unquote ideal body, who are miserable, who don't feel acceptable, who still think they need to change or do something else. And there are all kinds of women out there in the

the standardized non acceptable body who love themselves. So they're really, there's like not an actual guidebook as to this body is acceptable, but we kind of just have these ideas in our mind based on the stories that we've fed.

Jen (18:52)
Yeah, it's interesting because when I think back, my whole childhood and teenage years into my 20s, I was always heavier and always made fun of for it. My brothers used to call me Crisco Fat McCann. There was a lot there. And my abuser also went wholeheartedly into it, made sure it told me that I would never look like women that he saw on the street.

And so when I finally did lose that weight after I had my kids, I felt like a whole brand new being. I felt liberated. And then 47 came around, and that's when my body started gaining weight. And I was like, no, no, not again. No, no, no, no, I can't go back to that, the fear.

Jane Pilger (19:28)
Hmm.

Jen (19:46)
that I'm going to be tortured by people because of my size.

Jane Pilger (19:52)
Yeah. So what your brain has, what your nervous system has is a correlation, kind of a connection between when my body is bigger, then I am abused. I am verbally abused. Maybe I am physically abused. So of course our nervous system, anytime we go through something big, something significant, we come up with the nervous system has this not again.

this not again, kind of, we're gonna file this in never again. We're never gonna let this happen again so that we don't have to go through that. So when your brain, your nervous system has the connection with, that happened when I was in a bigger body, then it's kind of made this correlation that the size of my body created that experience. So if then we can start to see it, then the work becomes to separate

to reassure ourselves that that didn't happen because of the size of my body. It happened because of those people. Those people are no longer in my life. I am now in a position where I will not let that happen to me anymore. I couldn't do that before, but now I can. And if we can then separate that, as the body starts to change, I mean, not many people are going to just love the fact that our bodies change.

We don't have to love that, but when it feels threatening, when it feels like, my gosh, this is going to mean something really bad and awful is going to happen again, then nervous system is going to be activated. We're going to be on high alert. It is going to feel more like a fight. And I'm going to be very much in that, you know, activated response of my nervous system, which is going to make me way less likely to be able to make any changes.

my body. So being able to kind of like see all of that, it's like, okay. So my encouragement to you would be to that, to know you can find that that liberation that you felt before, you can find that in this body, this body right here. Like the liberation didn't, your brain wants to say the liberation came because of the size of my body.

And so if the size of my body changes, then I can't feel liberated anymore. But what I would encourage you to say is, how can I find that liberation in this body? Because it's totally possible.

Jen (22:32)
Yeah, that's so powerful. Changing that mindset, getting out of the... I don't consider myself a victim in any way, or form. hearing what you're saying is that I am kind of getting a little bit of a victim mentality in it and not giving myself the strength.

Jane Pilger (22:57)
I personally, I do not like the term victim mentality because it sounds like you're choosing to be a victim and nobody chooses to be a victim at all. But when you can see just to me, it's more like it's more like just seeing it, seeing the perspective of, I'm actually thinking that the size of my body is what's creating the liberation, but that's not actually what

creates it. What creates it is the way that we're thinking about ourselves, the way if you go back to what you were thinking about your body in those moments, like what you were saying to yourself when you looked in the mirror, when you put clothes on, all of that, it was all of that, that created that liberation plus the power of knowing this, I am the one who decides what happens with this body. I'm the one who chooses and you still are now.

Are you the one who gets to decide what the hormones do? No. But with this body that you have, you do get all the power, for sure.

Jen (24:05)
Again, that's so powerful. I love your view on this. so when you, when did you decide to start helping others through this?

Jane Pilger (24:19)
gosh, I remember, would say it was a couple of things. would say during my, while I was in, so I went through two rounds of intensive outpatient therapy at a local eating disorders treatment center. And that was really my like, when not yet becomes right now. I had an eating disorders therapist and I was seeing her and my binging, my behaviors, everything was really escalating.

and she wanted me to come into intensive outpatient. And I was just like, no, I don't have time for that. Like, this is not the time. And I gave her all the reasons why I just could not go into treatment. And she said, well, let's just calculate. Like how many hours a week would you say you're spending kind of in your eating disorder? And so we counted, we calculated the hours, not only in a binge itself,

but also like thinking about a binge. So thinking about what I was gonna eat, the actual binge driving around, this was when I was, so I was out of college at this point, I was working as a commercial real estate broker and I would drive in my car a lot. And so I would drive to bakeries and convenience stores and grocery stores. I would only buy just a couple of things at one place, just enough to like drive to the next place. So nobody would know just how much.

I was eating as I was driving around. And so we counted up the hours, the binge itself, and then the aftermath of the binge. How long would I sit on the couch and scroll or not be able to sleep or how long it would take for me to recover and all of that. And the amount of hours spent on my eating disorder in a week was significant. And then I was like, well, I mean, I guess I do have time.

for this because if I could get all that time back, how different would my life be? So I ended up going into intensive outpatient treatment. And I think it was there that I decided if I ever figure this out and get to the place where I feel like I'm recovered, I wanna help other people do this because there are so many people, especially with binge eating, there are so many people struggling with binge eating.

in silence. There's so much shame involved. And the shame really is one of the primary reasons that keeps us in the cycle. But we think just like I did in that very first binge and all the thousands of binges afterwards, really do think there must be something wrong with me. I'm broken. Nobody else, like nobody else

could even imagine what I do with food behind closed doors. And I would never want anybody to know or never want anybody to see me. And that shame is, it's so prevalent, but because of that, then we think we're the only one. I'm the only one who's broken. I'm the only one who's struggling this way. And what I find is that so many people are struggling and just knowing you're not alone in this, that

You know, there are so many other people who are struggling and so many other people who no, who no longer struggle that it is possible to find that peaceful relationship with food. Like that to me is just like, I just want to be able to bring my experience to other people to, help find that, that peaceful relationship with food.

Jen (28:01)
Yeah, community comes up pretty much every episode. really do need a community of people who understand us. When I was a kid, when I was thrusted into group therapy, I hated it. Hated it. Did not want to be there at all. But as an adult, I went inpatient for my own diagnosis, my complex PTSD, my depression.

And it was completely different that time because I'm an adult and I understand that these other adults know what I've been going through. And it's so uplifting to have people around you that understand you. And I can imagine that's even more important for eating disorders.

Jane Pilger (28:48)
Yeah, absolutely. It really is. And what's so powerful about being in a community, have a group coaching program. And so we have this group. And what's so amazing about it is that people will come in and some people just aren't, some people aren't ready to talk about it. And some people don't even want to talk about it, but they just want to hear other people and being able to hear other people, other people's experiences like, I'm not alone. Just that I'm not alone, that reassurance

is you can hear it on a podcast. You can hear it when you read something or you see something on social, but when you actually are in a group, you hear somebody else sharing about something that they're struggling with or something that they're realizing or something that they're working on. just like, I have been so alone in this for some of these people my entire life. And now like just to know that there are other people here who struggle in the same way, just

that in of itself is so, it really is, it's freeing. It really is. The other thing that's amazing about a group is that we are able to collectively do what we can't do on our own. So for example, especially with the nervous system, I do a lot of work with the nervous system, understanding the nervous system, how the nervous system impacts our eating, how we can kind of learn to work with our nervous system.

and just being in a group, when you come into a group, you're able to borrow each other's nervous systems. So you could come into a group and be stressed out or really upset or whatever. and if you're listening to this podcast, you've probably had a situation where you either go into a group or you just go meet a friend who has a very calm, relaxed presence and you get around them and you're like,

I can actually take a breath. I can feel myself relaxing a little bit where I couldn't get there before. And I love that part about it too is kind of to be able to be that kind of calm, relaxing presence for other people while they're learning to do it for themselves.

Jen (31:08)
Yeah, I love that. I've never really thought about it that way that we can share each other's nervous systems.

Jane Pilger (31:15)
Yeah,

yeah. It's incredible. Well, and if you think about any conversation that you have with somebody, are either you're you're you're going to either rise up to the level of their system or they're going to or or or down one way or the other. If you have two people who come that are kind of in different states, you're you're likely going to end up calibrating to the other person. This is why when if if not if when

When you are in a situation where there is a disagreement, where you have two people who have heightened nervous systems, could be your partner, could be your child, could be your boss or a coworker. When you are both in that heightened state, there is no, you're not going to resolve anything from that place. You're just not. So this is, you know, people say like, give yourself space, just, you know, whatever. It really actually makes sense because if somebody is activated,

The other person is they need time to get themselves regulated before you can come and just have an actual discussion, come to a resolution, whatever it is. Otherwise you're both, we've all experienced this where you have two people who are activated and then we come at each other and then we just like, all we do is escalate the activation. It works both ways, yeah.

Jen (32:39)
Yeah.

You know, I do these moody talks and I focus on an emotion every month. And this past month it was anger. And when you're angry and you're trying to communicate with another person, you're just going to keep revving up if you don't take that step back and give yourself a coping skill that works for you. Use that coping skill. Get yourself down to less intense

feeling in your body, and then you're going to be able to talk to someone. if they're reacting, then they exactly what you said. You guys will come down together and have a better conversation with each other and get things done, get what you want and get what they want. Right.

Jane Pilger (33:31)
Yeah. Yeah. And what's so powerful is when, you don't really know this, you don't really realize this, you don't, maybe you don't have the, the, skills and the tools to kind of be with your anger, to, you know, kind of bring it down, all of that. A lot of times people end up using food when they can't use their words. So for example, if you're listening and you're somebody who does kind of like turn to food, let's say when you're really angry.

Imagine if you've had a time or just get curious, if you've had a time where you've been really angry at somebody and you end up, because you feel like either you can't say something, you don't want to say something, you end up eating instead. So it's like, can remember a couple of times being upset, say I'm upset with my husband or something, I'll show him, and I'm like eating, like really like the food you eat generally have a clue. So if you're eating like really

crunchy foods, things like that. There can be more kind of like anger and that like the crunch. I can remember like, I'll show him, you know, like eating all of this food. he has, he's not feeling that, but because I didn't know how to use my words, I would end up kind of eating, eating with my words, if that makes sense. Yeah. And so then, yeah. And then on the other side, like if it's, so anger might be something like crunchy hard foods.

If then it's more, if it's more like sadness or grief or loneliness, a lot of times it's going to be more of like softer. It could be, you know, like the ice creams or the cakes and the muffins and you know, that, that type of food. So sometimes even the food you eat, gives clues. Wow.

Jen (35:19)
That's incredible. You're teaching me so much about our eating habits. It's amazing. So when you are working with clients, do you have an age range?

Jane Pilger (35:34)
That's a great question. I would say I have worked with clients probably anywhere from their 20s up to 70s. I mean, huge, huge age range. I do work with men, primarily, it's primarily women. Yeah. And I work with really women who, a lot of the women that I end up working with have been through a lot of different, they've tried a lot of different things.

They've been through therapy, they've been through treatment, they've been through you name it, they've tried all of the things and they've had some kind of small periods of success, but still are struggling. And that's the type of person that typically, I'm not usually the first stop of someone. So generally somebody's been through quite a few paths before they get to me.

Jen (36:34)
can see that and understand that because I think a lot of us just jump to different diets. At this point in my life, I don't call anything a diet. I call it a way of eating. we constantly jump to, OK, I don't like myself. Well, I'm going to go on a quote diet. And that diet didn't work. So now I'm going to do this diet. And I don't understand why this isn't working. It works for so-and-so. yeah.

I can understand that you have a lot of people are coming in after they've just been so fed up.

Jane Pilger (37:10)
Yes. Yes, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. Yeah. And really what I talk about, I actually recently wrote a book. Oh, wonderful. It's called, yeah, it's called the binge eating breakthrough. And the tagline of the book is to me, it's so important and it's why food isn't the problem and what really is. Because most people think with binge eating, food is the problem.

So if I just change the food, I change what I'm eating, I change when I'm eating, I just don't bring those things in the house. I just don't go to parties. I don't go to these places where these things I think I can't control myself around are, then I'll be fine. But the food isn't the problem. The binge eating is a symptom. It's not actually the problem itself. So when we focus on food and try to change what we're eating, how much we're eating, when we're eating,

we're not addressing the problem itself. And so the problem is there's really, I have identified eight reasons why people binge or feel out of control, struggle with food, eight reasons. We've actually already talked about most of them, but the number one reason is shame and judgment. Just, you know, we hide in shame, we're judging ourselves, then we wanna get away from ourselves, and how do we do that? We use food.

that kind of like keeps us in the cycle. The number two reason is restriction. Literally not eating enough food. There's also two types of restriction. There's physical restriction and mental restriction. Emotional, it's kind of like the, eat that, I'm not supposed to eat this, this food is bad. All of that is also a form of restriction. Number three, dysregulated nervous system. Talked a little bit about that. Number four, disconnection from the body. Where literally there's so many reasons

we are disconnected and that can be where you had mentioned trauma earlier, that can be where trauma can come in. Like we teach ourselves, this is how I disconnect. Number five, coping mechanism. We just literally, we don't have the skills, we don't have the emotional capacity to deal until we use food to cope. Number six, an attempt to control. My body's changing, I don't want it to change, I'm gonna control everything. Number seven is just habits.

Anytime we do something repeatedly over and over again, our brain is going to wire that in. And so some people will approach binge eating as a habit. This is just a habit I need to change. So I'm gonna go read Atomic Habits or whatever these other things, and I'm gonna try to apply these habit-based approaches to my eating. But if we haven't addressed the other seven reasons, no attempt to changing a habit is gonna work. And anybody who has tried to...

approach their food stuff from the habit standpoint, knows that's just not a long-term solution. And then the eighth reason is negative self-talk. It's just the way we talk to ourselves. And so each of those reasons has its own corresponding solution then. And shame and judgment. The solution is understand, understand why it started, why it hasn't stopped yet. Number two, restriction. The solution, remove restrictions.

Number three, dysregulated nervous system. The solution, learn to work with your nervous system. Number four, disconnection from the body, learn to connect with your body. I mean, that sounds so nice and simple, but it's that, that in of itself takes time, right? Number five, coping mechanisms. So the solution is to expand your emotional capacity, your capacity to be with any emotion. Number six, an attempt to control. The solution there is to develop

two-way trust. And so two-way trust is trust between you and your body. So if my body and myself trust each other, I'm going to trust that my body is going to communicate to me what it needs when it's hungry, when it needs to sleep, all of those things. And then my body is going to trust that I'm actually going to listen and respond. So it has to go both ways. And even when you think about what you were talking about with like perimenopause,

there's generally not that two way. It's like, I don't trust my body. don't even know what my body's doing. And then the body's like, well, I don't trust that you're gonna feed me because you're trying to serve me or you're trying to do all these other things, right? So that's a really interesting one. And then number seven, habit. The solution is break the habit. And then number eight, negative self-talk. The solution there is to develop, to develop, to work on your internal, to shift your internal dialogue.

Jen (41:56)
Wow, you have given me so much like bright light onto myself. The way that I look at my own eating and you know, I understand better now. Just through your, your genius.

Jane Pilger (42:14)
Well, and that is a hundred percent really, is the goal of the work that I do is to help people go like, wow, that makes sense. I get it. I understand. Because once you get to that place of like, yes, I see it. I understand. Now I want to do something about it. Not because I think I'm broken or something's wrong or I've got to fix it. It's because like, so you mean I can work with this? You mean this, it gives you

It gives you agency, it gives you choice now of where to go. And these are all just skills. They are literally all skills that we can cultivate and we can grow and we can develop.

Jen (42:59)
Well, we had a little technical difficulty, but I did not want to leave this episode without asking Jane where we can find her.

Jane Pilger (43:08)
Yeah, absolutely. So, few places you can find me, you can find my website, janepilger.com. It's great place to find me there. There's a couple of great resources there. One, there's a quiz. If you do struggle with binge eating, you can take the quiz and find out why you binge. So there's a great resource there on the homepage. also I have a podcast.

So if anything that you've been listening to, if you're interested in that, you can check out, it's called the Binge Eating Breakthrough Podcast. And also my book, I just wrote a book, it's available on Amazon. It is called The Binge Eating Breakthrough and Why Food Isn't the Problem and What Really Is. You can also get the details about the book and a link straight to it on Amazon through my website. So website's a great place.

to reach me. And lastly, I've got a newsletter on Substack. It's called the Peaceful Eater. And I send out a newsletter every Monday with just additional information, as well as the podcast episodes on Wednesday. There's also some additional resources. There are some coaching calls and other things that I do there. So that's another great way to find me.

Jen (44:22)
Wonderful. And that's going to all be in the show notes and I am getting myself a copy of that book. I cannot wait to read that. So thank you so much, Jane, for sharing your immense knowledge.

Jane Pilger (44:35)
Absolutely. Thank you so much. I loved our conversation and anytime I have the ability to just talk about the struggles with food and really help people see it in a new light and gain some kind of insights and understanding is just exactly the work I'm here to do in the world.

Jen (44:55)
Well, I'm so glad that you're here to do it because I think a lot of people could use your help in this. So thank you.

When Not Yet Becomes Right Now (45:09)
I want to thank Jane for sharing so much wisdom when it comes to the inner workings of why we make the choices we make when it comes to food. I'm in the middle of reading the Binge Eating Breakthrough, and I'm learning so much about how my trauma impacts my choices, and also learning to give grace to this body I live in, the body that has helped me through so many challenging times. And I need to love this body. I would love to have Jane back on the show since we had those technical difficulties.

Damn you, Wi-Fi! But I think the knowledge for Steve in this episode can really help so many to better understand the why of our food decisions. I highly recommend you check out Jane's website, which has so many resources, and her podcast, The Binge Eating Breakthrough Podcast.