Episode 80: How to Cope with Emotional Eating
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Episode Description
In this episode of The Up-Beet Dietitians podcast, Emily and Hannah discuss emotional eating and society’s perception of it. Have you ever beat yourself up because you overindulged in cookies after a bad day? Or maybe you were really stressed about an upcoming deadline and ate a family-sized bag of chips? The girls break down the driving factors of different types of emotional eating and how you can be intentional about coping mechanisms if you wanted to add a couple to your tool box. The girls also answer the question: is emotional eating bad? Be sure to give this episode a listen!
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0:33
hello everyone welcome back to the podcast the podcast hello guys welcome
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back today we are taking a break from the liver King drama and talking more
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about our usual intuitive eating content today we're going into emotional eating which we should have recorded
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like three dozen episodes ago because it's a question we get all the time and we always talk about it with other
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people so um anyway it's gonna be good to have this episode to refer to for anyone who
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struggles I know that a lot of people do struggle with emotional eating and whatever capacity so we're going to go over what that even
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really means maybe you don't even know that you struggle with it we're gonna help you kind of identify that um we'll go over the different types of
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emotional eating and talk about why it isn't a bad thing spoiler alert and then lastly go over how to cope with it
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um because even though it's not a bad thing it's not always going to be great to do all the time it's not going to feel very great
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things will explain in this episode today yeah so let's just talk about what is
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emotional eating and emotional eating can look a lot of different ways and it's different from our physical hungry
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it's more of that like emotional hunger and I know you can't really use a definition inside of a word inside the
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definition but let's say for example like physical hunger we get from
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working out more or going long periods of time without eating or maybe like our blood sugar levels are dropping those
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are like physical or physical reminders or like physical
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methods not methods but like something that's happening physically to your body yeah
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that is telling you to eat whereas emotional can be driven by more of those like internal factors so like happiness
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sadness boredom uh stress stuff like that that's a little bit more
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psychologically driven that is what the eating that's what kind of eating we'll be talking about today
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yeah I always say that like physical hunger is something we feel as a result
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of like physiological biological like actual like hormonal cues in our body or
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processes I guess um so it's like I guess physical hunger is the best way to define it you know
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what it is you know physical hunger feels like but emotional hunger can happen whether or not we're physically
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hungry so emotional hunger has nothing to do with those like leptin and growing like hunger and fullness hormones it's
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simply due to psychological feelings again it could be boring like Emily said boredom stress loneliness sadness even
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happiness too we can even happily emotionally eat but that is when we are
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eating whether or not we may have hunger cues to go along with it which again is not
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inherently a bad thing as we'll explain I feel like we already spoiled all the different types of emotional eating
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let's talk about I feel like one of the most common ones
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stress eating yeah I hear this all the time like oh I'm stress eating this pizza or I
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stress ate last night I was bad I also am a
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I'm trying to think of which type I'm we could make we could talk about this after we go through all of them trying to think of which one I participate in
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the most but oftentimes we think of like is a bad is a bed so to say is a bedtime
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coming up we're stressed about going to bed no it's like a deadline coming up oh my God
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that's what I would stress about oh my God it's almost 7 30. why am I still at this meeting [Laughter]
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um or maybe you received some bad news or maybe like you find yourself wanting
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something like sweet or salty like oh I just need to eat something right now and it's like or maybe work isn't going well
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and you're going somewhere to eat or like that from a distraction standpoint
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and Stress Management is always something we should all work on it's not every thing
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that's going to go away unfortunately we're not going to all not be stressed that'd be amazing I can't even imagine a world like that it probably will never
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exist but we want to make sure that sometimes we can't always just get rid
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of the stressor is great does that be like just stop working or
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um don't talk to this person you don't like or like something like that but we want to make sure that we can
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manage that initial emotion in some way especially from a stress standpoint because
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stress eating isn't bad it's just there are other methods to manage your
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stress and you might feel a little bit better if you do if you switch it up a
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little bit Yeah to go along with that we can come back and talk about how we emotionally eat if you want to but to go
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along with what you said before I forget this thought um I always like to say that
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to go along with like how it isn't always a bad thing it's a choice like if you are choosing to emotionally eat
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cool like that can be a very valid way to cope with whatever emotion but if
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it's more like a compulsive reactive like chronic thing where whenever I feel stressed my only way I know how to cope
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with it is to turn to sweets or salty or whatever you would normally turn to that's when we want to figure out why
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that's happening and maybe kind of think of other ways that we could cope with whatever that emotion is so again that
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choice is that kind of keyword there where if you're choosing to do so like I give the example of
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um I guess to go back to our question that I just talked about of what what do we do
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um I will like every Sunday me and Finn and
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if Ross is not working he'll join us we do what we call popcorn snacks where like to get like relaxed for the week we
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make a big old bowl of popcorn and we just like eat that and chilly watch TV so it's like our way of
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I guess it's not really like reacting to anything but it's preventing emotional stress um which I would classify as emotional
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eating because I'm not always hungry for that popcorn it's just like a routine or something that we do to help with that
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emotion every week yeah but we're choosing to it's not like oh I feel stressed every Sunday got the
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Sunday scaries I gotta get that popcorn in it's more of like a choice I'm choosing to do it and it helps me to
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feel better in that moment yeah and it's also like the more you work on recognizing it the
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better you'll just kind of feel with it or like maybe you're like oh I'm really stressed I know this is why I'm
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gravitating towards that candy bar but it's okay because I know this is
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kind of what's driving that and like I understand what the root cause of it is
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is my whatever stress but I'm this is how I'm choosing to deal with it right
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now and that's fine yeah how would you say you emotionally eat if any of these
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I emotionally eat when someone makes me angry oh yeah some
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anger eating um or or I'm like really annoyed with
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someone or like it's typically work related I don't I don't really surround
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myself with people that I don't get along with yeah unfortunately
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you can't always choose your co-workers no you cannot so like what would you
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typically like turn to like what kind of foods well
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I the way I eat is very odd I have found I get things in large batches so like
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I'm kind of succumbed to whatever I had really been
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fixating on during that time yeah but it's normally a salty I normally always have a salty and sweet on hand so
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like whichever direction that goes I'll go with that same I like to have both like if I have
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the popcorn I have to have something sweet with it like chocolate chips that I sprinkle in there or like a glass of like a sweet wine like salty and sweet
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together is my go-to also yes yeah remember that was you right we're at
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Purdue was it Purdue or in Orlando where I was like oh I need Savory oh I need sweet oh that was Orlando I could not
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get satisfied I was like I would eat a sweet thing and then I would need salty after that and then I would need sweet
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after that and I just could not figure out the perfect balance I wonder what
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that was about probably because I was a billion degrees and I was like that was the day that I was like drenched and sweat when we got
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on the the scooters I was stress eating that day for sure those scooters caused me a lot of
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distress yeah man well yeah you live in Florida
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you've got some some balls oh my gosh let's talk about the next
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night let's move on from sway
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so another common type of emotional eating which this one doesn't really get talked about as much is celebratory
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eating so we think of like going out to eat for a birthday or a promotion or
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even like a social event for work or just a social event in general
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oftentimes there's a lot of like really positive emotions going on or maybe there's like
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a lot more food than we normally eat and it's like just part of the event like
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this is what's going on we're all going to snack on some appetizers and eat a dinner and
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drink our drinks and hang out with each other and have a good time and this is just to go to show that like
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emotional eating we always we always perceive it as a bad thing but
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celebratory eating I would not say like not that like anything's bad but
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like are you mad at yourself for celebrating like no that's a very like
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clear well hopefully clearly well I have a story on this one I have no spoken I
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have spoken with some weight loss experts I guess you could call them
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and they always talk with their patience about how like oh our
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society sets you up for failure for emotional eating because we're always eating we eat at Thanksgiving we eat at
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Christmas we eat at birthdays and they kind of like make it to make a really bad thing that we use food to celebrate
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because it inhibits their weight loss oh so I've Heard lots of times that
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people will say like around the holidays especially it's like oh
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we're gonna be eating due to whatever celebration reason this is gonna be so bad for me
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oh no we're happy right for heaven forbid we use food for more than fuel because it just tastes really delicious
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and it brings us together with family and celebrates a certain culture maybe even oh no but your weight might go up for a
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day because of the extra salt and carbs how will we ever recover from that
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if only our bodies were smart machines or not machines smart
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innovators yeah that can handle a little celebrating once in a while
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I retract my previous statement then because no yours was right I live in a world that
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you hadn't heard of that but yeah yeah I live in a
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I'm not exposed to that quite as often speaking of
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choosing your surroundings we can't can't always do that
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yeah but celebrations are not a bad thing especially from a food standpoint
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and I hate when people are like this is something I haven't hearing a Super Bowl the like hole
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calories don't count around the holidays I know we already talked about this but like
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just the complete like disregard for nutrition it's like it's like one way or the other yes and it's not
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I'm just not like that no I don't know and thinking that way just sets you
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up for getting into a vicious cycle of like you're either super duper strict
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and you hate yourself or you're saying screw that that's too hard
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and then you're overeating and also hating yourself and feeling uncomfortable neither of which are good
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so yeah you were right about the celebratory eating like it can be a positive thing which is
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again another example of how emotional eating is not always inherently bad no matter what those weight loss experts
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will tell you no let's talk about the last one
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is another common one it's eating out of sadness
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I don't do this one do you I I'm realized I'm reflecting on myself
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right now and I eat two different ways I most of my okay well maybe we could talk about to say the second let's talk about
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EOS sadness first so this is when like maybe you're going through a breakup or
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maybe you're mourning a loss of someone or maybe you failed a class Hannah and I
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how did we react to that I want to unpack that also in a second we'll we'll come back because there are
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two things you need to pin one yes we're gonna analyze our emotional eating
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and then we're going to talk about how we've reacted to failing a class but eating out of bad sadness is
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very common because people use it as like a numbing agent a distractor to avoid thinking about those sad feelings
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it's so common and it doesn't make it bad it's like it's a coping mechanism you're people COPE in different ways and
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you cope with food in that sense and that doesn't mean you also only need to have one coping mechanism you can have
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multiple different coping mechanisms um but like obviously it's much harder when you're like in the emotion and you
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can't like which coping mechanism am I gonna try out right now or lean on it's
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something that you just take a lot of like practice around awareness of your triggers it just is also foreshadowing
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later things we'll talk about um but the more you raise recognition around it
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and just kind of know what drives you and how you react the battle you're built you'll be able
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to handle it and that doesn't mean that you'll stop emotional eating because Hannah and I are very in tune with our
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emotional eating triggers and we both still emotionally
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yeah exactly how to bring the first point we're going back to I realized how I emotionally eat
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it's not out of anger even though that is a little bit I eat more emotionally when I'm overwhelmed but when I'm sad I
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don't need anything that's all I am too if I'm like really sad about whatever it is I probably won't eat much
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yeah or if I'm like super stressed I don't eat like if I have like I hate job
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interviews if I have a job interview it's like a nightmare like putting on a show for an hour in
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front of some loser I don't even know who's trying to judge me the whole time absolutely not I hate job interviews hopefully if I've ever had a future
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interview no one's listening to this um um digital footprint
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um anyway like I get so stressed about those I like won't eat like if it's like 10 a.m I will not eat from like dinner
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until after the interview is over stress is a big one for me but I don't
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do but yeah I don't know like what more so like negative emotion leads me
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to eat foreign
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yeah but also I feel like my body is getting more
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sensitive it's really annoying like I feel like think about what I eat a little bit more now because I can easily
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like go into like a food coma more easily it's very annoying I know what you mean like I used to be able to eat
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more I wonder if and for me I think it's just since I've started working full-time
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like as a dietitian it's almost always a sedentary job whereas I used to like walk 20 30 000 steps a day in college on
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top of lifting almost every day yeah and I still lift but like I heard take them for walks most days but besides
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that I'm my butt all day talking to people it's
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sad I have said interior we are I miss I miss it I miss moving all the time yeah
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don't miss College though which is our next point
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which I don't know how it reacted I remember I was like laughing at the start of the exam oh my God this was
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biochemistry by the way yeah which I'm sure we told the story before
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but I feel like we probably went and like ate somewhere and like talked about how dumb it was or something
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yeah it probably was like a dining core or something and ate way too many desserts
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to be fair though Purdue did not skimp on the dessert bars no they're great
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well made it this far who cares we're okay yeah we made it through second time around
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so we've already said this but it is emotional eating bad no not inherently
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it's completely normal to do it and it's a very valid way to cope with really any
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emotion you might feel like I already said it's like Emily said too it's just like the why behind it and I'd say like
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how often we're doing it as well and if it's our only way to cope with that emotion yes and if it's leading to you
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feeling really uncomfortable too like if whenever you feel stressed you eat like really large quantities and
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that just leaves you feeling like really uncomfortable it probably is going to be good to
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figure out other ways to cope that make you actually feel better versus than just feeling worse with that emotion
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you're feeling exactly
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so how do we do that yeah so first step to how to cope with emotional eating is
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identifying your triggers and this could be like what Hannah and I talked about like Hannah's I don't even know if I'd
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say this as a trigger but like every Sunday it could be your trigger just the day of the week yeah you will eat your
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popcorn snacks popcorn snacks and my one of my triggers is if I'm
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really overwhelmed I know I'm more inept to
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go eat something to distract myself it's things like that where like you
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just have to think about a little bit more what I would always ask myself is like am I like what what are my physical
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hunger cues like am I when was the last time I ate because my stomach hurt I
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want to say that earlier like your emotional eating could totally be worsened if you're actually hungry oh
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yeah so like maybe you're much more vulnerable first of all so yeah you're so vulnerable yeah I'm gonna say that at
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the very beginning I totally forgot yeah um or like you just like figure out kind of
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like what is driving this hunger and it could be a combination of both as well
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um but once you start to learn those triggers that's when we could start
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maybe thinking of some ways to cope with it and this doesn't mean like we're gonna stop the emotional eating it just
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means how am I feeling after I participate in this because like if you have a couple
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coping mechanisms already maybe you don't need to apply as much work on into this like everyone has room
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for improvement but it's always good to be able to identify what's driving that at least
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which leads us to the second step is finding some alternative mechanisms for
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that emotional eating so like say I'm gonna use me for an example um because I know myself
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and I don't know you guys as well um but let's say like an alternative
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mechanism for me being really overwhelmed is maybe I'll
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go read Because reading is something that also calms me down a lot and helps
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me still be quote unquote distracted but it's something that maybe like I would
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like if I tended to overeat a lot and I felt really uncomfortable and bad
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um and then I can like alternate it but that doesn't mean I'm going to just stop emotional eating like I still very much
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emotionally eat now but it's something else I could try and like I said before it's hard to do in
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the moment when you're like really just being driven by that emotion that's okay it's just something that the more we
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reflect on it it doesn't need to be like something obsessive where every single time we're eating we're like why am I
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eating it's like you'll just focusing on the triggers
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more so or like just even think about how you respond to things in general emotionally it doesn't even need to be
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food this could be a great reflection to see how you if you're a reactive person or what type of person you are
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um let me start with that and if you're thinking like oh my gosh guys I don't even know what alternatives
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I have because all you know is to go towards food I always like to ask people what
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genuinely makes you happy and trying to do that and that can be going outside
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for a walk some people like to crochet some people like to do puzzles you could play with your dog you could call a
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friend play with your cat play with your turtle play with your
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knock your fish don't play with your fish you'll kill them so not only are we giving emotional
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eating tips today we're also giving animal care tips we we had a bet on here multiple times
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and now suddenly we are animal experts yeah um no it's just like think of a couple
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different activities it doesn't mean something crazy it could be just like listening to music or something like that's gonna like help
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deal with that emotion whatever it is yeah we didn't even put in like Angry eating in here because obviously I
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participate in that but that could be another yeah emotional eating type don't they have like um
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what are they called like those rooms you can like rent out and like go smash them I want to go to one of those so
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many too I wanted to like perfectly time though where I'm like having a rage blackout and I'm like
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ready to go that's true I feel like that's something just on the moment like on standby
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when you and I finally live together like in the same area like in our studio
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which we can use at any time like if we're both doing something on a Saturday separately and like I get really mad
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about something I can go to the studio into the rage room and just you're right have at it we'll have inventory to like keep things
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stocked in there to break come out of our week we'll have someone in charge yeah someone in charge of
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making sure the rage room is stocked we'll get an intern rage room intern
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Al that'd be great um speaking of the music thing though in my membership that I offer which I don't
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like to talk about on here because it's obviously not through Ted but um I have for the members speaking of
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like emotional eating I made like playlists for them on Spotify they can like follow and listen
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to for like each emotion it's like if they're feeling like I know I love it so like if they need like a happy playlist
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I have one of those I think like us like a sad mellow kind of playlist I have one of those like an angry playlist I have
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one of those so you could always do the same for yourself to like make playlists so you can like refer back to like I'm
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gonna say it's kind of hard to know in the moment like I feel angry let's go to Spotify
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um we might just be having like a more normal um like fluid reaction but
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at least having that could help to maybe use as a mechanism if you were thinking
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about it yeah that's a good idea yeah I was thinking I have Spotify playlists
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like that but mine are like unhinged and I don't think anyone should look to those for
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references for reference my sad playlist is called
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therapy session that can't be good no no I think I have
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any sad playlists well you said that you don't like to be sad anymore so you don't want to be sad
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I avoid it at all costs which is probably a problem build up into something else
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you'll go through a roller coaster being sad and then never being sad and [Music]
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um okay you're aware at least I'm very aware of my problems I just need to fix them not
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fixing I don't need to do that either which is also a problem yeah yeah cool we all know my problems around
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here at this point every yeah I think every episode I bring up whatever issue I've realized about myself since the
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last week it's okay and we're just sharing more about ourselves
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so when a Scandal comes out it won't be a surprise Hannah is going through this we have to
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give her grace because she hasn't felt sad in a long time and it finally came to her so we'll give her a break for the
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Scandal yeah ah it's funny so
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overall emotional leading is okay you don't need to beat yourself up we're all
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human and as long as we're making like conscious efforts to just try to manage
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our emotions that doesn't mean like suppress them it doesn't mean like correct them or like find some healthy
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alternative it's just making sure we're not letting them run Haywire like the Inside Out movie where they just imagine
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like those just not being kept in check which is kind of what happened is that the one or the cartoon the
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Disney one I've heard that one sad so I haven't watched it I cried the first
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year exactly you would definitely cry that's what everyone says so I've avoided it like the plague but it's
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it's so good though even a happy cry I don't want that either they're sad and happy crying yeah I'll
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be avoiding that no yeah I don't think you you'd be very sad I like it when it comes to like movies
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and T like movies especially I cannot watch movies like that because I get so emotionally attached that's why I like
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watch TV shows more of the movies because I have like nine Seasons before the breakup with the TV show happens
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yeah I hate movies because I like fall in love with someone for whatever reason and then an hour later I they're dead or
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the movie's over or whatever I'm a TV show Person everyone at work
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gets mad at me they're always like have you seen this movie I'm like you already know the answer of course I have I've seen like five movies in my entire life
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okay that's my I have a problem let's see we've we've unveiled something else
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something talking about emotional eating has really got me just bringing things up
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oh okay anyway let's do the bonus question oh yeah so
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what is and today's bonus question I'm excited for is I
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we should do a guess of each other's and then we'll answer so
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why are you making that face because I don't have an answer okay okay well let's say the question at least before
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you go and tell us like five different things you like so the bonus question is what is your favorite type of wine
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would it help if we let you do a white and a red like do I like white or red more now I'm
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saying like a specific type of white or red like a you know like Grigio the
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issue is like I have no idea like what color a Pinot Grigio is I don't know why oh okay okay then we can do red white or
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Rose like if I drink or we can use champagne I like campaign I guess maybe
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more like the notes I like sweet things okay but as I'm getting older I am
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appreciating a little bit drier but I don't know what's like a really dry wine I probably wouldn't like a really dry
29:47
one like a Pinot Noir that's like a red dry I probably wouldn't like that very much I could drink it but I wouldn't
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enjoy it I I feel like you know I was gonna say it
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depends like if I'm drinking it by itself I want it to be sweeter I think
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it's about answer for wine yeah but if it's with food I like drier wines
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I think yeah for wine it's okay to say it depends and like I think it's a common reason and like even like what
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type of food you're eating I'm sure depends yes like whatever if you're having fish I'm
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sure you do like a certain type white is it white in chicken and then like red meats are red wines
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I want to get more into it I like wine we should go
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we should go to France and we should go to wine tastings oh our
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trip is getting Broad I love it someone some brand
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pay for us to go into France oh yeah and we will educational yeah
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it's it's for my we could do cooking classes out there oh my gosh we could
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talk about they're much more in tune with like the family side and
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like long meal times and that side of it we could totally do a podcast episode or in
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a blog post about it yeah we will talk about your business whoever sponsors us
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it'll be you'll be our sponsor can you cover flights housing food
31:27
[Music] all the basic living Necessities that we you know you know yeah yeah
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but yeah yeah maybe my gopher 2023 will be to drink more wine drink more alcohol
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take that diet culture oh my gosh I want to bring up our elbow
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do you think elk doing alcohol is cool episode I don't think that Emily and Hannah would support that statement no I
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don't think it's cool I don't think I'm cool at all I think it would be it's educational once again I just want to
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like learn more about it yeah Vinnies no we talked about this because I was
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like in awe when I was there with you okay I was gonna say they used to have free wine tastings that were literally
32:13
like amazing because you just got free wine and could eat as much bread as you
32:19
wanted and there were like the like special smart wine people
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yes there's gonna be something similar there's wineries around here where I
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live I don't I mean it's Indiana so I don't know how much
32:36
the wine diversity they're offering but hey we'll go to California
32:41
there we go just go to Wine Wine Country yeah
32:47
that seems a little more accessible than France for now get there yeah so good talk good talk
32:57
give yourself Grace guys that's all we we can leave it at that
33:03
um we're all human and that's okay emotionally it's gonna happen and we are examples of that yeah
33:10
have a good rest of your week I had nothing to add to that nothing at all I
33:15
was like I don't know you really knocked out the park I was just like I agree with everything you said yeah cool well
33:21
thanks for tuning in thanks for hanging out with us if you made it through the liver King episodes we appreciate you
33:28
coming back for the emotional eating and if you found us through liver King and
33:33
now you're like what is this crap sorry this is what it is
33:38
yeah there's not a lot of that usually so maybe we'll make it a little bit juicier in review
33:44
public figures yeah controversy cells controversial
33:53
cool so I have a good rest of your day we'll let you go all right bye bye guys
