EP | 08: The PEP Test: Painkiller. Escape. Punishment: What It Is And How to Use It.

Bringing another wonderful TEDTalk to you. This one is from Tricia Nelson, who is the author of "Heal Your Hunger: 7 Simple Steps to End Emotional Eating," and she is an emotional eating expert. 

You can watch the TEDTalk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVSe2vaxXXM

Tricia talks about the PEP Test, where you have created a painkiller in your life (like ice cream), you use something to escape (like your favorite foods and the couch), and punishment (like over indulging in food). 

I also get into my punishment cycle, and dish out some tough love about thought work and feelings. I was in a feisty mood when I recorded this! 

Let me know if you use the PEP test method when eating! 

Be sure to stay connected, check out my Instagram and TikTok: MerittRollinsBrown for more mindset for mealtimes tips!

Website: https://cuethenewyou.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/merittrollinsbrown/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@merittrollinsbrown?_t=8hC2ICTEGIY&_r=1

Transcript

Meritt: 0:01

I'm Meritt Rollins Brown Mindset and Life coach, and you are listening to the Mindset for Meal Times podcast, where I help you stop emotionally eating and reshape your relationship with food yourself and with your body Hello babes and welcome back to The Mindset for Meal Times Podcast. I don't know what this East Tennessee weather is thinking right now, but I am here for it. It's been gorgeous outside. We had another fun filled weekend. We went to the zoo. Which by the way, if you have kids or grandkids or nieces and nephews and they live near zoo, a zoo membership is a great idea for a Christmas gift. We love going to ours, but we also had, um, our last pub league game for hurling, and unfortunately my team. but it's okay. It was a great game that was played and that was probably the, the most fun game in my opinion. Then we went to a friend's house to watch football. And y'all, my husband and I really do not care about football like whatsoever. But we wanted to watch this game because it was UT versus Georgia. And I have always liked Georgia. So our friends were watching the game and so we went over there. and had a great time. When we moved to Tennessee, it was a mission of mine to get out of my comfort zone and communicate with other moms to find mom friends. And I must say I have some incredible mom friends. And I am so grateful for them. One thing that helped me make friends was not punishing myself. After every conversation I have had really bad social anxiety because I always feel like I'm gonna say something wrong. because I always feel like I'm going to say something wrong or not be smart enough when speaking with people. That sort of brings me into what the podcast is going to be about today. So last week I shared Brady Wilson's TED Talk on how to fix an exhausted brain and talked about how meal planning can help alleviate decision fatigue. Cuz a lot of times at the end of the. We have used up a lot of brain power and if you don't plan ahead of time, sometimes you're scrambling like, Oh, what should we eat for dinner? What should I have? What do I have to cook with? Do I want to cook? Am I too tired to cook? Should we just order out? And this week is also based off of a TED Talk episode that I wanted to share with you. This one is called Emotional Eating. What if Weight Loss isn't about the food presented by Tricia Nelson? Tricia Nelson is. The author of"Heal Your Hunger, Seven Simple Steps to An Emotional Eating Now" and Is an Emotional Eater Expert. What she discusses in her TED Talk sort of blew my mind because it makes so much sense. I may have heard of the pep chart before, back in college, uh, studying psychology, but I haven't heard of it in recent years. So let me break this pep chart down for you. So Trisha puts a slide up during her TED talk that had two columns. Food as a was one column, and driving emotion was the. And underneath the columns, there were rows that spelled out the acronym pep, that's p e p, and it stands for Painkiller, Escape and Punishment. So Painkiller, Escape and Punishment was underneath the food as a column and. Under the column driving emotion, she listed pain, fear, and guilt. She talks about how her painkiller was praline pecan ice cream, so whenever she had uncomfortable emotions, she would gravitate towards that prelim bcan ice. Or when life got too stressful for her, she would curl up on the couch with her favorite foods to dissociate from herself and her life, punishment was the act of overeating and repeating that process. This was because she was an over doer and an over feeler. So when she made a mistake, she would beat herself up. And when she said that, I was like, Yes, that is almost exactly what I did. That cycle sounded very familiar I've mentioned before on the podcast the Pavlovian cycle of reward, where you essentially train your brain to create a cue and then you claim a reward. Pavlov did that with dogs and eating and ringing a bell, and they, There are external cues and internal cues, and internal cues are associated with how you are feeling. And what's going on in your mind And external cues are what is going on around you and your environment. When you aren't listening to the internal cues, you're going, you're going to reach for the external cues first, just because you are out of tune and you aren't connected to what's going on internally. For example, Putting others first would be external cues or not. Just not putting yourself as a priority would be an external cue or work before your own health. And these external cues create hormonal imbalances inside your body. And when you aren't physically taking care of yourself, you aren't mentally taking care of yourself, when you aren't mentally taking care of yourself, you aren't physically taking care of yourself, you may be working out, but are you working out as more of a punishment to try to lose weight or to burn off? I don't know, those donuts you just ate, or are you working out because you love and trust your. What is the purpose behind that action? Trisha claims in the TED Talk, emotional eating is an addiction. It's hard to break because we have to eat, end quote. Integrating self care into her life is what propelled her to shift her. And shift her reward cycles. Like I said earlier, I had a similar reward cycle. It wasn't until I made a commitment to myself to start taking care of myself mentally, physically, and emotionally. I needed to believe in myself, to trust myself to make my own decision. I needed to love myself in order to serve others and not live from a depleted state of self because my cup was hella empty all of the time. Back in the day. I was constantly looking at who I could help. next, or what can I do? So I didn't have to sit there with myself all day. When I had that time to sit there, alcohol became my pain killer. Not eating became my punishment. And mixing those together was not a great combination. Drinking so heavily was. So I could basically dissociate from myself. It was a way for me to lower my inhibitions and act differently. The first couple of sips was a way to release that hip dopamine into my brain, which dopamine is linked to the feeling of pleasure, followed by a false act of feeling better. That can mean maybe. Like I felt like I looked better, or I was projecting confidence, or I was being outgoing, especially when there was a big social gathering, then I would definitely pregame before those gatherings because I relied on alcohol to. Basically make me into a social butterfly, because in my mind I felt without it, because I had such bad social anxiety, without the alcohol, I would be so shy that I would just stand there and really not say anything because I was just so anxious about saying something wrong or that I was gonna do something wrong. I mean, of course when you drink alcohol, nothing ever goes wrong, right? It wasn't until. I started trusting myself and started being myself, that I stopped using alcohol as a way for me to become a social butterfly, and it helped get rid of my social anxiety. There are instances now, um, especially, I mean like I've been hanging out with. with a friend. She's married to a guy on the hurling team. And when we're one on one together, I still get nervous talking to her because I like her a lot and I respect her a lot. Um, and, you know, I want her to like me, but at the same time, I'm also going to be myself. But sometimes when I am myself, Yeah, I'm just awkward and weird, which is okay. Um, and like she totally loves that So it's, I get, I get nervous, but I don't get like anxious. I'm not like, Oh my gosh, why? And I don't beat myself up. Like, why did I say that stupid thing? Or, you know, Why can't I be. Not so awkward all the time. But she's here along for that ride. Because I was always so worried about saying something dumb or that I wasn't smart enough. Alcohol, I used alcohol as a way to help me relax enough not to care when the drinking was heavy. I of course said and did things that. Way, way dumb And then came the feelings of regret and guilt, Shame. When those feelings of regret, guilt, or shame came up, I would avoid and avoid and avoid. Avoid myself, avoid my feelings, avoid my husband, avoid my kids, avoid people in general. I would shut down, be in a bad mood and ask myself, why did I do that? Or why did I say? Why can't I be like them? My mind was always a mess and I was constantly trying to keep a quote unquote tidy mind, but was having to clean up so many areas up at once, that I was just drowning. I was drowning in my own mind. I was drowning in my own life like I did. I started doing a course of surviving to thriving because I was barely surviving. I was definitely not healthy, and I was definitely not thriving in life. It was really hard for me to be happy because of the patterns I had ingrained in my own mind and in my own life that I just cannot see a way. I did not think anything I tried was going to work or that my life was going to get better. I would complain and complain about my life and about how I felt yet nothing changed. I would rely on my old coping mechanisms and didn't have. The resources to challenge my thoughts or behaviors and understand why my life was not changing."Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." That is a quote from Albert Einstein. I was doing the same habits the same. Feeling the same way, reaching for the same things over and over and over again, expecting different results, and that just was not happening just because I was complaining all the time, didn't change a damn thing. I complained about my body all of the fucking time and tried changing the way it looked. I would often. Punished myself by restricting food, what I was putting into my body, unless it was alcohol. And this behavior started when I didn't feel like I was pretty enough, lovable enough, smart enough, good enough, whatever, enough. I was not enough. I was not anybody important enough to even. Carry around so much uncertainty and doubt and fear of failure and anxiety that I'm doing something wrong was detrimental to not only my mental health, but my physical health. I often punish myself by not eating or by working out way too fucking much, which makes total sense, right? And when I felt so depleted or so far gone into the shame cycle. like I'm a fucking terrible person, negative thought loop. I would just lose my fucking mind and binge eat, and then I would feel even worse because I just gave in. And if I gave in, then I wasn't in control anymore. When I wasn't in control anymore of what I was putting or not putting into my body, then I was a failure on top of already being a failure. so may as well. Just stuff my face with food and not give a shit like this. Created so much yo-yo dieting in my life for years as a middle schooler and as a teenager. I remember looking back at pictures, my soccer uniform. Was so small one season because I did not want to order a size medium shirt because if I wore a size medium that meant that I was fat. And if I was fat, then I could not stand myself even more. My weight would go up like 20 pounds, and then I would practice willpower and try to gain that control back, and then I would deny every single bad food groups, but I would deny every single cookie or pizza or. Anything I thought would make me gain weight, like I was literally eating lettuce with mustard cuz Mustard has five calories per serving and lettuce has zero. Not eating and working out all of the time was how I punished myself. I was punishing myself because of how I felt and that. My habit and didn't understand how to cope with my feelings or process my feelings in a healthy way. It was always directed towards my body and how I looked and how others told, told me I looked. I loved it when people told me I looked skinny because being skinny to me meant I was successful at something in life because I felt like I wasn't anything important to anyone. Looking back, I just think about how sad I always was and how lonely I always felt. And I definitely don't want my kids with that mindset, with the mindset I had, and it is my mission, not even my kids, like kids in general. So it is my mission to be open and vulner. with my kids about feelings and trying to create a healthy and sustainable lifestyle for them. So then if they decide to have kids when they're older, they create a healthy and sustainable lifestyle for their kids, and that cycle continues. I feel like I sound like a broken record. But in order to change your negative thought loops or negative reward or punishment cycles, you need to become aware of your thoughts and why you are feeling the way you are feeling. When you do this, this will help bring back balance to your hormones and your cortisol level isn't gonna. Sky high? Because you're stressed out all the time You will begin living more from your prefrontal cortex rather than your primitive brain? Your start creating new neuro pathways via new neurotransmitters inside your brain, and your brain will start to rewire. because when you're primitive, brain takes over. That is the fear based survival mode brain. That is the automatically do something, think something, act this way, brain versus using your prefrontal cortex, which is in the frontal lobe part of your brain. That is decision making. Critical thinking, and when you start thinking from your prefrontal cortex and living your life from your prefrontal cortex, planning ahead of time on things, following through with your commitments, following through with what you say you're going to do, then your permanent brain takes a step back. And you're able to do the things that you want to do in your life. And yes, you may fail, but failure is part of succeeding. You cannot succeed unless you fail. It's like people use Michael Jordan as an example. He got cut from his high school basketball team, but guess what? He's one of the best basketball. Known to man. He failed and failed. He missed shots. He mis plays, but he kept working and working and working and working and trying this technique and trying that technique, and he succeed. And you may be thinking, but Meritt How do I change my thoughts or habits? Every time I try to start or change something, life throws a curve ball at me and I get knocked down to square one. To be honest, sometimes you may take 18 steps forward, something happens in life, and then you're taking 20 steps. However, the number of steps you take back is arbitrary in the sense that if you have mindset, tools and healthy ways to cope and process your emotions, your steps back won't take you as long to get back to where you were. The process of getting back to where you were is going to be so much shorter when you implement tools and when you're intentionally think. From your prefrontal cortex and when you have support from others, because doing this shit on your own is, it is possible, but it is difficult. I started doing it on my own and then I hired three different life coaches. I have been doing research for the past five years, dedicating myself to learning more about mindset work and making myself better ultimately making my relationships better, including the relationship I have with myself, the making my food. Relationship healthier and sustainable. Like, I maintained my weight for the past five years and I know at times I want to get stronger, build muscle. But that's for performance reasons, athletics reasons. Of course I'm human. And of course, sometimes they'll like, Ugh, gosh, you know, I feel so bloated and disgusting. I'm not wearing my bikini today. But then I catch that thought and then I'm like, Wait a second. It's okay that I'm bloated because I'm human and I have a body, and I'm so hoping to wear my bathing suit because I want to. Not only have my thoughts changed, but my diet, my lifestyle, my hormones, my family dynamics, but my energy has changed. Before I was in such a have to energy or I should energy rather than I get to energy. Before all of this mindset work in research, this was in all areas of my. I should be skinny. I have to be skinny. I have to work out, I have to be good I should be better. I should be smarter. I should act differently. I shouldn't do this. I shouldn't eat this. I have to control everything. I have to do this or this in this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Redirecting my thoughts. Started shifting my. And when our energy starts to shift, we start to match the vibrations of other people's energy. So if I was in good mood, then I wanted to be around people who were in a good mood. If I was in a good mood and I heard someone complain or bitch about something, I did not wanna partake in that their energy was not matching my energy. And that is what happened with eating once I started. Eating intuitively and not saying I shouldn't eat this, or I have to work out, my eating energy shifted. The vibrations my brain was sending throughout my body was different. I started paying attention to f, fueling my body properly, eating the fats, the carbs, and I would say sugar. I've never really had a problem with sugar. I went so long without eating sugar. Like my body does not crave it hardly ever. I think it was two days ago or something. I, uh, I was craving sugar, I guess I was still like dehydrated after my run. And then I did a little workout and then I went to jujitsu class. So, I was like, Oh my gosh, my body needs sugar right now. Let me see what I can find. And we had some leftover gummy worms from the graveyard cake that I made for my daughter over Halloween weekend for her birthday. And so I just ate some of those and they were delicious. I do love gummies. Um, but after a handful, Like my body was satisfied and then I downed a bunch of water But once I started paying attention to my mind and dive into the world of mindset and thought work, then it was easy to focus and listen to what my body needs, what my body is telling me. If I feel physically just super tired, then I am not gonna work out. I will let my body rest. If I feel super hungry, I'll make sure the first thing I grab to eat is protein, because protein helps fill me up. And breaking the addiction of overeating or over indulging in alcohol is doable. Once you have some mindset techniques that work for you under your belt. The PEP test method that Tricia was talking about may work wonders for you every time you eat or maybe every time you get a beer or a glass of wine, ask yourself questions. Am I punishing myself? What is my body telling me? Do I really want those? How am I feeling right now? Am I actually hungry or am I actually thirst? So I encourage, I know this was another feisty energy for me, but I encourage you, the next time that you are about to eat something or drink something, ask yourself a few questions. Is this going to fuel me? Am I eating this just because it's convenient? How will I feel after I indulge in this ice cream? How will I feel after I indulge in this bottle of wine? Can I eat this until I'm satisfied? Get curious, and don't beat yourself up if you forget to ask yourself questions or you over-indulge in something, reflect. what led up to that moment of overindulging? What were your thoughts? What were you feeling? What were your intentions? Were you being mindful of what you were doing? Was this a habit? The best thing you can do is write it down asking your brain questions will eventually reveal to you a thought error you may have. Meaning you feel this way when you uncover this thought, which makes you do this because our thoughts are connected to our feelings, which are connected to our actions or habit. Asking questions will reveal to you patterns your brain has become accustomed to thinking. And let me know if this, if the PEP method test works for you I would love to hear from you if you practice this. Okay. So the question from last week was, what is your favorite piece of Halloween candy and what is your least favorite? So for me, I mean, like I said, I don't really crave sugar and I just, I do not like eating candy. However, When I do eat candy, I love three Musketeer bars. Those take me back to my childhood when I was on the swim team, Twix and Reese's, those would be my favorites. And Snickers, just throw Snickers in there too. My least favorite would be Almond Joys. Tootsie Rolls and Kit Katz. I just not a fan of'em. So the podcast question for this week is, what would you do with a million dollars? The lottery right now is insane, but it's fun thinking about like, Oh, What if I did win, what would I do with that money? As always, you can d me your answers over on Instagram at Meritt Rollins Brown. That's m e r i t t r o l l i n s b r o, and w n. And I. We'll talk to y'all next week. Okay? Bye. Thank you for listening to the Mindset for Meal Times podcast. If you enjoyed this podcast, I invite you to check out my mindset for Meal times program over on meritt rollins brown.com. That's M E R I T T R O L L I N S B R O W n.com. And if you need any additional support, feel free to DM me over on Instagram at Meritt Rollins Brown.