Eat When Hungry: Journey into a Rat’s Paradise
The fourth episode of Eat When Hungry uses the beloved rat Templeton from Charlotte’s Web as a springboard into a deeper understanding of the human hunger drive. Dr. Doug Lisle and my conversation begins with what we can learn from rats and science.
The discussion moves into personal stories and breaking down assumptions that permeate mainstream thinking about weight and binge eating. An important theme emerges toward the end: Subtlety matters, and it is rarely discussed.
My goal in this series is to offer clear ideas for consideration without reducing anything to quick fixes or easy answers. The topics covered are ones that I have used to understand myself and to navigate today’s food environment. My understandings continue to evolve over time.
The Delicate Balance
Dr. Lisle and I taped this episode on binge eating during the final weekend of 2023. In so many ways, exploring binge eating provided a fitting conclusion to a year that brought significant changes in my life. 2023 was my first full year of sharing my story publicly, and I changed jobs. Between personal and professional travel, I was away from home frequently.
In the shadows of these travels is my ongoing battle to keep binge eating at bay. Memories of this year of travels are inextricably tied to the ways I worked to avoid binge eating. While I am not perfect, I have developed enough strategies to fight myself successfully most of the time with minimal failures, especially in comparison to my previous self.
With all these comings and goings, I learned more about the delicate balance between my hunger drive and my routines, especially around maintaining the balances of food in ways that prevent binging. The challenges run deep and require commitment.
I tell one travel story in this episode to show the lengths I have gone to so I can eat unprocessed plants without salt, oil, and sugar – even if my balances get off. Going to Disney World for a work conference illustrates the dilemmas I regularly face to keep myself balanced as much as possible when traveling.
At Disney World, I learned that ordering groceries via a delivery service and turning my suitcase into a makeshift cooler can be a viable solution. Even though I often share snapshots of my journey on social media, I did not take a picture to document this suitcase-turned-cooler. I felt too vulnerable, raw, and tired to share that battle.
Private shame around binge eating skulks in the shadows of my entire life, and I am learning that I am not alone – from people of all different sizes. Sometimes, people speak of binge eating and/or shame; other times, these shadows lurk deeper in the background. Uprooting these feelings is a process.
For this episode, I had hoped to address two overall areas to help build understanding of binge eating: its physical roots in some of our bodies, no matter what our sizes, and the reasons we shouldn’t feel shame around struggling with binge eating.
My hope is that Dr. Lisle and I covered these ideas and more to help viewers consider and explore for themselves. I encourage people to focus on the concepts and processes since these may be more universal than the individual differences that may be different in the details. Discovering personal truths can be empowering.
Speaking personal truths can also be empowering, and I have found that to be the case for myself. One of my core messages is that I was not broken and I am not fixed.
I have shared openly that I struggle with binge eating, and my world has not yet fallen apart. Even so, fear and shame occasionally creep back in, especially in the large online public space that I have entered. Then, I remind myself that I truly have gained more than I have lost by naming my shadows to myself and others.
For the past few years, I have chosen words that represent a theme of self-improvement in my life. Many of the ideas in Eat When Hungry led me to choose the idea of balance as an overriding theme for 2024.
Overview of Eat When Hungry, Episode 4
Journey into a Rat’s Paradise: Understanding Ourselves through Templeton's "Veritable Smorgasbord"
As written above, this episode of Eat When Hungry uses the beloved rat Templeton from Charlotte’s Web and his binge at the fair as a springboard into a deeper understanding of the human hunger drive. Dr. Doug Lisle and I start with what we can learn from rats and science. The discussion moves to personal stories and false assumptions that permeate mainstream thinking about weight and binge eating. An important message emerges toward the end of the episode: Subtlety matters, and it is rarely discussed.
Like the previous three episodes of Eat When Hungry, this episode focuses on the complexities of a health, wellness, and weight loss journey. My goal is to provide clear ideas for consideration and exploration without reducing anything to quick fixes or easy answers. The topics covered are ones that I have used to understand myself and to navigate today’s food environment. My understandings continue to evolve over time, and the details of my story may be different from the details of others.
At the end of the episode, I share my Transform Shadows framework. In this episode, I have shared how I go through these mental processes with binge eating and other aspects of self-improvement.
The steps are not necessarily sequential although there is a sequence to them. But, for me, there are ongoing steps to Name, Face, Understand, Fight, Reframe, and Transcend My Shadows.
