Subscribe on Apple 

Subscribe on Spotify 

Did you know that sugar can light up the addiction centers of your brain more powerfully than cocaine?

Research shows that behavioral addictions, including emotional eating, can actually trigger stronger brain responses than hard drugs. Yet when people struggle with food, they're so often told to "just have more discipline" or "try harder." It’s no wonder so many feel stuck in shame and frustration.

The truth is, emotional eating isn't about willpower. It's about how we try to manage emotional pain. And understanding this distinction changes everything.

Psychiatrist Dr. Daniel Hochman, creator of the Self Recovery program (recognized as one of the leading alternatives to Alcoholics Anonymous), recently joined me on the podcast to break down the real science behind emotional eating. His approach doesn't rely on restriction or rigid rules. Instead, it helps people uncover the emotional roots of their struggles and build real, lasting recovery.

In our recent conversation, Dr. Hochman shared his "current of addiction" framework that reveals what's actually happening in your brain when cravings hit, practical harm reduction strategies that work, and why building tolerance (not perfection) is the real key to freedom.

What Addiction Really Is 

There's often confusion between clinical definitions and what people experience in real life. Clinically, "addiction" isn't even the official diagnosis. It's called "substance use disorder." But the everyday person's understanding is often more accurate than the medical textbooks.

When someone says "I'm so addicted to chocolate" or "I'm addicted to my phone," they're describing something very real. Brain imaging studies show that these behavioral addictions light up the same reward centers as drugs, sometimes even more intensely.

Dr. Hochman defines addiction simply: 

“It's when we turn to something outside of us and we use that to regulate an internal emotional experience."

That "something outside" could be alcohol or drugs, but far more commonly, it's food, social media, shopping, or other behaviors. Emotional eating specifically is about using food to manage negative feelings, whether that's severe trauma or everyday stress, boredom, or relationship dissatisfaction.

The Current of Addiction: What's Actually Happening

Dr. Hochman breaks down the addiction cycle into what he calls "the current of addiction." It feels like being swept away, moving from an okay state into something problematic:

1. Emotional Pain - It starts with a negative feeling, from severe anxiety to simple boredom
2. The Craving - Your brain comes up with a way to escape that pain
3. The Turning Point - You act on the craving, revealing you can no longer tolerate the discomfort
4. False Pleasure - You get a reward that feels good but won't last or truly serve you
5. The Aftermath - Shame, blood sugar crashes, or other negative feelings create the need to manage emotions again, restarting the cycle

Understanding this cycle helps you see where you can intervene, and surprisingly, it's not where most people think.

Start with Harm Reduction, Not Perfection

Dr. Hochman doesn't start by trying to eliminate underlying trauma or stop the behavior completely. Instead, he begins with harm reduction: 

What does this look like in practice?

• If you typically turn to a pint of ice cream, could you shift to chocolate-covered almonds? They're not perfect, but they're better
• From there, maybe you graduate to fruit or other options
• For nighttime eating, try saltier options that provide satisfaction without significant harm, like pickles or olives
• Keep healthier alternatives at work or in your pantry so you've already set yourself up for success

The key is making 1% improvements rather than demanding perfection from day one.

Building Tolerance: The Skill That Changes Everything

But if addiction is about managing negative feelings, why do some people with depression or anxiety develop addictions while others don't?

The difference is tolerance. People with depression but no addiction are actually tolerating their feelings of sadness, even when it's really bad. People with addiction have lower tolerance for sitting with discomfort.

The good news? Tolerance is a skill you can build, just like muscle at the gym.

How to Practice Building Tolerance

Start small and strategic:

• Practice when you're having a good day, not during a crisis
• Don't try new strategies on your worst days (if you’ve lost your job, that's not the day to start)
• Stand in front of the fridge or pantry and sit with the feeling
• Use breathing techniques, mindfulness, or distraction
• Set a timer and see if you can wait just a few minutes longer

Be systematic, not random: Pick specific strategies that appeal to you and practice them consistently - don't just wing it each time. Track your progress like you would with fitness.

Expect to reach failure (and know it still counts): Just like you reach muscle failure at the end of a workout set, you might "fail" and eat the thing you're craving. That's okay. You still got a workout for that tolerance muscle. Even if you ate less than usual or waited a bit longer, that's progress.

Aim for the breakthrough: Cravings are waves. They build, crest, and then always come back down. But when you can ride out that wave without acting on it, you've broken through. It's incredibly empowering because you've learned there's another side to the feeling.

When Progress Stalls: Get Curious, Not Judgmental

It's common to make great progress for weeks or months, then suddenly feel like everything falls apart. The strategies that were working stop working… and the shame creeps back in.

Dr. Hochman's advice is to get curious, not judgmental.

There are countless psychological reasons why progress stalls: fear of success or increased attention, unfamiliarity with how to handle success, relationship problems resurfacing, new stressors, or old trauma triggers.

Instead of jumping to the conclusion that "I just can't do this," get specific. What actually changed? What's happening in your life right now?

Or, as Dr. Hochman puts it: "Just say the thing and be specific." Instead of piling on vague self-criticism, name what's actually happening, and you'll often find the issue isn't as mysterious as it feels.

The Goal is Less, Not None

One of my core beliefs in working with patients is that perfection isn't the goal. Progress is.

Everyone always views it as a failure when they're not perfect. But you're not supposed to be perfect. The goal is less, not none.

If you ate half the amount you normally would have, that's success. If you waited 10 minutes longer than usual, that's success. If you chose a slightly healthier option, that's success.

Every small win strengthens your ability to tolerate discomfort and over time, those small wins compound into significant change.

Finding Help That Actually Works

If you've been struggling with emotional eating and the advice you've received hasn't helped, that doesn't mean you're broken or hopeless.

Dr. Hochman truly believes everyone can be successful in it. It’s just a matter of seeking the right guidance, and remaining curious.

There are real, science-based approaches that work. If the guidance you've found so far has been too vague ("just try harder," "be more disciplined"), keep looking. The right approach will give you practical psychological tools and strategies, not just platitudes.

I've learned in my own journey that getting help isn't a sign of failure. It's actually how you make the biggest leaps forward. Different perspectives and expert guidance can help you see what you can't see on your own.

Putting It Into Practice

Emotional eating isn't a character flaw or a lack of discipline. It's your brain's attempt to manage uncomfortable feelings with the tools it has learned to use.

The path forward isn't about perfection, restriction, or shame. It's about understanding what's actually happening in your brain, building tolerance for uncomfortable feelings gradually, practicing harm reduction, getting curious about setbacks, and seeking guidance that actually addresses the psychology.

Remember: cravings are waves. They always crest and come back down. When you can ride one out, you prove to yourself that there's another side. And that changes everything.

Want to hear the full conversation with Dr. Hochman? Listen to the complete episode of The Obesity Guide for more insights on building tolerance, understanding the emotional roots of addiction, and practical strategies for lasting change with emotional eating.

TRANSCRIPT:

Disclaimer: The transcript below is provided for your convenience and may contain typos, errors, or grammatical inconsistencies, as it has not been professionally edited or proofread. Please enjoy it as-is and read at your own discretion.

Please note: The content shared in this podcast and blog post is for informational and educational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. Always consult your healthcare provider for personalized medical guidance.  

Welcome back to another episode of the podcast today. I'm really excited because we have psychiatrist, Dr. Daniel Hochman, and I have really wanted to bring a physician on the podcast to talk more about the emotional aspect with eating with food.

And I don't know if we wanna put the word addiction in there, but as we talk a lot about on the podcast, it's really multifactorial when you're struggling with things. I talk a lot about the physiologic aspect, but we do talk about emotional eating often because. You might be quote unquote doing all the right things with nutrition and movement and things like that.

But if you can't get stress management and the emotional aspect under control, I don't know about, I'm gonna ask you when you introduce yourself, what percentage you think the struggle is for people, but I think it's more than 50% of the struggle to having health long-term is really understanding the emotional aspects.

Before we go further, can you introduce yourself to my audience? Just tell us a little bit about, where you practice, what your area is, so people have a little bit of background. Yeah, I'm a psychiatrist. I've got a practice in Austin, Texas. I only see patients that wanna do psychotherapy, so I do med management only.

I do med management alongside the therapy though. Yeah. And so I say that just to, help viewers understand I have a very strong focus on the psychology of things, and really look at the underlying issues. So what I most enjoy doing with patients, what I. Talk or write about is always to do with underlying issues.

So that's what I enjoy and spend a lot of my time learning and doing. I also have an online recovery addiction program that incorporates those altogether where people can understand, where it comes from and how to manage it. Yeah, it looked really good. I was looking at it. By the way, I'm always curious, how did you come to work in this area?

Because I'm always curious what drew you to it? Yeah, I thought I was gonna do emergency medicine. I had, I had some background earlier working in that area. Just loved it really . and, it was enough sort of experience through medical school that, by the end I realized,, that my greatest.

Curiosity is always around how someone wound up where they are. And, yeah, so just kept pulling me this way. Yeah, that's interesting that you bring that up. That's a hundred percent how I ended up in obesity medicine, because I was like, we're always treating the end product, but we're not ever really getting down to the roots of things.

And so I just find like we have different brains and then we end up in the right specialty based on that. Mm-hmm., But let me start out here with just asking, just in general. So this doesn't even pertain only to food. But how do you define addiction in a medical sense versus something that's just a habit or a strong preference that you have?

Like when does something actually turn into addiction? , There's a case where , the lay kind of person perspective on addiction is way more accurate than the so-called medical or clinical one. , Clinically,, there's criteria for substance use disorders. Addiction is not a diagnosis clinically, it's called substance use disorder.

Then there's different substances to name , and so alcohol would be, the most common one . There's 11 criteria, and then if you have just a couple of them, that'd be a mild, addiction. That'd be a mild substance use disorder. Okay. So I won't get too far into, but that's a clinical classic sort of definition of addiction.

And that's contrasted with a more lay person idea of, oh, well, I'm so addicted to chocolate. I'm so addicted to. My phone,, that actually is a closer description, even biologically, strictly speaking to what addiction really is because, we, for example, if you do wanna use the hard science or functional MRI, which shows how much the brain activity is in certain regions,, the addiction portion of the brain is lighting up.

More for behavioral things than even cocaine, in many, many instances. So with what we're talking about, sugar for example, lights it up more strongly and robustly and predictably than many drugs, even hard drugs. So that's where it can be very confusing when you're trying to look up in textbooks or into the medical world for these answers because they really, really miss what addiction is.

Okay, well then what is addiction? Or how do we define it? The government defines it as this compulsive thing. You just keep doing and doing the substance despite harmful consequences. That's the classic definition. I define it as it's when we turn to something outside of us and we use that to regulate an internal emotional experience.

We can break that down. 'cause it's packed actually with lots of things. It sounds very simple and it is in a way, but each of those words in there means a lot. Just one launching point for us is we're turning to something outside of us. Okay? That could be alcohol or drugs, but way more commonly in practice.

It's a behavior, so it could be food. It could be social media, right? It can be all kinds of things that we're turning to outside. And these, again, just to reiterate, they are producing a discernible, detectable, scientific, psychological brain, hormonal chemical reaction. And there's a lot of dopamine release.

Even by a classic definition, where you got lab science it is still definitely addictive. Yeah. Yeah, that's a really nice definition that you gave, because I like to think that everyone just wants to feel better. They're just looking for things to feel good.

And so I often have a challenge with patients that when they come in, about 99% of their world is that food is giving that to them, but in some capacity it's hurting them, either their weight set points up and their blood sugar's up and they're having, consequences from it, right? Otherwise we wouldn't be.

Dabbling in this area. , What I struggle with them is building out ways that they can get pleasure in their life that do not involve that. Because when it's been part of everything, it's a struggle for them. So one of the things that I see being part of that is emotional eating. I actually wonder how you define it.

'cause I define it as eating for any reason other than physical hunger that you're using food to satisfy some other need. Do you define it differently? Pretty much, I would only add that, it's to regulate usually a negative emotional experience. Yeah. Got it. Okay. That can range from, you've got a heavy trauma background and you have all kinds of mental illness.

But also just to very mundane things like, you just had a stressful day or you're bored, or you're just in a marriage you're pretty unhappy with. So it can be really severe and also quite mild. Yeah, I like that you brought up the spectrum. 'cause I think everybody always thinks about if I use the term big trauma, I think they might think about that, but they don't think about really anything can lead to this. Right. Right. If people come to you with that, how do you start to work on emotional eating? Because I find it's a real beast, in sort of the inroads.

So do you have any kind of strategies? Yeah. I'll kind of lay out a framework that I think, is. Useful and also, not too hard to wrap your head around. I think of addiction then, if we break out the way we're talking about it, right? That you're trying to regulate some negative experience internally with something outside of you.

I call it a current of addiction. 'cause it feels like you're being swept, from an okay state into something bad. So it starts with some negative feeling. And like we said, it could be really severe. It could just be super minor, just a negative feeling. And that's the beginning of it.

Okay. There's an emotional pain. I usually call it the next phase of the current is the brain coming up with a way to get out of that. That's what people would call a craving. It's just the desire that we naturally come up with to get outta that pain. Hmm. Now, we're already at the second point in the current, but we still haven't actually done the thing.

So that's still just a cognitive or emotional process after that. Then when we partake in the craving is the real turning point for any addiction, whether it's alcohol or food. So when we partake in it, it's that person in some fashion manifesting that they can no longer tolerate that experience, so they feel bad.

They're thinking of a way out and then it cannot tolerate, but carrying that out. And so there's a lot that happens there that, we can get into as much as we want, but, there's a lot in that step psychologically and behaviorally. That next part is when we partake in it, right?

And then the last part of the current is that there is a positive reward, and I call that a false pleasure part of the current, because it's pleasurable, of course. Or else why would we be,, turning to it to begin with. But the false part is what we all know, it's not gonna be a lasting, enduring, good for you behavior.

And then the aftermath, ? Which is for any of these, right? Whether it's, drunken sort of aftermath or with food, there's hormonal issues, there's blood sugar issues. And then ultimately the real big one is the shame, it's like, I'm hiding this thing.

I know I'm hurting myself. Why can't I stop? We start to hate ourselves. We get confused, we question things and there's just, all that sets in. And so then it's back around. 'cause now we're managing the negative feelings of what we've done. And that's what happens in addiction, it goes round and round.

Yeah. But back to your question, I wanted to give some context. I begin not usually addressing, the most underlying huge part of the pain in the beginning of the current. , Usually, , I, , look at, okay, well if you're turning to food in this instance, what are some healthier foods to turn to?

So I'm big on harm reduction. I'm not a purist. I think that anything we can do to move towards healthier is healthier. And so just keep it simple, right? So if you're turning to a pint of ice cream and you can shift that to , chocolate covered almonds. Well, almonds are healthy and you got a little bit better stuff going on.

You got chocolate though, and you got a lot of palm oil and it's not great, but definitely better than the ice cream, ? And then you graduate from there. . And you can still get, some good pick me ups and you can ship to fruit or just, there's plenty of creativity with food to try and get healthier things.

Often like bedtime, I'll help people look for saltier things that aren't so terrible if they don't have,, a huge reason, to avoid that salt intake. Even high blood pressure. Many people with high blood pressure don't get worse with higher salt intakes.

Not everyone has a salt dependent hypertension. So, pickles and olives or things that still provide some exciting sense to it, but don't really come with the harms. So we look at, can we harm, reduce, and then we go back upstream.

So then, can we build a tolerance for the want? I want ice cream, can I stand in front of the fridge , and just be, that would be like a practical sort of strategy to use. If you can do that, you've won right? In so many ways. Yeah. First of all it's so interesting that you call this the current of, addiction

that's what you called it. Yeah. And I was literally explaining to my friends the other day, I'd come back from vacation. I had put on a few pounds of vacation, and I was , really trying to get back into my routines, right? And I was explaining to 'em, , I feel like it's a riptide. And, it's happening.

I'm in a certain thing. I know once I'm out, I can swim either way. But I knew in those moments, this is feeling so horrible and I know so many strategies. I get myself out of it, but it's like after my whole life having struggled with obesity, it's a thing, right?

And so it's so exactly how you describe it. I'm like, yes. You know what you're talking about. This is amazing. So I love it. And I like how you don't start with what's the feeling? What's that big thing? 'cause I find a hundred percent I find in the clinic, no one can even tell me what they're feeling like.

That's not a place we can start. And of course, I'm not a therapist or a psychiatrist or anything like that. I really love this, when you're talking about the harm reduction with going toward healthier things, I'm always talking about how can people balance their food and, how can we start to crowd out the ultra processed foods instead of get rid of all of it?

It's like, yeah, maybe in the end we will get there, but today you are not ready for it. And I find it's very panicking when we ask people to do too many things all at once. So I really love how you laid this out. How do people get. You explain standing in front of the fridge, like a little bit of working on this tolerance.

I've talked to people about can we set a timer,, to see if you're actually still hungry, different things like that. Do you have certain things that you always come to that, your patients do well with when they use those strategies? Yeah. I would say it is.

In the same way we go to the gym and work out. And it's like some people might, grow muscle faster than others, but if you go out, you're gonna get stronger. So with this too, if you practice the Art of Tolerance, then you will get better at that. So even if you still have, this terrible trauma history and you're still very anxious and depressed, an interesting question a lot of people don't address. And. The field of psychology hasn't shown enough interest is why then if most people would agree and identify with, yes, the addiction is related to some, bad feeling that I'm trying to manage, then why do some people have depression or anxiety and other people have depression or anxiety with addiction?

And so this is the real key to it is that intolerance, there is more to it. Often there is a little more if I may say on the show, like a bucket sort of Yeah. Attitude and feeling. Yeah. So yeah. There are certainly other dynamics in here, but as far as the most straightforward way of understanding it, it's that there's an intolerance for the state, whereas someone with depression.

And no addiction actually is tolerating the feeling of sadness. Yeah. So even if it's really bad. Yeah. And so that's the biggest skill to work on specific to addiction or emotional eating. Is that, and so back to, yeah. Yes. Anybody who can build any tolerance for that state is on the winning side.

And so that could mean standing in front of the fridge or pantry and just sitting with yourself and breathing through it. It could mean distracting yourself when you have those thoughts, whether that's, puzzles and, apps and games or going for a walk would of course be better. So there are all kinds of distracting techniques and there's all sorts of other healthy things to do.

There's all sorts of mindful tolerances to do, and any of those, just every minute you do, I would view like a workout and don't just be vague or abstract where it's like. You know, oh God, I really want ice cream. And then just off the cuff come up with something , I would actually recommend to anybody and would work on with peoples, , get scientific and diligent about it like you would in the gym.

You don't just show up at the gym, like, ah, I kind of feel like the treadmill. And then next time, oh, okay, let's do bench press. And the next time like, okay, we're gonna do these interesting calisthenics. They're all fine., They're okay ideas, but you're not gonna get very far in any one of them. So with any of these, any strategy that appeals to someone, just do more of that. And even if it's not working in the same way, you reach a point of failure every time you're at the end of your set working out. Right? The same thing here. Even if , then you're standing there, you're standing there, two minutes in, you're like, okay, I can't, I can't, and you grab something, it's like, fine.

Follow that. See if you can get that up to three minutes or longer what you'll see much in the same way in psychiatry, we use this as there's exposure and response kinds of treatments where people with either OCD or other kinds of phobias we're generally,, treating them by exposure where we help them.

Get on the other side of it where usually it takes an hour of some exposure to neurologically learn and see that there is another side to it. So here too, when you can kind of reach a certain breaking point where I can just stand here and not partake, , there is a point where you're on the other side of it and it's very empowering because there is a learned behavior where every time I'm feeling bad, then I think of.

Let's just say it's ice cream, you know that doesn't go away. And attention internally builds until I partake. Yeah. And so we're learning every time I'm just gonna get more tension and more craving and want this more until I just do it. So then we learn to just do it. But the other side of that is once we can learn to tolerate it through that feeling, and it always goes away, it is definitely a wave of a feeling implying that it goes up.

But. It crests and then it does go down always a hundred percent of the time, guarantee everybody that. So when you can go on the other side of it, you've broken through. It's very empowering and that doesn't mean you're not gonna get swept up or be successful every time going forward, but , you become emboldened.

You see that there's something that can be done. You start to realize there is a U in there that can master something. You're not just the object. Addiction and emotional eating, and I just can't do anything about it. Yeah, I love so many great things you said here, how you need to decide ahead of time what these strategies are that you're gonna implement.

When you have an urge, I always say it feels urgent. You wanna take immediate action. ? And it's happens so fast that's when I find when people are starting to work on things, they almost don't even know what's happening. How do people? slow it down?

Because, again, usually, they're on the other end of it and they're like, oh, I did that. , They'll be making dinner and they're not even realizing that they're kind of putting things in their mouth as they're going. And that grazing behavior is leading to things that are not amazing for them.

Do you have any strategies for , do they. Pick the situations that they know occur and then they work on those, or,, do you see common patterns with that? Yeah. Most people know common sense, try, set yourself up for success,, and try things, at the , right dose or frequency or timing where you can actually do the damn thing or else you're just setting up failure.

Okay? In the same way we set up,, lightweights to begin, or,, you. Don't go for two hours the first time. So same thing here. We're not gonna try this on like the worst day. So a lot of people do say, okay, this is such a bad day, or the feelings are so strong. Okay, now I remember I need to practice this thing.

But that's the worst time to practice. If you can understand that rationale. I explain this just so people aren't just doing only what, no, this is perfect because they, people beat themselves up, right? They're trying things at a time where it's impossible to be successful, and then they're like, see more evidence that I can't do.

It's like, you lost your job that day. Why would you that day start a new emotional eating habit? Right? So, yes. No, this is perfect. People need to hear this. Yeah, exactly. It's like, if you understand why, well then. From what I said. Hopefully then people can say, okay, there are some common sense ideas I can come up with.

Okay. Maybe as far as like frequency, dose, timing and stuff, maybe that means at work, my snacks can be harm reduced so that I've controlled something. 'cause that's all I have in the drawer. Or, it could be that there's, middle of the day it's easier to think of something you really want.

Tolerate it. Yeah., You might be able to win in those smaller doses or not terrible moments. And at home too, work on standing in front of the fridge or pantry on a good day, where you're actually tasking yourself and prompting yourself. , Do I want ice cream?

, And practicing being able to stand there when it's not necessarily this huge strong urge on a terrible day. So starting with that. , And being able to stand there long enough , would be an example that, again, there's lots of other mechanisms to, , and strategies to practice, , but that's just an example of set up to do it well.

'cause then when you have a bad day, I would generally expect that you're not gonna be able to do it. But if instead of having, a whole lot of what the thing is, either less, or that you've just. Warded it off,, for a little extra time, and that is to be thought of as a workout that muscle in your brain got worked out more than it would have if you didn't try to practice anything.

I have to tell you this episode, it's gonna break our podcast when we put it up because everyone always views it as a failure when they're not perfect. And I'm always like, you're not supposed to be perfect. The goal is less, not none, you know, all of that, but this language that you. Say where it's a workout, you're gonna get stronger at it.

That's still, you go to failure. There might still be a failure at the end. I never define failure, but I think this is such an incredibly helpful lens. I have, a kind of a follow-up question for this. Let's imagine that someone has started to work on this. They're working with someone, they're getting stronger at it, they're okay.

A lot of things are going amazing, and what I often experience is that. They'll be doing great for a few months, and then they I wanna use the word regress, but , everything suddenly gets hard. They're like, did I forget everything I learned? Right. And of course, that shame comes with that.

What comments do you have for that person? Because I see this universally, with weight management, this is part of it. You almost have to expect it. But what do you offer to people in those moments? There's all kinds of nuances to that, doing what I do right there.

There's all kinds of questions around, a common trope would be , is this self-sabotage? Are you afraid of success? I see a lot of patients, especially,, women who've been sexually abused at some point in their life, they start to get more attractive. And then that scares them.

And this isn't a conscious process usually. There's all kinds of reasons that people don't wanna get, , noticed. They don't want attention, they don't want then other people pressuring. 'cause now it's like, oh, it's going well, now I've gotta live up to that pressure. Maybe you had reasons you weren't going out or doing social things because of your weight and now you don't have as much of an excuse. I'm just trying to show you there. Yeah. There's so many psychological reasons that people, yeah. Don't continue to be assertive or have success in life. , It could be really unfamiliar and just not know how to manage certain things. So there's a lot of reasons, but my ultimate point there would be you have to be curious about what's happening.

Don't say, oh, well see. Look, I just can't, it is just so silly to have that conclusion. Yeah. And it's like, again, going into the gym,, and then you , stop going to the gym, , look, I just, I'm not gonna be able to work out anymore. What do you mean you were going and now you're not.

Just say that. I challenge anybody to, just say the thing and be specific. And often what I'm doing is just helping people to get very particular with their language. So you say. I can't do this, but , what do you mean no, you can do this. And then there's times or situations where it doesn't feel like you can, or you cannot sustain that.

Mm-hmm. And now we have questions. Why? And then you, after a while, realize, it's actually not so confusing, maybe you have bad problems in the relationship again. . It had nothing to do with your own intrinsic motivation, but. Something was coming up in the marriage again, or some other deadline or something there's curiosity to be had in those times.

Yeah. Oh gosh. Again, really powerful stuff. Really good, real, like just say that, but don't heap other stuff on it. , And the curiosity aspect everyone always forgets that. Do you think that there's anything that we didn't talk about today that just with this sort of just beginning the conversation, 'cause obviously this is all super complex and goes deeper, but anything else that you think would be important for listeners to hear just with what we've talked about?

I think maybe just to recap and say some of the things that, , a lot of people miss is that even though it is just complex and nebulous around emotional eating and it feels like an addiction, it's just too complicated. You can with science and psychology and behavioral science,, there are real ways to work through this.

And so if you haven't encountered those yet. Or you haven't had good guidance or it's been just too vague, what people say to try harder or just be disciplined., Or just buy healthier things. If you're not finding like truly psychologically relevant guidance or answers, keep looking because they're there and there's so much, , there's so many things we're just giving a very basic overview here.

There's so much that can be done. Where I truly believe, everyone can be successful in it. So it is a matter of meeting the right guidance, and so seek that out please and remain curious if you're struggling and then you're just beating yourself up or not finding a helpful strategy. Stay curious and find that because.

, It can always get better. For sure, for sure. I love that you bring this up. , If I think about how many, coaches , and people that I have involved on my journey continue to this day, , there is not a time within business health, whatever it is, where I'm not getting help. And I think old me probably 10 plus years ago would've viewed that as a failure.

, Well, why do you need anyone? And now I'm like. Why would I ever, not, why would I ever, I mean, I can't see all the perspectives with my brain,, I have found that it helps with leaps and bounds going forward versus you just making these little steps, getting the right help.

, Someone that has a perspective that just resonates with you. A lot of what you're saying, I'm not gonna lie. I wanna run and join your program because it really resonates the way in which you're talking about stuff. So I love that you're, that everybody like, keep going , till you get the right help. Can you tell everybody about how can they find you? Both,, clinically and then the program that you offer at large? Can you tell us a little bit about all of that? Yeah. Clinically I just treat people in Texas 'cause of where my license is, that's at hockman health.com. , But yeah, I made the program 'cause , there's people all over the world that struggle with addiction and, there's so much.

Bad treatment and quackery out there. It is just a way anybody can access it. It's at self recovery.org and, , yeah, people can just go to the website and enroll it's just super simple. You just put in, email and contact info , , and then you're inside. , It's an on-demand program so you can start whenever.