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For 25 years, Jane Pilger couldn't figure out why she couldn't stop binge eating. She tried everything. And nothing stuck, until she uncovered the one piece no one had ever explained to her.

It had nothing to do with willpower… or food. It was her nervous system.

I've had Jane on The Obesity Guide before, and every single time she comes back, I learn something new. This conversation was no different. 

We dove into something I don't think gets nearly enough attention in the weight management space: how the state of your nervous system drives your eating behavior (often without you even realizing it).

In this post, I’m sharing Jane’s simple framework for mapping your nervous system, and why understanding it might be the missing piece you've been searching for.

What Is the Nervous System?

Jane describes the nervous system as the command center between your brain and your body. But what a lot of people don't realize is that it's a two-way street. Your brain sends signals to your body, but your body is constantly sending signals back to your brain too.

It's always on, always scanning, and it's asking one question on repeat:

Am I safe?

It scans three things at all times:

• What's happening inside your body
• What's happening in your environment
• What's happening between you and other people

This is important because your nervous system doesn't just respond to real threats. It responds to perceived threats too. And for a lot of us who struggle with food, our nervous system has been on high alert for a very long time.

The Three States of Your Nervous System

Jane uses a simple framework to make this easy to understand. At any given moment, your nervous system is operating in one of three states., and you move between them all day long.

1. Home Base 

This is your calm, regulated state. Where you feel grounded, present, and able to think clearly. You have access to the rational part of your brain here so you can make decisions, have conversations, and feel connected to yourself and others.

2. Above Home Base 

This is your fight-or-flight state. Your nervous system has detected a threat and is flooding your body with energy to deal with it. You might feel:

• Anxious or restless
• Irritable or angry
• Like you want to crawl out of your skin
• An overwhelming urge to do something — including eat

3. Below Home Base 

This is the shutdown state. Your nervous system has decided the threat is too big to fight or flee, so it collapses. You might feel:

• Exhausted and unmotivated
• Hopeless or disconnected
• Glued to the couch, scrolling endlessly
• Like you just can't move.

The goal isn't to live in Home Base 100% of the time because that's simply not realistic.

The goal is to recognize which state you're in, and to slowly expand your ability to return to Home Base more easily.

Why Your Nervous System Keeps You Reaching for Food

Here's where it gets really important for those of us who struggle with eating.

Food is one of the fastest ways to shift your nervous system state. If you're above Home Base (wired, anxious, overwhelmed), eating can quickly drain that excess energy and bring you down. If you're below Home Base (depleted, numb, exhausted), food can bring a temporary spark of stimulation.

The problem? It often overshoots. 

A binge can bring you so far down that you end up even more depleted than before… and then the cycle starts again.

As Jane reminds us, it's not that something is wrong with you. 

At some point, often very early in life, your brain learned that food works. Fast. 

And so it kept reaching for it.

How to Start Mapping Your Own Nervous System

Starting to map your nervous system doesn't require anything complicated. Here are a few simple places to begin:

• Check in with yourself several times a day. Just ask: am I at Home Base, Above, or Below right now?
• Notice patterns around food. When you feel the urge to eat outside of hunger, which state are you in?
• Look backwards. If you're suddenly above Home Base, what happened in the last hour or two that might have triggered it?
• Think about your default state. Most people have one state they spend the most time in. Which one is yours?

What To Do When You're Not at Home Base

Once you can identify your state, you can start experimenting with tools to shift it, instead of automatically reaching for food.

If you're Above Home Base (too much energy):

• Go for a walk
• Put on music and move
• Call a friend just to vent (not to fix anything)
• Try extended exhale breathing (breathe out longer than you breathe in)
• Jane's top tip: keep a foam pool noodle under your bed. When you're really frustrated or angry, use it to hit your mattress. It might sound silly, but it works!

If you're Below Home Base (not enough energy):

• Play upbeat music
• Splash cold water on your face or the backs of your hands
• Reach out to a safe person for connection
• Think back to what you loved doing as a kid and do that

That last one is more powerful than it sounds. Jane keeps a stuffed giraffe named Ginger for exactly these moments. Before you judge — she says it's been one of the most effective tools in her toolkit!

This Is Long-Term Work — And That's Okay

Nervous system work is not a quick fix. Your nervous system took years to develop its patterns, and it will take time to shift them. Change happens slowly, and often only becomes visible when you look back over months or years.

But the payoff is real. As your window of tolerance grows — your capacity to stay in Home Base even when things get hard — you'll naturally find that food has less of a grip. Not through restriction or willpower, but through genuine, lasting change.

As Jane says: “The goal isn't to not overeat. It's to learn how to self-regulate.”

That shift in perspective alone can change everything.

Want to hear our full conversation? Listen to the complete episode with Jane Pilger on The Obesity Guide podcast. And don't miss the free nervous system mapping worksheet Jane created to go along with this episode here.

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. I'm really excited today to bring back Jane Pilger. She's a master certified coach and she has been absolutely transformative in my life as far as helping with my relationship with food.

You have, I'm gonna let you introduce yourself and your program and everything 'cause it's incredible. But the reason I brought you back today, 'cause is this the third time I think I'm having you on. I feel like I think this is, yes. Yes. I think this is three. Three. Three or four. Patrick. Yes. I love it. The reason I brought you back is because I've really been loving, I'm in several groups of yours, but one of it is called The Gathering and you talk a lot about the nervous system and you brought up there how to map your nervous system.

And I thought this is such a great concept, is. Easy to understand, hard to apply. And so yes, I wanted you to talk about all that, but can we start out introducing yourself and then tell us a little bit about what the nervous system is and then I have so many questions for you. Absolutely. So my name is Jane Pilger.

I. Love talking about the nervous system. For me, one of the things I talk a lot about is I, I help people who struggle with food, who have had a lifelong struggle with food, who have tried all of the things and for whatever reason, things just haven't worked. Or they've worked for a short period of time, but then, maybe something else is going on.

And this was my lived experience too. I started binge eating my first semester in college. And continued on a journey for 25 years trying to stop binge eating. There were so many important parts on my journey, but the nervous system was really, I would say like the biggest.

Missing piece. That was really one of the last pieces in my journey, was understanding the nervous system and understanding the nervous system's role. Particularly for those of us, who do struggle with food. A lot of times what we're really trying to do is to. Calm or to regulate the nervous system.

And if we don't realize that's what's happening, then we just think, well, there's something wrong with me. I must be broken. I know better, but I can't do better. Why is it? And there are a lot of reasons. So it's not to say the nervous system is the only one, but the nervous system is. A key reason for a lot of people.

And when you can start to understand which we're gonna do today, when you can start to understand what your nervous system is, how do you even know what's happening in your nervous system and start to pay attention through what we're gonna talk about today, then you can start seeing. What happens for me?

What do I notice in different states of my nervous system? Do I notice that food maybe feels more challenging when I'm in certain states of my nervous system? Maybe for some people, they're like, you know what? When I'm calm, when I'm regulated, no problem at all. And other times it's like, I can not stop.

Eating or I can't stop thinking about food. And it's not because there's something fundamentally wrong with you. It may be that you, at a very young age, learned to use food to regulate your nervous system. And so now it's what your brain and your body know. Let's go back to your initial question.

What is the nervous system? Anyway, we're gonna talk today. Super simple. I love to make this. It's a little bit of a complex. System. But I like to make it simple because if we overcomplicate, then the brain just turns off and it's like ah, this is too much. I can't figure it out. So very quite simply, the nervous system is really the command center between your brain and your body.

It is a two way system. A lot of people don't realize that. They think it's the way that the brain talks to the rest of the body, which is true, but it actually goes the other way too. Your body is constantly sending signals to your brain as well. So it is a two way street, communication highway between your brain and your body.

So the command center, and it is. Constantly working a hun 24, 24 hours a day. It is always on. It's always scanning. It's always just scanning. It's scanning three things. It's scanning the internal environment. It's also scanning the external environment. What's going on out there? It's scanning what's happening between us.

So right now our nervous systems are scanning whatever's happening inside. I just ate lunch, so my nervous system is probably working on what's going on, digestively. It's also outside what is around me, my what's around my workspace right now. And between you and me, as we look at each other through, through the computer screen, our brains are scanning there.

So it's kind of like. Inside, outside, and in between other people. The nervous system is always doing this. It's asking one question constantly. Am I safe? Is the number one question that the nervous system is always, it's job. Your brain's number one job is to keep you alive. And so it's always scanning for is there any threat?

Am I safe now when it's scanning and when it's looking? Am I safe? Am I safe? It's looking for real threats. It also is perceived threat. Here's a great example. I remember one day I was at a, I was at a conference with, a few other people and we were walking to the elevator and somebody was coming out of the, it was like one, it was, there was one man, single man walking outta the elevator.

And the women that I was with, they felt a little bit of a sense of kind of danger from this single, this man. I don't even remember why, but we got to talking about it later and I was like, oh that, that didn't bother me at all. So their nervous system scanned and signaled this could be dangerous.

Whereas mine was like, oh, no, that, that's not a problem, but I might see something else as dangerous. So this is why. Your individual nervous system is going to be really unique in, it's how it responds based on what it's been through in the past and you know what it's doing all the time. I love how you bring up how complex this is.

'cause I think about, like, when I go to a conference, I'm very concerned with the food situation and I've had friends that I, I've worked on that over time. But it's that I am just hypersensitive to, I'm a vegetarian, I'm gonna be there, there's not gonna be anything. That has not presented itself at that conference, but I'm scanning for it constantly and I like how you brought up how it's not only external, but internal.

So there's really like a lot going on. Yes. When we think about all this. Yes. Yeah. Yes. And for people who struggle with food, there is a lot of times a disconnection that we create. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally, sometimes you know, it's always some sort of protection. But if you are a person who really feels very.

Disconnected from your physical body for all kinds of reasons. You may not even be aware of just how much is happening inside your body, that the messages are sending up to the brain. But because you are so disconnected from that, you may not be aware. But just because you are not aware and you're disconnected from it, doesn't mean that there are messages being sent from your body up to your brain because they literally are constantly happening.

I remember when I started to get more connected with my body. 'cause I definitely had that like head up here, body down here. Yes. No idea what's happening. Yes. I'm now so much more in tune that it's unbearable when I'm not listening to it. It's like it, my body, there's so many physical signals and I'm sure that was always there, but I probably ate over it or Yes.

Distracted in other ways. It's really interesting when you start to do this work, how. It changes over time. It's not like, well, I've always been disconnected. It's like, no, we can work on these things. It just might take a lot of years. That's right. To get there. And it, yes, and it is so important to know, especially with nervous system work.

This is long-term work. This is not something that you are just gonna be like, ah. I listened to this podcast and now I understand and now like all of a sudden, the lights are on and I feel safe where I didn't feel safe before. It's like that's, unfortunately that's not how it worked. This sense of what your body perceives as danger, the idea of creating more safety for yourself in your body with other people.

All of these things that let the nervous system become more. Regulated take time. They take repetition and it can be, it's like you were talking about. It's like, oh, I can remember back and I can remember how it was before, and now I can see this huge difference. But a lot of times as it's changing in those moments, in the in between, it's not always perceptible.

Sometimes it is, but for a lot of times it's like, this is work that you, that doesn't always have. An immediate noticeable payback. But if you can stay with it for the long term, it is, it is work that will truly change every single aspect of your life, not just your relationship with food. Yeah, it's, I say this so often, uh, you know, everyone wants to like, with the scale, they just wanna see it go down, down, down.

I'm like, but you don't, you don't get the privilege of always seeing what's happening. And same thing with what you're talking about here with the nervous system. And then people suddenly look at you years later and they're like, oh, she's just like a lot more calm and da da da. It's like, you didn't see the.

The feet under the water with the duck, all those years that was happening. So, okay. So you told us what the nerve, like roughly what the nervous system does. Yes. Can you walk us through the, the mapping of it, because I think that was just like super helpful to hear that. Yes, absolutely. So we're gonna go again through very basic, very simplistic term.

This is, this is based on the work of polyvagal theory. I have simplified some of the terms because when I first started learning about this, I was like, okay, there's sympathetic and there's parasympathetic, and I don't know which is which. And I would get so confused. And then, I would, almost have to look up, wait, which one is the one where you're kind of activated and which one are you calm?

I don't know. I thought if I can't figure this out, then I'm surely not the only one who has a hard time with all of these terms. So I really have simplified it when you are feeling calm, grounded, regulated, what some people would call the parasympathetic nervous system. Rest and dive, rest and digest the ventral state of your nerve nervous system.

I call that home base. So it's where you feel at home. Now you might be listening and like, never. I do not feel at home in my body and that's okay. Fair. But there probably are times where you do feel calm, where you feel peaceful, where you are able to, um, learn where you're able to take in. Information where maybe you're able to really just appreciate, um, a sunset or a sunrise or just be in the moment.

That is what I like to consider home base. Home base is where we have access to our prefrontal cortex, the thinking part of our brain. We're able to make plans, we're able to think about what we want, and we're able to make progress towards those things. You and I, right now, we're in home base.

We're able to have this conversation. We're able to be engaged. And we're here now. There's also then. There's what I like to call above home base. So above home base is,, also called the sympathetic state of your nervous system. This is a survival state. This is when your brain scans and it's like danger.

Danger. There is a threat, but there is. There, the threat is here, but the threat is such my nervous system has deemed I can do something about this threat. This is when you hear people talk about fight or flights. This is the above home base, the sympathetic branch of your nervous system. So, what happens is that.

Because my nervous system has deemed I can do something about this. It is going to activate me with energy to do the thing, either to run away from the threat or to fight it. This is when you might be driving and somebody pulls you over and you honk and you flip them the bird.

Or when maybe your partner says something that kind of, frustrates you and you just say some things you might regret later or, so that's like the fight. There's more anger, there's frustration, there's irritation. Then the flight part. Comes more in, I'm gonna run away from this. So this shows up as anxiety, as worry, as rumination.

That type of, real high energy. And what I like to think about this as the amount of energy that's in your system. So it's above, we are above that kind of grounded place. We have extra energy in the system. From here, this is when it's like you may say I was triggered or I was activated, like my nervous system is activated and now I wanna, do something about it.

So in this situation, you may feel that energy in your body. A lot of people when they get to this. When they get to this place in their nervous system, they can feel it. It's like, oh I just wanna scream. I want to just throw my computer out the window. Or if you're feeling really anxious, I know that I will sometimes feel almost like I just wanna come outta my skin.

Like, I can feel, just like this, the tingly. My skin. And for a lot of people what they realize is, oh, I wanna get away from this feeling. And food becomes a way to do that. So we have this excess energy. What we need, the need is to drain the energy. And what we do is we learn, ah, food is a quick way.

If I can go get something to eat, I can quickly. Drain the energy. But what happens is it goes down through home base and we go down below, which is gonna be the next state we're gonna talk about, where we have actually very little energy. And especially if we're doing something like binge eating, we're eating a big quantities of food.

It's like we eat and yes, it brings us down, but then we're so far down that now. We can't really do anything. But what's important is to see the different levels of energy in the different states of your nervous system. So then we can go below home base, which is, really, I call it below home base.

And this is what some people call, dorsal shut down. This is more kind of like shut down this is like when you can't get out of bed, when you know you have. 500 things on your to-do list, but you literally can't stop scrolling or can't stop watching YouTube or you can't stop eating whatever it is.

It's, and in this case, your brain, the nervous system has determined this threat is so big that I can't do anything about it. So it's actually a more. Perceived a more intensive level of threat. No longer can I fight it. No longer can I run away from it. I have determined I can't. And so I'm just gonna, I'm gonna collapse and I'm gonna do nothing.

And you actually see this in the wild with animals where there are some animals who when they determine I can't run away, they literally will play dead. And sometimes in playing dead. They, the, their, the animal that is chasing them will actually leave. And that animal will then, come back up, shake themselves off and go about their day.

Well, what we don't do, and this is beyond the scope of this podcast, but we don't really learn how to get up and shake ourselves back off. Yeah. We stay in these various states and so when we are below home base, this is where. We really have very little energy. I can't get out of bed, I can't get off the couch.

This is really where more hopelessness, depression, helplessness, those types of things really fall into, how you're feeling. Now this is very simplified. There are also blended states. There's a lot more we could go into, but for somebody who is like, I kind of hear people talking about the nervous system all over the place and I don't really know what it is or I don't know how to kind of how do I translate this?

To myself. So what I would encourage for you to do is even right now, ask yourself as you are listening to this, which of these three states would you say your nervous system is in? Are you in home base? Are you above? Meaning I got a lot of, there's like excess energy here. Or am I below meaning, ugh, I don't have much energy at all?

Mm-hmm. So if you can literally just start to check in with yourself several times throughout the day and ask, which state is my nervous system in? You'll see that we are meant to flow through different states of our nervous system. This isn't to say we should all be in home base a hundred percent of the time, all of the time.

No, that is not the case. We actually want to be able to be in different states when we are, when there is a perceived threat or a real threat, we want to be activated. I, if somebody pulls in front of me on the freeway, I want to be able to. Swerve and take action and do whatever I need to do. The problem is we get stuck in states.

As you are listening. You might also think to yourself, what is my body's preferred state of the nervous system? So most people have a state in their nervous system where they spend more time. I used to spend the majority of my time above home base. Constantly go, go, go, do, do, do.

I'm worried, I'm overwhelmed, I'm anxious. I'm just going. And what I discovered was that the only time I would slow down is when my body would literally, my body would be sending me lots of signals. But as we were talking about, I would ignore them. And the only time I would slow down would be after a binge.

So it was like my body would force a binge, and then that is when I was on the couch, I'd be on the couch scrolling. For hours, but it was the only way my body was like, well, if you are not gonna slow down, I will force you to slow down. And I think this is a common experience. So you're talking about a binge?

For me, it was, I had to physically get sick. Yes. So I, I would get sick 10, 12 times a year because it, there was no other way for me to just take a day of resting or plan less. It's really interesting what the pattern is if we're living in that. That's right. And literally that is the nervous system.

Like, okay, we cannot literally, we cannot survive in the go, go, go, like in that survival state all the time. We also cannot survive below home base when we are in that shutdown. The nervous system will send something. To, for us to get some more energy. And for some people that's food. It's like, well, if I have no energy, I'm below home base.

Sometimes it's like, oh, well that's food. And it becomes this feedback loop where I'm going back and forth between, I'm above, I'm in this way, activated energy, and then I'm below, and then I'm literally back and forth. But what I don't have is. The connection with other people, the connection with myself, the connection with my body, the safety that's really required to become comfortable and in that regulated home base place.

Another term that people that is used for home base is window of tolerance. It is the window where you are able to tolerate. Uncomfortable emotions where you are able to tolerate any amount of, let's say, perceived danger or any amount of discomfort. And for a lot of people, their window of tolerance starts really small.

And what we can do with this work is you can actually grow your window. And this is what I've done. I used to have a tiny, tiny window of tolerance. If I was in there, then everything was okay. And if not. Then I would spend most of my time above. But it's all capacity. So the more I grow my capacity to be in home base, to grow the size of my window, now there's less overall.

For above and below, because I'm spending more of my life, more time in that regulated space. What we wanna do is for you, as you are listening, pay attention. What are the things, when do I notice I'm in home base, if ever. If I'm in home base, what are my own kind of cues for it? How do I feel? What am I doing?

If you notice that you're in home base, what were you doing before? What were you doing that led you. To be in this place where you feel more connected, more grounded. And similarly, if I'm above, if I have all this extra energy what am I doing? What am I noticing? What am I thinking about?

If I notice all of a sudden, like I was okay this morning, but now two hours later I'm like, bye. I feel like my hair's on fire. Let's look at the last two hours and see what might be happening there. It will give us so many. Clues. So if this isn't just a me problem and I'm broken and it's my nervous system,

if I can see where I am in my nervous system, understand what my nervous system is, then the next step is how do I then come in and use? Other ways, other tools, other things to manage my energy where maybe in the past I've only used food, or I've only just beat myself up because I thought that I'm just always, I just am an anxious person.

I'm just always gonna be this way. I just can't get myself out of bed. Then we can, if we can start seeing it from the nervous system perspective, then what we wanna do. If you're above home base, if you have this excess energy, what do we need to do? We need to drain the energy. What might that look like?

It might look like taking a walk. It might look like music. It might look like talking to a friend, just not to try to fix anything, but literally to just ba like, here's all of the things that are going on. Sometimes we just need that. Anything to drain? The energy, if we're sometimes dancing, if you are angry, I'll give you a hot tip, especially when the weather gets warmer and, there are pool noodles available.

Hot tip. Go to the dollar store, buy a pool noodle, and keep it under your bed. And then next time you get really angry and really frustrated, take out that foam pool noodle and just bash it on your bed. It is such a beautiful way to get some of that irritation, anger, frustration, energy out that is not going to harm anyone.

I feel like, I'm never gonna look at a pool Noodle the same again. Yes, yes. Yes, I have had so many clients I did this. I mean, when I first heard about it, I was like, okay. I went and I remember the first time I just hit that thing across the bed, I felt so much better afterwards.

And I've had so many clients come to me and say, oh my gosh, that was amazing. Because so many of us are conditioned to don't be, don't get angry, don't be upset, don't raise your voice, don't whatever. And so it gives you a vehicle to very safely. Express that energy, it's interesting, it brings to me like the thought of reparenting because I think with my son, like he was very, sensory with things and so that was something that we learned with ot.

Okay, take the pillow. Throw the pillow. These are actually like technique that at least I was teaching my kid. And I think that we just don't have these tools for ourselves. So I'm so glad that you're bringing, like giving the permission to people. This is one avenue. It's not just taking a walk.

It's not just music, but this can be one other thing that they can do. Yes, absolutely. We can use breathing on both sides too. If I have excess energy, any amount, any sort of breathing where your exhale is longer than the inhale is very powerful. There are so many breathing, exercises on the.

On the internet, but anything where the exhale is longer than the inhale is very powerful. You can also do five finger breathing where you put your hand out and you basically just trace your hand and so you start, if you start on the outside of your pinky, down at the, at your wrist and as you, you trace with your other.

Finger, point your finger as you trace up to your, the top of your pinky. You inhale and then you exhale going down in between your two, your pinky and your fourth finger, and then you inhale going up. Exhale as you go down, and essentially what you do is you're getting the sensory where you are touching yourself.

You're also with each finger inhaling and exhaling. And as you get to the end of your five fingers, you have now done five. Deep breaths with just attention to your breathing and, the sensory sensation of your hand on your finger on your hand tracing your hand. It's pretty remarkable how in a very short period of time you can do something like that.

Now, if you're below home base, we need energy. There's no energy. This one can be a little bit harder because you need to encourage yourself to do something. But if you can see, oh, this is my nervous system. Let me see. If bringing a little extra energy will change anything, and so we can do music.

Music, you might have a different playlist, right? If I'm like, ah, if I'm really upset or if I'm really worried or anxious, my playlist might be very different than if I'm feeling depressed. But something to bring some energy. I don't necessarily want to encourage the depressed energy I want to bring.

Some sort of energy to me. Again, we can go for a walk, another thing that's really powerful when you are below home base is to, cold water on the backs of your hands or on your face, both of those, because the skin is pretty thin in those areas. So that can again, just bring a little bit of, a little bit of energy in any sort of connection with another person.

A safe person is very powerful when you are in that kind of below home base energy. Anything to bring in more energy. It's so interesting, I'm just always thinking a lot of examples with my kid because I think that's where I've done a lot of this, like co-regulation stuff, right?

And I think about, at night he would, he always loves to play soccer in the down by the kitchen, in the hallway. This is his thing, like throwing a ball, throwing a hacky sack. It doesn't matter. And I think about one of the only ways that I wanna be able to get off the couch we play, like the, Dallas Cowboy cheerleader to the, the Thunder song.

Anyway, it's a song that it brings energy to the environment and then I'm like, okay, we can get up, we can do this. Yes. I never thought about, yeah, I am below home base at that time and that's what's happening, that I'm using the music to get there.

And a lot of people after work are below home base, which makes sense. You have used so much of your energy, you're pretty much drained of your mental and your physical energy after a full day. So for a lot of people, they are. Below home base at the end of the day. And so if you want yourself, if you want to do something at the end of the day, then really thinking through, okay, what are little gentle things?

So if I'm below home base at the end of the day and I'm expecting myself to go to the gym and do some crazy workout for 60 minutes, probably not likely, I'm actually gonna get myself there. But if I can slowly. Maybe I can just go for a walk for a little bit or play around with it from just the lens of the nervous system.

The other thing you can do this very powerful, I love that you're talking about your kid too, is think about when you were a kid, what did you do naturally? What did you love to do when you were. A kid. So one of the things, I know for me, even if I'm below home base, when I was a kid, I loved stuffed animals so much.

I loved stuffed animals. And I remember when I was in therapy for eating disorders treatment, we were talking about stuffed animals and she encouraged me to get a stuffed animal. So I went to the build a bear shop and I have a stuffed giraffe, her name you, are you a Build A Bear fan as well?

I, I'm a massive build up air fan, I had actually never been, so I've been once to create Ginger is my giraffe. Love it. And Ginger comes out when I am below home base and I'm feeling really low. I'm feeling sad, I'm feeling whatever. Ginger, she has a very special place in my closet. And when I need her, she comes out.

But I knew that, I learned that because of thinking back on. How did I comfort myself as a child? So when you were a child, what did you do naturally? What were the things that you did to, to drain energy when you had a lot of energy? What were the things that, when you felt sad, when you didn't have much energy, what were the things that you know helped you that will can start to give you your own personal map?

That's so interesting that you bring it up. I've never put it together 'cause over years, I've really come to like coloring and crafting as I'm listening to something. But you're right. When I was growing up, we would get the, like back in the day you had to get the cassette tapes and we would have like a murder mystery, 24 of them and one after another.

We're putting 'em in on the weekend and I'm just. Making random things, like nothing was ever beautiful that was made, but it was just the act of that. I never thought about, I'm just recreating what I did back then.

Yes. Yeah, totally. Yeah. And what's beautiful is that when what you were doing back then, if it was something that really just came naturally and you enjoyed and you loved it, this was before you were in survival mode, before you were, told you shouldn't do that, or that's not cool, or whatever.

It really is like you were working with your nervous system, with your biology, with your physiology. Now if you're listening to this and you, let's say you grew up in not a very safe home and you were, now there was pretty much, I was not safe. Maybe from the beginning, then you can still think back to what you did as a child.

But it may well be that the things you did as a child were really from that kind of survival place. So people who struggle with food, who have struggled with food since they were very young, sometimes, it really is that kind of survival response. We very. Smartly, our system figures out food can make me feel better really fast.

Food can calm that excess energy that comes into my system. It can do that really fast. And so we, we learn that and then we repeat it over and over. Now, unfortunately, it comes with a lot of other things. It may calm it, but then again, we may go all the way down below home base. It may create. These other symptoms in our bodies, we may eat so much that then we're so disconnected that, there, there's a lot of other things that come with it.

But if we can start to see this not from a problem of I am broken or I'm doing these bad things with food, it's like, oh, this is my nervous system. If I can learn how to identify what's happening in my nervous system, try other things to. Regulate my energy and see if I can increase the amount of time that I actually spend in home base and figure out what helps me be there.

I can start to figure out, oh, if I work this many hours in a row, then maybe I'm too much. And so now I can be I can make different decisions with how I'm spending my time to spend more time there. You will naturally find your food behaviors will. Decrease because you now have other ways to navigate, to regulate your nervous system rather than the kind of one tool that you've been using for so long.

You've often said in the past, your goal is not to not overeat, it's to self-regulate. Yes. Instead of focusing on the food. The food. I love how you're saying it's, it, we're actually finding other ways for you to feel better and I love how you've made it very practical today that here's what home base is.

You're either too high, too low. If you're too high, how can we bring it down? If you're too low, how can we bring it up? And that just the checking in multiple times a day to be a starting place. Because I do think most people have no idea what's going on. And I know we started with that. Just to tell people, again, this can take a really long time, but hopefully you're understanding it with listening here in a way that's really simple.

Where you get now what it is that people are talking about when they keep saying nervous system. Yes. What you can do is you can really pair this with. Checking in multiple times a day when you wake up, how? Where do I think I am before you eat? Where am I in my nervous system right now and huh?

What do I notice about my eating behaviors if I'm in home base versus if I'm above, versus if I'm below when I eat? Now, this doesn't mean you can only eat when you're in home base, but if you start to really notice the difference, you start to check in before you eat. You and you start to just have your own mapping, your own understanding of your nervous system, then you can start experimenting with, huh.

I'm really above home base right now and I'm noticing when I start eating, when I'm in this place, I end up eating a lot more food than maybe I prefer, or, I have a really hard time stopping. Let me just see what happens if I go walk around the block for five minutes and then come and eat.

I'm not saying I can't eat, but let me do something else. To try to drain a little bit of energy and see what difference that makes. Yeah. I love it from the point of experimentation. And then I find over time you, you can plan more for things. 'cause like you said, we're gonna have times when the energy goes up.

I know that one, there's one day a week in the clinic when it's a really long day for me and I know the things I need to do at night to make sure that I get back to where I wanna be and that everything doesn't go to hell in a hand basket. Yes. But that's been because just really noticing throughout the day how I feel and then being able to.

Quicker take corrective action. I dunno if I can use that language, it helps me to faster get back to where I wanna be instead of it being three days of not being in a great spot. The more you can recognize it, then you can work with it. It's like, okay, we can anticipate, we can notice, we can adapt, we can adjust.

Sometimes we don't notice until, we're looking back. It's like, oh, that's exactly what was happening. It is the process of change, but when you can really just put your brain to work on can I just start understanding my own nervous system? You don't have to get into all of the cra, there's a lot of details.

There's so much more you could dive in and learn. But as far as a place to start, really just understanding home base, that kind of grounded place above, below, checking in are there things that I do that if I'm below, all of a sudden I try something else, I'm like, wow, I just feel better.

Take note of that, then you are developing your own roadmap because every individual literally is going to have their own roadmap of your. Nervous system. That will change with age. It will change with time, it will change with your relationships. It will change with the time of the season, the time of year, all of it will change.

A lot of it too is really being adaptable, being curious, being flexible, being willing to experiment with different things and not to think that there's some one size fits all. I'm gonna figure this out and I'm gonna just do the same thing for the rest of my life and take care of this.

System. That's not how it works. Totally. It occurs to me as you're talking when everyone's always comparing all day long, like, well, they did that, so then I must have to do that to get the same result. And then they do it. Yes. And they're so confused why the result not the same. And that's really hitting me how, we're also different that there's no way that we could regulate in the same way.

That's right. Yep. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Today, I just love how you explained everything and it's so practical. Can you tell people how they can connect with you? Maybe a little bit about, your book, your groups podcast yeah, absolutely. So first thing, we were talking about this before we started.

I am going to create a worksheet for anybody listening that's gonna go over what we talked about today. Just the basics of home base above, home base below home base. It will give you a kind of a visual so you can see what we talked about for some people. Some people have a better time learning, visually

if you want this worksheet, there will be a link in the show notes you can go download that there. So it will give you a little bit more information. So just know that's there. If you want to find me in other places, I have a podcast that's called, binge Eating Breakthrough. It's on all the podcast players.

I also have a book by the same name, binge Eating Breakthrough, then I also, I do private coaching one-on-one. I also have a, a group coaching program for women who struggle with, food. I also have the gathering. And the gathering is where, Matea was talking about this discussion around the nervous system.

The Gathering is a once a month. It is a call one time a month that really is focused more on the nervous system. It is not. Food specific. It really is learning to understand more about your nervous system. So many people now like really want to slow down. We're craving to slow down, but we don't really know how, and we also want to trust ourselves.

It's like, ugh, I wanna learn how to trust myself, but I don't really know how I wanted to create this space because. It's something that is unique, something I've, I haven't seen anywhere else. It is not a class, it is not a program. It is not a, you have to go catch up on 12 calls that you missed. It is literally one call a month where I teach something about the nervous system, about slowing down, about learning how to trust yourself.

And one of the things that's really interesting that I have learned so much in this nervous system work is sometimes if we haven't been around. A nervous system that is regulated. If we haven't been around somebody who has some of these traits that we are working to create in ourselves. We, we don't know what it looks like.

And one of the amazing things about co-regulation is through a space like that, you can see it, you can start to feel it. You can start to see, oh, that's. What it looks like, oh, I can start thinking about this. The goal of the gathering literally is one call a month and to, to be in an environment where you can start to, through co-regulation, through learning about the nervous system, start to learn more about it and work with it without it being.

I have this new thing to do and I have all of these, I have to catch up and I have all this homework and these things that kind of take us out of, the connection and regulation that ultimately we're really all trying to get to in the first place. Totally. I love it. And you even haven't made it complicated with a big course site to get into and it's just Yes.

It's so easy, it's so simple. It's, I wanna use the word like nourishing because it's exactly what you're talking about, the slowing down, figuring things out. You end up the rest of your month, you're in a different spot with it. And it's not that you have to answer another worksheet or something, but by the way, I'm excited about your worksheet.

Yes. Yes. Because that's gonna write down what we just talked about. That's right. And that's where there are places where worksheets are so helpful. Like in this case, this is going to be the worksheet that we're creating from today is gonna be how do you take this learning and really apply it and see it.

The gathering is I don't want you to have a worksheet. I want you to, whatever you have heard this month, to just take it, let it just be a seed that plants in your mind and then you, through your actions, through what you're thinking about, through what you're noticing that month, like they will be, watered and planted.

Through just how you live your life for the next month. So there really is a time and a place for them. Totally, totally. Well, thank you so much. We're gonna make sure to link to everything in the show notes, everybody. It's either right below where you're listening, or you can go to tia clinic.com and you can click on podcast and we'll have everything there in a nice post.

Just thank you again for taking all this time. I know that everyone, they just learn so much from you every single time that you come on. Yeah. Thanks for having me. I could talk about this all day.