November 3, 2025 • 32 mins
Message me with comments or questions
In this week’s episode of the Breakthrough Emotional Eating Podcast, Kristin's unpacking two of the most powerful (yet underrated) tools for lasting change — gratitude and journaling.
She explore how your thoughts set off emotions that drive your actions — and how you can interrupt that loop before it leads to emotional eating. You’ll learn how simple daily routines can calm your nervous system, reduce food urges, and help you build the consistency and confidence that diets never deliver.
Inside this episode, you’ll discover:
✨ The TEA-Cycle that links your thoughts, emotions, and actions — and how to interrupt it
✨ Why gratitude raises dopamine and serotonin, helping you feel more content and in control
✨ How to retrain your Reticular Activating System (RAS) to notice the good instead of the negative
✨ How journaling empties your mind, reducing urges and anxiety around food
✨ The power of tracking your wins to build self-trust and momentum
✨ Three simple daily practices you can start today to reset your relationship with food
This episode blends all three parts of my 3 R’s to Food Freedom™ framework — Routine, Rewiring, and Radical Accountability — to help you create real emotional freedom with food.
🎁 Bonus Gift: Want my 20 Journal Prompts for Emotional Eaters
Head to my Instagram [@kristinjonescoaching].
If you already follow me, send me a DM with the word “GRATITUDE.”
If not, follow me first and then send the same DM — I’ll send your copy right to you! Or just click here to download your copy.
Connect with me online:
1. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kristinjonescoaching/
2. You Tube channel, Kristin Jones Coaching: https://www.youtube.com/@KristinJonesCoaching44
3. You Tube channel, Breakthrough Emotional Eating Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@breakthroughpodcast-44
3 . Website: https://www.kristinjonescoaching.com
If you want to learn more about how to stop overeating at meals and lose weight easily, get my How To Stop Overeating At Meals Guide: https://go.kristinjonescoaching.com/stop-overeating
Needing more specific and direct support for your emotional eating and overeating? Check out my online course, Stop Dieting Start Feeling, and my personalized coaching program, Breakthrough To You.
If you found this episode helpful, don't forget to leave a review on the platform you used to listen and share it with your friends on your Instagram stories. Also, be sure to follow me on Instagram...
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:02):
Do you want to lose weight but struggle to stay
committed to a meal plan becauseyou constantly feel hungry?
Does food provide you comfortwhen you're bored, angry,
lonely, or sad?
If so, you are in the rightplace.
My name is Kristen Jones, andI'm a life coach specializing in
emotional eating and weightloss.
(00:22):
And I'm also a lifelongemotional eater.
I want to provide you withinformation, motivation, and
support so you too can learn tomanage your issues with food and
develop a healthy relationshipwith yourself.
Welcome to the BreakthroughEmotional Eating Podcast.
(01:06):
About 20 years ago, I took aroad trip with my mom and my
sister, and we went to Oregon,to Eugene, Oregon, to visit my
cousin and her partner.
And we were staying at theirhouse.
And one of the one of theevenings, they were really
excited to show us this video.
(01:28):
And the video was a documentary,and it was something I had never
seen before, but it wassomething that honestly, looking
back, it absolutely has changedthe trajectory of my life.
And the video was titled TheSecret.
And the secret is about uh thelaw of manifestation and the law
(01:50):
of attraction.
And the premise is that we arewhat we think, and that we uh
whatever we are thinking that weput out into the universe, all
of that comes back.
It's almost like a boomerang, itcomes back to us.
And one of the concepts that Ilearned on that trip and that
(02:14):
evening watching this video wasthe idea of gratitude and the
importance of gratitude in ourlives.
And from that point forward, Ihave used gratitude or the law
of attraction in various aspectsof my life and have always
believed in manifesting thingsinto my life and have seen those
(02:35):
things come to fruition and comeand, you know, and be created in
my life basically because of thethoughts that I wanted to think.
One of the um most clear and itwasn't a um, it was a benefit to
me, but it wasn't, I wasn'tasking for a car, I wasn't
asking for um anything uhtangible, I wasn't asking for
(02:58):
more money.
But when I was a teacher, I hada student that was really,
really problematic.
And he just pushed every buttonI had and every button that
everyone had.
And he was just a real, he wasreally tough to deal with.
And we had him in the afternoon.
I was teen teaching at the time.
(03:18):
So one morning, when I was doingmy gratitude before school, I
specifically thought about how Iwanted this student to come in
to class and how I wanted him tobehave that day.
And I thought about, Ivisualized him coming in, him
(03:39):
saying hi to me, him sittingdown, him interacting positively
with the other students aroundhim.
I mean, I just laid everythingout and I not only visualized
it, but I also was grateful forthe fact that I had this student
in my class and I was gratefulfor the teacher that I was
teaching with, and I wasgrateful for every student in
(04:01):
the room, and I was grateful formy job, and I was grateful for
the opportunity to possibly beable to change this child's
life.
And don't you know thatafternoon he walked in and he
was as close to perfectlybehaved as as we could have ever
asked for without us sayinganything.
(04:24):
He came in, he was, he just wascalm, he came in, he sat down.
We had an amazing day.
And I remember telling mycoworker, the person I was
teaching with, I remembertelling her about this ahead of
time.
And about five minutes intoclass, she looked at me and she
said, What did you do?
(04:44):
I said, I didn't do anything.
I said, Well, I didn't doanything, but I just kind of put
it out there.
And so I've always been abeliever that the gratitude and
visualization and uh, you know,just just focusing on what we
have, focusing on the positivethings in life is always going
(05:07):
to get us farther than thanbeing negative.
And it's always been somethingthat I have included in every
program, every uh different,different iteration of my
one-on-one coaching or my groupcoaching, um, my membership, you
know, groups, anything that I'veever done, I've always had an
element of gratitude and anelement of um just you know
(05:31):
visualization and and positivethinking and all those things.
And so one of the things that Iinclude in the um in the three
Rs, which is the uh signatureframework that I use within my
breakthrough to you uh signatureone-on-one program that I that I
(05:52):
take individuals through to helpthem manage their emotional
eating and change theirrelationship with food.
The first R is routines.
And one of the routines that Ithat I always introduce and that
I always encourage, I neverforce people to do anything, but
I I encourage them.
This is something I stronglyrecommend that they do.
(06:12):
And journaling and gratitude arethe two elements that I think
are especially important when itcomes to a daily routine.
So I wanted to, this is part ofour series on um presenting the
three Rs.
And we're on R number one, whichis routines.
(06:33):
And so this week's topic isgratitude and journaling and why
it is so important and how itconnects to emotional eating.
Because you you can think, well,yeah, gratitude's great, and uh
everyone says you shouldjournal.
Well, but how is that gonnarelate to emotional eating?
Well, there are direct ties toemotional eating and ties to
(06:54):
your emotions and your emotionalresponses that are absolutely
triggered by gratitude and thatare triggered by journaling as
well.
So we're gonna go through thoseand you're gonna understand why
this is so important.
And I'm also gonna give you somevery tangible hands-on things
that you can start doingimmediately after you listen to
this podcast, and you can startto see a change in your life
(07:18):
almost immediately.
So I'm excited for that.
That'll be really fun.
So there is a connection betweenemotional eating and your
thoughts and the thoughtpatterns that you have.
And there is something that Icall a lot of people have a lot
of names for it.
I call it the T cycle.
(07:39):
And the T cycle, the T is T-E-A,kind of like T that you drink.
So T-E-A, the T cycle, and the Tstands for thoughts, the E
stands for emotions, and the Astands for actions.
And what that cycle representsis it represents how we move
through our days.
(07:59):
Our thoughts come first.
We create our thoughts, ourbrain creates our thoughts, and
we create our thoughts togetherwith our brain.
Those then, those thoughts thencreate the emotions.
They cause the emotions that wefeel.
So I want to make sure we weunderstand that.
That thoughts, our own thoughts,cause emotions and how we feel.
(08:21):
It's not what someone else doesthat causes us to feel a certain
way.
It's someone else doessomething, we have a thought
about it, the thought thencauses us to feel either happy
or sad or angry or you know,mad, whatever it is.
But it's not what the otherperson does.
It's what we choose and wechoose to think about it.
(08:45):
So we choose a thought, thethought creates a feeling within
us, and then that feeling drivesus to do an action.
Every action known to man arealways driven by emotions,
always driven by emotions.
So instead, if we don't like theactions that we're doing, we
don't need to change our our ourhow we feel.
(09:07):
We need to go back and we needto figure out what are we
thinking that's causing us tofeel a certain way, and then in
turn react and act subsequently,and then have whatever that that
result is that we get based uponour actions.
So we always want to look backat what is the thought that we
have.
That's that thought cycle, thatthat T cycle.
(09:30):
So what happens is there can bea negative loop or a negative
thought pattern that candevelop.
And if we get into a negativethought loop where all we're
looking at is what we don'thave, what we don't have enough
of, what we aren't, what we wishwe were, all of those negative
thought patterns, we can getinto that loop that is very,
(09:52):
very challenging for us tochange.
And that negative loop and thoseensuing negative emotions that
are that are caused by thosenegative thoughts, those
negative emotions can lead us tothe actions that our brain is
actually automatically going todo because it wants us to feel
(10:13):
better.
So when it wants us to feelbetter, it's gonna have us do
something that's gonna make usfeel better.
What's gonna make most peoplefeel better?
Eating.
Eating is something thatdistracts us, it distracts us in
the moment, it makes us feelgood in that very brief moment,
and that is ultimately what ourbrain wants.
When we're in that negativethought pattern, it doesn't want
us to stay there.
(10:34):
So it goes about changing ourthought patterns, creates
different emotions, and thenresults in a new action that it
wants us to take.
So we have to be very aware ofour thoughts and our actions,
our thoughts and our feelingsand our actions absolutely
directly link to emotionaleating.
(10:56):
And so understanding thatthere's that connection and
understanding that when we don'tharness our power and we don't
take control of those areas ofour brain and those things that
we can control, because with100% certainty, we can control
our thoughts.
Many people do not understandthat and don't believe that, but
(11:19):
it is absolutely true.
We get to control our thoughts.
Our brain will keep giving usthose thoughts that we don't
want to have, but we get to keepsaying no.
We get to keep saying no, that'snot what's gonna happen.
That's not what we're gonna do.
And we can can continue to pushback against our brain and
against what our brain wants tonaturally do.
(11:40):
And that can help us get out ofthat thoughts, that thought
cycle.
But it's very challenging whenpeople don't understand that
they actually, in reality, havethe ability to be able to make
those changes themselves and tobe able to control how they
think and feel.
So, what gratitude and whatjournaling does is it interrupts
(12:02):
that negative thought patternbecause it activates the
prefrontal cortex.
And the prefrontal cortex isdirectly involved and directly
responsible for making decisionsas well as for selecting and
choosing mindfulness as a way ofgoing about your day.
(12:22):
And so when we know that we cantap into that prefrontal cortex
by journaling and by looking atand being grateful for what we
have, we have an easy and quickway of breaking that negative
loop pattern and creating apattern of thinking that is more
coming from abundance and notfrom a place of scarcity.
(12:46):
So why gratitude works?
Gratitude, I like to saygratitude is the gateway drug to
happiness because when we can begrateful, there is nothing that
we can't feel that's going to bepositive.
There's nothing that we can't dothat is going to help ourselves
ourselves move our lives in amore positive direction.
So gratitude shifts our focusfrom lack to abundance.
(13:12):
That means from scarcity toabundance because so many people
walk around in a scarcitymindset.
And it's very easy.
And I know for me personally, Ihave to fight that scarcity
mindset all the time.
And I really have to try andcome from a place of abundance,
and it can be very challengingdepending on the circumstances
and what aspects of my life thatI'm that I'm involved in.
(13:34):
But I have to always rememberthat scarcity comes from me and
comes from my thinking.
And when I realize that, then Ihave much more motivation to
want to change how I am lookingat the world and how I am the
perspective that I'm taking.
So I get to have control of thatand I realize that.
(13:55):
And I realize that I need toembrace that power uh
wholeheartedly.
So from a neurologicalstandpoint, gratitude increases
dopamine and serotonin in thebrain, and that improves your
mood and it reduces theemotional triggers that often
cause people to overeat and toeat when they're not hungry.
(14:16):
So that's the first step.
There are very basicneurological reasons for
gratitude and why you would wantto partake of it.
The second reason why you wantto really turn to gratitude and
have gratitude be a regular,routine, uh, daily occurrence in
your life is gratitude activatesand retrains the reticular
(14:37):
activating system within yourbrain.
It's it stands for RAS.
RAS is what it's called.
It's the reticular activatingsystem.
And what that system does isthat system is a filter for your
brain.
And naturally, what it does isit kind of, if we remember back
to some of my other videos whereI talk about the brain and that
(14:58):
the brain automatically doesworst-case scenarios, while the
the RAS is always looking fordoom and gloom to be prepared
for it.
So it can, it can kind of likebe on the lookout because again,
it's uh its whole objective isto keep you alive and safe.
And so the reticular activatingsystem is always looking for
(15:19):
threats.
And when we can retrain it andhave it look for the positive
things in our lives, our livesare gonna take a very different
turn and we are gonna be muchmore receptive to the good that
is out in the world becausethere is so much good in the
world.
But if all we're doing islooking for the negative, I
promise you we're gonna find it.
And so, really changing thatreticular activating system to
(15:44):
start looking for things thatare more positive, that's what
we want to start doing.
And gratitude on the regulardoes that.
And so that's something that isvery, very helpful for your
brain to be able to start toregularly incorporate gratitude,
because then gratitude begetsmore gratitude and begets more
(16:05):
positivity and better things andmore abundance to come into your
life.
So when we talk about emotionalregulation and meaning emotional
regulation, meaning that thateven keel of emotion, and I will
tell you that for many years ofmy life, that was never a way
(16:28):
that anyone would describe me.
Not anyone in my family wouldever describe me that way.
Um, I was like a pilot, I waslike a powder keg.
I mean, it was like you neverknew what was going to set me
off, what was going to triggerme.
Um, I was so emotionallyfragile, and it almost always
had to do with how I felt aboutmyself, how I felt about how I
(16:49):
looked, how I felt in my ownbody, all of those things.
So when, so gratitude helps youbuild kind of a regulation
system within you for youremotions, because gratitude
makes you feel good.
So when you feel good, you aremuch better equipped at dealing
(17:10):
with the little challenges thatcome up in our lives at all
times.
I wasn't feeling good aboutmyself.
I didn't like how I looked, Ididn't like how I felt, I didn't
like who I was, I didn't likewhere my life was.
When I didn't like all thosethings, and that was the tape
that kept running through myhead, I couldn't handle any, any
(17:32):
hiccup.
I couldn't handle any bump inthe road without losing it,
either in just sobbing tears orcomplete howler monkey screaming
and yelling.
And so I didn't have, I wasemotional, I was emotionally
dysregulated and I needed theregulation of that gratitude.
And it wasn't a few years lateruntil I found it.
(17:53):
But for many years of my life,and that was why I was so
relieved when I found somethingthat was able to actually help
me remain calm and give me theemotional balance that I needed
to in order to be able to justaddress all the things that come
into our lives because we allhave them.
We all have these various, youknow, uh things that that pop
(18:17):
into our lives.
And and we just have to be able,we have to be able to learn how
to handle them.
And and I didn't for the man formany years know how to handle
those things.
And gratitude was a huge pieceof it.
So when you're grateful, you aremore likely, when these
emotional dysregulations happen,you're more likely to pause, to
(18:38):
reflect, and then to chooserather than just to react,
rather than going from zero tohowler monkey, you can actually
be calm and choose and selecthow you want to respond.
Now, journaling, on the otherhand, I have always known, and
many of you don't know this, Idon't talk about it very often,
(19:00):
but I was um I was a resourcespecialist when I was a teacher.
I was a resource specialist foruh for nine of my 17 years as a
teacher.
And in that process of becominga resource specialist and
getting my credential as aresource specialist, I also got
my master's degree in specialeducation.
And so I had a very um extensiveeducation on the brain and how
(19:27):
the brain worked.
And I also understood how it wasvery challenging for my
students, for many of mystudents, almost most of my
students, to get the thoughtsfrom their head down through
their body, through their mind,through their arm, and then out
(19:48):
through the pencil onto thepiece of paper.
And these were not emotionalthings, these were things that
they were trying to remember.
These were facts, these were,these were what they wanted to
write.
This was, these were all thejust very basic, basic things.
Um, nothing, nothing deep likeemotions, but I knew a great
deal about the struggles thatcame from getting your thoughts
(20:11):
that were in your head out ontopaper.
But what I also knew was I, andI also learned tenfold in life
coaching school, was theimportance of emptying your mind
as frequently as possible andgetting your thoughts out as
frequently as possible.
(20:32):
And for people who have alearning disability, it is very
challenging because thoughts getjumbled, thoughts get trapped,
they get stuck in your head, andyou don't have a clear pathway
to get them out through yourhands, you know, onto paper.
And so it's very, verychallenging for people to not
who are not able to do that.
(20:54):
But for those of us who can, itis absolutely so cathartic and
so important because our braincan only handle so much
information.
And when we have too manythoughts in our head, this was
the visualization that I was uhI was taught in life coaching
school.
It was it was that every thoughtis like a ball.
(21:18):
And when there are thoughts thataren't positive, that are
negative thoughts, and you havethem inside your head and you
don't get them out and you don'texternalize them onto paper,
they just keep knocking aroundin your head.
And every time they hit anotherthought, they multiply.
(21:38):
And so the thoughts get biggerand bigger and more powerful.
And soon one thought that youthought was was was detrimental
to you becomes a thousandthoughts that are
life-threatening to you, andthat you really, for your own
health and your own peace andyour own ability to be able to
(22:01):
move through your your life, youhave to be able to remove and
get those thoughts out of yourhead once so you can have more
thoughts because we have over60,000 thoughts a day in our in
our head.
But otherwise, they just it itbecomes overwhelming for a
person who doesn't know how tohandle those thoughts.
And so getting thoughts down onpaper almost takes their power
(22:26):
away.
And it and it does in facthumanize our power.
It puts our power, it puts thethe the thought or the belief or
the the horrible thing thatwe're thinking onto paper where
we're much more equipped to dealwith it because we see it and we
can look at it and we can seethat on paper it's not gonna
(22:50):
hurt us, it's not gonna doanything, it's not gonna, it's
not gonna destroy us.
And so getting those thoughts,positive and negative, out onto
paper and externalizing themoutside of your body is so very
important to allow eachindividual to feel emotionally
stable.
(23:10):
And when we know that emotionaleating stems from emotion,
emotional dysregulation and notfeeling emotions and not
expressing them and keeping thembottled up and then having them
explode, you know, just bottleup and brew up inside of you.
It makes sense.
Why wouldn't you journal?
It's it's five minutes a day,and that can keep emotional
(23:32):
eating at bay and it can keep itfrom stop from happening, and it
can help you feel moreeven-keeled and better equipped
to deal with the emotions of aday.
Why wouldn't you?
Why wouldn't you do that?
So the other piece of it is itallows you to be able to track
your growth as you are movingthrough whatever process you're
(23:55):
moving through.
And sometimes it's just yourdaily life.
You can go back and you can lookat a journal entry from three
months ago, and when you aren'twhen you aren't really sure if
you're making progress, and youcan see how far you've come.
And it no longer then becomesjust about the data that you get
from the scale or the data thatyou get from other people.
Now you have this tangibleproduct that you can refer back
(24:17):
to.
And I always tell people havinga journal is so important
because if things are goingwell, we always want to
reproduce that.
We want to say, okay, how can wedo that more often?
If we're having really greatdays, we want to know what
exactly we're doing to createthose great days.
If you have a journal, you knowexactly what's happening, you
know exactly how it's goingdown.
So why not?
(24:38):
Let's let's do that.
Let's have a record of what itis that we want to have
happening and what it is that wewant to um reproduce in our
lives.
So now we know the specifics ofboth journaling and gratitude.
And so now, how do we integratethese two practices into our
(24:59):
daily lives?
So I'm going to give you um somesuggestions, but the most
important suggestion is to startsmall.
Don't try and do anything big,don't buy a big, huge journal
and say, I'm gonna fill these apage every day.
No, just go small, very small.
So the my first suggestion is tojust focus on, because you can
(25:23):
kind of kill two birds with onestone, is just focus on
gratitude first.
Because that's a that's an easyone.
So in the morning, three thingsyou're grateful for.
And I always say three thingsyou're grateful for in the last
24 hours, three things that havehappened to you or that you
realize in the last 24 hoursthat you're grateful for.
That's morning.
(25:44):
Your evening routine is writingdown one win from the day.
What's one win?
It doesn't mean it matters ifit's big or small.
One win, what is it?
What is it and why did ithappen?
Um second thing is you can also,if you don't want to do
journaling, you can dojournaling.
(26:05):
You can also connect journalingto emotional eating and ask
yourself these questions.
So they could be a question eachday.
It could be one question for,you know, every three days.
And the first question is, whatam I feeling before I want to
eat?
And that's just, and you justwrite, you just a couple
(26:27):
sentences, three, a paragraph.
It doesn't have to be, you know,it's not a it doesn't have to be
a pull of surprise, it doesn'thave to be a book.
It's just what emotion am Ifeeling before I want to eat?
Second question, it could be ona different day.
What do I actually need rightnow when I'm feeling like I need
to eat?
What do I need right now?
And then the third questionwhat's one thing I did today
(26:51):
that I'm proud of?
Those are simple questions likethat, simple journal prompts
like that that can really,really help you.
Now, I have a journal, I have auh 30 journal prompts for weight
loss that I'm happy to sharewith you, and I will uh drop
(27:14):
that in the um in the shownotes, and you can get those 30
journal prompts, and that cantake you through um a month of
journaling.
And if you could do consistencyover perfection, over length,
over quantity, just or quality,just trying to get yourself into
the habit of journaling.
(27:36):
Two sentences, three sentences,some days it's one, some days
it's a couple of words.
That's fine.
But just get your journal out.
Get your journal out and dosomething.
Just get some of those thoughts,feelings, emotions down on paper
and let your brain get a littlebit of a break.
A little bit of a break.
(27:57):
So now gratitude and journalingsupport the first R in the three
Rs to food freedom.
And that that R is routine.
And so remember the three R'sroutine.
And again, this routine buildsconsistency, emotional
(28:18):
stability, fewer urges, fewerbinges, you know, ability to to
uh eat less food and to loseweight naturally without needing
to diet.
Um the second R is that rewiringof your of your mindset, and
that supports you that this thejournaling and gratitude
absolutely rewires everything.
(28:39):
When we come from a place ofgratitude and abundance, we are
automatically already rewiringour thought system.
And then that that third's thatthird R of radical
accountability is journalingincreases your
self-accountability.
Because when you write somethingdown, you are being accountable
(29:00):
to yourself.
You are acknowledging what'shappening in your life, you're
acknowledging what you're doing,your role in it.
And that is the first step toreal radical accountability
because radical accountabilityis really being accountable
fully and completely foryourself, your actions, and
everything that you do.
And over time, all of thesethings compound and they build
(29:22):
and they they create a strongerfoundation for you to be able to
deal with the ups and downs thatare inevitable in life.
We can't get around them.
We can't, we can't avoid theinevitable ups and downs, but we
can absolutely create systemsand routines in place to allow
us to be able to handle them ina much better way that actually
(29:43):
serves our lives.
So, three simple steps that youcan implement today.
Morning gratitude, those threethings that you're grateful for
in the last 24 hours, yourevening reflection, what did I
do today that I that honored mybody?
What did I do that?
I'm proud of myself.
What's one thing that uh what'sone win for the day?
(30:05):
So you have some evening piecethat you do.
And then you also a third thingthat you can do through
journaling is noticing when youhave urges and writing them down
and asking yourself, so how wasI feeling before?
Did I actually eat?
Did I give in to the urge?
If you did, you don't give anyshame.
But if you did, you give intothe urge.
(30:26):
What did you eat?
How'd you feel afterwards?
How do you, how'd you, how'd youmove past it?
And you just, again, thosemidday, it doesn't have to be
just be at morning at night, itcould just be any time.
It could be you get an urge andyou pick up your journal and you
start writing about how you'refeeling.
And that can be the thing thatcan help you sidestep that
journal, that gurge, andsidestep that desire to eat when
(30:48):
you're really not hungry.
So all of these things can bekind of incorporated in.
So those are three very simplethings that you can do.
You don't have to do all threeof them.
You can just do one.
You don't have to do any.
When you're ready, you havethings that you can pick.
So those are three ways ofreally getting yourself to start
moving in the direction.
Gratitude changes your focus,journaling changes your
(31:11):
awareness.
And together, they change yourrelationship with food.
If you would like a copy of my30 journal prompts for weight
loss, go to in the show notes orclick on the link to my
Instagram.
If you follow me, great, send mea DM.
If you don't, start to follow meand then send me a DM with the
(31:34):
word gratitude, and I will sendyou a copy of my 30 weight loss
journal prompts that you canuse, and they will be great ways
of starting and your journalingroutine and see how that changes
your life.
I hope this podcast was helpful.
I think journaling and gratitudeare so very important, and I
hope that you've learned a lotand I hope you really embrace
(31:56):
the idea of changing yourrelationship with food by
incorporating one or both ofthese very important routines.
All right, we'll see you nextweek.
Thank you for listening to thisweek's episode.
If you are interested inlearning more about how I can
(32:17):
help you understand and manageyour emotional eating, including
the use of hypnosis to uncoverthe root cause of your eating,
go to my website, Kristen JonesCoaching dot com.
Do you want to lose weight but struggle to stay
committed to a meal plan becauseyou constantly feel hungry?
Does food provide you comfortwhen you're bored, angry,
lonely, or sad?
If so, you are in the rightplace.
My name is Kristen Jones, andI'm a life coach specializing in
emotional eating and weightloss.
(00:22):
And I'm also a lifelongemotional eater.
I want to provide you withinformation, motivation, and
support so you too can learn tomanage your issues with food and
develop a healthy relationshipwith yourself.
Welcome to the BreakthroughEmotional Eating Podcast.
(01:06):
About 20 years ago, I took aroad trip with my mom and my
sister, and we went to Oregon,to Eugene, Oregon, to visit my
cousin and her partner.
And we were staying at theirhouse.
And one of the one of theevenings, they were really
excited to show us this video.
(01:28):
And the video was a documentary,and it was something I had never
seen before, but it wassomething that honestly, looking
back, it absolutely has changedthe trajectory of my life.
And the video was titled TheSecret.
And the secret is about uh thelaw of manifestation and the law
(01:50):
of attraction.
And the premise is that we arewhat we think, and that we uh
whatever we are thinking that weput out into the universe, all
of that comes back.
It's almost like a boomerang, itcomes back to us.
And one of the concepts that Ilearned on that trip and that
(02:14):
evening watching this video wasthe idea of gratitude and the
importance of gratitude in ourlives.
And from that point forward, Ihave used gratitude or the law
of attraction in various aspectsof my life and have always
believed in manifesting thingsinto my life and have seen those
(02:35):
things come to fruition and comeand, you know, and be created in
my life basically because of thethoughts that I wanted to think.
One of the um most clear and itwasn't a um, it was a benefit to
me, but it wasn't, I wasn'tasking for a car, I wasn't
asking for um anything uhtangible, I wasn't asking for
(02:58):
more money.
But when I was a teacher, I hada student that was really,
really problematic.
And he just pushed every buttonI had and every button that
everyone had.
And he was just a real, he wasreally tough to deal with.
And we had him in the afternoon.
I was teen teaching at the time.
(03:18):
So one morning, when I was doingmy gratitude before school, I
specifically thought about how Iwanted this student to come in
to class and how I wanted him tobehave that day.
And I thought about, Ivisualized him coming in, him
(03:39):
saying hi to me, him sittingdown, him interacting positively
with the other students aroundhim.
I mean, I just laid everythingout and I not only visualized
it, but I also was grateful forthe fact that I had this student
in my class and I was gratefulfor the teacher that I was
teaching with, and I wasgrateful for every student in
(04:01):
the room, and I was grateful formy job, and I was grateful for
the opportunity to possibly beable to change this child's
life.
And don't you know thatafternoon he walked in and he
was as close to perfectlybehaved as as we could have ever
asked for without us sayinganything.
(04:24):
He came in, he was, he just wascalm, he came in, he sat down.
We had an amazing day.
And I remember telling mycoworker, the person I was
teaching with, I remembertelling her about this ahead of
time.
And about five minutes intoclass, she looked at me and she
said, What did you do?
(04:44):
I said, I didn't do anything.
I said, Well, I didn't doanything, but I just kind of put
it out there.
And so I've always been abeliever that the gratitude and
visualization and uh, you know,just just focusing on what we
have, focusing on the positivethings in life is always going
(05:07):
to get us farther than thanbeing negative.
And it's always been somethingthat I have included in every
program, every uh different,different iteration of my
one-on-one coaching or my groupcoaching, um, my membership, you
know, groups, anything that I'veever done, I've always had an
element of gratitude and anelement of um just you know
(05:31):
visualization and and positivethinking and all those things.
And so one of the things that Iinclude in the um in the three
Rs, which is the uh signatureframework that I use within my
breakthrough to you uh signatureone-on-one program that I that I
(05:52):
take individuals through to helpthem manage their emotional
eating and change theirrelationship with food.
The first R is routines.
And one of the routines that Ithat I always introduce and that
I always encourage, I neverforce people to do anything, but
I I encourage them.
This is something I stronglyrecommend that they do.
(06:12):
And journaling and gratitude arethe two elements that I think
are especially important when itcomes to a daily routine.
So I wanted to, this is part ofour series on um presenting the
three Rs.
And we're on R number one, whichis routines.
(06:33):
And so this week's topic isgratitude and journaling and why
it is so important and how itconnects to emotional eating.
Because you you can think, well,yeah, gratitude's great, and uh
everyone says you shouldjournal.
Well, but how is that gonnarelate to emotional eating?
Well, there are direct ties toemotional eating and ties to
(06:54):
your emotions and your emotionalresponses that are absolutely
triggered by gratitude and thatare triggered by journaling as
well.
So we're gonna go through thoseand you're gonna understand why
this is so important.
And I'm also gonna give you somevery tangible hands-on things
that you can start doingimmediately after you listen to
this podcast, and you can startto see a change in your life
(07:18):
almost immediately.
So I'm excited for that.
That'll be really fun.
So there is a connection betweenemotional eating and your
thoughts and the thoughtpatterns that you have.
And there is something that Icall a lot of people have a lot
of names for it.
I call it the T cycle.
(07:39):
And the T cycle, the T is T-E-A,kind of like T that you drink.
So T-E-A, the T cycle, and the Tstands for thoughts, the E
stands for emotions, and the Astands for actions.
And what that cycle representsis it represents how we move
through our days.
(07:59):
Our thoughts come first.
We create our thoughts, ourbrain creates our thoughts, and
we create our thoughts togetherwith our brain.
Those then, those thoughts thencreate the emotions.
They cause the emotions that wefeel.
So I want to make sure we weunderstand that.
That thoughts, our own thoughts,cause emotions and how we feel.
(08:21):
It's not what someone else doesthat causes us to feel a certain
way.
It's someone else doessomething, we have a thought
about it, the thought thencauses us to feel either happy
or sad or angry or you know,mad, whatever it is.
But it's not what the otherperson does.
It's what we choose and wechoose to think about it.
(08:45):
So we choose a thought, thethought creates a feeling within
us, and then that feeling drivesus to do an action.
Every action known to man arealways driven by emotions,
always driven by emotions.
So instead, if we don't like theactions that we're doing, we
don't need to change our our ourhow we feel.
(09:07):
We need to go back and we needto figure out what are we
thinking that's causing us tofeel a certain way, and then in
turn react and act subsequently,and then have whatever that that
result is that we get based uponour actions.
So we always want to look backat what is the thought that we
have.
That's that thought cycle, thatthat T cycle.
(09:30):
So what happens is there can bea negative loop or a negative
thought pattern that candevelop.
And if we get into a negativethought loop where all we're
looking at is what we don'thave, what we don't have enough
of, what we aren't, what we wishwe were, all of those negative
thought patterns, we can getinto that loop that is very,
(09:52):
very challenging for us tochange.
And that negative loop and thoseensuing negative emotions that
are that are caused by thosenegative thoughts, those
negative emotions can lead us tothe actions that our brain is
actually automatically going todo because it wants us to feel
(10:13):
better.
So when it wants us to feelbetter, it's gonna have us do
something that's gonna make usfeel better.
What's gonna make most peoplefeel better?
Eating.
Eating is something thatdistracts us, it distracts us in
the moment, it makes us feelgood in that very brief moment,
and that is ultimately what ourbrain wants.
When we're in that negativethought pattern, it doesn't want
us to stay there.
(10:34):
So it goes about changing ourthought patterns, creates
different emotions, and thenresults in a new action that it
wants us to take.
So we have to be very aware ofour thoughts and our actions,
our thoughts and our feelingsand our actions absolutely
directly link to emotionaleating.
(10:56):
And so understanding thatthere's that connection and
understanding that when we don'tharness our power and we don't
take control of those areas ofour brain and those things that
we can control, because with100% certainty, we can control
our thoughts.
Many people do not understandthat and don't believe that, but
(11:19):
it is absolutely true.
We get to control our thoughts.
Our brain will keep giving usthose thoughts that we don't
want to have, but we get to keepsaying no.
We get to keep saying no, that'snot what's gonna happen.
That's not what we're gonna do.
And we can can continue to pushback against our brain and
against what our brain wants tonaturally do.
(11:40):
And that can help us get out ofthat thoughts, that thought
cycle.
But it's very challenging whenpeople don't understand that
they actually, in reality, havethe ability to be able to make
those changes themselves and tobe able to control how they
think and feel.
So, what gratitude and whatjournaling does is it interrupts
(12:02):
that negative thought patternbecause it activates the
prefrontal cortex.
And the prefrontal cortex isdirectly involved and directly
responsible for making decisionsas well as for selecting and
choosing mindfulness as a way ofgoing about your day.
(12:22):
And so when we know that we cantap into that prefrontal cortex
by journaling and by looking atand being grateful for what we
have, we have an easy and quickway of breaking that negative
loop pattern and creating apattern of thinking that is more
coming from abundance and notfrom a place of scarcity.
(12:46):
So why gratitude works?
Gratitude, I like to saygratitude is the gateway drug to
happiness because when we can begrateful, there is nothing that
we can't feel that's going to bepositive.
There's nothing that we can't dothat is going to help ourselves
ourselves move our lives in amore positive direction.
So gratitude shifts our focusfrom lack to abundance.
(13:12):
That means from scarcity toabundance because so many people
walk around in a scarcitymindset.
And it's very easy.
And I know for me personally, Ihave to fight that scarcity
mindset all the time.
And I really have to try andcome from a place of abundance,
and it can be very challengingdepending on the circumstances
and what aspects of my life thatI'm that I'm involved in.
(13:34):
But I have to always rememberthat scarcity comes from me and
comes from my thinking.
And when I realize that, then Ihave much more motivation to
want to change how I am lookingat the world and how I am the
perspective that I'm taking.
So I get to have control of thatand I realize that.
(13:55):
And I realize that I need toembrace that power uh
wholeheartedly.
So from a neurologicalstandpoint, gratitude increases
dopamine and serotonin in thebrain, and that improves your
mood and it reduces theemotional triggers that often
cause people to overeat and toeat when they're not hungry.
(14:16):
So that's the first step.
There are very basicneurological reasons for
gratitude and why you would wantto partake of it.
The second reason why you wantto really turn to gratitude and
have gratitude be a regular,routine, uh, daily occurrence in
your life is gratitude activatesand retrains the reticular
(14:37):
activating system within yourbrain.
It's it stands for RAS.
RAS is what it's called.
It's the reticular activatingsystem.
And what that system does isthat system is a filter for your
brain.
And naturally, what it does isit kind of, if we remember back
to some of my other videos whereI talk about the brain and that
(14:58):
the brain automatically doesworst-case scenarios, while the
the RAS is always looking fordoom and gloom to be prepared
for it.
So it can, it can kind of likebe on the lookout because again,
it's uh its whole objective isto keep you alive and safe.
And so the reticular activatingsystem is always looking for
(15:19):
threats.
And when we can retrain it andhave it look for the positive
things in our lives, our livesare gonna take a very different
turn and we are gonna be muchmore receptive to the good that
is out in the world becausethere is so much good in the
world.
But if all we're doing islooking for the negative, I
promise you we're gonna find it.
And so, really changing thatreticular activating system to
(15:44):
start looking for things thatare more positive, that's what
we want to start doing.
And gratitude on the regulardoes that.
And so that's something that isvery, very helpful for your
brain to be able to start toregularly incorporate gratitude,
because then gratitude begetsmore gratitude and begets more
(16:05):
positivity and better things andmore abundance to come into your
life.
So when we talk about emotionalregulation and meaning emotional
regulation, meaning that thateven keel of emotion, and I will
tell you that for many years ofmy life, that was never a way
(16:28):
that anyone would describe me.
Not anyone in my family wouldever describe me that way.
Um, I was like a pilot, I waslike a powder keg.
I mean, it was like you neverknew what was going to set me
off, what was going to triggerme.
Um, I was so emotionallyfragile, and it almost always
had to do with how I felt aboutmyself, how I felt about how I
(16:49):
looked, how I felt in my ownbody, all of those things.
So when, so gratitude helps youbuild kind of a regulation
system within you for youremotions, because gratitude
makes you feel good.
So when you feel good, you aremuch better equipped at dealing
(17:10):
with the little challenges thatcome up in our lives at all
times.
I wasn't feeling good aboutmyself.
I didn't like how I looked, Ididn't like how I felt, I didn't
like who I was, I didn't likewhere my life was.
When I didn't like all thosethings, and that was the tape
that kept running through myhead, I couldn't handle any, any
(17:32):
hiccup.
I couldn't handle any bump inthe road without losing it,
either in just sobbing tears orcomplete howler monkey screaming
and yelling.
And so I didn't have, I wasemotional, I was emotionally
dysregulated and I needed theregulation of that gratitude.
And it wasn't a few years lateruntil I found it.
(17:53):
But for many years of my life,and that was why I was so
relieved when I found somethingthat was able to actually help
me remain calm and give me theemotional balance that I needed
to in order to be able to justaddress all the things that come
into our lives because we allhave them.
We all have these various, youknow, uh things that that pop
(18:17):
into our lives.
And and we just have to be able,we have to be able to learn how
to handle them.
And and I didn't for the man formany years know how to handle
those things.
And gratitude was a huge pieceof it.
So when you're grateful, you aremore likely, when these
emotional dysregulations happen,you're more likely to pause, to
(18:38):
reflect, and then to chooserather than just to react,
rather than going from zero tohowler monkey, you can actually
be calm and choose and selecthow you want to respond.
Now, journaling, on the otherhand, I have always known, and
many of you don't know this, Idon't talk about it very often,
(19:00):
but I was um I was a resourcespecialist when I was a teacher.
I was a resource specialist foruh for nine of my 17 years as a
teacher.
And in that process of becominga resource specialist and
getting my credential as aresource specialist, I also got
my master's degree in specialeducation.
And so I had a very um extensiveeducation on the brain and how
(19:27):
the brain worked.
And I also understood how it wasvery challenging for my
students, for many of mystudents, almost most of my
students, to get the thoughtsfrom their head down through
their body, through their mind,through their arm, and then out
(19:48):
through the pencil onto thepiece of paper.
And these were not emotionalthings, these were things that
they were trying to remember.
These were facts, these were,these were what they wanted to
write.
This was, these were all thejust very basic, basic things.
Um, nothing, nothing deep likeemotions, but I knew a great
deal about the struggles thatcame from getting your thoughts
(20:11):
that were in your head out ontopaper.
But what I also knew was I, andI also learned tenfold in life
coaching school, was theimportance of emptying your mind
as frequently as possible andgetting your thoughts out as
frequently as possible.
(20:32):
And for people who have alearning disability, it is very
challenging because thoughts getjumbled, thoughts get trapped,
they get stuck in your head, andyou don't have a clear pathway
to get them out through yourhands, you know, onto paper.
And so it's very, verychallenging for people to not
who are not able to do that.
(20:54):
But for those of us who can, itis absolutely so cathartic and
so important because our braincan only handle so much
information.
And when we have too manythoughts in our head, this was
the visualization that I was uhI was taught in life coaching
school.
It was it was that every thoughtis like a ball.
(21:18):
And when there are thoughts thataren't positive, that are
negative thoughts, and you havethem inside your head and you
don't get them out and you don'texternalize them onto paper,
they just keep knocking aroundin your head.
And every time they hit anotherthought, they multiply.
(21:38):
And so the thoughts get biggerand bigger and more powerful.
And soon one thought that youthought was was was detrimental
to you becomes a thousandthoughts that are
life-threatening to you, andthat you really, for your own
health and your own peace andyour own ability to be able to
(22:01):
move through your your life, youhave to be able to remove and
get those thoughts out of yourhead once so you can have more
thoughts because we have over60,000 thoughts a day in our in
our head.
But otherwise, they just it itbecomes overwhelming for a
person who doesn't know how tohandle those thoughts.
And so getting thoughts down onpaper almost takes their power
(22:26):
away.
And it and it does in facthumanize our power.
It puts our power, it puts thethe the thought or the belief or
the the horrible thing thatwe're thinking onto paper where
we're much more equipped to dealwith it because we see it and we
can look at it and we can seethat on paper it's not gonna
(22:50):
hurt us, it's not gonna doanything, it's not gonna, it's
not gonna destroy us.
And so getting those thoughts,positive and negative, out onto
paper and externalizing themoutside of your body is so very
important to allow eachindividual to feel emotionally
stable.
(23:10):
And when we know that emotionaleating stems from emotion,
emotional dysregulation and notfeeling emotions and not
expressing them and keeping thembottled up and then having them
explode, you know, just bottleup and brew up inside of you.
It makes sense.
Why wouldn't you journal?
It's it's five minutes a day,and that can keep emotional
(23:32):
eating at bay and it can keep itfrom stop from happening, and it
can help you feel moreeven-keeled and better equipped
to deal with the emotions of aday.
Why wouldn't you?
Why wouldn't you do that?
So the other piece of it is itallows you to be able to track
your growth as you are movingthrough whatever process you're
(23:55):
moving through.
And sometimes it's just yourdaily life.
You can go back and you can lookat a journal entry from three
months ago, and when you aren'twhen you aren't really sure if
you're making progress, and youcan see how far you've come.
And it no longer then becomesjust about the data that you get
from the scale or the data thatyou get from other people.
Now you have this tangibleproduct that you can refer back
(24:17):
to.
And I always tell people havinga journal is so important
because if things are goingwell, we always want to
reproduce that.
We want to say, okay, how can wedo that more often?
If we're having really greatdays, we want to know what
exactly we're doing to createthose great days.
If you have a journal, you knowexactly what's happening, you
know exactly how it's goingdown.
So why not?
(24:38):
Let's let's do that.
Let's have a record of what itis that we want to have
happening and what it is that wewant to um reproduce in our
lives.
So now we know the specifics ofboth journaling and gratitude.
And so now, how do we integratethese two practices into our
(24:59):
daily lives?
So I'm going to give you um somesuggestions, but the most
important suggestion is to startsmall.
Don't try and do anything big,don't buy a big, huge journal
and say, I'm gonna fill these apage every day.
No, just go small, very small.
So the my first suggestion is tojust focus on, because you can
(25:23):
kind of kill two birds with onestone, is just focus on
gratitude first.
Because that's a that's an easyone.
So in the morning, three thingsyou're grateful for.
And I always say three thingsyou're grateful for in the last
24 hours, three things that havehappened to you or that you
realize in the last 24 hoursthat you're grateful for.
That's morning.
(25:44):
Your evening routine is writingdown one win from the day.
What's one win?
It doesn't mean it matters ifit's big or small.
One win, what is it?
What is it and why did ithappen?
Um second thing is you can also,if you don't want to do
journaling, you can dojournaling.
(26:05):
You can also connect journalingto emotional eating and ask
yourself these questions.
So they could be a question eachday.
It could be one question for,you know, every three days.
And the first question is, whatam I feeling before I want to
eat?
And that's just, and you justwrite, you just a couple
(26:27):
sentences, three, a paragraph.
It doesn't have to be, you know,it's not a it doesn't have to be
a pull of surprise, it doesn'thave to be a book.
It's just what emotion am Ifeeling before I want to eat?
Second question, it could be ona different day.
What do I actually need rightnow when I'm feeling like I need
to eat?
What do I need right now?
And then the third questionwhat's one thing I did today
(26:51):
that I'm proud of?
Those are simple questions likethat, simple journal prompts
like that that can really,really help you.
Now, I have a journal, I have auh 30 journal prompts for weight
loss that I'm happy to sharewith you, and I will uh drop
(27:14):
that in the um in the shownotes, and you can get those 30
journal prompts, and that cantake you through um a month of
journaling.
And if you could do consistencyover perfection, over length,
over quantity, just or quality,just trying to get yourself into
the habit of journaling.
(27:36):
Two sentences, three sentences,some days it's one, some days
it's a couple of words.
That's fine.
But just get your journal out.
Get your journal out and dosomething.
Just get some of those thoughts,feelings, emotions down on paper
and let your brain get a littlebit of a break.
A little bit of a break.
(27:57):
So now gratitude and journalingsupport the first R in the three
Rs to food freedom.
And that that R is routine.
And so remember the three R'sroutine.
And again, this routine buildsconsistency, emotional
(28:18):
stability, fewer urges, fewerbinges, you know, ability to to
uh eat less food and to loseweight naturally without needing
to diet.
Um the second R is that rewiringof your of your mindset, and
that supports you that this thejournaling and gratitude
absolutely rewires everything.
(28:39):
When we come from a place ofgratitude and abundance, we are
automatically already rewiringour thought system.
And then that that third's thatthird R of radical
accountability is journalingincreases your
self-accountability.
Because when you write somethingdown, you are being accountable
(29:00):
to yourself.
You are acknowledging what'shappening in your life, you're
acknowledging what you're doing,your role in it.
And that is the first step toreal radical accountability
because radical accountabilityis really being accountable
fully and completely foryourself, your actions, and
everything that you do.
And over time, all of thesethings compound and they build
(29:22):
and they they create a strongerfoundation for you to be able to
deal with the ups and downs thatare inevitable in life.
We can't get around them.
We can't, we can't avoid theinevitable ups and downs, but we
can absolutely create systemsand routines in place to allow
us to be able to handle them ina much better way that actually
(29:43):
serves our lives.
So, three simple steps that youcan implement today.
Morning gratitude, those threethings that you're grateful for
in the last 24 hours, yourevening reflection, what did I
do today that I that honored mybody?
What did I do that?
I'm proud of myself.
What's one thing that uh what'sone win for the day?
(30:05):
So you have some evening piecethat you do.
And then you also a third thingthat you can do through
journaling is noticing when youhave urges and writing them down
and asking yourself, so how wasI feeling before?
Did I actually eat?
Did I give in to the urge?
If you did, you don't give anyshame.
But if you did, you give intothe urge.
(30:26):
What did you eat?
How'd you feel afterwards?
How do you, how'd you, how'd youmove past it?
And you just, again, thosemidday, it doesn't have to be
just be at morning at night, itcould just be any time.
It could be you get an urge andyou pick up your journal and you
start writing about how you'refeeling.
And that can be the thing thatcan help you sidestep that
journal, that gurge, andsidestep that desire to eat when
(30:48):
you're really not hungry.
So all of these things can bekind of incorporated in.
So those are three very simplethings that you can do.
You don't have to do all threeof them.
You can just do one.
You don't have to do any.
When you're ready, you havethings that you can pick.
So those are three ways ofreally getting yourself to start
moving in the direction.
Gratitude changes your focus,journaling changes your
(31:11):
awareness.
And together, they change yourrelationship with food.
If you would like a copy of my30 journal prompts for weight
loss, go to in the show notes orclick on the link to my
Instagram.
If you follow me, great, send mea DM.
If you don't, start to follow meand then send me a DM with the
(31:34):
word gratitude, and I will sendyou a copy of my 30 weight loss
journal prompts that you canuse, and they will be great ways
of starting and your journalingroutine and see how that changes
your life.
I hope this podcast was helpful.
I think journaling and gratitudeare so very important, and I
hope that you've learned a lotand I hope you really embrace
(31:56):
the idea of changing yourrelationship with food by
incorporating one or both ofthese very important routines.
All right, we'll see you nextweek.
Thank you for listening to thisweek's episode.
If you are interested inlearning more about how I can
(32:17):
help you understand and manageyour emotional eating, including
the use of hypnosis to uncoverthe root cause of your eating,
go to my website, Kristen JonesCoaching dot com.
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