From Emotional Eating to Self-Love: A Journey of Healing and Nutrition for Women in Midlife and Beyond

Have you ever wondered how childhood experiences shape our relationship with food and body image? In this deeply moving episode of Real Food Stories, host Heather Carey sits down with Susan Gold, author of “Toxic Family: Transforming Childhood Trauma into Adult Freedom,” to unravel the intricate ties between emotional eating and our formative years.

As both women reflect on their personal food journeys, Susan shares her powerful story of growing up in a family marked by addiction and unhealthy eating habits. This candid discussion sheds light on how family food influences can lead to emotional eating patterns that persist into adulthood, affecting not only our nutrition but also our self-image. Susan’s insights offer invaluable nutrition advice, emphasizing the necessity of acknowledging and processing trauma to foster healing and self-love.

Throughout the episode, listeners will gain a deeper understanding of how emotional eating can be a coping mechanism for unresolved grief and discomfort. Susan highlights the importance of cultivating healthy relationships and support systems, sharing how her current partnership has transformed her approach to food and wellness. This conversation serves as a powerful reminder that confronting our past can pave the way for a healthier future, encouraging listeners to embrace their own stories and seek healing through understanding and compassion.

Join us as we explore the seven pillars of abundance, mindful eating practices, and the significance of nourishing our bodies in a sustainable way. Whether you’re navigating midlife changes, seeking weight loss stories, or looking for healthy eating tips, this episode is packed with insights that empower women to reclaim their narratives around food. Susan’s journey illustrates the impact of family food traditions and beliefs on our current lifestyle choices, making it clear that healing is possible when we confront our emotional eating habits.

So tune in and discover how to transform your relationship with food, embrace body positivity, and empower your menopause journey through culinary nutrition and mindful eating. Let’s embark on this personal food journey together, as we learn to nourish ourselves with compassion and joy!

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Transcript:

Speaker #0
Well, hello, everybody, and welcome back. And if you are just tuning in with me for the very first time, it’s so nice to meet you. And I’m really glad you’re here with me today. I am your host, Heather Carey, nutritionist, chef, mom, and a woman who has been around the block with food. I want to open up about real food in relation to health, weight, and our bodies so you can make peace with what you eat. Hey, everybody. I’ve talked a lot on my podcast about past trauma and our stories that we often have around food and body image and just making peace with food. These stories get very influenced by how we grew up. So I had a very important conversation today. with Susan Gold. She’s the author of Toxic Family, Transforming Childhood Trauma into Adult Freedom. And we had a really deep, heartfelt conversation about growing up with trauma, body image, eating disorders. We really dug deep. So if this is something that is relevant for you and appeals to you, I hope that you can take the time. to listen to my very important conversation with Susan. And trigger warning, we do dive a little bit into the topics of sexual abuse and eating disorders. So if this feels triggering to you at all, then you might want to skip this podcast. And if you feel like it can benefit you, then please, by all means, listen. Today, I am here with Susan Gold, who So… has a real food story to share that is embedded in past family trauma. So a little bit about Susan. Navigating a ferociously challenging upbringing while bravely moving forward as an adult to face ingrained, outdated, and patriarchal programming head-on, Susan now shares a unique perspective in viewing life challenges as occasions for transformation. She’s excited to help others all over the globe transform their traumatic experiences into peace. Susan wrote about her experiences in her book, Toxic Family, Transforming Childhood Trauma into Adult Freedom, in which Susan turns the standard paradigm on its head, courageously leading others through her own journey of abuse, addiction, and surviving narcissism, all while creating a distinctly empowering personal and professional life. So hi, Susan. Thanks so much for joining me today. I’m really excited to speak with you. And I just wanted to start by saying I wholeheartedly believe that what we experience as children and in our childhoods directly influences us as adults. And as I know you do as well. So as a nutritionist, I especially believe this When it comes to our body image, our history with dieting and eating disorders, and how our deep-seated feelings we may have around food and nourishment really get impacted by our childhood stories. So I want to hear more about your story today of your past, your traumas, but especially how food and body image played a role in that.

Speaker #1
Heather, thanks for having me here. I feel so solidly like I am home and food has been more of my nemesis than I even realized. I mean, I’m just, again, taking off another layer at this age, but let me take you back to my childhood home. I believe that Food addiction, food disorder is in the lineage. And it was hurt and abused children, raising hurt and abused children, doing the best they could. My mother was a compulsive overeater. She was prescribed diet pills, which back then was speed, straight on. So she was popping pills on speed. You didn’t know what was going to come through the door. My father was unpopping the whiskey bottle at 7.30 a.m., glug, glug, glug, and a brilliant astrophysicist, but he also would watch his food intake and would exercise like a bulimic if he felt he had too much. My mother would eat out of the grocery bags as we were leaving the store, trying to find some kind of soothing. I ate food. I grew up with three brothers and a sister. It was dog-eat-dog at the dinner table when we were eating dinners together. And there was a lot of sneak eating going around. And there were a lot of issues around body image. My mother would swing. She’d be 140 and swing up to 173 and back down to 152 and up to 268. And she would just swing wildly. And the weight was part of the distraction from my father’s addiction and his bulimia issues through exercise. So there were a lot of false stories. being circulated. And there was a lot of out and out lies being covered by food. And my sister really was the one that literally took on my mother’s illness in that my mother would project her weight issue onto my sister. And my sister was a little heavier than I was. But when I look back at the photos, she was not obese. Like she was a healthy weight. I was sort of like skinny, scrappy. But we would go on clothing outings and my mother would say, those pair of jeans back right away. Your sister hasn’t found a single thing that fits her yet. And just the shame that would come up. And as I was heading towards puberty, my father began to look at me in a much different way. I mean, to this day, Heather, he looks me up and down physically, like a piece of meat. And it really mattered in our household how you looked from the outside in rather than the inside. out. So by high school, I wasn’t eating breakfast in the morning. I wouldn’t dare go into the cafeteria with my friends at lunch. I don’t know what I did, but, and I was so famished by 3.30 when I walk in the door, I just blew into the kitchen and ripped up, opened the cabinets. And it did not matter what the combination was like generic salty tubs of peanut. butter you buy for a family of 20, you know, and just dumping the chocolate chips in there and eating it by the tablespoon followed by like bologna sandwiches on white bread and mayonnaise and lettuce and tomato and a couple of bites of cold lasagna that were there from the night before. And then I’d put on my plastic pants like the wrestlers would wear to cut weight and go to dance class. for several years to work it all off. And it was always, I was always on a wheel chasing it.

Speaker #0
You know, in certain families, I think you take certain rules, right? So it sounds like your sister took, she followed your mother’s eating issues. Did you feel like you followed your father a little more closely, you know, in that, let me not eat, then come home and binge and.

Speaker #1
So I think I was a combo cloud and taking on the energy of both of them. So I was a walking hazard site and knew it and didn’t know how to find the balance. I only carried on shame and it got darker as I went on and out of school and became more uncomfortable around my own sexuality. I think I look. almost better today than I did towards the tail end of high school. I think I was 148 the last time I got on the scale. Now I’m higher than that. And I’m kind of a T, probably maybe 5’3″, 5’4″, at best. And just the circles under my eyes. And it was all about how the jeans fit. And God forbid they went in the dryer and I couldn’t get them on. It was such an obsession for so long.

Speaker #0
Yeah. So I’m just back to you saying that it really mattered more what you look like on the outside rather than what was happening on the inside. That’s certainly happening in my family as well. the big emphasis on your appearance and how you look that started with me when I was about 11, when I was starting to fill out a little bit more. And there my dad was telling me I should probably lose a couple pounds. And I was not fat. I was not overweight. I was just probably a little more curvier than my two sisters. I grew up in a family of sisters, all girls. So I was curious too. You have three brothers, you said. Was there a different emphasis on the boys versus you and your sister?

Speaker #1
There were no conversations around food and how much they ate and, you know, how they looked in clothing. You know, they were always they were lean and athletic and it wasn’t even a question. It was more foisted upon the females of the house.

Speaker #0
Mm hmm. Yeah. Well, that’s. I imagine that would have happened too if I had brothers in my house. But, you know, I just had these two sisters. I was the middle. Everyone, all of us had an issue, you know, in some certain way. Like some, everyone, just like your sister, like we each like kind of picked a lane as to how it was, how it was, dysfunction was playing out. You talk about this just growing up with trauma and how it just impacted your life so greatly. It was the food and how you… felt about food and your body. Tell me about like that when you were just younger and then how it just carried itself with you through your life.

Speaker #1
Food when I was young was a super tool for self-soothing. I was six and I had Oreos coming out my nose in the back of the station wagon because I went through probably a row and a half sneaking. each one hoping no one would hear me and then it became more compulsive and faster and hardly chewing you know swallowing those cookies until they came up and out and that’s pretty much a metaphor for my eating in childhood in adulthood it continued because I didn’t have tools until I was in my mid-20s. And what was realized first was that I had an issue with alcohol. And it was later after I got clean and in recovery that I realized, oh, I have an issue with food too. It’s the same. I use it when I feel insecure. I need to know it’s by my side. And I would cover that. through copious amounts of exercise. I started marathoning and then I started triathloning. And then I was a master swimmer and I was always controlling with food. There was a point where after I got sober, about four and a half years clean, I was in the middle of a business deal and I was playing the same role I did in between my mother and my father trying to broker their arguments. But I was doing this in a business deal and I literally split out of my body and had suicidal and clinical depression and was hospitalized in a treatment center for 28 days. And one of the things that I used in that treatment center where I was being treated for codependency and clinical depression was controlling my food intake. I probably lost 18 pounds. it. I ate barely anything and it was my way to feel powerful.

Speaker #0
Right. And in control, right? A lot of women I know with eating issues, right? That is a big part of it is trying to control the amount that comes in or goes out. And that sounds like that’s what was happening with you. You said, though, that you used food for emotional reasons. Do you feel like you were doing this on both ends? I mean, restricting food and then also eating food for emotional reasons?

Speaker #1
That’s so insightful, Heather. And that is absolutely true. And I had to come to understand that I was doing that, accept it, and then surrender. And actually, I got help. So a professional like yourself had to teach me how to eat, what was a balanced meal, what that looked like, what,

Speaker #0
you know,

Speaker #1
the groups I might consider. And I basically learned for the first time how to eat healthily, even though my mother was like an amazing cook. And she made foods that were really exotic for the tiny town. central Pennsylvania where we lived. But yeah, I needed to learn how to eat properly.

Speaker #0
I can totally relate to the eating for emotional reasons. Because when I was, you know, when my first diet started when I was 11, and that was a total fail. And then I was trained at a very early age that food is love. I mean, food is supposed to be loathed. you know, because I was a girl, but food because we were supposed to, you know, really be totally overly mindful of our appearance on the outside. But food from other like different family members, food was love and food was comfort, you know. And so then I went through a couple traumatic experiences. My dad died when I was 14. And so just food became like this sudden, total comfort. I mean, it was like my best friend sometimes. So I understand that feeling of like leaning into food to soothe yourself. I had to teach myself how to unlink that, you know, that I could, I could emotionally help myself in other ways than food, you know, than the leaning back on, you know, ice cream and cookies and, you know, candy or whatever it was. And that didn’t happen until I was well into my 30s. And I was a nutritionist. So I was, you know, I knew better, but I definitely still had this linkage between food. It’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard habit to break, you know, especially because we all, we need to eat too. We need to eat food.

Speaker #1
Yeah, it’s not a, it’s not a black and white issue. And, and I too have had a sort of an unveiling of the process and it all tied back. to the early trauma. I just, I would have these wafting feelings of abandonment, of neglect, of a feeling of impending doom and betrayal. And honestly, a lot of that came from sexual abuse. My oldest brother had a very violent relationship. with me. And I will say that he used me as a lab experiment as he went through puberty. And it’s something that I blacked out. And as I got clean and sober, and as I cleaned up my food addiction, those memories came flooding back. And when I was able to care for myself properly with food, I didn’t have a choice. I Thank you. had to face those memories and go through a process of recovery, which I did. It was very, very crucial to my food recovery. But the piece of food feeling like still, like food is danger, food is, you know, a weapon. That’s all starting to shift now that I finally, I have a healthy male partner in my life. And he’s totally different when it comes to, you know, food. He’s really nurturing. And, you know, let’s try that butter in the coffee deal. Whereas, you know, that crossed my mind four years ago. So it’s, I’m receiving a lot of healing as a result of being partnered in a very loving and different way than I’ve ever experienced.

Speaker #0
Do you feel like it sounds like you have a nice relationship with a partner who is really supportive of eating and food and experimenting? Do you feel like that comes from, you know, outside people like that? Or does it have to come mostly from you?

Speaker #1
It definitely comes from the inside out, Heather. And that was not something that I was even looking to attract. I went through a pretty horrific. divorce. It sort of brought everything together in the form of a perfect storm.

Speaker #0
And

Speaker #1
I won’t get into that now, but what I will say was when it was done, I wanted to keep myself in a safe compartment and never engage again because I didn’t trust myself. So the universe did for me what I could not do for myself. You know, I met this gentleman. In a very serendipitous way, we were friends for a long time. And then we both went like dragging our heels, kicking and screaming into a partnership. It’s really lovely. And he’s nurturing me as a woman, as a feminine woman, not as a stick figure moving through with toxic masculinity. And, you know, it’s really amazing to allow myself to feel trust. And I want to say food is not often an issue anymore. I used to obsess. I find myself, sometimes I have to remind myself to eat, which I know some people want to beat me silly for that. But I don’t know. It’s just what the evolution has been for me. And I don’t need to sneak eat anymore at all.

Speaker #0
Do you ever feel like that? Oh, I just forget to eat because I know I’ve heard that too. And I’m quite the opposite of that. I don’t think I’ve ever forgotten to eat. And not that there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just that because I hear people say that sometimes, like, I just forget to eat or I haven’t eaten lunch or breakfast and I was so busy. Do you feel like that’s a form of control around your food?

Speaker #1
Well, it’s… It doesn’t feel it because when it does happen and it’s not often, it almost feels like amnesia. Like literally, like my partner’s preparing dinner, another class and I’ll go, wait, oh my goodness, I didn’t have a lunch today.

Speaker #0
You know,

Speaker #1
it’s really a big surprise. Or it can happen in the mornings because I’m, you know, that’s when I meditate and I stretch and I walk and I do some exercises. and you know, take care of the pets and then something will grab me at work and I’ll realize, oh, well, you know, I missed that protein shake, you know, 1130. I realized, oh, I’m hungry. Why didn’t I? Oh,

Speaker #0
you missed it. Yeah. Well, I mean, and there’s no rules around food, right? We all just recognize when we’re hungry, when we’re physically hungry, honor your hunger and eat.

Speaker #1
Whereas before I wouldn’t. I’d be starving and just say, you can muscle through it. You don’t need it. Or I’d eat off my son’s plate. I wouldn’t make myself a meal. I’ll eat it and finish half his pasta. I’ll just take that. It was very controlling about what it was I was eating. I only had salad for, I don’t know, maybe six years. I mean, salad of every type.

Speaker #0
So it sounds like you’ve really come very far. as far as your relationship with food and body image. And it’s taken a lot of introspection and a lot of work with yourself, hard work.

Speaker #1
I think what was important, Heather, was to get the story down verbally. So I did do therapies that had a lot of talk modality. But what’s really helped me find compassion and self-love and start to strip away some of those dark, heavy layers around my heart and to even find my heart. Where is that in my being? And what does that feel like? It was really more somatic work, you know, going into the trauma pockets, because I do hold a lot in my body. and to really explore them and let them. out and let them breathe. And where are they from past present or, or future, you know, and is it like taffy? Is it like stone? And, and then to really let that go and replace it with, with light has, has brought in so much compassion and serenity and peace within my being.

Speaker #0
Sounds like meditation is one of your go-tos for. self-soothing or self-healing. Is there anything besides meditation? And we can talk about that as well, but anything else that you utilize on a daily basis? For example, like I use, I’m a big journaler. I, journaling has saved my life, you know, personally. So I’m always trying to promote journaling with people because I think it is such a great outlet. So is meditation, but tell me about you. Tell me, tell me what you do besides meditation.

Speaker #1
Yeah, I learned to meditate formally in my 30s. I used to go on week long silent sits. And, you know, I was very on a cushion for 30 minutes a day, no matter what, you know, just another bulldog. And now I’m a lot softer. If I get my butt on a seat, it’s because I want to go and I want to be quiet and just be within myself. But a lot of my meditation comes from walking. And from being surrounded in nature, which I am now having moved first to New York City, then to Los Angeles, and now to live in rural Montana on a prairie in the open with blue sky and mountains surrounding me. That’s, it’s just a natural. So being in nature is, is really healing. And then spending time like with my dog and our two cats and connecting, hearing them. purr and that frequency that’s so healing and listening to music and just being goofy sometimes when I’m on my own I just get up and go to the center of the room and stick my arms out and I start to spin around like you do when you’re in the whole game just fun and I can’t sing for crap but I hum and just that tone like it just lifts me up into a different space and I feel really good. and it’s so much better than packing and having to work.

Speaker #0
Right. Well, and that’s such a good point too, is just the fun besides the walking and meditating and, you know, doing, listening to music, doing those kinds of things, but also just having fun because I remember someone said that to me a little while back when I was just like starting to look at trauma and they’re like, you might want to try to have fun. I’m like, fun. I’m too busy. I haven’t to like worry about, you know, this, this and this. And I have to make sure like fun is like for sometime later, you know, for other people and sometime later. So I love that you just brought that up and talk about that as part of your healing and something that you try to cultivate, because I think it is really important when you have gone through lots of trauma and experiences like that too. teach yourself to have fun, you know, to be a little more lighthearted.

Speaker #1
I’m so glad though, that you share that Heather, because I think that’s the branding of a lot of women, especially, you know, of our generations, because I mean, the generation before, right, they fought to get in that man’s world and work and be successful. And then here we are, like totally capable of taking on any job. But then we also want to be mothers too. And then in my case, I was not just the mother. I was the provider. And I took on a dual role. So it was very serious. And it did feel like my life depended on it. And it came also from my upbringing. I mean, we were told from the get, you’re going to have to be dependent. Figure it out. Nobody’s going to take care of you. So again, My partner laughs at me, you know, he’s like, oh, serious again.

Speaker #0
Right.

Speaker #1
I feel that I make it happen. And then I realize, yeah, no, I don’t have to make it happen. Look at the next right thing. And why don’t you just explore how SEO may change your email list and for fun and things happen more freely.

Speaker #0
Mm hmm. Yeah, absolutely. So I think that’s just such a great practice to be in. It’s just to remember to just loosen and just try to have a little fun in our lives sometimes. So tell me about your book. I know you, you know, all of your experiences prompted you to write a book.about it.

Speaker #1
I wrote a book. It’s called Toxic Family, Transforming Childhood Trauma into Adult Freedom. And Toxic Family was not my title. My title was Magical Illumination, because that’s what I feel like it’s been. And I did not want to throw my family under the bus. I’m grateful for the roles they played. I have profound respect for my mother and my father. and their bravery coming to this planet and marshalling through the way they have and taking on the rules that they, they have. And I learned so much and I’m the person I am today, warts and all from that family. But my publisher came up with that title and it fits. It’s the truth that it was a toxic environment and a toxic lineage. And I had the privilege to find tools when dysfunction was coming up in my own life as an adult to get help and transform some of those trauma pockets and to really feel free because I’ve stood up to it and called it by name and gotten, I’ve gotten help and I walked through it and I don’t see it. as dragon slayers. I see these challenges and these challengers as great opportunities for me to evolve from a soul level while I’m here on earth. I just think next time around, I might look at the fine print.

Speaker #0
That’s a nice way to look at it to get yourself prepared. But I love that you to have turned this around and looked at, you know, it’s almost like a mindset shift and Look at that. I mean, as hard as your upbringing was, as much as it affected your body image and food relationship and everything, you are seeing it as an opportunity to learn from it.

Speaker #1
Yeah, and have compassion for the participants in the movie, which also creates compassion for myself and what I went through. And I think that’s the biggest gift. of the book. I mean, the pieces of my own puzzle just came together perfectly. And I think it was chapter 12 or so. I read it before one of the final galley prints. And I was like, wow, that is strong. That woman is you. But it’s also a gift in that it’s not just the story. I’m able to. in the appendix, create a bit of a workbook. And so there’s exercises that are there that match each chapter and they’re what I use to get through the trajectory and what I still use. And they’re helping readers. Like I had a woman knock on my door to say, I need to tell you that I read this chapter and I did this exercise and this is what happened. And my life is different. So that’s worth it to me.

Speaker #0
Definitely. That’s really powerful, especially when someone gives you such impactful feedback like that, you know, that you really have at least helped. You’ve helped probably many people, but you know, at least one person in the world. And that’s, that’s huge.

Speaker #1
And you’re doing the same with with the beauty and the truth that you’re sharing with your guests in this podcast and in your own work oh thank you yeah it really gets thank you yeah i i think it’s i i think it’s so important to just speak out loud or write it in a book or

Speaker #0
just tell your story and not keep things hidden and a secret because i think with secrets it brings a lot of shame and we can’t heal like that. And it’s even more important than, you know, I think you mentioned just compassion and forgiveness and forgiveness for your family. And that’s an equally as important step in the process of healing, taking it full circle.

Speaker #1
Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly, Heather.

Speaker #0
Yeah. Is there anything else about the book that has… been impactful for you or as a result of writing the book that you learned from?

Speaker #1
I didn’t want to write that book. Okay. It was only in 2007 by the year I had a book to write that helped a lot of people. And then it came up again twice by other intuitives and the third intuitive said, you have three books to write. I was like, gosh, it’s starting before I have a library to write. But it’s just a phenomenal gift. I mean, there were days that I didn’t want to do it and I was a bulldog. producer, I’d make myself sit at my desk for 15 minutes, whether I had something to write or not. And then that gave me the first pass that a wise friend said, you know, why don’t you go back and take a pass from little Susie’s point of view, that little bright light in your heart that’s lived through all of it with you. That’s when it shifted. That’s when I felt true, authentic pride. for the entire story and my walk here as a human being and a real desire to share it with others that could be helped just as a reflection of their own.

Speaker #0
What do you think would be a good takeaway for people who are just new to this subject of just looking at their past trauma in relationship to… eating and body image and eating disorders. And what do you think if someone came to you right now?

Speaker #1
Yeah. The first thing that I would do with them is I would ask them to take a deep breath in and then release it. And then I would ask them to put their hand, not on their heart, too much on their solar plexus. So right under the breastbone. And I would ask them to take a breath then And say gently either to themselves or out loud, it’s okay. It’s really okay. And that’s the first step.

Speaker #0
That’s nice. That sounds exactly what I would want to hear too.

Speaker #1
Took me a while to get there.

Speaker #0
I understand. Well, Susan, this has been a really impactful. meaningful conversation for me. And I’m so thankful for you for sharing your story and being so open about it. I really appreciate it. I think that we need to have more stories put out into the world so people, and especially women, don’t feel alone.

Speaker #1
And thank you for your bravery bringing me on. I know that it’s a bit of a taboo topic, but I feel a drive and mission. to share it. And I feel like I finally found why I’m here and what my reason for being is. Yeah. Of course. Thank you.

Speaker #0
And as always, if you loved this podcast, please consider gifting me with a five-star review. It is so helpful for me to get the word out on real eating. our real bodies and real food stories. Thank you so much and have a great week. Bye for now.