Why You Can’t Stop Using Food for Comfort with Kelly McDaniel

Why can changing the way you eat feel so emotional, even when you know exactly what you want to change? In this conversation, I sit down with therapist and Mother Hunger author Kelly McDaniel to explore the deeper emotional and relational layers that can become intertwined with food. Through Kelly’s Mother Hunger framework, we look at how early experiences with nurturing, safety, attachment, and caregiving may influence the way some of us relate to food later in life—and why food can sometimes become connected with comfort, connection, routine, and relief. We also talk about emotional eating, body image, nervous system regulation, fasting, food noise, GLP-1 medications, and the messages about our bodies that can be passed from one generation to the next. This conversation gave me an entirely new way to think about some of the struggles I’ve seen women experience when changing how they eat, because sometimes there may be more happening beneath the surface than what’s on the plate. In this episode: Kelly’s Mother Hunger frameworkWhy food can become emotionally significantWhat Kelly means by “surrogate comfort”Why changing eating patterns can bring up difficult emotionsFood and nervous system regulationWhat mothers can unintentionally teach daughters about their bodiesKelly’s perspective on food noise and GLP-1 medicationsHow support and connection can help us create new patterns MORE ON KELLY MCDANIEL Instagram: @kellymcdanieltherapy https://www.instagram.com/kellymcdanieltherapy/Mother Hunger, Revised Edition https://kellymcdanieltherapy.com/mother-hunger-revised-edition/For more resources related to today’s episode, visit the podcast episode page: drmindypelz.com/ep369 https://www.drmindypelz.com/ep369 Connect with Dr. Mindy: Join Reset Academy https://resetacademy.drmindypelz.com/reset-academy?utm_source=libsyn&utm_medium=podcast&utm_term=&utm_content=loc-description&utm_campaign=reset-academyWatch the episodes on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@DrMindyPelz?sub_confirmation=1Follow Dr. Mindy on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/dr.mindypelz/Subscribe to Dr. Mindy’s newsletter https://www.drmindypelz.com/ Disclaimer: This podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before making changes to your diet, fasting routine, or lifestyle.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Mindy Pelz?

  Okay, I have something I've got to say that I really think a lot of women need to hear. If you've ever followed a health program and it didn't work, check this out. This is not your fault. I promise you. Let me explain. Most fitness programs, most fasting protocols, most dietary advice, it was researched on men. It was designed for men and then handed to women with a shrug. And here you go. Hope this works for you. But here's the thing, you operate on a 28 day hormonal cycle. The food you eat, the length of your fast, even the intensity of your workouts,

• 0:42Mindy Pelz?

  all of it needs to be timed to where you are in that cycle to actually get a result. This is the science I teach inside my Reset Academy. This is the science that I have researched for over a decade. And inside my Academy, every month I walk you through it in a very practicable and actionable and way. And it's actually built for your body, for a feminine body. So it's going to work. I promise you, I see it over and over again. So no more guessing, no more following advice that was never designed for you. This is a moment to get back into relationship with this beautiful body

• 1:26Mindy Pelz?

  that you are so blessed to live in. So if you're ready to finally understand this incredible body of yours and work with it instead of constantly fighting against it, come find me over in the Reset Academy. It's resetacademy.drmindypelz.com. That's resetacademy.drmindypelz.com. I'll see you there.

• 1:54Mindy Pelz?

  Hey, Dr. Mindy here and welcome to the Live Like a Girl podcast, where I bring you icons, disruptors, educators, scientists, and doctors that show you what can be possible when you love and celebrate the female body you are blessed to live in. Let's dive in.

• 2:17Mindy Pelz?

  I'm six years old, maybe seven, and I'm sitting on the floor of my mother's bedroom. She's standing in front of the mirror in her bra and underwear. And she's going through the list, the list of every part of her body that she hates. Her stomach's too big, her breasts are too big, her muscle tone is anemic, her butt was sagging. Every body part she hated was called out over and over again for years. I can see the whole scene 50 years later. Now here's the shocking part of the story. Every time she went through the ritual of criticizing herself,

• 3:02Mindy Pelz?

  she would turn around, look at me and say, you're lucky. You don't have this problem. Now here's what I want you to notice about that. I did not hear reassurance. What I actually learned, sitting on the floor of her bedroom, was that there is a problem, that a woman's body is a problem and that mine just hadn't shown up yet. Now, I've never told this story on this show. And what many of my followers don't know is that for most of my adult life, I was about 30 pounds heavier than I wanted to be, largely because I was an emotional eater.

• 3:46Mindy Pelz?

  My mom was a woman who, when I had a hard day, would say, come sit with me. And she would put food in front of me and she would give me her complete undivided attention wrapped in a whole lot of mother's love. So when I went off to college and she wasn't there and moments got challenging, I did the only thing I knew how to do to get back to feeling well again. I ate. And it wasn't until years later, years and years later, when I did my first 24 hour fast, that I realized I used food for so much more than nourishment.

• 4:31Mindy Pelz?

  At hour 19, when I felt horrible, I heard a voice. And I realized it wasn't my voice. It was the voice of my mom saying, you are suffering. It's time to eat. At that moment, I didn't have a blood sugar problem. I was wearing a monitor. I could see my blood sugar was fine. I wasn't lacking discipline. I have plenty of that. There was a deeper attachment to food that I had never looked at. Food and love were mixed together. Without food, I felt unloved.

• 5:13Mindy Pelz?

  What I have now come to realize is that for many of us, our mother is the first person to feed us. When we were babies, we cried when we were hungry and mom responded. For an infant, a full belly meant feeling heard, cared for, and loved. An emotional attachment that doesn't go away as we age. My guest today will tell you that this food and mother's love connection is one of the strongest biological drives in the human body, stronger than just hunger by itself, which means that when a doctor looks at a woman in the eye and says, you need to go gluten free,

• 5:58Mindy Pelz?

  or you gotta get off the ultra processed foods, that doctor is not just asking a woman to change a harmful habit. She is asking her to break up with the first thing that ever loved her back. This is why I have brought you Dr. Kelly McDaniel. Now Kelly is a therapist. She has spent decades in the room with women who tried the nutritionist, tried the doctor, tried the eating disorder program, and nothing helped. In 2021, she wrote an iconic book called Mother Hunger that changed the way the mental health world looked at food addiction and obesity.

• 6:44Mindy Pelz?

  Today, she sits with me to talk about her new revised version of Mother Hunger that was released this week. In this new version of her book, she has added some chapters like surrogate comfort, where she helps us all understand how we use food as a surrogate mother.

• 7:05Mindy Pelz?

  This may be one of the most impactful interviews I have ever brought you. If you are struggling to fast, you can't seem to make that lasting food change, or the food noise is not quieting, I promise you, you will free yourself with this conversation. And if you resonate with this conversation, please grab Kelly's book. It's life changing. And if you want to dive deeper into Kelly's work, join me in my Reset Academy, where Kelly has graciously offered to come into my community and answer questions. And as always, please share this podcast out with friends you know who are struggling with food addiction.

• 7:48Mindy Pelz?

  It's conversations like the one you are about to hear that drastically changes lives. I am so proud. I am so honored to bring you this incredible woman and this life changing conversation. Without further ado, Kelly McDaniel. Kelly McDaniel, first, let me just welcome you to my podcast. I am dying for my audience to hear this conversation.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  Well, thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to it as well.

• 8:22Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. You said something to me when we met a month ago that I literally cannot stop thinking about. And you spoke about how our relationship with food is intimately attached to our relationship to our mother, because our mother was the first one to feed us. That literally blew my mind, like, and has me thinking so much about what that relationship might have looked like for me as a newborn. Can you, can you explain that so people can understand that? Because I think it's really freeing when we're trying to overcome major food cravings and food addictions.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  Yes, I would love to.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  When I was thinking about writing a book around mother hunger, the clients I was at the time working with unilaterally said, oh, Kelly, please include a chapter about food. Because I think working with me, they were learning a new way to reframe the issues they had around food. So the way I see this is that when we're born, we're designed for our mother's embrace and we're designed for our mother's milk. In fact, the milk her body makes is designed for her baby. So I know there are lots of folks that didn't necessarily, they weren't breastfed. And this applies whether it's a breast or a bottle.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  But generally, the way we are fed begins immediately when we enter the world. And the first experience is going to be in our mother's arms if she is alive, survived the birth, or it'll be the next caregiver. And whatever that eating experience is like, is going to be our first experience of love.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  So.

• 10:21Mindy Pelz?

  It's crazy.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  If we're fed on a schedule, let's say, as lots of babies are, babies are given, parents are given feeding schedules by well-meaning medical team, but those feeding schedules were actually designed around formula-fed babies, cause formula is a denser substance than mother's milk. So if a breastfed baby is being fed on a schedule, that's gonna be a hungry baby. Babies are coming into the world designed to be fed on demand, meaning when a baby cries, baby's hungry. And so if you're met with receptive caregivers who are there with milk, then your first experience with food and love is gonna be pretty pleasant.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  But if you're on a schedule, or people are just too busy and you're hungry a lot of times, or the feeding is unpleasant, you're allergic to the formula and babies are throwing it up, but keep getting it anyway. That is actually confusing the infant. Cause it's not just about nutrition, it's not just about feeding, it's also about, is this world a safe place for me?

• 11:32Mindy Pelz?

  Whoa. So what I hear is, my first thought is, is there a difference between breastfed and bottle-fed? And I think you answered that in the sense that there's a difference if there's a schedule or no schedule. Is the important piece.

• 11:49Speaker 01

  That is one of the big pieces. The other piece, though, is that breast milk is designed for that baby.

• 11:56Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  So the mother's body is already getting to know her infant in utero and creating milk for that specific baby.

• 12:05Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  The breast milk has properties that will help the baby's immune system that formula does not have.

• 12:13Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  So, yeah.

• 12:15Mindy Pelz?

  So if you're, let's go bottle-fed, and I'm just intrigued on that because I was bottle-fed. And, um, and you know, bottle, what I know about bottle-fed is it doesn't fill you up as much as breastfed does. That's, uh, can be, depends on what formula you're using. Then are you attaching the experience of food with the person who is delivering that food to you?

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Given that a baby in the first year, and the first three years actually, is purely sensory.

• 12:55Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 12:56Speaker 01

  Everything we learn about the world, about whether or not we're safe, about what it is to be, um, in the care of our family, is coming without language. Sounds, smells, and food.

• 13:12Mindy Pelz?

  Okay.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  And sometimes, as little ones, when we're crying, it's cause something's wrong, right? And a lot of times that's a hunger pain. It's indicating to our caregivers, we need food. And if that's not tended to, hunger pains hurt. They, they don't feel good. So the cries intensify.

• 13:31Mindy Pelz?

  Okay.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  When food comes, it's such a relief for the baby, that a lot of times little ones learn. The only time I feel relief is when I have a full belly. And this is what can lead to issues later on if the rest of the environment was alarming and the only relief was a full belly. But to backtrack to what you said about formula, the formula has a denser protein than

• 13:59Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  human milk. So sometimes it actually fills up a baby's tummy longer.

• 14:05Mindy Pelz?

  Okay.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  Than breast milk. What that does is sometimes give a caregiver the idea, cause the baby's full and the baby's asleep. But they don't, they don't, they don't need the adults around them. Breast milk is, digests really fast because nature's plan is, we need a lot of touch, we need a lot of holding, so it digests really fast so that we're fed often. Formula-fed babies sometimes aren't hungry, they're not crying, and they're left alone a lot. That's not optimum for brain development.

• 14:38Mindy Pelz?

  Right. So, and then you have a statement that went, that fullness gets attached to love. And I find that fascinating because as somebody who has taught millions of women how to intermittent fast. I have watched a lot of women take their own agency back, take their own power back by actually learning how to fast as a, in short spurts as a gift to themselves. Because they have been overeating, because when they feel full, now they are feeling loved. Help us under-explain how that neurologically gets connected.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  Definitely. Food and being full is an instant enhancement in dopamine. Which we all need to feel good. It goes right to the pleasure center of the brain. Eating is supposed to be enjoyable. We're supposed to want it, just as we're supposed to want human touch, which increases oxytocin. So dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin gets put in there. These are all the feel-good hormones that infants are supposed to be flooded with. Touch and food, pleasure, safety, love.

• 16:00Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 16:00Speaker 01

  All of that. So what happens for lots of us as we grow up is there's a deficit in that. We don't have quite enough dopamine, we don't have enough touch, so our oxytocin levels are low. So as we grow up, we learn to replace that ourselves. And one of the first things we have available to us as little ones is food.

• 16:20Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  We can sneak food, we can hide food, we can eat, we can, um, enjoy ice cream, we can, we can start to administer our own dopamine. Not knowing we're doing that, of course.

• 16:33Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  But then as we become adults, that becomes something we're really attached to. We're attached to the dopamine hit that comes with food and may substitute that for other ways of feeling good. Cause we just didn't learn other ways.

• 16:48Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  So intermittent fasting, I think, it, what, that gives a break to that dopamine hit.

• 16:53Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 16:53Speaker 01

  We're in a deficit. I guess you're teaching people there are other ways to feel good.

• 16:59Mindy Pelz?

  That's it. Thank you. Like, and so what I used to say to people all the time when I taught uh, fasting, when, to my patients, is I would say, actually, it's a break from food that is a gift to your body where it can start to heal itself. And so many women struggled with the break, and they still do. Women listening to this right now are still gonna have this where the break from food is really challenging because it means a break from love, it means a break from dopamine. It means a break from, uh, you know, I always tell people, don't use food as your therapist.

• 17:38Mindy Pelz?

  Like, we don't, when we use food, I think the biggest thing that I don't know if the world has completely understood this yet is we're not always using it for just nutrients.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  No, in fact, usually we're not. So, one of the ways I like to frame it so that women can feel compassion for themselves, reduce the shame when they struggle with giving up a certain food or a certain behavior, it's a heartbreak.

• 18:08Mindy Pelz?

  Ooh.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  When you decide to take a break, whether that's an intermittent fasting or maybe it's, I'm gonna not do wheat, flour, sugar, you're facing breaking up with one of the first relationships that ever gave you comfort. It's a heartbreak. And what's worse for humans than a broken heart?

• 18:29Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  Nothing.

• 18:30Mindy Pelz?

  Wow.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  So I really look at eating patterns as telling a story of love.

• 18:38Mindy Pelz?

  Wow. Say more, because again, I've spent the last, uh, thirty years helping women uh, redefine their relationship to food, and it's complex for us.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  I think it is one of the most difficult things we face.

• 18:55Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  Because for a lot of us.

• 19:00Speaker 01

  Food was our first love.

• 19:01Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 19:03Speaker 01

  And we don't give up our first love easily.

• 19:06Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, it's really, we've written a lot of music about that. There's a lot of songs about the first love.

• 19:11Speaker 01

  There is, and we think it's a romantic thing, and for some of us it is.

• 19:16Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  But when we start to experience trouble with our eating habits, they're not working anymore. And I guess this is when women will find you and try your programming and need coaching and need help. I think it's really helpful for women to have a framework that this is like giving up a lover.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  Ideally, our mother is our first love, but for so many of us, we had mothers that were unavailable for multiple reasons. Busy, or depressed, or addicted, or too many other children, or a busy career. And so we're designed for her to be our attachment figure. But if she couldn't be our attachment figure, a lot of us created another one, and the first thing was food. This is all unconscious. We do this before we know anything, and before we can speak. It happens very young.

• 20:11Mindy Pelz?

  Wow.

• 20:12Speaker 01

  So when we're helping women work with food, we're really working with a very small little child inside that person.

• 20:19Mindy Pelz?

  Wow. And so what if, knowing this, I think people already, you know, 10 minutes into this podcast, their mind is blown. Um, what, I mean, do you approach it like you would approach a heartbreak? When you go to change the way you eat? Um, I mean, we have a really huge metabolic mess in our world right now because of the abuse of food. And it's a fascinating way to look at it, like, what if we grieve the food? The old food that we know we need to let go of, like ultra-processed foods? And how, is there a ritual we can do? Is there an understanding, that journaling we can do to really grieve that?

• 21:04Speaker 01

  First of all, I love the way you just said that. Is there a way we can grieve?

• 21:13Speaker 01

  Even just pausing right there, that this isn't as simple as a diet, or a new way. This is, first of all, grieving the old way.

• 21:22Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  And really having an understanding of what it is. What is your food of choice? What is your primary love? Right?

• 21:28Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 21:29Speaker 01

  So our food in Western North America is designed to make us addicted.

• 21:36Mindy Pelz?

  Yep.

• 21:37Speaker 01

  It's full of preservatives and sugars and things that attack and give us a dopamine hit. So it's one of the most powerful withdrawals to pull back from, we'll call it, a love drug.

• 21:52Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  We.

• 21:53Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 21:55Speaker 01

  And anyone who's letting go of something that is habitual and addictive and soothing, which food can be, is going to grieve before a new behavior can start. So I think you hit the nail on the head. How do we help women grieve?

• 22:13Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  And I think we start by naming it, that this will hurt.

• 22:17Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 22:17Speaker 01

  This will hurt.

• 22:18Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. I mean, in full transparency, I feel, just based off this part of the conversation, I feel like I haven't been empathetic enough to the patients that I was like, you need to get off gluten. Um, all I could see was, when you get off gluten, you'll feel so much better. And I, or even the, my followers on YouTube, it's like, you know, they've all been playing with the different fasting tools and coming up against hurdles, and I feel like I've had a more of a mechanistic approach to, oh, this is what you do to get over these hurdles. But you just offered a really intimate way for us to acknowledge

• 22:59Mindy Pelz?

  that food has, has been such an important part of our life, way more than nutrients. So I really love that, and I think that will actually change the way I talk about, uh, changing your patterns of food. So thank you for that. And I, in the last, this is a total side note, but in the last two years, I've had, uh, I have had, fortunately or unfortunately, a real intimate experience with grief. Um, and I never had an experience so deep with grief. I lost a very good friend, and 52, and, um, I, somebody said to me

• 23:38Mindy Pelz?

  that you should learn how to dance with grief, that, like, it's a skill to learn that. And, um, I spent a year, year and a half, really practicing what that looks like to overcome the heartbreak of losing this friend. And I'm now thinking deeper as you're talking, like, wow, we need to do this with the people who are learning to fast, who are learning to overcome ultra-processed foods. Like, let's just acknowledge that there's heartbreak here.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  Yes, well said. And

• 24:17Speaker 01

  this might be a good time to talk a little bit about the difference, and you're probably more of an expert than I am, but I have some insight around this as it relates to our body chemistry. There's a difference between fasting, like intermittent fasting, and giving up.

• 24:32Mindy Pelz?

  Oh, yeah, thank you.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  Gluten, or dairy, or sugar completely. Like, that really is, wow, this person, this relationship is going to be gone. Grief, and you're going to spiral down. Whereas intermittent fasting sometimes can bring someone's body chemistry up a little. It can be an upper, and so it won't feel like the same grief necessarily as giving up a whole food category. Have you found that with?

• 25:02Mindy Pelz?

  Oh, yeah, absolutely. I, I, I'm, my principles are actually quite flexible because I don't take a dogmatic approach to, to nutrition or fasting. I think everybody needs to find their rhythm. And so what I love about fasting is it's temporary, to your point.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  Yes, and it's a good reset.

• 25:25Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, but, but here's what's really interesting. I've never had this discussion with anybody, but, um, I've, I've really spent so much time helping women see that there are times in your day you go without food, and that is a gift to the body, so the body can rest and repair and recover. And then there are times that you nourish your body with food in this 24-hour cycle. I call them eating windows and fasting windows. But here's what's crazy, Kelly, is the movement from a fasting window to an eating window, and from an eating window back to the fasting window is the hardest thing for a woman to learn.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  Well, if you think about it.

• 26:10Speaker 01

  Think about what is the hardest thing for a child? It's when mom leaves and when she comes back.

• 26:19Mindy Pelz?

  So good.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  So if you think about a child being dropped off at daycare, or kindergarten, or watching mom go out the door to work, and they're left at home, perhaps with a caregiver they're not excited about, think of how hard that separation is, and then they do okay for a while. And then the minute they see her come back, and we can see this in the still-faced baby experiment that lots of people have watched.

• 26:42Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  You see the mother come back, and almost the baby then realizes, you were gone. And so even the coming back hurts for a minute before it feels okay.

• 26:53Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. Is there a way we can re-pattern this relationship with food? Um, if we know that it's attached to mother's love, we talked about the grief side of it. But what, when we talked a month ago, I really thought about my own eating. And, um, you know, I told you that I had a mom that would say, you had a really hard day, come sit with me. And, uh, she did that for, all the way till I was a teenager. And so when I first started losing, learning how to fast, I really felt all her messaging in my brain come up. And I always say that fasting is like a mirror. It shows you your relationship to food.

• 27:38Mindy Pelz?

  And I, before I even knew of your work, I was like, wow, my mom taught me to be an emotional eater because she, I got unconditional mother love with a meal when life was bad. How do we begin to uncouple those things?

• 27:54Speaker 01

  Okay, I want to make sure I understand what you're saying.

• 27:56Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, okay, go for it.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  So rich. You would have had a hard day. Your mother says, come sit with me. Was she also offering food at that time?

• 28:06Mindy Pelz?

  Oh, yeah, she was offering me food, and the other thing she offered me was undivided attention from her.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  Well, what's interesting is what you actually needed was her undivided attention.

• 28:19Mindy Pelz?

  Yes, but it was linked to food. So, fast forward, I go off to college, she's not around. Um, I start overeating, start gaining weight. Um, and that was like, it was in those moments that all of a sudden I realized that I was an emotional eater. Because I was trying to reproduce what she gave me in my childhood.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  You wanted your mom.

• 28:41Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  I want my mom gets translated into, I'll have some Cheetos, I'll have some ice cream, I'll eat a pizza.

• 28:50Mindy Pelz?

  Yep, yeah. So how do we uncouple that? I mean, for me, it took awareness.

• 28:57Speaker 01

  That's the first step.

• 28:58Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 28:59Speaker 01

  The first step is awareness. And then I think there is some, second step is grieving. A real kind of, oh, I've got this awareness, but this is not the awareness I wanted. I don't like this. This doesn't feel good.

• 29:15Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 29:15Speaker 01

  I didn't choose this and now I have to deal with it. So I find that women can be sad, angry. A lot of anger can come up that I, I now have this burden of problematic eating and I didn't choose this.

• 29:31Mindy Pelz?

  Hmm, yeah.

• 29:32Speaker 01

  Which is where I think people really struggle with, I didn't do this to myself, but now I have to fix it. A lot of anger comes up with that.

• 29:40Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  So what I have found is that big change will not happen without a lot of emotional support.

• 29:48Mindy Pelz?

  Beautiful. What does that look like? Is that a therapist? Is that a community?

• 29:54Speaker 01

  It can be all of that. It can be a community. It can be a coach like yourself. It can be a podcast where someone's talking about these issues. They understand and you can listen to it at two in the morning when you wake up lonely. And who do you call? Um, so I think all the things you've designed.

• 30:13Mindy Pelz?

  Mm hmm. You, you have a statement that I also resonated with, which is food can rescue a hungry heart.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 30:23Mindy Pelz?

  Have you seen in your clinical practice that if we understand that it's the heart that's hungry, not the stomach? That we then see we have access to a new set of tools?

• 30:38Speaker 01

  Yes, we can understand that we now have access and that's a cognitive process. The body doesn't really care. The brain's like, okay, now I get it. The body's like, I want food right now. And so it can feel like there's an internal warfare going on.

• 31:01Speaker 01

  And, and there is. And sometimes that warfare gets externalized. And women who are beginning to modify their eating get mad, get angry with other people. Some women get angry with their themselves and turn it inward. And whatever was going on with eating can either intensify. So if I was overeating, I'm going to just rebel and do it more. Or I'm going to go the other way and I'm going to starve. I'll show you.

• 31:27Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 31:28Speaker 01

  So that's all an expression of anger that there's this warfare going on. If I understand I need to do this and the body's like, oh no, no, no, no. We have already found what works. This food works and we're not changing this.

• 31:43Mindy Pelz?

  Right. Oh yeah. I mean, I watched that. I, I watched that in clinical practice. I was like, like, it was so crazy. I'll never forget. One day I came up to my front desk and I'm like, why is everybody so attached to their oatmeal and orange juice in the morning? I, it seems like everybody on the planet wants their oatmeal and orange juice. And I couldn't understand if I wanted, I, that's how I got into fasting. Cause I was like, could you push your oatmeal and orange juice back an hour maybe? Cause they were like gripping it. They wouldn't let go of it. It had, it was a ritual. They had been doing it forever and it was really difficult to break that apart.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  Well, yes, because the first thing we want when we wake up in the morning is love.

• 32:32Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  And as children, if we woke up to an angry mother, an absent mother, a mother who was stressed. Or perhaps we woke up and were fed donuts. Yeah, whatever it is, we learn to replicate or fill in. Either replicate the love she gave us or fill in for what we didn't get, we're going to attach to that.

• 32:56Mindy Pelz?

  To the food. Yeah.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  And we need rituals as humans. We're, we, we need them desperately. It's why we love holidays and we, we like to create habits. We're, we're creatures of habit. And so when you're asking someone to modify their eating, they're facing a loss on many levels.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  Relational loss, heartbreak and the ritual. So there needs to be a replacement there, which I'm sure you have figured out. That if you're fasting in the morning, what are you going to do instead that will bring some dopamine?

• 33:29Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 33:30Speaker 01

  What can you do instead that might bring some oxytocin and serotonin?

• 33:34Mindy Pelz?

  Well, this is why I think all, now you've given me another layer to understand, like fasters are like gripping their coffee in the morning.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  That makes sense.

• 33:44Mindy Pelz?

  And it's like, what else can I put in the coffee? Oh, I can put collagen in there and creatine and like MCT oil. And the coffee becomes like this thing that is the anchor. And if it's healthy and it's done in a healthy way, again, you're giving me new thought. That potentially when you're drinking your coffee, you could say kind words to yourself like, this is love. This is what love feels like.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  I think it's really important to think of those morning rituals or any ritual with food as a surrogate mother.

• 34:20Mindy Pelz?

  Ooh, that's so good. Yeah. I want to invite you to something that I am crazy excited about. This October 3rd and 4th, I'll be joining an incredible group of speakers at Empower Your Life. A live event at the Alex Theater in Glendale, California. We'll spend two days exploring health, personal growth, mindset, and practical tools to help you create meaningful change in your life. I'll be there alongside speakers like Suzy Orman, Jim Quick, Jamie Kern Lima, Brendan Bouchard, Nancy Levin, and many more.

• 35:03Mindy Pelz?

  It's going to be an amazing weekend filled with learning, connection, and inspiration. I'd love to see you there. I'd also love to give you a big hug. And you can grab your VIP or general admission ticket by visiting hayhouse.com/DrMindy. That's hayhouse.com/DrMindy. I can't wait to see you.

• 35:31Mindy Pelz?

  What, what if you had a mother that, that was abusive or a mother that died early? Or a mother that wasn't emotionally available?

• 35:42Speaker 01

  That's what creates mother hunger. And that is what's going to intensify the need for other replacement rituals, processes, and substances. Again, food being the first one we usually have access to as little ones. Imagination and fantasy, we have access to. Touch, we have access to. We learn to touch ourselves. But as we get older, that can also, we start adding alcohol. We add other forms of addiction, other drugs. We add compulsive exercise or perfectionism. I mean, there's a whole host of things that take the place of the attachment we're actually craving. So if we didn't have that from our mother.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  And again, this is kind of on a spectrum that I'd like to differentiate the mother who was busy. Or tired from the mother that was abusive physically and emotionally. That's two different forms of mother hunger. And I call one of those, the one that's more extreme, third degree mother hunger. Because it's one thing if your attachment figure's not available.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  It's another thing if your attachment figure is frightening to you. Because if you need to, the, the strongest biological drive we have in our whole body, it's stronger even than eating, is attaching.

• 37:05Speaker 01

  And if the thing and person we have to attach to frightens us, we're going to attach anyway.

• 37:11Mindy Pelz?

  Oh, interesting.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  Think of what that does for women relationally over the lifespan. So that gets into relational difficulties.

• 37:18Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  But if we had to attach to something because we couldn't attach to her and it's food? This is a big ordeal.

• 37:28Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 37:29Speaker 01

  Because that attachment system is stronger than any other system in our body. So when you're asking someone to give up a food or fast, you're really working with their attachment system as well.

• 37:41Mindy Pelz?

  And the attachment system was determined by the relationship with mom.

• 37:45Speaker 01

  Well, the attachment system is in us because we're mammals.

• 37:48Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, well, there is that, yes.

• 37:49Speaker 01

  We all have it.

• 37:50Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 37:51Speaker 01

  How we develop the attachment system, whether it thrives or whether it suffers, happens in the first care with whoever our primary caregiver is. Generally, I call it mother, but mother represents whoever's nurturing, protecting,

• 38:11Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 38:11Speaker 01

  and ultimately guiding us. So I like to think of a mother more, more in what that function is rather than who the person is. So the function, so that we have a secure attachment, which would then label, that would stabilize our eating. It sets the success rate for our whole nervous system so that we have good relationships. We can trust. We know when we're hungry, when we're full. A lot of us lost those cues because our attachment system didn't have enough nurturing, soothing, didn't have enough protection. We were scared a lot, so we had too much adrenaline. And food brings in a calming, relaxing substance to bring that adrenaline down.

• 38:55Speaker 01

  And ultimately later guidance, we may not have had good guidance around what is healthy eating or nutrition and things like that. So that's a later, the first two being nurturing and protection are where food will come in if a caregiver can't.

• 39:10Mindy Pelz?

  We'll use food for nurture and protection. Talk about the protection piece of food. What would that look like?

• 39:19Speaker 01

  What it looks like is that when we're scared, when we're really little, or anytime really, fear is designed for action. So when we're afraid, our body becomes flooded with hormones that are designed to run or fight. If those two things don't work, we can't, let's say as little infants can't run. As toddlers, we don't want to fight the person we depend on. We're probably going to lose.

• 39:50Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 39:50Speaker 01

  Although that's what a tantrum is. That's basically the fight response in action. This is a baby in distress. Not a problematic baby. It's a baby who's in distress. So what's going to calm down the nervous system? Infants can't self-soothe.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  So if the caregiver can't calm down that little one, what will? The next available thing is either for them to have some form of touch or food. And food brings in all the good hormones of dopamine, serotonin, and it literally calms down the fight-flight reflex of adrenaline and noradrenaline. Well, cortisol, cortisol and adrenaline, which is noradrenaline, right?

• 40:39Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. So this is fascinating because when I put Fast Like a Girl out into the world, it will be four years in December. I really got a big lens of how women used the principles. And the intention behind Fast Like a Girl was to fast according to your hormones. And where I have landed now, four years later, and what I'm starting to teach here on my channel, is how to fast for your nervous system. Because, right? I know. And I'm like, oh, I didn't even have this conversation. It fits so perfect. Because what I have seen is if you go into the polyvagal theory and you look at

• 41:21Mindy Pelz?

  green state, which is balanced, or you look at yellow state, which is you're in fight or flight, or you look at freeze mode, which is red state.

• 41:31Mindy Pelz?

  People in a red state should not fast. That is what I have come to conclude.

• 41:39Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 41:39Mindy Pelz?

  So if, and so just for my audience listening, we, I have a whole questionnaire now. You can put in the comments and ask Q and we'll send you a copy because this is the evolution of my work. Is that you need to understand your nervous system state. Because if you're in freeze mode, fasting is not your tool. And you will only go deeper into that state. And you just gave me another layer of language for that.

• 42:11Speaker 01

  Well, exactly. And also, if you're in a fight and flight mode, fasting is going to make that go up.

• 42:17Mindy Pelz?

  Yes. So shorter fasts is what I, you know, or easy fasts.

• 42:21Speaker 01

  That's when you really need a half a cup of beans.

• 42:24Mindy Pelz?

  Right. And we've been doing that. I've been bringing back in what we call a fasted snack now. And food that can actually keep your blood sugar stable, but will keep you in a fasted state and you get all the benefits of it. That, that's actually the evolution of fasting right now. And it's really beautiful. Where we're saying, hey, there are some things you can have. But what, for the sake of this conversation, food as a nervous system regulator

• 42:58Mindy Pelz?

  is an important part of the food craving, food addiction conversation. Because if I'm a 52-year-old woman and I all of a sudden start fasting, but I've been using food to regulate my nervous system, and I'm struggling in a fast, I better have some other tools.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  You need them because food has been soothing loneliness.

• 43:26Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 43:28Speaker 01

  Food has been the primary relationship for probably a very long time that has been keeping this person from knowing how lonely she is. So if she's going to modify that, she's going to come right in face to face with the very thing she's been avoiding. So there's going to be a lot of nervous system dysregulation. And if you have someone who literally grew up with abuse, then you're going to have some significant trauma pop up if you start modifying food.

• 43:59Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. And, and that goes back to my theory that I always say fasting is like a mirror. If you want to know your relationship to food, try some intermittent fasting and all the, the, all the thoughts will come up. When I did my first 24-hour fast, I had, I had researched it. I understood what it was. And I was about 19 hours in, and all of a sudden I heard my mother's voice. I heard, "You are going to die if you do not eat. You are uncomfortable right now. You should probably eat." My mom was constantly running around with food

• 44:41Mindy Pelz?

  to help us soothe whatever mental state we were in. And I did never knew that until I started fasting.

• 44:51Mindy Pelz?

  So it's really profound, which is why when I found out about your work, I was like, oh, my gosh. This was my experience. Now, another thing that my community really has been transparent about is what our mothers have taught us about our bodies. And I remember as a child, my mom standing in front of her mirror criticizing her body.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. I, I remember that too. I, I think it's important for us to kind of remember our mothers were first daughters and they grew up watching their mothers, who were watching their mothers. And we come from different backgrounds and, and different standards of beauty. But if the beauty standard in your family and your maternal ancestors was being thin, then there's this really difficult navigation around the way we, our, our food supply, which is designed full of fat, and what the beauty standard is. Not every culture has that same struggle. But, but we do as daughters learn

• 46:04Speaker 01

  how to feel inside our own skin by watching our mother. Not by what she says, but by how she dresses, how she talks to herself, and how she feels in her own body. And I think it's really difficult in patriarchal structures for any woman to have a good feeling about her body.

• 46:23Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, right. Right. I did a video one time where there was a statistic that said like only 2% of women meet the stand, the media standard for a, a, a pretty woman, like only, like an acceptable weight. Like only 2% of us meet that standard.

• 46:39Speaker 01

  Good gracious.

• 46:40Mindy Pelz?

  It's crazy.

• 46:42Speaker 01

  It is.

• 46:42Mindy Pelz?

  But it, but I remember as a child, watching this woman that I admired criticize herself when she got, and I thought she was so powerful in other areas, but if you put her, I can, I can still to this day remember her bra and her underwear and her body as she looked herself in the mirror. And she, and I would be like hanging out in the room and she would be telling me all the things she hated about her body.

• 47:08Speaker 01

  And as you picture that, this is so great. Thank you. As you picture that, can you imagine how old you are in that moment and what you're thinking as you're watching that?

• 47:19Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, I was about six or seven years old.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  That sounds right. That's when the prefrontal cortex is coming online and starting to make sense of the world. So that totally lines up. So you're watching this, your body and mind is starting to make sense of what this means. And what are you telling yourself in that moment?

• 47:37Mindy Pelz?

  Well, it's interesting because she would turn to me and she would tell me, "You don't have this problem."

• 47:45Mindy Pelz?

  And so I just identified that it was a problem and that I somehow didn't have it. But if you go back and my, my audience doesn't really know this, I should probably share this sometime. I was for most of my life, I was 30 pounds overweight. And because I was an emotional eater and I had all these body image issues.

• 48:07Speaker 01

  Oh, but you didn't have that problem.

• 48:09Mindy Pelz?

  Right, I know, right?

• 48:12Mindy Pelz?

  Right, yeah.

• 48:15Speaker 01

  So this is partly what's also interesting is that I asked you what you were thinking and your answer was what your mother told you. That speaks to the power that as daughters, our thoughts come from her.

• 48:28Mindy Pelz?

  Right, yeah.

• 48:30Speaker 01

  Our ideas about ourselves come from her. We can't appreciate it.

• 48:35Mindy Pelz?

  I have to tell you something really trippy.

• 48:38Speaker 01

  Oh, good.

• 48:38Mindy Pelz?

  My, my mom is actually calling me right now.

• 48:45Mindy Pelz?

  I'm sitting here in this interview and all of a sudden I look down at my phone is buzzing and it's my mom.

• 48:52Speaker 01

  Okay, there's a psychic connection there. There's no accident. Do we need to hit pause? Do you want to?

• 48:56Mindy Pelz?

  No, we're fine.

• 48:57Speaker 01

  It could be really fruitful. It could be fascinating.

• 49:01Mindy Pelz?

  Hey, Mom, I want to know how you messed up my body image and my relationship to food. Can we talk about it with Dr. McDaniel right now?

• 49:11Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, and, and, and what was really beautiful is that somewhere along, as I understood the human body, I really made sure that I changed the messaging for my children. And I was very aware of this. I mean, you're talking to a woman who's done a lot of therapy and a lot of work on this. So, but I hear it a lot where, I mean, so many women, Kelly, oh my God, in my Reset Academy, they're like, my mom was on me like white on rice to be thin, so I could be loved, so I could be accepted and so she could feel good.

• 49:50Speaker 01

  That's right. That's right. Over and over, I've heard these stories of little ones being put on diets, very young.

• 49:58Mindy Pelz?

  Oh, yeah, my sister chronically on a diet.

• 50:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 50:04Mindy Pelz?

  So how do you, how do you unwind that? Because one of the other things outside of the relationship with food that I've been working with my audience to redefine is a love for their bodies.

• 50:19Mindy Pelz?

  And how do we measure what it looks like to love your body? Because like we said before, we have been taught if you're a size two or you're a size four, then you are acceptable. But I have, I always say, I don't care what size you are, as long as you look in the mirror and you love what's staring back at you. And as long as you, when you put clothes on, you're not criticizing yourself. And if, and, and if your blood work is looking great and your hemoglobin A1C is in balance, like it does, we're not all meant to be so thin. So there, it, what can you help, how can we help the woman who's listening to this and is like,

• 51:02Mindy Pelz?

  I don't even know how to begin to love my body?

• 51:06Speaker 01

  Well, my first reaction would be, of course you don't.

• 51:10Speaker 01

  Of course you don't know how. Where have you seen it modeled? So I think one of the most powerful ways to help women develop a love for our body is to model it, which is why it's really powerful that you're offering a program that would model what that even looks like. I mean, a lot of us just haven't seen it. And then I think it's important to keep in mind that as women, our relationship with food is as unique as our relationship with our mother. And there's no mother-daughter relationship that duplicates another. It's as unique as our own DNA.

• 51:54Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 51:55Speaker 01

  So the, the path for me to heal my body and the path for you to heal your body are going to be as unique as Kelly and Mindy are. So it is very individual and I think that's where it can get tricky when we're in a group and we want to kind of, we're group oriented mammals, you know, we really want a role model and we want to do what everybody's doing. Whatever works for Sally better work for me, right?

• 52:21Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, right.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  Sometimes it doesn't, and that doesn't mean I'm failing.

• 52:25Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 52:26Speaker 01

  It just means I might need to be learning more about myself.

• 52:31Mindy Pelz?

  Right, yeah, and dive deeper. And what have you seen, because you, you, you know, not only are you an author, but you are, you know, a practitioner and in clinical practice. What do you see that it's just like, like untangling a really knotted up ball of yarn? And you just have to keep pulling the threads until things start to loosen up? What is, is there a process that we can all go through to unwind this way in which our mother has taught us food and our, and how to love or not love our bodies?

• 53:06Speaker 01

  Right. Well, this is why I wrote the Mother Hunger book, because mother hunger is really a way to name insecure attachment. And 50% of us, if you'll keep in mind, did not attach securely. Though 50% of the people that did are probably not in your program or mine. So that's not who we're talking about. We're working with folks who did not have their attachment needs met and therefore food has become a substitute for maternal care. So what we're really doing, and if you want a path, is rewiring the attachment system. We are creating and earning our own secure attachment.

• 53:49Speaker 01

  And that is an inside job. And the more we become secure within ourselves, our eating starts to stabilize. Now, sometimes it's what's, what goes first, the cart before the horse, you know, chicken or egg, what goes first? Sometimes we might need to modify our eating to calm our nervous system enough to start to understand this and to engage in a therapeutic process that would help us attach better to ourselves. Sometimes we're going to have to attach to ourselves better before we can modify our eating. And again, that's so unique for each person that I can't, I can't give a formula that works for everyone.

• 54:29Speaker 01

  I can simply say that what we're working with here is a lot more than what, what might be on the plate.

• 54:37Mindy Pelz?

  Right. If you are loving the conversations on my podcast and you want to go deeper with me, come join me over on Substack. It's where I share the conversations I'm having behind the scenes, the research that I'm obsessed on and paying close attention to. And really the thoughts I don't always get to unpack here on the podcast or any of my other social media. We're taking women's health, fasting, hormones, food systems, mindset, aging, and what it really means to live like a girl in today's world to a whole new level.

• 55:15Mindy Pelz?

  You'll also get early podcast access, deeper essays on my thoughts around how we can all stay healthy in this modern world. You get community, you get conversations and exclusive content that I only share there. I'm not joking when I said this is my new favorite place. It is currently where I am at. So you can head on over to substack.drmindypelz.com or just search live like a girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz directly in the Substack app. I'm super excited to have you over there. Please introduce yourself and let's dive in to some really good conversations.

• 55:57Mindy Pelz?

  So if I was supposed to get nurturing protection and guidance from my mother and I'm listening to this and I realize I didn't get that and I attached that to food, what I think you're offering all of us is the possibility to actually turn it within ourselves and to nurture ourselves, to protect ourselves, to guide ourselves and to do it outside of a person or food or anything, that that's where the work really is, is, and this is a human problem, I think, because everybody wants to attach themselves to something else.

• 56:39Speaker 01

  Well, we have to. We have to. It's not, it's not elective. We have to or we die. If we're not attached, we, we die. This is why infants die when they are not touched enough.

• 56:50Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 56:51Speaker 01

  It's failure to thrive syndrome. It's, it's, it's a problem. So I just want to let this, this is a relational injury that happens from not having our attachment needs met. And it does have, it does need a relational solution. So we can do some of this on our own, but not all of it. We are not designed to do this on our own. We're not designed to heal by ourselves. So the formula is, oh, now that I know I missed out on some nurturing, I'm going to need to find some. And that might mean I find a good coach, I get a massage therapist, I, I need to work on who my friends are. Do I have new friends? I need to look at my primary relationships. Do I feel loved and safe?

• 57:34Speaker 01

  So that is a relational issue as well as am I good to myself?

• 57:41Speaker 01

  But for women, we, we learn to nurture ourselves based on how we were nurtured. So we have to unlearn some things usually before we learn the good ones.

• 57:51Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 57:52Speaker 01

  So that's if we realized we lost out on nurturing. You know, maybe our mother was a great guide. We had a caregiver that kept us safe, but they were cold and we were never held nurturing. Okay, perhaps we had a mother that was very cozy and playful and loving, but we weren't safe and our uncle had access to us and we were abused as a child, but she didn't notice. She was just, you know, lovey and sweet and not protecting us, then it's going to be our job to protect ourselves.

• 58:18Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 58:19Speaker 01

  But we live as women in a world where we are sexual prey. So to tell a woman, oh, you ought to just learn how to feel safe without understanding the cultural context that most women I know walk outside their home and are immediately vigilant. They've got their keys ready or their spray ready. When they're in their home, their doors are locked. I mean, the truth is you can do your best to try to feel safe and you're working against a lot. So I think keeping in mind the cultural context here, that it's more than just.

• 58:55Speaker 01

  When you realize you missed out on some protection, you can make yourself feel safe. With that said, there are things you can do. If you realize you were not safe as a child, minimize how much of the news you're watching.

• 59:08Mindy Pelz?

  Hmm, so smart.

• 59:10Speaker 01

  Try not to watch things on TV that amp up your nervous system. Because that, you're already on high alert. So what your work will be is to bring things down and probably you've been using food to do that.

• 59:26Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 59:26Speaker 01

  Eating things like a lot of cheese, a lot of ice cream, a lot of bread, things with carbs bring down the nervous system and numb us out.

• 59:34Mindy Pelz?

  Calms it, yeah, yeah.

• 59:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's gonna be hard to give that up unless you've got something in place that helps you feel safe.

• 59:42Mindy Pelz?

  So if you, you know, a lot of people are seeing functional medicine doctors now, they maybe they have some digestive problems and they go into the doctor and the doctor says you need to go gluten free. But you've been using that bread to calm your nervous system down. This is, this is where I'm like, oh, my God, all practitioners need to hear this conversation and get your book. Because you need to understand what you're asking of this person and offer up other tools of protection because they've been calming that nervous system.

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  That's right. I think this is why a lot of people have come to me frustrated that they worked with a nutritionist, they worked with a doctor, they've worked with an eating disorder place and nothing worked. Well, nobody was treating the nervous system and looking at this, so. Keep in mind, I didn't write a book about food. I have one chapter called, it's chapter four, it's called surrogate comfort. Because I do think of food as a surrogate mother.

• 1:00:43Speaker 01

  So, yes, it'd be really great if the world were more aware of this, but a lot of things would have to change.

• 1:00:48Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, well, I'm gonna do my best to make the world aware of this.

• 1:00:52Speaker 01

  You're doing your part, I'm so glad. I'm just thinking even what pediatricians would have to do differently with parents and what what we'd have to do with our education system that is, that is really toughening kids up and making them independent when really those dependency needs are not met. So, we got a bigger issue here, but.

• 1:01:11Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, we got, we got a lot of work to do. Um, what are your thoughts? I, I don't think it was in the revised book, but I'm curious what you think of the the obsession with the weight loss drugs right now and specifically food noise. I really dove into trying to understand food noise from a physiological standpoint. And you know, there's a lot of interesting things like ultra-processed foods destroy microbes that actually give off a byproduct that stimulates the internal cells to and cause them to make GLP-1 hormone. So, we now have more food noise because of the toxicity of our food system.

• 1:01:57Mindy Pelz?

  But there's also the food noise as we have, you know, said is, is there's an emotional piece. So what happens when I take a drug and I cut that food noise off?

• 1:02:11Speaker 01

  Well, you tell me, what are you seeing?

• 1:02:15Mindy Pelz?

  Well, you know, there's, I've done so much research on this because there's many different things. Depression kicks in, that's a big one. Where, because people were using food to soothe themselves for all the reasons that we've talked about.

• 1:02:31Speaker 01

  So are you seeing that alcohol use goes up?

• 1:02:34Mindy Pelz?

  No, actually addictions go down.

• 1:02:36Speaker 01

  Okay, well, that's good, okay.

• 1:02:37Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, but there's, but there's something that's happening that is called the meh personality, where people on these drugs don't have enthusiasm for life. They don't have excitement for their relationships or their, or their careers. So they get a very muted personality. Now, I've only looked at that through the lens of pharmacology and potentially how that's affecting it. But if we look at it through the mother hunger lens, you've now shut off this primal need that has all these emotions attached to it.

• 1:03:20Mindy Pelz?

  And it's, it's like taking a trauma and, and like pushing it down even deeper in my, in my sense.

• 1:03:29Speaker 01

  Well, that's one way to look at it and I also wanna just throw out kind of the obvious.

• 1:03:35Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:36Speaker 01

  Is initially, what a relief.

• 1:03:40Mindy Pelz?

  Right, I, I, I have to honor that, I agree, yes.

• 1:03:43Speaker 01

  You've spent your whole life hungry for something you didn't understand. Trying to fill it in ways that really didn't work. And now here's something that just dials it down? What a relief.

• 1:03:57Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, agreed. Yeah, and thank you for saying that because I'm not, I don't want to be insensitive to people whose life have changed.

• 1:04:05Speaker 01

  Sure, sure, I, same. And I think that's why

• 1:04:12Speaker 01

  I come at it more as a therapist and less as a medical person because I'm seeing a reduction in some trauma symptomology and initially that's gonna look like progress, that's gonna look like mental health and it's gonna look like relief. And I think we might be too young in this whole relationship with the GLP-1s to know what the long-term effects are gonna be.

• 1:04:36Mindy Pelz?

  Right. But in the therapy room, you're seeing that you, progress is being made. You're, you're offering me again another insight into maybe the benefits of these because now can you go to deeper work? Like how to speak to this through the trauma lens?

• 1:04:56Speaker 01

  Right, right. And I think that different clinicians are gonna see it differently based on the kind of therapy they're doing. But one of the things that I have seen is there's also an increased for some women, again, this seems really different, so I can't generalize, but I've seen some women struggle with anger

• 1:05:18Speaker 01

  that had never been angry before and they're like, where is this coming from? And sometimes they're not even noticing it, but the people around them are. So it's different than the meh impact that, that does impact some. Some are finding that they're irritable and angry. So I haven't yet come up with a general theory about about these medications because again, I look at the relationship a woman is navigating with food as a story. And this is a new chapter. This is a new chapter in the story. I'm gonna read it with my client. I'm gonna see where this goes.

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  And I'm gonna read her story and then read a different client's story and not really say, I think unilaterally

• 1:06:10Speaker 01

  these are good or these are not.

• 1:06:12Mindy Pelz?

  Right, you're, the jury's still out.

• 1:06:14Speaker 01

  Jury's out for me.

• 1:06:15Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, yeah. With this new revised book of mother hunger, what, what was it that you felt like you needed to add into the book?

• 1:06:25Speaker 01

  That is such a great question. I, I loved the book and felt like it was pretty complete. But, and most people love the book too, but when women would write in to me, I was hearing a lot of women say, help me break the cycle with my own children.

• 1:06:42Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, oh, I was gonna ask you about that because I have a daughter, yeah.

• 1:06:47Speaker 01

  So a lot of people, you know, even though I say, read this book as a daughter, this is not a parenting manual, would still write in and say, I need parenting help. So, I'm not a parenting expert, but I did talk to some and, and do some research and I included a chapter for parents who who already know they have some mother hunger and they wanna try to break the cycle of passing it down.

• 1:07:11Speaker 01

  And then I got a lot of women writing in saying, you know, I know you wrote this for me, but I think my husband needs to read this, or I think my brother needs to read this. Or, you know, what do I do for my son one day? So I included a chapter for men.

• 1:07:31Mindy Pelz?

  Beautiful.

• 1:07:33Speaker 01

  Which was kind of fascinating because I wanted to co-write that chapter with a man. I talked to colleagues, other psychologists. I talked to men in recovery.

• 1:07:47Speaker 01

  They weren't ready to look at mother hunger. That taught me a lot. These are, these are well-educated, highly-trained, or psychologically-aware people. And they have not even been given language or permission to look at their relationship with their mother. I couldn't find a man to help me with this. So

• 1:08:06Mindy Pelz?

  Wow.

• 1:08:08Speaker 01

  I took a stab at it, and even the fact that men don't have language for this and resist it was fascinating to me. I think the relationship boys have with their mothers is so taboo to look at.

• 1:08:23Mindy Pelz?

  Ooh.

• 1:08:24Speaker 01

  That this is really tricky. So I'm not even sure they're the ones reading this chapter. I think it'll be written. I read it. I know that women will read it because they want to understand their men and the men in their lives.

• 1:08:34Mindy Pelz?

  Right. Well, and you, yeah, you bring up a good point because we've been talking about the mother-daughter relationship strongly here. And that is my audience. It's mostly women, but, but, but men do have dysfunctional relationships to food and their body as well. And would you say that stems from mother hunger as well?

• 1:08:54Speaker 01

  Well, I, I would have to say yes, because I think all, we're all babies. And gender doesn't really weigh in when it comes to how we first experience love. We have the same need for nurture. We have the same need for protection because we're vulnerable little mammals. Gender doesn't matter a whole lot. So yes, I think the primitive relationship we have with eating. And you can see men really overeating, indulging, medicating their mood with, with food. But because they have more testosterone or more muscle mass, it takes a while for that to catch up and become problematic, maybe.

• 1:09:33Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, yeah. And they don't, and they're living in a patriarchal society that treats them different.

• 1:09:37Speaker 01

  Totally different. They can, they can have food issues and nobody's going to say a thing about it.

• 1:09:42Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:09:43Speaker 01

  Right. It's just a different, it's a, it's a double standard. So

• 1:09:47Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I can see that.

• 1:09:49Speaker 01

  Anyway, then the third chapter is written for firstborn daughters. Because that's another population I was hearing a lot from. There's a unique loneliness for firstborn daughters and their families. And I looked at the biological reasons why this happens, but the sociological reasons why this happens and included a chapter for them.

• 1:10:10Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. It, it, as an author, I'll tell you, and you, I know you know this, it is no easy task to write a book. Yet I think we all, just like our children, hope that it's going to blossom into something someday. Something great. What are you hoping the revised mother hunger will blossom into? A new cultural conversation, compassion for women have for themselves? Like, what do you hope it does in the world?

• 1:10:45Speaker 01

  I think you just named it, that when I'm writing, first I'm a therapist more than an author. So when I'm writing, in my mind is a conversation I want to have with each woman I will ever get to sit with in psychotherapy.

• 1:10:59Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:11:01Speaker 01

  My hope for this book is that it touches the hearts who need it. And that's what it's been doing. I hope these new chapters don't undo that. So I just, because they're very different chapters. They weren't my original plan. I'm responding to what people asked for, but I was a little outside my expertise. So I just hope that it lands gently and that women or men who read the book take what's useful. And what's not useful doesn't undermine what is.

• 1:11:36Mindy Pelz?

  Right, right. You know, one of the things I love about being an author more than anything is that somebody picked up my words, a person I will never meet, that may have only spent, you know, 30 bucks on a book, will never come into my world, and they changed their own life because I made the decision to sit down and think through a concept that I knew would help people. I, I, I think on the day I die, that's going to be one of those things that I look back on and feel the most proud of.

• 1:12:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. It gives your life meaning and purpose.

• 1:12:15Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. Yeah. So, so I think I'm really excited that you revised this. I'm super excited that I got an opportunity to chat with you. I'm the type of person that when I get obsessed about something, I can't shut up about it. And this will be one of those things. So people who have listened this far are going to hear me keep coming back to this. I'm so happy you're coming into my membership group. So thank you for that. But it, it, most importantly, thank you for taking the time to put your thoughts down and what you've clinically seen so others can heal. And I just, it's profound. So thank you for that.

• 1:12:54Speaker 01

  I appreciate that you understand that commitment and that dedication. And I also appreciate your effort to help me spread the word.

• 1:13:01Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, thank you. Oh, I, I got a megaphone for you here, Kelly. So I really do. Yeah.

• 1:13:07Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah.

• 1:13:09Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. And if people are still listening this deep in, share the episode out because, you know, I think in just a few things you said in here, you, women will free themselves from that food noise, potentially as deeply as they do with the weight loss drugs. Like, just that awareness is so profound. So I appreciate that. So, okay, so the topic of, the name of my podcast is Live Like a Girl. And I, I named it that because one of the things I'm trying to take back for women is that being anything like a girl is a bad statement. It's derogatory. So what, when you think of living like a girl, what does it mean to you?

• 1:13:53Speaker 01

  I think this is such a great title.

• 1:13:55Mindy Pelz?

  Thank you.

• 1:13:56Speaker 01

  And it's connected somehow for me with mother hunger.

• 1:13:59Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:14:00Speaker 01

  I think healing from mother hunger, helping your children heal, is a countercultural endeavor. To live like a girl and own that in a world that is patriarchal, in a world that is misogynistic, is countercultural. You're actually going against the culture. And in that way,

• 1:14:22Speaker 01

  for me, living like a girl is really tuning into the rhythms of my own body. And so when I was still menstruating, that meant understanding my cycle, taking it out from hiding, not being ashamed of it, and understanding what the luteal phase was teaching me. And understanding that when my period was about to come, I needed to rest more and not apologize for that, not try to overachieve during that time, but really understand I'm a cyclical creature and honor that. And be playful when, then when I was ovulating and then sleep more when I wasn't. Now that I don't have that cycle anymore, I've had to relearn. Well, what is it to live like a girl as an older woman?

• 1:15:05Speaker 01

  You know, I'm not a maiden anymore. I'm not in the mothering mode anymore. I'm a crone now.

• 1:15:10Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, you are.

• 1:15:11Speaker 01

  Right?

• 1:15:12Mindy Pelz?

  Which means crown, by the way. You know, crone means crown.

• 1:15:15Speaker 01

  Well, okay, I'm going to go with that. See, that's a good example of how I had, I have to relearn.

• 1:15:20Mindy Pelz?

  Yep.

• 1:15:21Speaker 01

  What is it to live like a girl as an older woman? And so I think I'm figuring that out, Mindy, and that's why I love the question. Because it means that I look at exercise differently.

• 1:15:33Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, oh, yeah.

• 1:15:35Speaker 01

  Exercise rather than being kind of this, I don't know, it, it's now my playtime. I've had to make it playful, make sure that whatever it is I'm doing, I actually enjoy it.

• 1:15:47Mindy Pelz?

  Which is girl-like.

• 1:15:49Speaker 01

  It really is. It really is. Yes.

• 1:15:53Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, you know, I wrote, the last book I wrote was Age Like a Girl. And the purpose behind that was to show women that the brain rewires itself as it goes through menopause. And that rewiring actually lets you go back into your childhood and take parts of you that maybe the patriarchal culture took away. And it allows you to grab those parts back and say, I'm going to own these now. I, I, I'll tell you this one story. When I first moved here to Santa Cruz, we have a really beautiful, long driveway. And I looked at my husband and I said, on my 56th birthday, I'm going to get a big, a big wheel. And I'm going to ride a big wheel down that driveway.

• 1:16:36Mindy Pelz?

  And he's like, no, you, he told me all the reasons I couldn't. I'm like, no, I'm doing that on my 56th birthday. Sure enough, there, I put it, I posted on socials on my 56th birthday. I put a helmet on. I could barely, I ordered a big wheel off Amazon. I got on the big wheel and I, I went down my driveway.

• 1:16:55Speaker 01

  Okay, that is probably one of the most inspiring stories I've ever heard.

• 1:16:59Mindy Pelz?

  Thank you.

• 1:17:00Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:17:01Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. If you, like, I felt like I was 10 again.

• 1:17:06Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:17:07Mindy Pelz?

  It was amazing.

• 1:17:09Speaker 01

  It's amazing and perfect and such good role modeling. That's what we need. Role modeling of what it does look like to live like a girl as we get older.

• 1:17:18Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, thank you.

• 1:17:19Speaker 01

  Thank you. Wow.

• 1:17:20Mindy Pelz?

  Well, Kelly, I could talk to you for hours. I just hope we meet in person one day. And I just, I really thank you for bringing this topic to light. I know this episode is going to help so many women. So the standard question is, where do they get your book? Is there anything that they need to know about ordering your book?

• 1:17:41Speaker 01

  As far as I know, the pre-orders are going well and are happening now. The book will officially launch on September 15.

• 1:17:50Speaker 01

  And I think a lot of women, the feedback I'm getting is they like the audiobook.

• 1:17:55Mindy Pelz?

  Oh, yeah, the audi, yeah, they're very popular. My books are, are actually doing better in audio now than, than hardcover.

• 1:18:01Speaker 01

  I think people want to hear our voice.

• 1:18:03Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:04Speaker 01

  And women have told me who had the original book that they use it to go to sleep at night, which I'm taking that as a compliment. I think that's wonderful. So

• 1:18:14Mindy Pelz?

  That's amazing. Okay, beautiful. Well, thank you for your time and thank you for your knowledge and your heart. I just really, I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. So

• 1:18:24Speaker 01

  So have I. Thank you for coming with your whole heart and intellect.

• 1:18:28Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, thank you. I hope we get a chance to hug someday.

• 1:18:32Speaker 01

  Yes, we will.

• 1:18:33Mindy Pelz?

  Okay.

• 1:18:36Mindy Pelz?

  Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.