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Emotional Eating Explained: Cortisol, Serotonin and Why Diets Fail · Moving Minds Forward

• 0:10
  Gary Johannes: People aren't broken, and it's almost never too late to change. I know that because I've lived it. I left school at 14 with no qualifications, one of nine kids. I didn't join the air force at 16. And when I left, I went into sales and bars and nightclubs, and restaurants.
• 0:32
  Not exactly the typical route into mental health. But in my late forties, I met a hypnotherapist, and everything I thought I knew about myself turned out to be a lot more flexible than I'd assumed. I retrained, and I started inspired to change. Much later, I took on an MSc in psychology and neuroscience of mental health at King's College in London, and I graduated at 60. This podcast is everything that comes from all of that.
• 1:05
  I'm Gary Johannes, solution focused hypnotherapist, founder of Inspire two Change, and I now train our hypnotherapists through CPHT. One condition per episode. What's going on? What's keeping it going? And what actually helps?
• 1:23
  Let's get into it. So wait. Let me start with the thing nobody says out loud. If you struggled with your weight, you have almost certainty at some point decided the problem is you, that you're weak, greedy, lacking in willpower, that everyone else can manage this, and you just can't get a grip. I want to take that idea apart because it's wrong, and it's the very thing keeping you stuck.
• 2:00
  Struggling with your weight is not a character flaw. It's not a failure of willpower. In most cases, it's a completely normal brain running a very old survival program in a world that program was never designed for. Once you understand that, the whole thing looks different, and the way through starts to appear. Now weight covers a lot of ground.
• 2:28
  Some people are fighting to lose weight. Some are fighting to gain it. Some are wrestling with a relationship with food that's tipped into something harder. And I'll come back to that because it matters. But underneath most of it sits the same truth.
• 2:49
  This is far less about food than anyone tells you. It's about stress, mood, and the brain trying to look after you the only way it knows how. If this is your first time here, do hit subscribe wherever you're listening. One condition per episode, the same honest lens. Now let's get into it.
• 3:14
  So what is this really about? Here's the reframe that changes everything. For most people, weight isn't an eating problem. It's an emotional problem that happens to play out through eating. Think about when you overeat.
• 3:30
  It's rarely when you're calm, content, and rested. It's when you're stressed, exhausted, lonely, bored, flat. Food isn't really about hunger in those moments. It's about trying to change how you feel, and it works just for a moment. That's the whole trap, and we'll get to why.
• 3:54
  So all diets, all the plans, all the counting, they aim at food. But the food was never the real driver, which is exactly why willpower runs out and the weight comes back. You can white knuckle your weight against your own biology for a while. You can't do it forever. Nobody can.
• 4:16
  This isn't about finding more willpower. It's about removing the thing that's overriding it in the first place. You're not alone in this. If your weight weighs on you, you're in enormous company. Nearly half of UK adults are actively trying to lose weight at any given time, and that's from the National Health Survey.
• 4:40
  Not some fad diet headline. This is not a minority struggle happening to a few people who can't cope. It's most of us at some point. And there's a link that matters here. Weight struggles and mental health are closely tied.
• 4:58
  When one is under strain, the other usually is high. That's not weakness. It's not a coincidence. It's a clue to the whole thing. Weight and mood are tied and tangled together deep in the brain, which means you can't reliably sort one out while ignoring the other.
• 5:19
  So if you've carried shame about this, I'd gently put it down. You're not a lonely failure. You're a very ordinary human being with a very common struggle. So what's happening in the brain? This is where it gets interesting because once you see the machinery, you stop blaming yourself.
• 5:43
  Start with stress. When you're under pressure, your whole body pumps out cortisol, a stress hormone. Cortisol does two unhelpful things here. It drives you towards quick, high energy food because your brain thinks you're in danger and might need fuel to run or fight. And it tells the body to store fat, especially around the middle.
• 6:11
  And here's the cool twist. That belly fat carries extra cortisol receptors, so it actually generates more stress. More stress, more fat, more stress. Around it goes. Then there's a low mood side.
• 6:28
  When you're feeling down or flat, you produce less serotonin. One of the brain's feel good settling chemicals. And when serotonin is low, you get this hollow, empty feeling. You know you're not really hungry, but you want to fill the gap. So you eat, because the brain would rather have some good chemistry than none at all.
• 6:55
  And food is the fastest hit available. Food also gives you dopamine, the reward chemical, the little, that was good. Do it again. But here's what the research shows. The more someone leans on food for that hit, the less reward the brain gives back over time.
• 7:16
  So you need more to feel the same. It's the same action you see in any habit that stop delivering, chasing a feeling that keeps shrinking. And underneath all of it is the oldest worry of all. For most of human history, food was scarce and unpredictable. The people who survived were the ones who ate plenty when they could and stored it on the body for the lean times.
• 7:47
  So we are, every one of us, hardwired to overeat when food is available and we're under pressure. That instinct kept your ancestors alive. It just doesn't fit a world where food never runs out, and the fridge is no more than 10 feet away normally. Now the good news buried in all of that, every one of those systems calms down when your stress calms down. And the thinking part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, is back in charge.
• 8:24
  That's the part of the brain that makes calm, long term choices. It goes quiet under stress and comes back online when you're settled. Get back in the driving seat, and good decisions stop being a fight. So what causes the struggle in the first place? For most people, it's emotional.
• 8:45
  Stress, loneliness, anxiety, low mood, old hurts. These interfere with eating far more than any lack of knowledge about nutrition. Most people who struggle with their weight know perfectly well what's good for them. No one was never the problem. Food becomes a coping tool, the reliable comfort, the one we're all at the end of a hard day.
• 9:14
  And for a lot of people, that started early. Food was a treat. Food is love. Clean your plate. Be good, and you can have pudding.
• 9:24
  The brain learn young that food and feelings go together. Some of it is physical and worth naming. For people trying to gain weight, a fast metabolism or certain medical conditions can make it hard to put weight on. No no matter how much they try, how much they eat, sudden unexplained weight change in either direction is always worth a conversation with your GP to rule things out. And for some, this is tipped into a diagnosable eating disorder, anorexia, bulimia, binge eating, and others.
• 10:04
  These are serious conditions that can affect anyone, and they need proper specialist support. If that's where you are, this episode isn't a substitute for that care, and I'll point you somewhere at the end. So what keeps it going? Here's the cycle, and it's a brutal one because it runs on shame. You feel bad.
• 10:29
  You eat to feel better. You get a moment of relief, and then minutes later, the guilt lands. I shouldn't have. I've blown it. What's wrong with me?
• 10:42
  And the guilt doesn't stop the eating. It fuels it, because now you feel worse than you did before. And what does a brain reach for to feel better? The same thing. More stress, more eating, more shame, more stress, and so on.
• 11:01
  Shame is not fuel. Shame is a break. People believe they need to be hard on themselves to sort this out. More discipline, more self criticism. Almost always, it's the harshness that's keeping the whole thing spinning.
• 11:20
  And then there's black and white thinking, which stress makes worse. One biscuit becomes, well, I've ruined it now. I'll start again Monday. And the whole day goes. Food gets sorted into good and bad.
• 11:37
  Each and a bad makes you feel a bad person, and sleep sits beneath it all. Poor sleep ramps up the hunger signals, weakens the thinking brain's control, ranks up the cravings the very next day. Bad sleep, harder day, more comfort eating, worse sleep, another loop that feeds itself. But loops can be broken. That's the whole point of what we do.
• 12:09
  So what actually helps? Not another diet. If diets alone worked, they'd have worked by now. For you and for nearly everyone, the solution focused approach starts somewhere completely different. It starts with a question.
• 12:25
  What would your life look like if food wasn't such a battle? Not a fantasy body, just just an ordinary week where eating feels calm and unremarkable, where you eat when you're hungry and stop when you're full without being at war. Where food is just food, not comfort, not reward, not the enemy. Getting clear on that gives the brain a direction to move towards, and that matters more than any meal plan. Then we lower the stress because that's the master switch.
• 13:07
  As cortisol comes down and the anxiety eases, the thinking brain comes back online. And from there, the good choices. You already know how to make stop being a fight and start being natural. We're not adding willpower. We're removing the thing that's been overriding it.
• 13:31
  This is where the trance state does the real work. Deep sustained relaxation directly lowers the stress response. It brings down the cortisol physically and in a calm state with the thinking brain still engaged. We work with the subconscious to loosen the emotional charge around food and rehearse a calmer, easier relationship with it, because the brain doesn't sharply separate a vivid rehearsal from a real one. That practice starts to become how you actually are.
• 14:11
  The three pillars do a huge amount here. And what's lovely is they map straight onto the brain chemistry we've just talked about. Positive interaction, real connection with people, lifts serotonin, and calms a stress response. So you need food less to fill the gap. Positive action.
• 14:33
  Movement burns off the stress fuel and gives you dopamine and a real lift. So the reward you were chasing through food starts coming from somewhere that actually pays you back. Positive thinking, deliberately noticing what's gone well, widens that narrow black and white thinking and rebuilds the good chemistry too. And that's the real secret, if there is one. Get your feel good chemicals from somewhere other than food, from people, from movement, from small winds, and food quietly loosens its grip.
• 15:15
  It stops being the only reward in your day. And all of it works better with more self compassion, not less. Realistic steps, kindness over harshness, progress you actually notice, rather than a standard you can never meet. Before I close, one thing you can take away today, the next time you find yourself heading for food when you're not actually physically hungry, pause just for a second and ask yourself one question. What am I really feeling right now?
• 15:55
  Not to stop yourself eating, not to tell yourself off, just to name it. I'm tired, stressed, lonely, bored, fed up, whatever it is. Name it. And here's why it worked. That pause, that naming switches on the prefrontal cortex, the thinking, observing parts of your brain.
• 16:20
  It puts a tiny gap between the feeling and the food. And in that gap, you get the choice you didn't have a second earlier. Sometimes, you'll still eat, and that's completely fine. But sometimes you'll realize you're not hungry, you're tired, and what you actually need is ten minutes to yourself or walk or to text a friend. You're not trying to win every time.
• 16:51
  You're just teaching your brain to notice the difference between feeding a body and feeding a feeling. That awareness, small as it sounds, is where it turns around. Try it today. Pause. Name the feeling.
• 17:08
  See what happens. If food and weight have been a source of shame for a long time, I want to say this clearly. You are not greedy, and you are not weak. You're a person with a completely normal brain, running on ancient survival programs under more pressure than it was ever built for. That's a pattern, and patterns can change.
• 17:36
  The brain that learn to reach for food can learn to reach for something that actually feeds you. Understanding what's going on is where it starts. You've just done that. And quietly, that's a step forward. That's it for this one.
• 17:54
  If it was useful, hit subscribe if you haven't already. Every episode, one condition, the same honest lens. What's going on? What's keeping it going? What actually helps?
• 18:07
  There's a lot more to come. One last important note. If your relationship with food feels out of control, or you're worried you might have an eating disorder, please reach out for specialist help. BEAT, The UK's eating disorder charity, has a helpline and support at beateatingdisorders.org.uk. And if your weight has changed suddenly without explanation, do see your GP.
• 18:40
  There's no shame in either. It's a sensible step, and you don't have to do this on your own. And if you'd like some support with the emotional side of eating, Inspired to Change has solution focused hypotherapists across The UK, in person or online. Everything you'll need is at inspiredtochange.biz, including some interesting reading. Whenever you're ready.
• 19:07
  No rush. See you on the next one.