Using Data to Break Free from Emotional Eating Patterns | Ep 317
Ever wonder why you keep eating when you're not actually hungry?
The battle between emotions and rational decisions plays out most visibly in our eating habits, causing you to go "off track" (and sometimes way "off the rails"). Sound familiar?
Today's episode explores emotional eating through a completely different lens... using data and structure to identify patterns and solutions so you can stop flying blind and finally conquer emotional eating.
You'll discover why tracking certain metrics reveals surprises about your eating behaviors, how meal timing dramatically affects your psychological relationship with food, and tips to bridge the gap between analytical approaches and emotional intelligence.
Main Takeaways:
Understanding patterns through tracking creates awareness without becoming obsessive
Strategic meal timing and composition significantly influences emotional eating behaviors
The powerful "if-then" approach creates a framework for managing challenging food situations
Consistency in eating patterns helps your body develop safety signals that reduce stress eating
Creating a balance between structure and flexibility is key to sustainable habits
Episode Links:
Follow the Don't Call Me Skinny podcast for more great content from Sarah Krieger
Listen to the companion episode about the psychological side of emotional eating: The Hidden Triggers Making You Overeat Without Realizing It
Timestamps:
0:01 - Emotional eating through a data lens
8:36 - Using data without becoming obsessive
15:43 - What to do based on your data
23:36 - Powerful "if-then" strategies when life trips you up
27:08 - Meal timing -> emotional eating patterns
31:11 - Macros for managing hunger
36:32 - Hunger vs. cravings
42:11 - The solution after years of dieting
Mastering Emotional Eating by Tracking the Right Data
Emotional eating is often framed as a purely psychological issue, and while that’s certainly part of it, there’s a much more objective tool most people overlook—data. When you feel like your emotions are steering the wheel with food, that’s actually the perfect time to bring in structure, not more willpower.
In this episode, I dive into the concept of emotional eating from a data-driven lens.
This isn’t about turning into a robot who lives by macros and spreadsheets. It’s about identifying real, trackable patterns behind your behaviors, so you can make changes that stick.
Why Emotional Eating Needs More Than Mindset Work
Many of my clients—especially those who've tried intuitive eating or pure mindset work—feel like they understand why they eat emotionally but still can’t seem to stop. That’s because awareness without feedback doesn’t lead to behavior change. You need measurable variables that act like breadcrumbs leading to the trigger.
For example:
Meal timing
Hunger levels before and after meals
Training sessions and recovery
Sleep quality
Food composition (protein, fiber, processed foods)
When you track these, you begin to connect the dots. You realize that skipping lunch leads to late-night snacking. Or that undereating on rest days leads to low energy and cravings the next.
Track First, Interpret Later
One of the most common mistakes is assuming that the numbers themselves are the solution. But the power of data lies in what it tells you about your behavior. That’s why I don’t push clients to track everything at once or get obsessed with every little detail. Instead, I help them track just enough to get the right signal from the noise.
This often starts with:
Protein intake: Are you getting 0.7 g/lb or more?
Meal structure: Are you eating consistent meals, or just grazing all day?
Training quality: Are your lifts progressing, or are you running on fumes?
Start there, and you’ll quickly see why that random bag of Goldfish at 9 p.m. isn’t about discipline—it’s your body screaming for energy after missing breakfast and skimping on lunch.
The Emotional Cost of Ignoring Structure
The irony is that the less structured someone is, the more anxious and emotionally reactive they tend to feel around food. Chaos breeds overthinking. Structure breeds peace of mind.
In the episode, I talked about how emotional recovery is just as much a part of the process as physical recovery. That means having go-to strategies when obstacles hit:
If/Then planning: “If I go out for dinner, then I’ll order my go-to protein/fiber combo and skip the appetizer.”
Meal timing rules of thumb: “Never go more than 4 hours without food.”
Minimum effective tracking: Track hunger before/after meals and your meal timing for a week. That alone reveals so much.
This creates what I call structured flexibility: a framework where you don’t have to rely on willpower because the system supports your goals.
Why Overreliance on Tech Can Backfire
Not every piece of data is helpful. Your Fitbit telling you that you burned 647 calories in your HIIT class? Irrelevant. Trying to match food intake to a wildly inaccurate “calories out” number is a dead-end.
Instead, track output by results. If you’re losing fat, maintaining muscle, and feeling energized, your intake/output balance is probably in a good place. Trust the system—not your smartwatch.
Optimizing Macros for Hunger, Not Just Fat Loss
As calories drop during a fat loss phase, hunger becomes more of a challenge. This is where macro tweaks come in:
Some clients need more carbs pre-workout to offset fatigue.
Others need more fat to stabilize energy and mood.
Some benefit from redistributing protein across the day, especially at breakfast.
This isn’t about perfection. It’s about tinkering just enough to feel good and keep momentum going. And yes, emotional eating will decrease when your body is better fueled.
Your Data is a Window into Your Behavior
If you take one thing from this conversation, it’s this: Data and emotion aren’t enemies. They’re two sides of the same coin. Tracking a few simple things—not obsessively—can give you the insight you need to finally feel in control.
So, if you’re stuck in the same “I know what to do, but I’m not doing it” cycle, maybe it’s time to stop guessing and start measuring. That’s how we move from emotional chaos to confident action.
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Transcript
Philip Pape: 0:01
Emotional eating is a struggle for many of us, even when you know exactly what to do with your nutrition. There's an interplay between our emotions and habits that derail even the most meticulously planned nutrition approach. But today we're going to explore emotional eating through the lens of data and structure. You'll learn how tracking certain metrics can reveal your emotional eating patterns, why meal timing affects your psychological relationship with food, and how to use data as a tool to create those sustainable habits you want, without becoming obsessive. This is all about balancing emotional and logical aspects of nutrition to transform your relationship with food.
Philip Pape: 0:50
Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering and efficiency. I'm your host, philip Pape, and today I'm sharing a recent appearance on the Don't Call Me Skinny podcast with registered dietitian Sarah Krieger. Now you might remember her because she was recently on the show discussing emotional eating from a psychological perspective. Well, in case you didn't catch this on her show, today I'm replaying the flip side of that conversation, where I joined her podcast to explore the data-driven approach to understanding and managing emotional eating. Many of you know me as the data guy. I love engineering, I love using systems and as someone who naturally gravitates toward structure and numbers, I've found that tracking certain metrics can provide really good, really invaluable insights into our eating patterns. But I've also learned that this approach needs to be balanced with awareness of our emotional triggers and our psychological responses to food, and not everybody responds the same way to using numbers, so it has to be very, very useful.
Philip Pape: 1:57
Now, during this conversation, we talk about how being an engineer influences my approach to nutrition coaching, how to interpret hunger cues versus emotional cravings, and then some strategies and tips to bridge the gap between data and emotions when it comes to food choices. Now, before we get into the episode, if you like what you hear today, all I ask is that you hit follow on Wits and Weights so that you catch every episode when they come out. They come out on Mondays, wednesdays and Fridays, and then I want you to go follow Sarah's podcast Don't Call Me Skinny wherever you listen to this, all right. So let's jump into my conversation with Sarah Krieger about approaching emotional eating through a data lens.
Sarah Krieger: 2:39
Welcome to another podcast of Don't Call Me Skinny. I'm super excited to be with you here today. We have a really great little collaboration that we are doing. I was a guest on a podcast with Philip Pate, wits and Weights and we talked about emotional eating from the emotional side, and today he's coming on my podcast today to talk to you guys about the emotional eating through data specifically, which I love because he is such a data guy. I'm not a data girl. I mean, I am a little bit, but not like he is. So check the link in the show notes If you want to take a listen. My version is on his podcast today. It's going out. We're doing it the same day so you can hear both sides at the same time, and so, yes, philip, thank you so much for joining me. I'm so excited to have you on here with me today.
Philip Pape: 3:33
I am so excited to be on again. I want to see you again on your show, so thanks.
Sarah Krieger: 3:38
Yes, of course, of course. What I want to do first is just can you give my listeners a little bit about who you are, where you're from and how you ended up in this and what makes you like I call kind of you the data king, like I literally listen to his podcast because he has these amazing guests on and it's all just so much about data, data, data. So can you go ahead and tell us a little bit about who you are, where you're from and how you got here.
Philip Pape: 4:05
Yeah, I suppose the data side comes from being an engineer. So I've been an engineer for more than 20 years, a software engineer, which is even more like nerdy and data centric, and so I get very annoyed when I can't figure out why something works. And so my whole life, through fitness, through nutrition, I was always a bit fluffy or overweight or always on diets. I mean, I'm old enough to have been on SlimFast and then Atkins. So we're, you know right about that generation in my mid forties and and I love being in my forties now, because I've kind of started to figure it out, you know, just starting to figure it out and uh, I did all the things right. I did, um, crossfit for about eight years. Eight years stressed myself to death doing CrossFit and doing all the diets.
Philip Pape: 4:47
But, having been an engineer and trying to figure it out, it wasn't until things got bad enough, let's just put it that way when I had a kid in my 30s, or my first daughter, and I kept getting more out of shape, the dad bod. It starts to hit you in your 30s and 40s where you can't make excuses anymore, or, for those of you with a fiery metabolism, in your twenties. It's going to. It's going to slow down eventually if you don't do something about it, right? So around the time I was going to turn 40, I just got fed up with it. I'm like, why isn't this working? Why isn't all this CrossFit and these cleaning jerks and like cutting carbs and doing keto? Why is it not working for me?
Philip Pape: 5:28
And I just dove headlong into or dived is the right way to say it, dived headlong into evidence-based nutrition and training and a lot of my early inspirations were the Muscle and Strength Pyramids by Dr Eric Helms and I think Andy Morgan was a coauthor.
Philip Pape: 5:45
A ton of podcasts, ton of videos, and this was a lot of. This was during the pandemic, so while people during that time were probably going the other direction in many cases with their fitness, I was starting to figure it out. I was putting together my home gym, I started strength training and about a year later I got into nutrition and then, almost a year after that, I started my podcast. I'm giving you the short version, but basically took a lot of learning and experimentation and a lot of that was learning how to track food and biofeedback and training and like how I felt to just see what worked and what didn't, along with the science, kind of like merging the two together, because if you're, if you fly in blind, or if you don't have a coach or help, the information is just overwhelming out here in the industry.
Philip Pape: 6:29
Even when you have three different people telling you and you trust them all, they're contradictory, right. So you finally like kind of started to figure it out. And then, just to make this story not longer than it needs to, be A guest on my podcast who was a power lifter and she was a coworker. She asked me to take over her nutrition coaching, like a few months later when her coaching was going to expire. So to get ready for that, I got certified and started working with free clients and then, through that process, figured out my systems, which are largely unchanged. They're definitely more efficient and effective, but they're very data centric systems, whereas I know you get a lot into also emotional and psychology. That, for me, came much later. It wasn't my strength, but by working with clients I became a lot more of an expert in those areas. So there you go.
Sarah Krieger: 7:21
No, I like that and it's interesting because, being an engineer, I mean really that's kind of what we do almost when we create our processes or when we are coaching a client. It's really it's very, it is very structured. Even though I do a lot of the mindset work, the emotional side of that, that's still kind of that's a structured element of this process, Right. So I think it's cool how it kind of like you're parallel, like you said, like I'm an engineer, but like that's kind of like what we do for wellness, essentially Like we're wellness engineers.
Philip Pape: 7:54
I don't know that's kind of cool. Yeah, yeah, I use physique engineering, wellness engineering. I think engineering comes down to systems, right and and structure. You said it great. I love the word structure because that's usually the word a lot of clients will use. They're like oh, it wasn't until I had this structured approach, even if the structure is around emotions, right, like it doesn't matter.
Philip Pape: 8:14
It's just awareness. We were talking about this on on my show. It's having awareness through some method, some framework, some step-by-step process that takes the stress off of you, that gives you some clarity, that gives you confidence that I can control my physique and I can control even my mental health, because they're tightly linked in many cases. So that's kind of where I come from with the show and with working with people.
Sarah Krieger: 8:36
Yeah, I love that. That's what I love. And speaking of this part of this, right, let's take that piece where we're talking about structure. Um, I know that we, we can see things go really the other way. Uh, I was actually watching. I don't do you ever follow, like jordan syatt I follow him okay I love him and he just did a whole mini, uh mini podcast.
Sarah Krieger: 8:58
He calls it yeah oh yeah, the pot, yep, uh. And he just did a post today on his Instagram about how he went so far the other way with all of this data that he had. You know, oh, I can be this lean and I can look like this and I can train like this and I can do all that stuff with all of this data. And how? From zero to 150? Because we can use data and it's great to have, but how do we prevent ourselves from going so extreme with it? I have to keep getting progress, I have to keep going. I have to keep losing weight. How do we find a balance with using the data that we get?
Philip Pape: 9:41
Yeah, that's a really great question. I think it comes down to it depends we were laughing about this on my my show that there's a spectrum of people's like propensity to do this. So naturally people will seek you out as a coach because you're a certain way Right. So people listen to my show will be like I'm so nerd, I love data. Give it to me. Like let's track everything at the same time, like biohacking and things like that.
Philip Pape: 10:03
I'm not track everything at the same time, like biohacking and things like that. I'm not. I'm not very much into that. Like I don't go overboard with the HRV tracking with your aura ring. I talk about it.
Philip Pape: 10:09
I think it's cool, I think it's a nice little side thing, but it does come down to the fundamentals. I'm like I don't care how much you're eating over here, doing over here, if you're not strength training, or I don't care how much you know um, or I don't know how many calories you have, until we understand your protein right. Like there's a certain priority that we start with to keep it simple, despite having the data. So when I tell my clients like we're going to collect a bunch of things, but I'm going to reduce the friction as much as possible for you and, as a coach, that's the way I take stress off of them and and I'm basically give them the emotional support it's like. Here's a couple things you need to do Track your food, track your workouts.
Philip Pape: 10:46
A lot of stuff's going to come through your watch, but don't worry about it. Like, at the end of the day, what happens in the first couple of weeks and you've seen this too, sarah is self-awareness starts to change their own behavior, and then the tracking doesn't become a chore. It's actually reframed as this thing's really helping me out. As far as the extreme you're talking about, there's a pocket of people who really like that, who like understanding oh, how much muscle am I gaining versus fat and how efficient is it? And like I've got a client, sarah, who wants to experiment with all the crazy Lyle McDonald diets, like the protein modified fast and the rapid fat loss, and I roll with him because that's what he wants and he's cool, he gets it and he loves data. Most, most people are not like that. Most people, it's like what are you eating? How much are you eating? You got protein, you're training, you're growing. We don't have to overthink it. So don't overthink it is my point.
Sarah Krieger: 11:34
Yeah, and I think that's where I think a lot of people get caught up, as you're talking about, like the Oura ring and the fitness watches, right? So here we are. We're all like. We are data driven, right. Oh, I'm going to get an X amount of steps. I'm going to get in.
Sarah Krieger: 11:50
You know, all this stuff, or my sleep, how I'm curious as to. I mean, you're talking about how you, how you help your clients, like, ok, we don't have to pay attention to all those things. We don't have to pay attention to all those things. What would you say, especially to those? We talked a little bit about this on your podcast when you were interviewing me, which was, like you know, making sure how many calories we're burning. Why Can we talk about the data there, about calories burned and why that might not really translate into actual burning of calories? Like this is something that I'm seeing a lot, where we think that we have to go exercise to work off the piece of cake, or I have to go go on the stair master for 45 minutes to burn 254 calories Exactly. I'm not really sure how people are getting that, but can you talk a little bit about how there's a disconnect here?
Philip Pape: 12:40
Yeah, that's a good one. Um, where do I start? So where do I start? So, first of all, when I work with folks and I use, there's an app that I like to use. It's called Macrofactor. You don't have to use it, but so far, unless you know differently, sarah, it's the only app I've found that isn't just a food logger, but it also estimates your rate of calorie burn. Rate of calorie burn.
Philip Pape: 13:06
And when people start using that, they say, well, where does it take your activity data? And I'm like it doesn't. I'm like let's think of your body as a system, as a black box. Energy comes in, energy goes out and, however, that energy changes based on weight, on the scale, over time not just the daily fluctuations, but over time, based on what you're putting in your mouth tells us really well what you're burning. Then the question is what do we do?
Philip Pape: 13:29
And what you're getting at is people try to burn more calories and eat less, and they burn more calories and eat less, and usually they're eating less in the wrong way, right, they're cutting the wrong things, or they're eating a lot of processed food, they're starving, they cut even more, they go on crash diets and then they're doing all this chronic metronomic cardio that honestly nobody likes, right, like only a tiny percentage of people really love doing quote unquote set, you know, steady state cardio. So I do love to explore, at least with my clients and on the podcast, how we use the data to get insights into how what we're doing affects our energy levels. And at the end of the day, I want you to feel energized and perform and be able to hit all the reps in the gym, be able to recover, get lots of stimulus from your lifts but not feel like it's wiping you out or making you super sore, and it's like this beautiful balance between it's called energy flux actually is the term people use. It's like I want to eat more and move more, but move more in the right way, by lifting, by walking, maybe a little bit of sprinting here and there and some play. And when you have that in the right proportions, you're feeling satisfied and potentially weight starts to come off anyway, because you're serving your body's needs and you're serving your satiety signals, your hunger signals, all of that and emotional eating.
Philip Pape: 14:44
It sounds like a side piece to all this, but it's actually super important, right? Because it controls you know what you eat, how you eat it, your patterns and everything. But people who are tracking and have this data tend to know what the heck's going on and then, if they don't change, the data continues to tell them that. So, anyway, I went off on some tangents. I don't know if you have specific questions related to that.
Sarah Krieger: 15:05
No, I mean, I like that because I feel like we get really caught up in the numbers, right, well, I have to track my data or I have to. I've used macro factor before. Um, I love Jeff Nibird and I love that and all those guys like he promotes it hugely. Uh, and it, it, it wasn't for me. I chose to stop using it, right, uh, because I would get really hung up. The the, not the data would actually make me then emotional and I was like I just really need to focus on what the protein is, what the fiber is and what my overall calories are, because it almost was like almost too much data coming at me. Um, personally, right, that's for me.
Sarah Krieger: 15:43
Um, so I'm curious then, leading out of that, like how do let's, let's talk about how, when we have so much like data coming at us, how then do we know what decisions we're supposed to make? How are we supposed to know what do I do with this data? Now, obviously, with that data, your clients have you right, but a lot of people don't know what they're supposed to do. Okay, so now I am feeling wiped after my workouts. I don't have any energy, I'm sleeping like absolute dog crap. Like what do I do now and how do? How do I know where I'm supposed to go from there?
Philip Pape: 16:18
I mean, I do think there's a bit of skill involved in understanding patterns of the data and that's why or data, or data, you know, data on Star Trek always got people for not calling them data. Anyway, are we British, are we American? It doesn't matter.
Sarah Krieger: 16:33
Well, it's funny because I started out saying data and now I'm saying data and I don't know.
Philip Pape: 16:37
I do that too. I do that too. So, which is plural for datum, which nobody uses, datum. We always say data as if it's singular. Anyway, that's me being a nerd. Um, so, yeah, I, here's a good example.
Philip Pape: 16:49
If someone like, say, listens to my show or goes into my Facebook group and I can tell they're completely lost, right, like, total babe in the woods, you know the type, right, like and this is no insult to anybody If you're listening and you're like, I don't know what to do, but I try to think of an education process. Like when you learn a new instrument, you don't start by playing Mozart, right, you start by playing a single note. And so what is their single note? Well, their single note is going to depend on what they do know already, or do not know, what they're willing to do, what they will, what's accessible, dah, dah, dah, dah dah. So I, you know, I'll do these like free calls with people and get on, and they're like I want to talk about training, I want to talk about nutrition, I got to do this, I got to do this, I got to do this, like, take a breath. Take a breath Like what's the, what's the gap of awareness you have right now. That would be easiest to solve as low hanging fruit. So ask yourself that question.
Philip Pape: 17:36
I think food is a good place to start nutrition, and that doesn't have to be calories and macros, like my fitness power macro factor. It could just be protein. How are you eating protein with every meal, right? Super simple eating protein fiber. Um, if it's your training, are you training? Like, honestly, this sounds crazy, but if you're not training your three days a week or whatever your you know goal is, even if it's one and you're not doing that consistently, I almost don't even care about how you're training. Let's figure out your time management. Let's figure out the space in your schedule. Let's figure out, like, how important this is to you, what's your why? So long story short, it doesn't have to be obsessive if you start small and then just build into that and get to the point of data that makes sense to you. You know, sarah, though, you have to be tracking something to measure it. Yeah Right, you have to track it to measure it.
Sarah Krieger: 18:28
Yeah. So you have to know and I think that you make a really good point there Like people are so worried about all the how much am I supposed to have? How many? How many minutes a day should I be? You know, training, how many minutes a day? Well, all this stuff. And you're like can we just make sure? And you said like can we just make sure we're eating protein at every single meal. Sometimes I have clients where I'm like do you know what a protein is?
Sarah Krieger: 18:54
Fair point, yeah, you know. Like, do you know what? Where there's fiber that's not in Metamucil, like we have to sometimes, it goes that far back and I say that because it's okay not to know those things, like so many people that I know they're like. Oh, I talk about this all the time, but peanut butter it's a protein and I'm like it's not a protein, guys.
Sarah Krieger: 19:14
Okay, it's a fat source, and that's what I hear all the time. Oh, but I'm eating eggs and sausage for breakfast Awesome, egg whites or whole eggs and turkey sausage or pork sausage, because that's going to determine what we shift, if we need to shift. So I think that you make a really good point. It's like, again, it doesn't have to be as complicated as what I think that this industry has made it to be, yeah, and like moving on from that, you know it's. I think that how do you, how would you say?
Sarah Krieger: 19:45
This is leading to another question, though but how would you say that? That the over, the overconsumption of all that information, how, how does that tie into? How do you, how do you kind of go for I don't know what I'm trying to say here the data versus the emotional, like, how do you get somebody to move from, like, okay, this is what we need, this is what the data says we need to do? But they're like I can't, I can't, I can't get through that, I can't move past this, or I can't, I can't eat more food, or I can't get to the gym, like you're talking about, like time management, like, how do you get somebody to take that data that you're receiving from them, but they have this really big emotional block. Are you able to get them to look logically at this or like how do you tie in that piece of it?
Philip Pape: 20:30
Yeah, that's a great question too, because the I joke with people that I, my brain goes to logic initially, but a lot of people's don't, and, like you're, what you're suggesting is that you have the data, you've measured the thing, you've got some awareness and now it's telling you something has to. You've measured the thing, you've got some awareness and now it's telling you something has to change. There's the what has to change, there's the how and there's the how. For me, Like, what's the thing blocking me?
Philip Pape: 20:53
And I'm definitely big into understanding roadblocks, challenges, anomalies and normalizing the fact that life is just naturally chaos in a good way, Like it's naturally unpredictable, and if you're kind of that stoic philosophy that the vast majority of things are actually out of your control, and if you realize that and just control the things you can, I think mentally that's an easier way to tackle life right, Like the obstacle is the way, so to speak. So, if a client now I keep talking about clients, obviously if you're listening and doing this for yourself, you have to go through this reflective process and be intentional. But it's like identify the one thing this week that was the obstacle, Because if you wanted to do certain habits and you didn't, something prevented you. Don't blame yourself. Don't say that I just need to do it, Like we joked on my show just, I don't need to do?
Philip Pape: 21:43
I just need to do it. No, that's not it, that's not enough. Okay, otherwise there'd be a million things I would never do if it was just up to willpower, trust me. Yep. So what is the obstacle? And then you just have to be a detective and go back to root cause. What's the root cause? And it you know. Sometimes it's deeper than others and sometimes you need a tool or process like, let's reduce decision fatigue.
Philip Pape: 22:02
If the issue was your friend keeps asking you to go out to dinner or to drinks at night, you have a lot of options. You could say no, or you can know that it's going to come and have your backup plan, your meal plan for that type of day, or you're going to the restaurant strategy or your whatever your posted note of how many drinks you're going to have. You know, like it's just thinking ahead with your past self, because we were talking about identity on my show. You talked about how your past self helped your current self. Well, everything you do today to plan ahead is an act of self-care for your future self. Meal plan, meal prep, strategizing and if, having, if then statements or if then strategies for these things is the way, in my opinion, to solve it, because they're going to happen. They're going to happen.
Sarah Krieger: 22:46
Yeah, I do that a lot. If this happens, then I'm going to do this, and I think that the if-then is really powerful, because the if-then can change if you need it to change. Right, if my friend asks me to go out, then I can tell them this. Or if I say yes, then I can do this. But even in the moment it's like okay, if I have another one, then what happens? How do I, what do I do now? Right? So I think that that one's so versatile because you can literally flip it right, right then and there like okay, if I get another drink, then this is going to happen. If I say no to another drink, then this is going to happen. Or this is how I feel, or this is what other people might say. Like, people might have comments about me not having another drink or just taking water. Um, so I think that if, then is super powerful. Do you find that your clients do have a really good like response to that?
Philip Pape: 23:36
technique. Oh sure, yeah, my clients are perfect and and and they just, they love me and every you know um no, I mean, but like honestly no no, I'm being honest too.
Sarah Krieger: 23:47
I love that.
Philip Pape: 23:47
I love that I do like on my show I joke about the coaching industry and myself and like we're not perfect, you know, and you should never claim to be. Yeah, I mean again, everybody's different. I tend to generally attract the person who is more like into the data and kind of side, but I will occasionally have a client who's like never heard of me and that's it. That's always interesting because I haven't like educated them through the podcast or through the basics yet and have to take them through that.
Philip Pape: 24:13
Look, I think you mentioned on the other show you have to have a conversation, you have to understand the person, understand their emotions. How can you be there for them non-judgmentally and take the emotional stress off? I think emotional recovery is a type of rest. It's a type of rest and recovery. And if, if a client, if I can be like look, don't stress, don't stress. I mean you can stress, but like I'm here for you, let's, let's go through this one step at a time. Uh, I can think of a client right now, sarah, who's fairly new to my program. She came in through a launch that I had and so it wasn't quite like seasoned with my stuff yet and there you can sense the impatience early on.
Philip Pape: 24:49
There's a lot of impatience of like I got to lose the fat, I got to lose the weight Right, and I'm slowly chipping away and finding her the parts that resonate with her, after realizing certain approaches were not working like the logical approach didn't work, and then the using data combined with emotion still didn't work, and I had to kind of slowly chip away at myself as a coach and learn about her to see what would help her feel like this is going to work for her, you know.
Sarah Krieger: 25:16
Yeah, and I think we talked we talked a little bit about this as well on the other episode, which was allowing yourself that space to say, okay, that didn't work. And I think again, as you just mentioned, we're all perfect, right, us coaches, we're just, we're amazing, you know right, even us as coaches have go, oh, that did not work with that client. Like, okay, now I know, like this potential type of person this might not work with, and stay away from it, like, okay, nevermind, and we move on from that. And then we're like, but again, we try again. We keep going after that next thing Be like, okay, well, let's try this instead.
Philip Pape: 25:52
So also taking that pressure of like this has to work or this is your only option, there's lots of options for lots of people, I think you know so yeah, I think I think if you are looking for a coach, look for somebody who's like a total, I'll say, bulldog or whatever, but very persistent, curious, skeptical, uh, growth mindset Like I. I try to convey through the pod One of the reasons I do the podcast to just like lay it all bare and let people know I take this stuff personally for my clients and for people even they're not my clients, you know they could just reach out for you know a Facebook message and I like want to help them. You know I want to. I don't want you to sit there frustrated and stewing and now the next 10 years you still don't have the result you want. Because there's a way, like there's always a way, and just know that that there's a way. Yeah, I think that's important.
Sarah Krieger: 26:39
I think it's huge, um. So I kind of want to talk about this part of it. We hear a lot of times, you know again, social media. I'm going to say this because it inundates us with all the things Meal timing, how can this meal timing we hear a lot about it and, oh, you have to eat 30 minutes or your protein synthesis is all this. It's not good, you're not going to grow muscles and all these things. Right, how does that work? When it comes, how can meal timing, or more meal structure, benefit the emotional side?
Philip Pape: 27:07
of the eating piece.
Philip Pape: 27:08
Oh, that's actually that's a great question, because it's it's tremendously helpful, especially when people come from a world where they think they have to eat a certain meal timing structure, like intermittent fasting Come on, folks, you know who I'm talking to or they have to eat three meals a day, or six meals a day, or snacks are bad, because snacks can be a great tool.
Philip Pape: 27:27
So it it does come down to the tracking of awareness of your hunger signals and your emotional triggers Kind of what we talked about on my show as well, where sometimes the simplest thing is to reduce that four hour gap in the afternoon where you're not eating and just put a snack in there. It might be Greek yogurt with some berries, right, where you try to check off all the boxes of I've got protein. It tastes good, it takes the hunger away, it fits with my calories, right, it serves all the things and it's not a chore. So, um, when I talk to clients about meal timing, I like to ask about training first. So if you're strength training or you should be strength who's not strength training listening to this?
Sarah Krieger: 28:06
I don't want to talk about that. There's a lot of people.
Philip Pape: 28:10
I know so well. That's where I start, because if you can fuel your training, it sets things off well for everything you're trying to accomplish with your body composition. It also sets yourself up for hunger signals elsewhere in the day, because we know training is linked to cortisol. How you eat is linked to recovery and cortisol and stress. Same thing goes for having like a good protein centric breakfast. You know, there's something to be said for what your grandma said about breakfast being the important meal, most important meal, because there is evidence that eating earlier in the day, again partly linked to cortisol, is going to make you less hungry later in the day.
Philip Pape: 28:49
Interestingly, even though your calories are kind of shifted to the front, doesn't sound intuitive, but it's true. Um, but it's different for everybody, right? So just tracking your hunger and then saying, okay, is it a meal timing thing? Am I eating at seven and then at four? Right, and I'm like starving in between? Well, that's an obvious solution to me when I see that. Or, or are you eating tiny meals and so you're never satisfied and you're eating like six tiny meals? Are you eating inconsistently? I think consistency of both calories and protein? And then, um, meal timing is actually telling your body. Things are safe and predictable, and that actually helps both with your calorie burn and your hunger signals. So yeah, there's a lot more where that came from.
Sarah Krieger: 29:32
Yeah, yeah, no, I think that's important. Again, we touched on this on the other episode. I have a client we talked about this client who eats like 700 calories of snacks, but her lunch and dinner are like 250 calories maybe at times. Right, this would be a case that I say that the snacks need to go. The snacks are happening because we're not eating a proper meal 250 calories in my opinion, for an 1800 plus calorie person, that that's what we're intaking. 250 calories is nothing. And so I've advised this particular client to increase those meals and kind of, there's a couple of snacks that she has in the cottage cheese and fruit. I think that's great, like that's a great snack and that's a great snack, like you said, between that lunch and dinner, where it might be four to five, maybe even six hours who knows, depending on your schedule right, I think that can be really beneficial.
Sarah Krieger: 30:22
I've had another client who I worked with a while ago and she was very successful on my program and she realized that if she could get in about 600 calories at breakfast and it'd be about 40 plus grams of protein, so typically she would have some Kodiak cakes with some additional egg whites and some yogurt and some fruit and things like that. Like she really beefed up her breakfast. She was like that was a game changer for me for the rest of the day. And I think people underestimate the process of try it, see what happens and just go from there Like it's all you're going to do is get more data and more feedback of this went well. This did not go well.
Philip Pape: 31:03
Yeah, I mean, this is where the dichotomy between having the information and knowing what to do with it is is a good one, and again, where coaching can help.
Philip Pape: 31:11
But even just being educated, um, I can think of clients who, in a fat loss phase, for example, where things get a little more tight, right, the tolerances get tight, the numbers get lower, and all that where the macro composition, combined with the timing, is very sensitive for that person, where if, like, exchanging some protein for carbs could be exactly what she needs to have all the energy that, the opposite being, she's constantly feeling like in a low energy state, which then leads to emotional eating, even though the calories are the same.
Philip Pape: 31:43
So, like thinking about that composition and it isn't always protein, right, if you get enough protein, you've got flex now to say, okay, protein, fats, carbs, which one goes up and down and toggles around, and it does come down to experimentation. So if you, if you're in fat loss, you're starting to lose fat at a decent rate, you know, at a normal, consistent rate, and then the hunger starts to ramp up, don't think you have to continue the same eating pattern throughout the fat loss phase. It's always dynamic. You know not just the calorie level, but even the timing and the macro proportions, because, think about it, as the calories come down, with metabolic adaptation, every the protein tends to stay the same and the fats and carbs come down. Well, that starts to hit your energy and your hormones.
Philip Pape: 32:26
And if you have more than enough protein, I might say, just give some of that protein to carbs and do it before you work out and all of a sudden, boom, game changer. I can do another four or five, six weeks in the fat loss phase and feel roughly the same amount of hunger, and then I don't have binges. You know binging episodes. So it is all tied to emotional eating from a tool and data perspective in that way.
Sarah Krieger: 32:47
Yeah, I was going to ask about about the macro side, right, cause we were talking about the meal timing side, but how does the macro specifics play into? And I think that's. I just recently did a whole podcast on calorie calculators with, like the rate, and we have all these formulas and all these calculations and these are wonderful and they're amazing, but like they're not the Holy grail, like you have to also intuitively be able to go these are not my numbers or this is what's happening, and I need to flux this a little bit or raise this, lower that. Um, I think that that's a huge piece to this that a lot of people again, coaching is. This is why coaching is beneficial and, uh, because you already don't know what to do when you're already inundated with with information overload and you don't, like I know I'm supposed to eat better or more protein. How.
Philip Pape: 33:35
Yeah, I agree, I agree. And also when you're, when you're in fat loss, like and I know you probably do this as well you don't just jump right in Like you've got to get everything stable and dialed in and know a little bit about the calories and macros and then understand that macros can affect calories, can affect your metabolism and can affect like it's a big vicious cycle or maybe a virtuous cycle. I'll give you an example right, we know protein burns a lot more calories when you digest it than carbs, and carbs burn more than fat. So if you're, if you double your protein, if you just do this in a spreadsheet, you'll see. But like the same 500 calories with much more protein, you're going to burn more of those calories, meaning your, your actual metabolism is slightly bumped up, even though the calorie intake's the same. And now you can be in the same deficit and eat more, or you can be in a bigger deficit and eat the same, which is a game changer. Now if you again, if you have too much protein, now you're eating into fats and carbs, that could be a problem.
Philip Pape: 34:31
So when you talked about macros, sarah, I think of minimums. I like minimums. So a protein minimum and then fats and carbs also should have a minimum for, but you need to figure that out. And then now, anything above that has a lot of flexibility, and you're good to go. And then the cal. Here's the thing, though. If you are barely hitting your minimums, whatever calorie level that is, you probably don't ever want to go below it, even if you quote, unquote need to to lose weight faster. No, you're going to be miserable forever. You just won't do it.
Philip Pape: 34:58
You're better off eating a little more yeah.
Sarah Krieger: 35:00
Yeah, you won't be. It won't be sustainable, right, you're not going to be able to stick to it. You're going to end up eating your arm off. And then you're like, oh, I did it again. I fell back into the same pattern. And here we are again on the same cycle that we've been on for 25 years, and that's the patience piece.
Philip Pape: 35:14
It's like it's not going to happen as fast as you think. Just assume it won't and that's okay. Weight, in my opinion, don't even have a target. I mean, clients will come to me with the target weight and I slowly chip away. You know, at the mindset of all we can control is how much we eat and the calories and the macros we eat and what we do. Our body's going to do, what it's going to do. We can optimize as much as possible, but given that, now tell me how long it's going to take to get to a certain weight, that's you can't control that part. You can't. You can only control what you're doing here now in the process. So it's empowering and it's liberating when you realize that.
Sarah Krieger: 35:48
Yeah, it is, um. So one of the last questions that I have for you, before we start wrapping it up, is I'm really curious about, um, the our hunger cues, right, I? This is one of the first things. Again, if somebody comes to me and they're like, oh, I never eat breakfast, I'm never hungry, that's not normal. So we need to change that. Like, never being hungry is not normal, guys, ladies, gentlemen who listen, which is not a normal thing. So I'm curious how do we determine hunger cues, fullness cues Like how do I know when to stop eating, how do I know when I'm actually supposed to be hungry? Or what that feels like. And it's relationship to emotional eating, like what does the scientific research say? Versus like how does that play a role in being emotional person?
Philip Pape: 36:32
human being. That's a big question, sarah. That's a loaded one because the the simple. I guess the simple answer is you. You will have to figure out the difference between psychological and real hunger, um, through some level of tracking or awareness. I mean again going back to that um, I have like a journal or it's not, yeah, I guess it's a diary with a scale in it that says, like here's your hunger scale. It's based on some of the validated hunger scales. Sometimes they have the different happy face down to the grumpy face.
Philip Pape: 36:59
Yeah, love that, love that, and it's like okay when you're hungry.
Philip Pape: 37:04
You go to this scale and you see what the threshold is Like. Be honest with yourself, and if it's below the threshold then it's potentially psychological hunger. And there's some like little tricks like go get a glass of water right or take a pause I know we talked about that on my show as well Just to kind of resolve whether it's physical or not. The problem is, people are eating in such a shitty way for so many years that the hormonal milieu, as they call it, are like so screwed up between their thyroid and their cortisol and their gut hormones, semaglutide all of that's involved, like the stuff you hear in the weight loss drugs. You've got those and it's all involved to just make it go haywire.
Philip Pape: 37:42
Honestly, I would go back to lifting weights as like the thing I would shoot to the top of the list for people, as if you wanted to pick one activity that would, quote unquote, solve a lot of issues, probably magically, in pretty short order. It'd be lifting weights, including peri post-menopause women who are worried about hormones and everything else lifting weights. And if you can do that for a while and then see what's left and then start dealing with it, cause it affects your hunger signals as well, I'm not doing too much. Cardio affects your hunger, right. So I would like put the behaviors in place that you know make hunger worse Like sleep deprivation makes hunger way worse and address those. If you're not doing those, come on like that's what we got to do. Do those things and then whatever's left you can potentially address. That's a little bit different than starting from emotions, which could be necessary for certain people as well. It's just my. It's my approach with most of my clients.
Sarah Krieger: 38:35
Okay, no, I mean and I think that's the thing is like it really truly is a complex situation. No-transcript was, say, doing a leg day versus an upper body day, versus. Because I was like man, leg days, you're moving so much more, should be moving so much more weight. That was like I feel like I am, I can't get full in it and I'm eating the same things that I do. You know, I'm a pretty consistent like.
Sarah Krieger: 39:23
I like, I like my stuff. I keep it simple. So I was like I'm eating the same things and I don't know what's happening until I realized, like I'm looking at my data in my logger for all my, all my lifts and I'm like, oh, this man, that's a lot more weight than I lifted yesterday, or, man that's, I'm lifting way more weight than I'm lifting on leg day, than I am lifting on, uh, you know, a press day or a pole day, even depending on if I have deadlifts right. Or even noticing on those kinds of days where I'm doing more of my core lifts that it's like, wow, this, I'm significantly more hungry. So it's like we're afraid to learn about what our body is trying to tell us.
Sarah Krieger: 40:01
It's constantly talking to us and we're like shut up, just shut up. It's true, it's true. I think we're so afraid to listen to it.
Philip Pape: 40:09
Yeah, and there's interesting situations like gaining weight to build muscle, where I have a client who's like gaining, gaining, gaining, and they're like why am I hungry now? I, where you know, I have a client who's like gaining, gaining, gaining, and they're like why am I hungry now? I'm up at 3,500 calories, why am I hungry? That's actually your body telling you something legitimate. Still, it's because you're about to hit a hard gaining plateau.
Philip Pape: 40:26
I've seen it over and over again and if you don't jack up those calories, my man, you are going to stop right now and you need to eat maybe another 300 calories, right.
Philip Pape: 40:41
So it is your body telling you what to do and your example of training. It's interesting because there's a lot of talk about calorie cycling, carb cycling, stuff like that, and people want to overthink this stuff before they got the basics down. Generally, for most people, I found, if you like eat before your workouts, if you eat consistently, if you get enough calories, the hunger signals generally work out for themselves to where you don't have to do all this optimization, manipulation. The caveat is then, once you've done that, your body, your unique body, may have patterns of hunger that you want to listen to beyond, within that, and so I'll see this in client data, where they're always eating more on these two days of the week it might not even be the weekend and I'm like what's going on here? And they're like, I don't know, I'm just hungrier or especially women with their cycle, some women are a lot more sensitive. I've learned that, something I didn't know before I got into coaching the, the there's four phases, not just two, and like how they, how they all interact with.
Sarah Krieger: 41:27
Yeah, it's called crazy and non-crazy, right.
Philip Pape: 41:31
Yeah, Somebody said the different, the different people she are. She is during the month, but yeah, even with that, and then what you got to do is say don't fight it. Like lean into it and say, okay, I'm going to plan ahead so that those days are the ones that have more food and that generally solves the problem. Like, stop fighting it If you're eating mostly whole, nutritious foods. Um, yeah, those are my thoughts on that.
Sarah Krieger: 41:52
Yeah, I think you know, kind of back to the, the hunger cues, kind of like we've like I don't know. I also I'm 41. So I grew up in this. You know, slim fast. I remember seventh grade I told my mom my volleyball coach told me I needed a slim fast before practice. No, no, no, that was just me trying to lose weight, like for real. That's what I did, so, but anyway.
Sarah Krieger: 42:11
So I feel like that we have spent so much time again not listening, suppressing you're not hungry, you don't need to eat. You just ate 27 minutes ago. What's wrong with you? Or you already had breakfast, you don't need anything else. And that's something I, you know my kids drive a lot of, why I do what I do right now, and it's something I'm trying to teach them like we need to listen to what it what our bodies are telling us. They're constantly talking and we have spent so much time suppressing our hunger cues no, you're not hungry, or then we don't listen. It's like, well, I was full about four donuts ago, but I'm just going to keep going, so the donuts aren't a problem tomorrow.
Philip Pape: 42:54
Yeah, sorry, go ahead. No, go go. No, it's a little bit like no. And also, if you think of our evolution, like we are wired to seek out energy, like we're wired for it to survive, and but the environment has changed massively, right? So we are now wired to get obese. We are we're wired to get obese in this environment. So the whole nutritious, whole foods, nutrient density thing is not anything to be taken lightly.
Philip Pape: 43:17
It is extremely important to look at the industry ultra processed foods, everything happening with weight loss, drugs not not to judge any of that, but to look at your own choices and say look, how do I get the flexible approach? Because and we're at why I say that, sarah, and you know this just as well I, I use your hunger signals are highly manipulated in the wrong direction When're eating food that's effectively been discombobulated into its ingredients. A bunch of ingredients that never exist in nature are put together and they're pre-digested for you, just to make it gross for people. Not that I don't love my Oreos like you do, and we can have them. We can have it.
Philip Pape: 43:54
In fact, when you're gaining muscle, you could include more of those in. But yeah, it's just not going to make you full, because it shouldn't. It's already been digested. It's bypassing a bunch of your gut. You know, your gut goes from mouth to your ass, right, and there's steps, and you're skipping a whole bunch of steps and those steps involve hormones and saliva that keep you full. So you're skipping it all, right. No wonder we have a problem with obesity and all that.
Sarah Krieger: 44:18
So yeah, yeah, it's interesting. You're talking about how things are kind of put together, already processed for you. Again, I love jordan. Jordan did a thing about how, like, even the way they stack a snickers bar together like create like specific things and triggers that happen in the brain that make you want more of the thing, because you have the nugget, then you you have the peanuts, which is salty, the chocolatey, the caramel.
Philip Pape: 44:42
I can taste it right now. Yeah, right.
Sarah Krieger: 44:44
So it's like it's wild, but it's a real thing that I think again, people aren't, they're just awareness, awareness, awareness, awareness. So I appreciate all your time.
Philip Pape: 45:10
Is there anything else that, like, we didn't touch on that. You're like, man, I really want these people to hear this. I got to say this and collect a little bit of data. Don't obsess about it. Just if you're not sure, ask Sarah, ask me, and we'll give you a tip on like maybe what's the best thing for you to look at right now and that'll just massively change the game for you versus the other 95% of people who are just wandering through life without a clue. Without a clue.
Sarah Krieger: 45:32
And there are so many. Don't be one of them, don't be one, don't be one, don't be the one, without a clue. So thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it. You guys, make sure you go check out Phillip's podcast Again. I call him the data king data king, whatever you want to call him and he's got some incredible, incredible guests on so many people in this industry that are just so fucking knowledgeable. So I again thank you so much for coming on here. I really appreciate you guys and I'll catch you on the next episode.
Philip Pape: 46:02
All right, and that was my conversation with Sarah Krieger about using data to understand emotional eating patterns, and what I love about these collaborations is they highlight how there's never just one approach to solving nutrition challenges. It's highly individualized, and while I naturally gravitate toward data tracking systems, sarah brings some other aspects about the psychology behind a relationship with food, and I think the most powerful approach honestly just combines the best of both perspectives using data to identify patterns while developing the emotional intelligence to understand what drives those patterns intelligence to understand what drives those patterns. As we discuss, something as simple as tracking your hunger levels or meal timing can reveal some surprises, possibly about when and why emotional eating occurs, and unless you have that, you just don't know. These data points they're not just numbers, by the way. They're sort of windows into the soul, into our behaviors, that can help us create meaningful and sustainable changes. That's what we're going for.
Philip Pape: 47:03
So, whether you personally are naturally more analytical like me or more intuitive about your nutrition, if you combine these, you're going to get a let's call it a complete toolkit to manage emotional eating. So I would say, be open to both. Be open to both because they can help you along the way. All right if you found value in today's episode. All I ask is that you hit follow on Wits and Weights right now to catch every episode when they come out Again Mondays, wednesdays, fridays and then go follow Sarah's podcast Don't Call Me Skinny in your podcast app because I believe she has some insights about nutrition and body image and other things that are really valuable to hear. Until next time, keep using your wits lifting those weights and remember that data and emotions are not opposite forces. They are complementary tools in building a sustainable approach to nutrition. I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.
