Ep 615: Breaking the Cycle of Binge Eating: Reprogramming Your Mind for Lasting Weight Loss with Dr. Andrea Maxim

Why do so many smart, motivated people struggle with binge eating, emotional eating, and losing weight despite knowing exactly what they should be doing?

In this episode of The Health Fix Podcast, Dr. Jannine Krause sits down with naturopathic doctor, master hypnotherapist, mindset coach, and author Dr. Andrea Maxim to uncover the deeper psychological and emotional roots of weight loss resistance, emotional eating, and self-sabotaging behaviors.

Andrea shares her personal journey into naturopathic medicine and discusses how her own weight loss transformation revealed the powerful connection between identity, self-worth, and health. Together, they explore how the unconscious mind drives many of our daily choices and why lasting weight loss requires more than diet and exercise alone.

You’ll learn how hypnotherapy can help reprogram limiting beliefs, why emotional eating patterns become automatic, and practical strategies to regain control of your relationship with food.

Whether you’re struggling with binge eating, emotional eating, weight loss plateaus, or simply want to understand how your mindset influences your health, this episode provides actionable tools to help you create lasting change.

Resources From The Show:

• Connect with Dr. Andrea Maxim
• Dr. Andrea on Youtube
• Dr. Andrea’s The Maxim Movement on Instagram
• Dr. Jannine Krause

Our Partners

Podcast Transcript

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Binge Eating and Naturopathy
03:00 Andrea’s Journey to Naturopathic Medicine
06:06 The Impact of Weight Loss on Identity
08:50 Exploring Emotional Eating and Hypnotherapy
12:05 The Role of Mindset in Weight Loss
15:00 Understanding the Unconscious Mind
17:58 Reprogramming Beliefs for Success
20:53 Creating a New Vision for Health
23:46 Reinforcing New Beliefs and Moving Forward
25:04 Assessing Our Environment and Influences
30:03 The Impact of Media on Mindset
34:19 Dismantling Emotional Eating Patterns
40:05 Empowerment Through Choice and Control
45:54 Embracing Our Human Experience

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Jannine Krause (00:01.16)
Andrea Maxim and welcome to the Health Fix Podcast.

Andrea MAxim (00:04.602)
I’m so excited to be here.

Jannine Krause (00:07.106)
This is fun since we know each other outside of the podcast here and we get to chat a little bit more. I’ve been looking forward to this. Also because I’ve never had anybody on the podcast to talk about binge eating at all. So this is gonna be fun because we’ve talked about eating disorders, we’ve talked about different things and of course.

Obviously binge eating is an eating disorder, but we’ve not went specifically to binging. And this is one of the things that I said before we hit record, like 50 % of my practice really does struggle with this. So of course I love to start off the practice, the whole podcast practice of talking about stories. How did you decide first that you wanted to be a naturopathic doctor? Then we’ll get into the binge.

Andrea MAxim (00:46.307)
Yeah.

Andrea MAxim (00:53.913)
Okay, so I am a naturopathic doctor here in Ontario, Canada. And my story of how I became a naturopath is very simple. I knew from when I was in kindergarten, around that time, that’s what my mom says is I was like, I’m going to be a doctor one day. And truly that vision never left, regardless of what age and what I was going through. However,

What I had only been exposed to was allopathic medicine. And I go to university, I’m in my dorm, everyone on my floor wants to go to medical school. And I was just like, I don’t think I want this that badly. This is not for me. Yet sciences and biology and health was all that I knew I was going to do. So fast forward to my fifth year in university, I did a thesis on

peanut allergy in a mouse model. And we were learning how we could re-inoculate mice with peanut allergy in small doses to see if we could overcome peanut allergies in general. And I started being now exposed to this natural alternative way of healing people. And I say to this day, Google saved my whole career. I kind of went to Google.

And I said, these are all the things that I want to learn. So I want to learn botanical medicine. I want to learn acupuncture. I want to learn physical medicine. And on the very first page of Google, naturopathic medicine was there. And I was like, what is this? And it was one of those moments where I just tunnel visioned on it and there was nothing else I needed to see. And there’s my school that I graduated from just 45 minutes away from me. At that time, it was the only one in Canada.

So I was like, this is what we’re doing now. And now I’ve been a naturopath for 15 years and I can’t imagine doing anything other than this.

Jannine Krause (02:59.15)
I can relate. I mean, it’s a fabulous medicine and it’s just we have so many tools in the toolbox. And when you’re looking at allergies, like that’s that is a fabulous thing to that I want to dive into for a second because so many folks aren’t aware of the different types of ways to deal with allergies using and of course it brought up my thought of NAAT.

Andrea MAxim (03:05.698)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea MAxim (03:17.113)
Mmm.

Jannine Krause (03:22.562)
Have you heard of NAPT? Yeah, I started thinking about that and I was thinking about all the homeopathics and even the toothpaste I was pitched at one point to help folks with working on their food sensitivities and food allergies. Did you end up in any part of your practice going into that eventually or like focusing on that or did you kind of divert once you got out of school?

Andrea MAxim (03:23.245)
Yes. Yep.

Andrea MAxim (03:30.297)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea MAxim (03:41.619)
Well, here’s what here’s the other part of my story is I knew as soon as I graduated, I was 100 % going to work with women in weight loss. That was my my whole thing. And that came from my personal story of when I was in high school, the three years leading up to high school, and it happened very shortly after my parents got divorced. And logically, I was like, I know they shouldn’t be together. Logically, this makes sense. Yet my body

responded in an incredibly difficult emotional way that only in hindsight do I understand now. And at the beginning of high school, I was 165 pounds, at that time probably five feet. I’m five foot two now, so not much difference. Yet I do recall this memory of stepping on the scale and my mom and all of her kindness.

noticed that I was gaining weight and was like, hey, let’s be healthy together and let’s use data. And I stepped on the scale and I was five pounds heavier than my mom. And in high school, now our value is by how people accept us. It’s very social. And it was like this light switch went off in my brain where all of a sudden I was no longer hungry. Legit.

Jannine Krause (04:46.446)
Hmm.

Andrea MAxim (05:05.88)
I remember looking in the auditorium and all of a sudden my brain was like, we no longer are hungry. This is not healthy. Yet it precipitated me to start to exercise four times a week in my basement, just doing hand weights. I was living off of one meal a day. Again, not healthy. However, six months later, here I am 45 pounds lighter. Now the ramifications of this

not only, you know, being more accepted and everybody noticing was now my family was showing me love that I wasn’t receiving prior to dropping the weight. And now I was getting all this praise that I wasn’t receiving before dropping the weight. And now I’m being invited to go shopping and I can basically wear whatever I want to. And I’m getting more praise. And again, in hindsight, I didn’t appreciate

the mental dynamic that came with that of, only when I look a certain way do I get the love and affection and praise that I was craving. And it brings up a lot of old wounds, right? I’m not good enough or I’m a disappointment or all these things. So weight loss was always going to be where I landed as an atropath. And weight loss

as I know we’re gonna talk about as we go on, is an incredibly deep rooted thing. It is so multi-layered. It is so multifactional and it impacts every layer of our being from physical to mental to emotional to spiritual. And by the word spiritual, whatever faith you follow is perfect. And I hit a wall.

with patients very early on where I wanted them to be so successful. And then in the naturopathic world, as you know, it’s very physical. It is a physical tool. So we’re using herbs and diet changes and lifestyle changes and exercise changes. And I would hit this wall where we’d get success, life would happen and my patients would reverse.

Andrea MAxim (07:24.464)
or we would start to go really, really good and be on track and then their mental chatter would take them and derail them to the point where I almost wanted to leave practice altogether. I was like, I don’t know why this is such a challenge. And being a healer as you are, I wanted them to be more successful than they did often. So I took that on. So now I’m a mom.

Jannine Krause (07:48.013)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea MAxim (07:52.693)
with a husband all happened within 14 months of meeting my husband married first child first home all the things that’s a story for another day and I’m starting to notice some patterns showing up in me again like emotionally eating like nighttime binging like holding on to emotions like all the people pleasing and the resentment because of that and I was starting to gain weight again

Jannine Krause (08:00.546)
Okay.

Andrea MAxim (08:22.144)
And I decided I’m going to learn a different way of how to heal myself. And my very first toe dip into the space of the unconscious mind was hypnotherapy. Legitimately dropped in my world. Again, Google, Google is obviously my, my, my lifeline. And it was grace space hypnosis. Grace space hypnosis has an app.

Jannine Krause (08:35.608)
Nice.

Jannine Krause (08:41.56)
Thank you.

Andrea MAxim (08:50.36)
that you can download for, think, 97 a month or maybe even less than that. And you can just start dabbling in her hypnotherapy audios. And I was like, how fascinating. And it just clicked. And so I got my very first designation as a hypnotherapist, and then I was hooked. And I wanted to dive as deep as I could and master the unconscious mind. And that journey took me from 2022 to now.

And so now my approach in practice is very much integrative of my naturopathic license, what I know about the unconscious mind, and now the results and success that my clients are getting is so much more easy and effortless. And that’s what spurred me to really dive deeper into what are some of the mindset blocks, mindset behaviors,

that show up that sabotage our weight loss results. And that’s where emotional eating, nighttime binging really fell into my lap. And I’ve been going all in on that for the last two years.

Jannine Krause (09:59.798)
Nice, nice. It’s always fascinating to hear everyone’s individual story because we can all resonate. And as women, think, you know, just going back to what you were saying in high school and…

I wish it weren’t that way, but it is. And we’re all trying to hang out, we want our tribe, we want the cute boys or however you’re looking, you want the attention. And unfortunately, a lot of us will do desperate things to get the weight off and.

Andrea MAxim (10:18.136)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea MAxim (10:22.424)
Right.

Jannine Krause (10:31.31)
Right now, one of the biggest factors that I’m seeing is, you know, with all of the GLP ones, I love them helping people with inflammation. I love to use it that way. However, I do think we need the subconscious mind part of it because as most folks who are listening, but also, you know, you come off these and if you didn’t, and I always tell folks, if you didn’t learn the lesson from the GLP, now the weight’s going to come back on. Nothing will have changed. And we also have a lot of people who keep using them because of the apathy

Andrea MAxim (10:55.596)
Yes.

Jannine Krause (11:01.274)
tight suppression component and we’re just overriding. Have you worked with folks in that realm and found, like do you have folks in your practice that are working with the GLPs in addition to working with you?

Andrea MAxim (11:02.422)
Right. Right.

Andrea MAxim (11:13.25)
From a mindset perspective, no. In the naturopathic perspective, yes. However, a lot more rare, maybe it’s just where I’m located, because I’m in a very small town. So it might be different if I was in a big city like Toronto. Yet I’m going to kind of talk about this from the exact perspective that you’re describing.

where I had a woman that started to work with me and her number one goal was to do the gastric sleeve or the gastric bypass surgery. And in order to do that, she had to lower her weight to a certain threshold where then the surgery would be successful. So we worked on that for three months and she lost 30 pounds with me.

What we built and exactly what you said Janine is we built her identity.

around a woman who can lose weight and build the confidence and change her diet and lifestyle practices. So that when she had the surgery, and this maps over into GLP-1 perfectly, so that when she had the surgery, the drasticness of what that surgery does in the way of physical weight loss does not match the identity unless the identity is there.

Jannine Krause (12:42.446)
Hmm.

Andrea MAxim (12:42.538)
So now what I’ve seen with her is because we did the identity work prior, she has now gone on to lose over a hundred pounds and completely changed her life. Her confidence is there, her self-worth is there, her relationships have changed. Like she’s an entirely different person and she consistently reminds me it was because of the work prior. So now let’s map it over to GLP-1.

It’s the exact same story. GLP-1 does delay gastric emptying. That’s why we can start to lose a lot of the emotional eating behaviors, because we legitimately aren’t hungry. Yet, as soon as we go off that medication, unless we’ve learned the lessons like you’ve said, the identity hasn’t shifted. We just had physical result change. And…

That’s really the real question. And as a practitioner, if the GLP ones get people out of the red zone, I’m all for it. Yet the conversation still has to be around, well, if you’re not planning on staying this lifelong, which most of the patients that I’ve worked with don’t want to be on it forever.

then what are we going to install to make sure that when you come off of it, you stay successful instead of that immediate 75 % rebound, which the scientific studies show will happen, especially if you’ve been taking it for over two years. So that’s why when we’re talking about health and specifically in the realm of weight release in any capacity,

to stay in the physical realm is gonna be a disadvantage almost every single time until the mindset is right, then it will trickle down into the physical and then we can hold it in a different capacity. And I can’t wait to kind of dive deeper into that. So what’s coming up for you from that perspective.

Jannine Krause (14:43.288)
Well, it’s always the statement that I probably even said myself, I know that client say all the time is I know what to do, I just can’t do it. Or I know what to do, it just never works for me. And that’s where a lot of folks, like you said, they’re doing the physical things, they’re not working on the subconscious side of things because we’re trying to attack this from something in a manner that it’s not the root issue. So yes, I think.

Andrea MAxim (14:47.448)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea MAxim (15:01.452)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jannine Krause (15:11.81)
I would love to dive into that more because so many folks are going, you know, going down that pathway of like, what’s wrong with me? Why, you know, why do I keep repeating the same pathways? And so tell us more, tell us more.

Andrea MAxim (15:18.466)
Right.

Yeah. Okay. When I speak to women that enter into my world and they say exactly that, I know all the things. I know all the things. Janine, you know all the things. And the question becomes when we know the things and we want this outcome and we keep brunting up against the same pattern, well, we have to recognize that this isn’t a logical problem.

Logically, we know exercise helps. Logically, we know what we need to eat and what we shouldn’t eat. We know all those things logically. And if logic alone isn’t working, then it has to be something illogical, which is now where we enter the unconscious mind. Your unconscious mind is running 94 % of your day.

Which until I realized this, I had no idea. I just lived in this pragmatic, very physical world. Your unconscious mind is literally driving every aspect of your day. And your conscious logical mind is the 4 % that is literally a robot doing what your unconscious mind tells it to do. So when we are brunting up against something that is challenging, difficult, hard,

It’s not because we don’t logically know the things, it’s because there are programs that are running in our unconscious mind that need to be deleted. And the analogy I always give is your unconscious mind is no different than a phone. And if you are running programs from childhood, so based on us and your audience, three, four decades old phone over here, so 1970s, 1980s apps,

Andrea MAxim (17:10.933)
and we’re living in 2026. Well, the apps aren’t going to work. We can’t download 2026 apps onto a 1970s phone. And we know that logically. The unconscious mind is no different. And so here’s where we need to now explore what

Programs are running because the oldest program will win so you may have a new program of I’m ready to be successful at releasing weight Well, that’s very very tiny compared to this big four decade old app that’s been rooted so deeply that it’s running everything because every program that’s running instantly impacts every behavior every belief

up to a magnitude of 50. So you can imagine if we’re running, let’s say, the old program and a lot of women carry this, the I’m Not Good Enough program. And that shows up everywhere. Now, if we installed that before the age of seven, which is when most of that programming is happening, because we are purely unconscious from zero to seven.

Jannine Krause (18:12.556)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea MAxim (18:29.698)
There is no conscious filter. And our unconscious mind directly listens to everybody that we think of as an authority figure all day long. TV, our teachers, our parents, our siblings, any extended family members, friends, anybody that is an authority figure is mapping our programming.

we can’t uninstall anything. It is purely a sponge like they say for children. They are just little sponges. Well they are. And we don’t know when that significant event happened. Yet it could have been something as simple as I wanted to wear this dress. My mom said that’s not good enough to wear to this party. I decided to believe I’m not good enough. And that’s how it starts.

It’s amazing how nuanced and how simple it is for these roots to start to grow. So now I’ve installed, I’m not good enough. Imagine how that’s gonna show up later on. Well, I’m not good enough to be a size four. So why would I bother? Sabotage, sabotage. I’m not good enough to be successful at this health regime or staying in an exercise compared to so-and-so.

Well, sabotage, sabotage. I’m not good enough to show off this new outfit because I can see there’s like some roles or I can see a stretch mark, know, sabotage, sabotage. And it shows up in all aspects of your life, yet we’re gonna stay in the health realm for today. So now we can trace it back and say, okay, I’ve now become aware of this old program. So the next question becomes, well, what do I do about it?

And oftentimes, and if you’re brave enough, in that moment, you can claim, F that, I am more than enough. And claim that new identity, no different than for any woman who ever was not pregnant, took a pregnancy test, found out she was pregnant, and in 30 seconds changed her habits, changed her outlook, changed what she ate and drank.

Andrea MAxim (20:54.996)
stopped smoking, our unconscious mind is that powerful. So I truly believe if you are fully convicted, you can say, no, I am now claiming the identity of a woman who is more than enough. Now watch how things start to play out in your world. Now that’s going to take repetition and a lot of repetition in the beginning because your unconscious mind is no different than a muscle.

And what we’re talking about here is your reticular activating system, your R-A-S. Where if I were to say right now to everybody, look around your room and find all the things that are blue. You will be able to narrow in on just the blue things and it’s like everything else fades away. And then if I say now, erase, like clear your mind and now look for all the things that are green in your room.

Jannine Krause (21:44.664)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea MAxim (21:52.811)
Now your RAS is only finding what’s green. This is no different than when we say, look for this particular car, you know, whatever. So the more we train our brain that we are more than enough, the weaker this old program becomes. No different than if we just stopped giving it sunshine and water. The weed will naturally die.

As we’re doing that, we’re now simultaneously rooting this brand new, beautiful plant. And it just takes a lot of nurturing in the beginning, no different than a seedling, where it will then start to root and this becomes our new operating system. And there is evidence of this happening everywhere, where we get to a pain point that’s big enough where we’re like, I’m done. I’m not gonna live like this anymore. And we instantly make a change in that moment.

And this is how people have these massive breakthroughs. So that’s one way. And I’m sure your listeners are like, well, that’s easier said than done. You know, I know, I resonate with that and I can’t stop it. So now this is where we start reaching out to support systems that will help you stay in this new identity of what you want to claim. And…

with my team, we can go even deeper to literally delete that app, no different than deleting it off your phone. And that’s always on the table. But in the context of this and for your listeners to really hear me, you have more choice than you think that you do. And so when I talk to women in the emotional eating realm, there, I will ask when the emotional eating problem is gone,

What would you be doing differently than you are now? And it’s amazing how challenging it is for us to imagine a life that doesn’t match what we have right now.

Andrea MAxim (23:52.769)
And yet when we give ourselves a little bit of time, we can start being like, yeah, if the food noise wasn’t there, I would just be present. If I wasn’t obsessing over food, I could go out to eat with my friends and not worry about pre-researching the menu first, not worrying about all the restrictions that I have to put in place, not worrying about being like, well, F it, I’m here. I might as well blow it and here we go.

When the emotional eating problem isn’t there, I’ll have more confidence. Where I can enjoy opening up my closet door and pulling out those pieces that I haven’t worn in years and actually love the way I look. When the emotional eating problem is gone, I can actually look at myself in the mirror and start to smile instead of avoiding mirrors. And when we get into this place where we start to create this new vision,

for what we want, we can easily start to see how the pain is now a non-negotiable, that it’s time for it to go.

So how else can we start to reinforce this new belief? And if I’m going too long or deep into this, certainly interrupt me. All good, we’re following along.

Jannine Krause (25:08.992)
It’s great. Keep going.

Andrea MAxim (25:13.46)
So just like we talked about the RAS, meaning you can zoom in on just blue or green things, this is where I challenge women to really start to assess what their environment is reinforcing. How often do we scroll on our phone? I personally scroll on my phone at least once a day. Now I don’t fall into two hour loops, but I can. What I’ve actively done

is made sure that when I see something that shows me a life that I don’t want, it shows me values that I no longer want to have, it makes me feel a certain way. So if my feed is full of 20-somethings in beautiful bikinis and I feel like I’m comparing myself to them or how nice it must be for them to have a beautiful body, knowing that they’re 20 and I’m in my 40s,

And if I feel negatively about that, well, it’s my job to start to unfollow, delete and hide that information. And instead, what I’m going to actively be searching for is things saying, you can have everything you want today. You are one choice away from a better life. Here’s all the things that you want. Here’s some women that are in their 40s that are living their best lives as a size six or an eight.

things that validate where it is that I want to grow to. And the more we surround ourselves with that, our RAS is naturally gonna match that. And things become a lot easier. And just like, and I forget who it was, was it Jim Rohn who says, are the sum of the five people you spend your time with. I could be misquoting the author of that.

It is also true for when you’re spending time alone, what are you investing in? What are you watching? What are you listening to? For example, I love me some reality TV shows. We could talk this entire podcast on Perfect Match, Love is Blind, Temptation Island. Like, I love that. Yet what I had to use discernment on is, I watching this drama?

Andrea MAxim (27:33.665)
And am I starting to bring that into my marriage? Or am I watching this drama because I don’t have drama in my life and this is my fun little escape. I’ll tell you a story. This is kind of an aside. I love documentaries and true crime. I mean, most women here are probably on that bandwagon. And Criminal Minds was a show that my husband introduced me to and I fell in love with it.

So I’m 10 seasons too late into the whole journey of the show and I wanted to catch up. So every day I’m watching a few episodes of Criminal Minds as I’m just puttering around doing odds and ends, working on my computer. And after a month of doing that, Scott would, my husband Scott would go out with his buddies and I’d be like, I need to know what time you’re coming home by. And he’d say, well, it’s probably gonna be after 11 or 12.

And I would catch myself staying up and I’m a 9.30 PM bedtime girl. I would catch myself staying up until I heard him come into the door and then I would fall asleep. Then the next week he’d be like, I’m going out again. was like, I need to know what time you’re coming home by. And he’d say, I don’t know, probably after you’re in bed. And I said, I need you home by 10. I am not able to fall asleep without you being here. I need you home so I can go to bed at a reasonable time.

And then he said to me, he said, I think you need to stop watching that show because before you started watching Criminal Minds, you didn’t have these fears and now you’re starting to be affected by it. And that clicked for me in that moment. I was like, my gosh, he’s right. Because I was embedding myself into this world of fear, especially women being attacked.

break-ins, home invasions, all the things. And I started installing that in my real life. And the moment I decided to stop watching that show, I recalibrated back to a neutral nervous system. And so we take a lot of this for granted as, it’s just a show, or it’s just a podcast, or it’s just venting with my girls. Your unconscious mind is taking it all personally.

Andrea MAxim (29:55.501)
So that is a really beautiful up level on if this isn’t what you want, start really exposing yourself to what it is you do. And naturally those old programs will start to go away. So that’s that.

Jannine Krause (30:09.678)
That’s a great point because you know, I don’t think I’ll…

A lot of people think about their friends, right, and their family members, but I don’t think they think necessarily about what they’re consuming on television in particular. I mean, just watch the news for five minutes and see how you feel about things. You know, it’s, I haven’t watched TV in years. I stopped probably about five years ago altogether just because of the impact, right? And at this point, you know, I’m not saying that everyone needs to throw out their television. You just have to be aware of, you know, how these things impact you. I also think

Andrea MAxim (30:39.894)
Okay.

Jannine Krause (30:45.184)
And this is one of the things that impacted me and you just got my mind thinking about it. I still watch all of the cooking shows. And at my heaviest, I was really deep into trying all these different new recipes. And I wonder if that kind of thing too can have an impact here if you start getting hooked on certain cooking shows or things of that nature. mean, even that side of things.

Andrea MAxim (30:53.143)
Yeah.

Andrea MAxim (31:10.328)
And that’s going to really be person dependent. So there’s a few elements we can unpack around cooking shows. For me, when I watch a cooking show, I get hungry. It’s rare that I will watch a cooking show without eating. So I know that I need to be very careful or cognizant of what I’m choosing to eat while watching these shows. The other part of this could be quite healthy in that you’re experimenting with new foods and flavors. And now we have to identify

Jannine Krause (31:16.962)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea MAxim (31:40.455)
Okay, while they cook with a lot of flour, is flour good for me or not good for me? Does it create inflammation for me or not? And oftentimes that’s what we’re fighting against the most is that bloat and inflammation from the food choices that sure, they can eat with all the butter and all the things, yet my body may not be able to. So that’s kind of a level of discernment. Yet what I wanted to also address is

Jannine Krause (32:05.294)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea MAxim (32:10.294)
back to our identity conversation. So let’s use the example of a smoker. Janine, are you a smoker?

Jannine Krause (32:13.538)
Mm-hmm.

Jannine Krause (32:18.816)
No.

Andrea MAxim (32:20.266)
Now, you could watch all of the Food Network shows you wanted to and would you feel compelled to smoke? And you could be, right? You could be surrounded by all the most amazing cigars, cigarillos, cigarettes in your kitchen and would you feel compelled to pick one up and smoke it? Right. And that’s because you identify as a non-smoker.

Jannine Krause (32:26.826)
No, absolutely not.

Jannine Krause (32:41.749)
Absolutely not.

Andrea MAxim (32:47.722)
So when we shift our identity to that of a non-emotional eater, the same becomes true. Where it doesn’t matter what I’m watching. It doesn’t matter whether there’s a plethora of yummy foods on the table or not. Whether I’m eating out, whether I’m traveling and out of my comfort zone. I will still be able to regulate my eating consumption from a place of choice.

not a place of no control. And that’s where we need to start working towards.

Jannine Krause (33:25.358)
It’s a huge shift. mean, it’s definitely a huge shift for folks. And, you know, for years, I would have trouble with parties, right? Or have trouble, you know, when the food was always out and just right in front of me. And I think for…

a lot of people that is a key point, and then also traveling. And you had just mentioned, yes, with travel, do I need to go to all the new restaurants? Do we need to go to all the new restaurants? Do we need to try out all the things? Do we need to have the cuisine or the fun thing, snack, du jour that’s out there?

Andrea MAxim (33:44.237)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea MAxim (33:55.317)
Okay.

Andrea MAxim (33:59.17)
you

Jannine Krause (34:01.738)
Identity is such a biggie. Now, obviously you are saying you could get it to switch pretty quickly and a lot of folks probably would be a little bit of an eye roll, like you’re right. But I do know, I do know with hypnosis and different things, it’s absolutely there. What kind of things are you having folks doing, like say while they’re traveling, countering different triggers that may be their things, whether it’s a party, a holiday party, all of that.

Andrea MAxim (34:20.962)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Andrea MAxim (34:28.536)
So I’m going to start from just dismantling the automated, seemingly uncontrolled pattern of food. And this is exactly what I teach inside my emotional eating program called the Five Minute Binge Breaker. And we’ll link to that, or I can share that with anybody who is interested. Inside that program, I have a four-step protocol. And that four-step protocol is very simple.

And your neurology is very simple. So we don’t want to over complicate it yet we want to work this. And if you don’t work it, it will not work. There’s a very big difference between intellectualizing a tool and using the tool, especially when it’s inconvenient. And I don’t identify as an emotional eater now. And I still use this tool every once in a while.

So the tool goes as follows, regardless of where you are, regardless of what time of the day it is, regardless of what you’re doing, you can run this. And that’s why I love it. The first thing is you’re gonna actively pause before you put anything into your mouth. Now, if liquids and alcohol is also a problem, include them. So right before I take my sip of coffee, I’m gonna pause.

And I’m gonna quickly ask myself, am I hungry or thirsty? And if the answer is yes, perfect. Continue for that one sip or bite. If the answer is no, I’m not thirsty, then the next question becomes, what was I just thinking or feeling? More often than not,

We had a thought of the past. We were reminiscing on the stressful day. We were feeling bored. We were feeling lonely. We were feeling whatever, anxious. And then the fourth step, which is the most important, is now do anything other than consume. That could be, you know, and I’m just looking around my desk right now. That could be, just gonna brush my hair. Anything other. That could be, I’m gonna pick up my phone. That could be, I’m gonna stand up and do squats.

Andrea MAxim (36:45.26)
That could be I’m gonna leave the room entirely. That could be I’m gonna declutter a puzzle. That could be I’m gonna open my laptop and look at my email. That could be I’m gonna go to the washroom. I don’t care what it is. What we’re doing by following those four steps, all in sequence, is we are consciously bringing the pattern to our awareness. So it is no longer running in the back of our mind, it’s now fully in front.

Jannine Krause (37:08.526)
Hmm.

Andrea MAxim (37:13.036)
The second thing we’re doing is we’re pausing and then we’re asking, am I really hungry or thirsty? Do I really need this? And this is the difference between a non-emotional eater that can have a few bites and feel satisfied versus someone who’s like, well, I have to finish everything on my plate because that’s how I was raised, right? If your answer to question two is I am not hungry.

then this is when we can start putting things away. Be like, I’m satisfied. I’m full. I’m good. Then the third part is what was I just thinking or feeling prior to doing that? Well, I was thinking about my mom saying, finish everything on your plate. Okay, got it. Four is do anything other than that. That could be just get up, you know, do a little shimmy, sit back down. It doesn’t matter. When we work that,

And I tell my clients for the first week, whether you’re eating breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, late night eating, transition eating, I don’t care. Work the four steps and then tell me how it goes. Typically by the end of that first week, I’ll have women go from a seven or eight out of 10 to a two. Because they’ve now realized how much more choice and control they have and they didn’t know that prior.

consciously because this pattern was just running. So when we’re traveling, a non-emotional eater would be able to enjoy all the foods and appreciate that there’s consequences to overeating, right? There are still nights where I’m like, I just want movie theater popcorn and I appreciate the consequence of that choice. Yet I’m consciously going to eat it because I want it.

as opposed to it’s 10 o’clock, I feel lonely, I’m gonna eat popcorn and all of a sudden the bag is done and I don’t even remember having the second bite. Those are two very different reactions or responses to food. So now when we’re out traveling, we can still enjoy all the things and actively choose if we’re gonna keep going or not.

Andrea MAxim (39:31.607)
Because even if you’re not hungry and you’re like, am not hungry, but this pasta is so freaking good. I’m eating the whole thing. Go for it. Don’t blame it then that it was just automatic or it was running behind the scenes or you don’t remember choosing that choice. And this is empowerment, right? This is us staying in our personal power where we can live and eat and enjoy whatever we want to. Yet.

staying in that choice place doesn’t make it a problem anymore. Now we’re choosing and we’re also choosing our consequences of, and that’s okay, right? So how does that like shift things even for you?

Jannine Krause (40:17.452)
I think for a lot of people and myself included, when I realized there was a choice, because I called it alien hijackings, bag of chips, next thing you know, you’re like, how, where, where did I go, what happened? And so one of my biggest jokes of course is that, but at the end of the day, it’s a choice, right? That I chose to do that and I chose to say F it and do it. And that happens, know.

Andrea MAxim (40:21.272)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea MAxim (40:26.36)
Yeah. How, right?

Yes.

Jannine Krause (40:45.08)
probably to a, I know it happens to a lot of women, but it’s also for, you I can only speak for myself in terms of choices, right? And the land for me on that is when we think about the fact that everything is a choice. And if we choose to devour a bag of really delicious chips, then all right, great. That’s awesome.

That happened, move on. But what, you know, in the past for me, I would ruminate on it. I’d be like, why the heck did I do that? You know, my gosh, I’m gonna gain 55 pounds. Like, you you just…

Andrea MAxim (41:08.941)
That’s

Andrea MAxim (41:16.888)
Right. Okay, you actually just nailed it. That is the most empowering reframe after a overindulgence where you say that happened, now what? Truly, that statement that you just kind of said very easily, when we use it with the right intention becomes a massively powerful shift because…

when we use it and we say, well, that happened, now what am I gonna do about it? If you choose to create a whole story and meaning and go onto a big guilt spiral, will you actively chose that after saying that statement to yourself? Which there’s no room for story. It’s happening to you. So the next thing could be, well, that happened again, now what am I gonna do? I realize I need more support than what I’ve got.

That happened now, what am I going to do? I realized that I’m going to go for that 45 minute walk that I was coming up with all the excuses to not do. Right? That happened now what? You know what? It was worth it. I had the best time. And I’m just going to enjoy it. All of that is still choice. Yet when we know, we can’t unknow what we know.

And when we know that we’re an emotional eater and when we know we are more successful by being supported by someone, being accountable to someone, and we don’t do that and stay in vicious independence, that’s also something you are choosing, right? And the excuses can come up. I don’t have the time, I don’t have the energy, I don’t have the money, all fine. There are a lot more resources, even free.

even very low cost that can still support you at just getting to the next level. Maybe not all the way to the end of your journey, but just start planting some new seeds, which is growth. And that is a core need that we have as humans is to grow. Because when we’re not, we’re stalling. And that’s when we feel stuck. And that’s when we start getting low energy. And that’s when we become apathetic. And that’s when we start doing the thing, the thing.

Andrea MAxim (43:38.625)
And our level of pain gets bigger and bigger and bigger. So when we know we can’t unknow and you still have choice. So if I were to say very honestly to you and your audience, I know that I would love to lose 15 pounds. I don’t want to prioritize it right now. And I am choosing that choice. I have other things that I want to prioritize right now.

and I have to be okay with that versus the spiral of I need to be doing all the things and I’m not perfect here so I’m not perfect there. The overwhelm, the overwhelm. My to-do list is already five weeks long. I decided to let certain things go for now because I truly don’t want it that badly.

And that’s also okay. It’s okay to say now is not the time. However, if you are going to say now is not the time, you also don’t get to bitch and complain about it either. So it’s taking the story away again, right? We’re keeping you away from that victim pain island as much as we can and keeping you on the path to solution island, which means staying in that personal power position.

of I’m choosing not to prioritize this right now. And that’s okay. I’m choosing to actively prioritize this and I’m gonna resource everything I can to get me out of this. Both options are fine. It’s when we sit on the fence or keep going back and forth or we’re in constant conflict with I should and I really don’t want to, right? That’s very painful.

Jannine Krause (45:32.001)
Hmm?

Andrea MAxim (45:33.612)
just pick a side and reevaluate tomorrow. We reevaluate later on today, but in this moment, just pick a side. And it’s amazing how that lowers all of that ruminating that you were describing, because now there’s no room for a story when we make a decision, right? Because we decided.

Jannine Krause (45:55.663)
That’s so good. That’s so good. So, so relevant because I mean, I hear a lot of the stories. I’ve told a lot of the stories, you know? It’s where it’s, you know, I’m no, no, what do we call it? Angel here, you know, I’ve, I’ve told a lot of And, you know, I think for a lot of women, it’s, it is just owning it and being like, all right, pick a side. I love it. Pick a side. Pick a stinking side.

Andrea MAxim (46:11.528)
my god, me neither. Yeah.

Jannine Krause (46:23.252)
and enroll with it and be cool with it.

Andrea MAxim (46:23.618)
Yeah. Yeah. And here’s where I just want to like give a quick clap and just say, yay, human. That is a fun little thing that I come back to often where we will have emotions. We will mess up. We are innately infallible.

and perfection equals failure every single time. All or nothing thinking equals failure every single time. Yet we are all human and until we learn a different way, we can only do the best we can with the resources that we have. So just for everyone listening and even for us, you, me and all the women out there is we are human.

and we will always have a human experience, which is not perfect. And it is not we stay committed to one thing and we’re there for the rest of our lives. Because the only people that do that are typically in the military. And I am certainly not one of them, right? Where they are like committed beyond a thing. Like they will keep doing the pushups well beyond retirement. That ain’t me. I am as real as it gets. So as much as we can stay out of story,

And as much as we can just appreciate that we are human and the human existence by its very nature is messy and we’re choosing choices every day, just like choosing to stay in a marriage. There are days where I don’t wanna choose that choice at all and I have my bag packed and I wanna go. And then there’s days where it’s easy and effortless.

and yet we’re still actively choosing to keep working towards whatever it is that we want to. And baby steps are still steps forward. Stalling out is where I have a problem, right? If we just abandon ship and we just become a parked car, well, that’s gonna take a lot of energy to start moving again. But if we can at least stay open to the possibilities of a better life, that is still forward momentum. And I think that that’s more than enough.

Jannine Krause (48:40.334)
100 % 100 % That is that is a good mic drop right there So we gotta tell folks about how they can work with you and and you’re you have some great free You know resources in addition to the binge breaker program. I mean so cost-effective tell folks about it Let’s let’s tell folks about your website how they can find you You know all the different socials and of course we even talk about your book which is above you there and maximized health so

Andrea MAxim (48:41.506)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea MAxim (49:06.614)
Yes. Yeah.

Jannine Krause (49:08.622)
Tell us all the things.

Andrea MAxim (49:10.712)
So the best place to follow me is at The Maxim Movement on Instagram. When you follow me, I will immediately send you the link to my 30 minute free emotional eating masterclass and to my $17 binge breaker program, which has the four step protocol in there. If you’d like to learn more, you can go to andriamaxim.com and that’s where there’s a link to the book.

There’s other resources there, other programs there. And really it’s just those two avenues. I made it very, very simple.

Jannine Krause (49:46.958)
We’ll make sure that we put that in our podcast notes at drjcrowsend.com and for those of you watching on YouTube it is underneath right here in the show notes check it out and then of course if you’re not following me on Instagram at drjanninecareuse you can find all of the little shorts and some of the fun little tidbits from this podcast that you can share for us. Dr. Andrea Maxim, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I sincerely appreciate it.

Andrea MAxim (50:14.966)
Yeah. my gosh. I can’t believe how quickly the time just flew. This was so fun. Yeah.

Jannine Krause (50:20.441)
Time flies when you’re having fun. Thanks again. All