Podcast Transcription: Brain Over Binge: How to Overcome Binge Eating Without Willpower with Kathryn Hansen

Ted Ryce: Hey Catherine, really excited to have you on the podcast today. How are you?  

Kathryn Hansen: Hi, Ted. I'm good. Thank you so much for having me on the show.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah. And just very briefly, can you in introduce yourself, I mean, I gave you an introduction at the, the beginning of the show before we started, but just in your own words. 

Kathryn Hansen: Yeah, so I recovered from binge eating bulimia like 20 years ago now, so it's been a really long time. I published my first book in 2011, brain Over Binge, and since then I've really helped. People try to overcome binging. That's really where I focus. Overcoming like out of control episodes with food. I have, uh, podcasts as well, brain Over Binge podcast. 

It's really just a mission for me to help people understand binging in a more brain-based way and use practical tools to overcome it. 'cause I think there's a lot of confusion out there about how to stop binging. So I really try to make it simple for people and help them use their brain to stop this behavior that really causes so much pain in people's lives. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah. And I'm excited to have you on and, and have this conversation. And I just want to say this right, you had some reluctance to come on the show and you're gonna have me on your show and, and can you talk about your reluctance and, and where that come, where that was coming from?  

Kathryn Hansen: Yeah, I mean it's definitely, um, so I love what you do, like helping people achieve health outcomes and helping people that feel better about their bodies and, and get in great shape. 

All that's a great thing. Um, the problem a little bit as far as my audience is that sometimes people can take that too far or go on diets that really end up. Harming them. People who are susceptible to eating disorders, once they put their body in any sort of calorie deficit, it can create this real survival response in the brain where you could start out of control eating. 

It's, it's really the brain's adaptive response in a lot of cases to extreme calorie deficit. So there is a bit of, um, a concern there as far as like, I don't want to promote to my audience any sort of like weight loss program or diet approach that causes them to restrict their calories in a way that's gonna trigger. 

That survival response in their brain or in a way that's just gonna keep them obsessed with food and weight. Because a lot of people that I work with are really looking to get free from that and really looking to have a great relationship with food, which I know you're helping people do too. So it's just, um, a concern to make sure we're sensitive to anyone listening. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah. And I think that's super important and, and one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on the show is because you're, uh, although I, I agree. Like when I first saw what you're doing, I'm like, all right. Yeah. I mean, I, I just straight up, I don't deal with people with eating disorders, and if I suspected a potential client had one, I wouldn't work with them because. 

I don't have the skills or experience and, and I think this, this is gonna be a good conversation. Like, how do you even know if you have a, because, because people have told me in the past, oh, I'm like outta control. I'm a sugar addict. I'm like, you're not a sugar addict. You had no food. You started eating processed food and instead of being able to stop when you felt like you had enough, you just ate the whole bag or the whole thing of ice cream. 

But do you have a eating disorder? And, and this person in particular didn't, right? Or, yeah. Hey, again, I don't diagnose people, but what, why say that is because they weren't formally diagnosed. Right. And they just say that and it's like, well. Eating ice cream. Like if I am hungry and I have a pin, Ben and Jerry's, it's gonna disappear too. 

And it's not because I'm like a loser with no self-control or no discipline, it's I was hungry, which triggers a survival response right. And this food is highly processed in a way that, again, triggers the reward system of my brain and even, and the calories don't kind of matter, meaning like I just ate 1200 calories because I like the Ben and Jerry's cookie dough and Brownie, you know, whatever. 

And uh, uh, I forget the name of the flavor, but, but yeah, I just ate it all, and that's a normal response. So I would even ask you, Catherine, how does someone know if they haven't, if it's not completely obvious or if they haven't been formally diagnosed, how does a person even know if they have an eating disorder? 

Kathryn Hansen: That's a really good question, and I like the example you gave because it shows that the behaviors that sometimes show up in people with eating disorders, usually in a more extreme way, also can show up to a smaller scale or on a smaller scale in people who are quote unquote normal eaters. Because we all experience this, right? 

The. The drive of hunger and what it does to our brain and what it does to that, those pleasure centers in our brain and makes us crave more. And when we get food, we want to eat it all. We all experience this. Like I tell people all the time, I've been recovered for 20 years and I still have food cravings. 

Or, you know, if I get really hungry, it may be a little harder to stop eating something pleasurable. This is something that I think anyone can relate to, but when it comes to eating disorders. It is a lot more extreme. I mean, there definitely are like is there's clinical criteria as far as binging, like a binge is categorized as in the clinical, like DSM five diagnosis as eating a larger amount of food than someone would eat under a similar time period and under similar circumstances. 

So like in a two hour period, you're eating way more objectively than. Any normal person would eat in that timeframe and the feeling out of being out of control. But again, like you talked about, that was sort of your experience in that moment too. So it can be a little hard to tell. There isn't an exact calorie measure of what is a binge and what is not. 

So a lot of it is kind of based on your experience. So, yeah, I mean that has to be happening often, like it's like three times a week or there, there's definitely like a frequency criteria as far as like  

Ted Ryce: you're out of control, you mean?  

Kathryn Hansen: Yeah. The, the frequency of of these episodes, which are categorized as eating more than a normal person would eat under that timeframe, has be, has to be happening about a few times a week to be, to receive a clinical diagnosis. 

So if this is happening. Often it's very possible that you could be struggling with some form of, of binge eating disorder, but like you're talking about, if it's just, oh, I had a little extra ice cream here and there, that's really not it. When it comes to binging, you feel. So bad afterward. You're so full. 

I mean, when I binge it was thousands and thousands and thousands of calories. I wouldn't be able to really move after I felt awful like the whole next day. I mean, it's really extreme amounts of food, but not everyone's binges shows up. Not everyone's binges show up that way. It can be less food and still kind of be categorized as a binge. 

So there is some like gray areas or ambiguity, but really the main thing is that it has to be really large amounts of food. Feeling out of control and it has to be happening often.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah. And so I used a client example, but I should have used, just said this, it's what Tuesday today, so on, on Sunday, I, I. Way, way too much. 

Right. I, I had a bit of a binge.  

Kathryn Hansen: Oh, I thought you said, I thought that was you, your story with the ice cream. That was a client. I apologize.  

Ted Ryce: Oh, no, no, no. Like, uh, yeah, the, the ice cream was me for sure. I was just, but I thought anyway. Um, but the client who said that they had a eating disorder or like disordered eating, I think people throw that around a lot without really understanding what you said. 

The, the clinical criteria for diagnosis. They just say, oh, I'm a sugar addict, or, oh yeah, I have this. I like, I have disordered eating without really understanding. The people who are struggling with that, it's quite extreme. It's not just, uh, it's not just these natural sort of situations where I, yeah, I was at a, a, a get together, a family get together. 

Not my family, but someone else's that I was invited to and there was a ton of food and there was a ton of. Um, sweets and I ate and had, uh, I had more wine, right, and more food, and I was totally stuffed. But to your point, that doesn't happen frequently to me, at least frequent enough to really show up. Uh, in a meaningful or, or disrupt my life in a meaningful way. 

And even later that night, I have some strategies that I, you know, teach my clients and use myself to kind of rein in, um, the amount of food that I ate because I, I'll feel like crap, you know? Or, or I, I, I was feeling kind of bad. So what advice would you give to someone who maybe even feels like they might have an eating disorder? 

Who should they talk to? A psychologist or? What, what advice would you give them?  

Kathryn Hansen: Yeah, that's a really good question and I wanna answer it. I also wanna go back to kind of what you were saying about eating so much like at a gathering, and that is a really important distinction because. The clinical criteria says you eat more than a normal person would eat under similar time period and under similar circumstances. 

And I feel like that circumstance of being at an event, a lot of food is around, it's pretty normal to then eat a little more than normal during that time. So like holiday meals when you go out to nice restaurants. And you're eating a little more than normal, that definitely doesn't fall under the criteria of a binge. 

So I think that's a really important distinction. A lot of times these binge, binge behaviors are happening in secret. It's a very isolated behavior. It's a lot it the way you're eating. You typically would never want anyone to see you eating that way. So most of the time it is. Like I said, in isolation. 

So that's a good distinction that what you experienced that day wasn't really binging.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah. Thanks for sharing that, because I think that's so important. I've definitely done things in private too in the past, which maybe we can get into because I feel like I, I think part of your concern comes from a lot of the fitness folks. 

Who l let's say, are very lean and muscular, both men and women. They're not that healthy psychologically. The fitness, uh, they're fit, but healthy psychologically. There's a lot of, uh, uh, there's a lot of issue. I mean, I was one of 'em. Right. I was very extreme in my approach with, with dieting. I thought I was being poisoned by everything, when in reality it was just kind of un unmanaged anxiety and, and like, um, not understanding some of the ways that I was felt wasn't connected with nutrition. 

It was these other things going on in my life that were affecting me in a negative way. I've also had some tragedy in my life too that I, I didn't really appreciate at the time. And nobody explained to me like, Hey, this is how your nervous system can change based on that and how it can affect how you feel. 

But I was just like, everything was about nutrition, which is not right. So,  

Kathryn Hansen: yeah. And as far as like if someone, if you resonate with that definition of binging and you feel like. This is really extreme in your life. I mean, it's important to, to look at it and to say, okay, I actually need some help here. And I'm a little biased, but like, I have a lot of help at my website, brain over binge.com, but that's not the only way, right? 

There's a lot of help out there for binge eaters. And of course if you think you have an eating disorder, the first place to start would be your doctor, right? Like just to make sure that everything is okay, like health-wise. Um. A lot of binge eaters do go to therapy. Now, that's a big conversation because a lot of my book talks about why therapy at the time and a lot of the things they still teach today in therapy for eating disorders weren't helpful to me. 

And my book is taking a different approach. So as much as I would like to sit here and say, yeah, just go to therapy and you'll be fine. Yes. If therapy works for you, absolutely go to therapy, get all the help you need. There's many great therapists out there, but understand that there is a more. Wait, there's a different way to approach this that makes it a little more, more efficient, which is what I teach people as far as like the brain. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah. Um, you're bringing up something so, so important because the, let's say the, the, the right answer or the not really the right, but the socially appropriate, or let's say socially responsible or maybe medically correct. Advice is to, to go get diagnosed, but at the same time, yeah. Can you talk a little bit about it? 

Because I, I've had experience like that with, you know, psych with therapy. I think it can be great, but if you look at the results sometimes, you know, anyway, so I would love to hear the difference between your, like, why wasn't the therapy helpful and, and what did you start doing differently?  

Kathryn Hansen: Yeah, so you bring up a great point about therapy. 

Like yeah, we're all told just if you have a problem, go to therapy and it, it certainly can be helpful, but that's what I did when I felt like my eating was out of control. And my story was that I went on a restrictive diet. And that's why I've been hesitant to talk about dieting with my, my audience. I started, um, it was just when I was a teenager and I just was naturally gaining the weight that teenagers do as they grow and mature. 

And it worried me 'cause I was weight raised in a very weight conscious environment and I just started restricting my food and I went on for about a year and a half, I got severely underweight. And during that time, my cravings just increased so much. Like I talked about that. Survival response of the brain. 

I mean, food had never really been an issue, and all of a sudden, that's all I thought about in my whole life, was revolving around how I was going to restrict my calories, how I was gonna stay on this, you know, low amount of food, which was. Literally starvation. And then about a year and a half after that, I had my first binge. 

I woke up one morning and just felt like someone completely took over my body. I felt like I was watching myself. I felt like I couldn't stop myself from just eating so much food until I was absolutely sick, and that. Just started repeating, and I would try to get back to my diet and exercise more. And it just happened, you know, once a week, once every, twice a week, you know, it started happening like more, more and more often. 

So then I thought, wow, I, and,  

Ted Ryce: and Catherine, this was just triggered from the, from, from trying to, to lose weight and trying to, it was, it wasn't anything else. It was, you started doing this to get in better shape and then these, this happened as a result.  

Kathryn Hansen: Yeah, I mean it was more of a fear of gaining weight 'cause I didn't like going through puberty and, and not knowing where my weight was gonna stop and always being told, oh, I was like, you have to control your weight, especially as a woman, you have to always stay. 

It was not good messages I received growing up. So it was more of like, okay, I have to start restricting now to prevent future weight gain. And yes, it was the dieting. I mean, I go through a lot of that in my book, and that's really the point I'm gonna get to with therapy is that. So I went into therapy completely feeling out of control with food. 

And they didn't tell me it was the dieting, they said it. It had to be some sort of emotional trigger. It had to be some sort of trauma in your life that we need to find. It has to be anxiety, depression, perfectionism, low self-esteem. And I believe them, and I'm not saying those things have no bearing on who develops an eating disorder and who doesn't. 

I certainly. Always had a tendency toward higher anxiety or depression or perfectionism, and I think that's part of why my dieting kind of got outta control. You know, some people would've just started eating normally again, but I was like, no, I have to keep going. I have to do it until my body just completely took over. 

Made me binge. So I really went on a journey of trying to cure my anxiety, trying to find some sort of underlying trauma and I found a lot of things right. Right. I feel like, and not to minimize anything anyone struggling with, 'cause I know that, you know, as far as like things I've struggled with in my life, there are probably pretty minimal compared to most people, but I definitely found past problems and issues. 

Things with my parents and siblings and family and all these different things that I thought maybe was causing it and maybe is why I was trying to quote unquote use food to cope. That's the big message that has been out there for a long time and I think it's changing and I'm sure we'll get more into that. 

I do think there's a shift, but that is a strong message and that was the main message I received is it's not about food, it's about your emotions. And I tried to work on my emotions so much, but I still binge over and over and over, so like. Six more years of binging while going to therapy and trying to figure out my emotional triggers and, um, it just didn't work. 

Um, and I'll, I can stop you there if you have any comments and then I can tell maybe more of the story as well.  

Ted Ryce: I just want to know what Yeah, no, no, no. Keep going. And, and I'm, I'm waiting to hear what did work for you if, if all that didn't  

Kathryn Hansen: Yeah. So. It what I learned, and it started with a book for alcoholics, actually. 

It was called Rational Recovery by Jack Trippy, and I don't know if you've ever heard of that book, but it was an alternative to Alcoholics Anonymous at the time. I mean, I think the book was written in like the early nineties, maybe late eighties. I'm not sure. An older book for sure, but I picked it up in like. 

Five. So anyway, I, I read this book and it was like, okay, alcohol, alcohol is anonymous, will tell you alcohol is a disease. You can't control it. But really it's this primitive response from your brain to seek pleasure and it's going to keep repeating once you keep doing it. It's like in urge, it's, he called it the beast. 

Sort of the beast inside you, this primitive part of your brain that regardless of what's going on in your life, regardless of how well you cope with things. It's just gonna keep sending this urge because it's basically addicted to this behavior. And I was like, huh, okay. That's interesting because that's kind of how I viewed my. 

Eating disorder, that it was a disease, that it was because of emotions. But what if it was just this primitive drive, this urge, and he, he recommended basically separating your true self from that primitive part of your brain. And I kind of interpreted this in my own way in relation to my eating disorder. 

But what I came to understand is that. The dieting had triggered this primitive response in my brain to really try to save me. Like it didn't mean something was wrong. I mean, I was a teenager who wasn't eating. My body was doing what it was supposed to do all along. It was encouraging me to eat, and because I didn't listen, I didn't listen. 

It kind of just took over. But the thing is, is when you, when you do follow that urge and you do eat all that food. Another brain process happens like it is a huge hit of pleasure. That relief from starvation, eating all the foods you were previously restricting, it's a massive dopamine hit, or all these pleasurable brain chemicals, so you automatically want to do it again. 

And the problem in the beginning is I kept going back to dieting so that I had the survival response plus that habitual drive and that that real urge to get that pleasure from all that food. And it just kept repeating and repeating. And I eventually did realize that dieting was part of it and I started eating normally. 

But there was still that habit, there was still that desire for pleasure and, and that it sort of became an addiction. I really do believe that. So what, what that book helped me see. Was that that wasn't me. Like that was just this primitive part of my brain that had fired up because of dieting that had perpetuated because of habit. 

But it actually didn't have anything to do with my true wants and needs. It didn't have anything to do with my emotions. It didn't have anything to do with coping. It was just this kind of, this loop that I was on repeat. And sure it got interconnected with my emotions along the way, and I perceived it as a form of, you know, escape or relaxation, or there's all these, this meaning I gave to it, but I realized I could stop giving it. 

That meaning, I could say, okay, these urges are meaningless. They're powerless, and they're, they're harmless. The higher part of my brain, the my true self prefrontal cortex, the human part of the brain had the ability to feel those urges, feel that familiar drive and not do it. And so that's really what I learned to do. 

And it wasn't perfect right away. Like I still acted on it a couple more times, but it was so different just to experience those urges as. Just this primitive force from my brain, instead of as something deep and meaningful that I had to figure out like, oh, what emotion is it? What stress is it? What do I have to do to cope with my anxiety? 

I realized I could be anxious and still not binge. I can be sad and still not binge like it was all the urges. 'cause you take away the urges. None of those things. Emotion, sadness, depression, none of those things cause binging without the urge to binge. So it was really like learning not to act on the urges. 

And then like any habit or addiction, once you don't act on those urges for long enough, they do go away.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah, I think that's such a great message and it's, um, it's something that I try to do in my work is try to sell, because I get a lot of high performing people. They're very successful, and they tell me because I'm not successful in this area of my life with health and fitness or weight loss. 

I feel like a loser. I feel like I question success in other areas of my life when in reality. The best, really the best, like let's say weight loss or healthy lifestyle advice, it would be don't live in the United States. Find like a hunter gatherer culture to, to get into Right. And then you'll, all these problems will go away. 

But none of us want to do that. We, we, you know, like the internet and, you know, all the other things. So, and, and the point being, it's like a lot of this isn't. To your point, it's not, it's not a moral failing. It's not that you're a loser or any of the type of negative stories that you tell yourself. It's us dealing with our brain and also. 

The fact that we're in a society, there's a lot of abundance of food, there's a lot of messages. Like you were quite, quite young when this started for you. And yeah, you don't, you if, if you don't have the, like I, um, my gosh, I can't even imagine, you know, what it would be like today to look at all the guys on steroids as a young guy thinking that's okay. 

Like, oh, that's what it means to be. And people tell me, I look like I'm outta shape all the time. It's like, no, I'm, I'm just not on steroids. Right. I'm not on TRT. And then with the women, you see the BL surgeries and then the, the apps that changed bodies to, to give women these, these bodies that are completely unachievable even with surgery, right? 

'cause they. They're just filters, these body filters and it's like, uh, yeah, I, I feel like this is gonna be a really important podcast episode for people who have children, especially, I would imagine, I'm not on top of the statistics with eating disorders, but if you would ask me, I would to guess, I would imagine that more women are diagnosed with them or, or say that they suffer from eating disorders than men or, or boys. 

Is that. What, what can you, uh, say about that?  

Kathryn Hansen: Yeah, and I, I can't say that I have the exact statistics in front of me now too, but it is a majority of women, but not as much as you would think. Like it definitely is. A lot of men do struggle with this, and maybe I can have the statistics better. You  

Ted Ryce: just don't talk about it. 

Kathryn Hansen: Yeah, they don't talk about it as much. And um, it is historically the sort of body standards were more pushed on women. And when I was growing up, it was all about like, be as thin as you can be. Now that's shifted a lot, like as far as women is you have to have a specific shape and you don't really wanna be too thin, but you have to have a small waist. 

And I mean, it's, it's very, um, specific about how you should be. So, but I think, like you mentioned, there is a lot of pressure on men now too, and a lot of it is maybe about getting bigger and bigger muscles, but still maintaining a certain body fat ratio and Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think the last I saw it was like a third of the people struggling with eating disorders or men, but I don't know if that's a hundred percent accurate, but definitely more women, but a lot of men too. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah. That's good to know. So, so if you're listening right now and you feel like this is an issue, so. Let's talk about, so for you, I, I, it, it's a great story because you, I mean, from the way you told your story, there's not like some, again, we all have stuff in our past. We could say, oh yeah, that kind of messed me up. 

But you didn't have like some great trauma or any big thing that you were dealing with. It was this. You were young. You wanted to lose weight because of these body images that, uh, you just said. Now they've kind of shifted. Right? And then once you started that journey and you started dealing, the problems arose with binging, you started to view those behaviors as like, oh, this is me who is outta control, or, or whatever the story was. 

I'm not a good person. I'm outta control. And then once you started to separate. Your identity from it and realize these were drives coming from your, your calories were too low. It was making you crazy, which I really want to talk about the Minnesota starvation experiment with you. 'cause I'm aware of it. 

I've read about it, but I'm, but I'm, uh, I, I think you're gonna have a really good take on it, but uh, when you're able to start separating it, you start to realize, oh, well I have, so you changed this story, right? That's what I'm hearing. And that changed everything for you.  

Kathryn Hansen: Yeah. I changed the story and it, it really did. 

And that doesn't happen to everyone. I mean, plenty of people I work with, yes it does happen to, they have that mental shift right away. Some people take longer to, to get that mental shift of like, this is not me. It's really not that far off from someone who, let's say, decides to stop smoking and then decides that all those urges to smoke are just no longer who they are. 

And anytime they have an urge, they simply don't act on it. And even if smoking is an anxiety relief, if in some way, I think a lot of it is just to get relief from the urge. So it's not like the smoker has to go solve their anxiety to stop smoking. They just need to stop acting on the urge. So. That message is not given to people with eating disorders. 

It's like your urge means something. Your urge is really important, and it means you've been traumatized in your life or whatever. And again, not to minimize anything anyone's been through, but I just really think focusing on the urge as the central problem really just changed everything for me. I realized I was binging to cope with the urges. 

I wasn't binging to cope because they made me feel so. I mean, they didn't make me feel good, right? To feel like you want all this food and to kind of feel like you're going crazy. But once I was able to step back and say, oh, like that is just an urge, that's just kind of my brain is doing it, doing its thing that's, that's just energy in my body that's, I called it neurological junk. 

It's just not a part of who I am anymore. I was able to feel those urges, but they weren't as uncomfortable anymore. 'cause I didn't truly think I needed anything in that moment. I knew it was just those false messages from my brain. So I was able to just let that urge move through me and then see on the other side, oh yeah, I actually didn't want that after all. 

Move on with my life and it would happen again. And it didn't take too long for them to be deconditioned because when it comes to the brain, which you don't use anymore, you lose. It's just the fundamental concept of neuroplasticity that our habits can go away, and we've all likely experienced that. With different habits in our lives, and I don't think the binge eating habit really has to be too much different. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah. I, I really like what you're saying there. And that, and it is more of a, you know, if you're trying to define it in terms of psychological approaches, like more of A-C-B-T-A, a cognitive beha behavioral approach where you're really, you're focusing on the behaviors and the cravings in the brain, rather than like, well, tell me what happened. 

When you were three or, or whatever, what, whatever the story is. And uh, yeah, maybe some of that can be helpful for some people if they're right. At the end of the day, it's really what helps you. But I feel like that has, that, that narrative has been pushed too much and where the, the big breakthrough in so many things, not just with. 

Eating disorders, but with social media use or drug use or, right. Is like, Hey, the brain is playing a role here and there's a reason that we, you know, we, we experience ourselves as like two different people. Well, I had to hold my tongue. What? What? What do you mean? Why didn't you just like not want to say it, right? 

Say the thing. Well, it's like, uh, our brains. Or wired in, in a certain way where there's some conflict sometimes, or I, I had to drag myself out of bed. Well, if you are you who's doing the dragging and who's being dragged, and just the reality of the wiring of our brain, it just, you know, it's these funky things that we have to deal with. 

And, and you mentioned right, the, the prefrontal cortex versus, you know, the more primitive parts of our brain. One thing I would say. Coming up for me, and what I do is listening to your story. One of the things that we work with, with our clients is making sure that they're eating the right amount of calories and they're not experiencing high levels of hunger. 

Because one of the things that happens with people who figure out, oh, it's just calories, so here's what I'm gonna do. Calories in, calories out. Got it. I'm gonna work out twice a day, seven days a week. I'm gonna have. Yeah, like a smooth, uh, uh, protein and water for breakfast. Gonna have a salad for lunch and then like a soup for dinner. 

And that's gonna work. And it does, it gets you to lose weight. And it drives you freaking insane because you're, you're not eating enough calories, you're doing a lot of exercise. And to your point, Catherine, and what you talk about it like it triggers what, what we know is hunger triggers a survival response. 

In fact, there's a really interesting study where, um, they were. I forget all the details 'cause it's been a little while, but, uh, this was Robert Polsky who I, who was telling the story about this, who's a neurobiologist. He was talking about how people who were seeing a judge, like going to court for a crime they committed, got harsher sentences right before lunch and they were trying to figure out why that was happening. 

They thought it was it racism or some other stuff. No hungry judges. Right. And there's several examples of that. So you can't fight hunger because it's such a powerful drive. You have to really work with it. Food choices play a big role. 'cause even, you know, if you've ever eaten a bag of chips that was maybe three, four, or 500 calories, and you're like, okay, well now I need a meal because I really didn't do anything for my hunger. 

You know, there's, there's a lot of strategies to, to. You know whether you're tracking calories or even interested in weight loss. But like, just making sure you're choosing foods that help satiate you so you don't fall into that survival mode  

Kathryn Hansen: because those, those foods do activate more of a pleasure process in our brain than the more natural foods. 

You know, it's, and when you're hungry, that's even more so. People I've heard too, oh, I'm just a sugar addict. Or these things that you say you hear, and some of it is the combination of starvation plus those highly pleasurable foods. It just makes those foods so much more rewarding. I mean, there are studies around this too, like people who are food deprived, the food is just much more rewarding when they do have it, and especially those processed foods. 

And I think, you know, we live in a world of food abundance, but we are wired for food scarcity just based on our evolution. So we're not really meant to be presented with these foods all the time and have this opportunity for pleasure all the time, but it's kind of where we are and we have to learn to deal with it. 

And I absolutely think. We're capable of dealing with it. But when you combine hunger and you combine, you know, in my, uh, case and people I work with combine starvation, anorexia, plus these processed foods, it's really just not a good combination and it leads to serious problems.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah. Really important to know that. 

Right. Uh, going back to that initial thing where it's like, well, I, that, that realization that it's really the environment. Especially in the us I'm actually in Brazil right now. Um, I've lived all over the world and you see the differences. You see the cultural and and societal differences. Like in the US people get less than 5,000 steps per day because it's very oriented around having a car and driving places, right? 

Very few people live in walkable cities. And then, uh, to your point, like the food abundance, we have this, what, what's referred to as an evolutionary mismatch. Right? Uh, where, where it's like, oh, gotta gotta eat all the food. You never know when the famine's gonna come. It's like, it's not coming. Yeah. It's not not coming. 

So we have to contend with that. Right. And there's serious consequences if we don't. But also we have to do it the right way, especially like with your work and, um, you know, where you can start developing this, uh, uh, an eating disorder. Even if you are, you know, don't have trauma in the past, just because you're going about it in a way that doesn't, that doesn't work with your brain and, and biology, Catherine, um, I would love to hear like your, what, so, so you had this eating disorder, you conquered it, you tried the, the therapy wasn't really hitting home for you. 

You started to figure out, oh, these, these, this, a lot of it for you was a brain. Right. Just understanding the parts of your brain allowed you to shift your perspective and therefore your behavior. And then, um, what did you get out of studying the Minnesota starvation experiment? Can you talk about what it is for those people who've never heard about it before and then the lessons that you learned and, and teach from it as well? 

Kathryn Hansen: Yeah, I mean this was a really important study 'cause it was really the only study we have on the effects of. Human starvation in a controlled study because for ethical reasons, we really can't be repeating those kind of studies. And it was done during World War II or during the recovery period? I think it started in 1944 where they recruited, I think it was 36 healthy men to volunteer to come go through semi starvation. 

To figure out what refeeding, um, refeeding processes or, or method of refeeding was gonna be the best because so many people were experiencing these atrocities of war and actually being starved. So they needed to know how do we best refeed. Populations, you know, so these,  

Ted Ryce: and, and they were all like Amish or something because they were all conscientious objectors and didn't want to go to war. 

So  

Kathryn Hansen: Yeah. Like nonviolent didn't Yeah, for sure. And they, they were really healthy men. They were all healthy men. I think that's, that's important to say here too. They were all at the start of the study eating about 3,500 calories a day and they were meeting all their nutritional needs and they did. I think a three month control period where that they ate normally and they really measured their psychological, um, tests. 

They did personality tests, they did physical tests, and they were all very, very healthy. So this is like the best starting point you can possibly get. People without huge trauma and emotional problems and all very. Ethical and trying to do right for their, their country and, and civilization. I mean, great starting point. 

And the only factor here was that they all got starved. So they went down from 3,500 calories to 1,570. I was just reading it this morning to like review and, um, they all started experiencing. Eating disorders. Basically, they got obsessed with food. They experienced all these things that people with anorexia experience, like body checking, moving food around their plate, trying to think about food all the time, cooking for other people, like all these different things. 

And plus their psychological tests went way down, like as far as they started. Stu struggling more with depression, anxiety. Really difficult emotions, not wanting to do things they previously wanted to do. All of the things you mean  

Ted Ryce: suicide too? If I remember correctly.  

Kathryn Hansen: Yeah. I, I don't know if anyone but that. 

Yeah. Suicidal thoughts. All these different things from starvation. I mean, and it's just when I learned about it, this was after I had actually stopped binging and I knew that starvation had caused my problem to start, like to begin with, I had kind of unlearned everything I learned in therapy and I was like, no, it was really the starvation. 

Yeah, with combination of some risk factors too, but. I was like, oh my gosh, nothing was wrong with me. Like, this is everything I experienced. It's that with the starvation. But then when they started refeeding them binging appeared, purging appeared. You know, they, they went to eating when they didn't restrict them, they were eating like 7,000 to 10,000 calories a day, and they started experiencing digestive problems and just eating way too much, eating food out of like trash cans. 

I mean. All these things that I experienced as a binge eater just from dieting. And I was like, it just gave me this huge sense of relief. Like, oh my gosh, nothing was wrong with me. I was starving and my body was trying to adapt and cope and trying to refeed myself and, and it's just, I don't know, the body just doesn't seem to know exactly how to refeed yourself. 

I mean, I think it has to be done very carefully, you know? And, um, so yeah, I mean, that study I think is. Is used a lot in educating eating disorder patients to say what I'm saying about myself. Like, Hey, nothing is wrong with you. Like this is a normal response to starvation. So, yeah, I mean, does that kind of explain it or do you have any questions about it? 

Ted Ryce: No, I just think it's, it's important. Again, just backing up this idea and reinforcing that this isn't about willpower, right? There are certain, 'cause I feel like another narrative, it's like I, I tell people sometimes and it pisses people off, or some people, I'm like, biology trumps psychology. And they, and they'll say like, wow, that's, oh, oh, you believe that. 

So it's true. I'm like, hold your breath and use the power of psychology. When you start gasping for air, keep, continue holding your breath and let's see how long that goes. Now, if you're like a free diver, maybe it'll last, uh, a few minutes, but eventually you lose, right? Same thing with, um, I. With so many, so many, uh, right. 

You, there's just like, we're just dealing, we're dealing with the biology of the human body, and it's, and it's definitely workable, but the way I think one of the, the, the best lessons from hearing your story, it's like working with it instead of trying to constantly fight it. Right?  

Kathryn Hansen: Yeah. And, and we absolutely can work with it. 

I think it just speaks to like sustainability of habit change, right? We can't just throw ourselves into it, you know, throw yourself into the fire and expect just to be able to maintain those habits. Like you talked about the person who's eat eating water and protein for breakfast and a salad for lunch, and it's not something your body can sustain over any period of time. 

So it's not. I'm against healthy changes. I absolutely think that people can take control of their health and feed themselves well and be in shape, but I just think that that dieting and starving yourself is, is not the way to get there. I mean, in my case, it led me to be about 30, 25 pounds over my natural weight, like what my natural weight is. 

The dieting led me to lose weight, but then it had me gain way more weight through binging. You know, so it, and then it took me a while after I stopped binging. I didn't have to, you know, work on it. I just needed to stop the binging and my body gravitated back toward what's normal and healthy for me. But I do focus on health, you know, to an extent. 

I'm a busy single mom of four, and I'm an entrepreneur, and I have, you know what? I can, and that's what I love about your work is that you teach people to fit it in their life how they can, and in a way that's sustainable and in a way that's not going to. Eventually cause harm to them.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah. It has to be done. 

Yeah. And you have to watch out who you work with. I, I don't know the, the coaches that I know, I think they do a pretty good job. But my, my promise is that I help people do this in a healthy way. Right, because what you said, food restriction, they're, we put people on a bit of a strict approach in the first week or two when they join, but after that, there's no food restrictions. 

We get out rid of that, uh, forbidden fruit effect, right? Because I think that psychological, like, no, I, I, I really want it, but I can't have it. I really want it. Oh, I shouldn't do it. I shouldn't do it. PE people who are really good, they don't eat this stuff. We get rid of that shit. And I think too, Catherine, there's almost an ex an a, like, I don't want, I, I don't wanna use the word addictive, but it's, but it's almost like people get hooked on. 

The excitement, like part of the excitement of doing drugs is not even doing the drug, the illegal drugs. I was just, uh, listening to Michael Easter's scarcity brain book. If you haven't read it, it's just fantastic. Um, talking about a lot of the things that we're talking about, but more broad, uh, not, not specific to diet, but he was talking about how a lot of people who. 

Who use drugs? It's about getting the drugs and how much will we get and you know, how strong will they be versus, versus pharmaceutical drugs. Like opioids for example. They don't get abused as much because you're getting it from your doctor and and prescribed from your doctor. Now buying it on the street, but. 

They don't get abused as much because it's the same dose taken at the same time. The, you know, it's just more boring, right? And so it's not as exciting and I feel strict and we try to get people away from strict dieting, like, get rid of keto and all that, because it's not necessary their frameworks that work. 

But again, um, yeah, I think people, you know, going back to the whole conversation we're having about, uh, our brains, we, we also seem to be wired for that, that quick fix instead of. Let me slow down like you, your story about, yeah, I dieted and lost weight, but I ended up gaining a bunch of weight longer term and had to deal with the effects of that because of these shorter term approaches. 

I think it's so, so important. I. Catherine, I feel like I talked to you for a really long time.  

Kathryn Hansen: I know. I feel like, yeah. This has been a great conversation and maybe as a final thought, like we're all living with this brain in our, in our head, this primitive part of our brain that the goals of it are to survive, to seek pleasure and to avoid pain. 

And that's kind of like what you were talking about with the drug addict. And they're trying to seek pleasure and. We all just kind of have to accept that right. And work with it the best we can and try to live our best life, even though we have this sort of primitive voice often trying to undermine us. 

But yeah, like I said, we can all work with it and, and really have a full life even in spite of that.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah. And it, I, I really enjoyed talking to you, talking to you today. It's no wonder that, uh, your book, uh, has done so well, you know, you have. Over 3000 reviews here and, um, you know, just, you, you talk about a lot of the things, even though. 

We're focused on different types of, you, you're, you're specialized in, in eating disorders, but it's clear like you've done a great job basing this in your personal experience, but also some of the best understand the bigger scientific or more recent scientific breakthroughs and, and looking into things like the Minnesota starvation experiment. 

So it was really great to have you here today, and if you are listening right now. You know, you want to hear more about Catherine, what she's up to, listen to her podcast or get her book. The name of her book is Brain Over Binge. Why was Bulimic Why Conventional Therapy Didn't Work and High Recovered For Good? 

The name of her podcast is Brain Over Binge and you can find all of that and more@brainoverbinge.com. Yeah, so yeah, I, I really enjoyed the conversation today. Catherine, I, I feel like it's not talked about enough.  

Kathryn Hansen: Thank you so much for having me, Ted.  

Ted Ryce: Absolutely. Gotta do it again. 

Ted Ryce: Hey Catherine, really excited to have you on the podcast today. How are you?  

Kathryn Hansen: Hi, Ted. I'm good. Thank you so much for having me on the show.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah. And just very briefly, can you in introduce yourself, I mean, I gave you an introduction at the, the beginning of the show before we started, but just in your own words. 

Kathryn Hansen: Yeah, so I recovered from binge eating bulimia like 20 years ago now, so it's been a really long time. I published my first book in 2011, brain Over Binge, and since then I've really helped. People try to overcome binging. That's really where I focus. Overcoming like out of control episodes with food. I have, uh, podcasts as well, brain Over Binge podcast. 

It's really just a mission for me to help people understand binging in a more brain-based way and use practical tools to overcome it. 'cause I think there's a lot of confusion out there about how to stop binging. So I really try to make it simple for people and help them use their brain to stop this behavior that really causes so much pain in people's lives. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah. And I'm excited to have you on and, and have this conversation. And I just want to say this right, you had some reluctance to come on the show and you're gonna have me on your show and, and can you talk about your reluctance and, and where that come, where that was coming from?  

Kathryn Hansen: Yeah, I mean it's definitely, um, so I love what you do, like helping people achieve health outcomes and helping people that feel better about their bodies and, and get in great shape. 

All that's a great thing. Um, the problem a little bit as far as my audience is that sometimes people can take that too far or go on diets that really end up. Harming them. People who are susceptible to eating disorders, once they put their body in any sort of calorie deficit, it can create this real survival response in the brain where you could start out of control eating. 

It's, it's really the brain's adaptive response in a lot of cases to extreme calorie deficit. So there is a bit of, um, a concern there as far as like, I don't want to promote to my audience any sort of like weight loss program or diet approach that causes them to restrict their calories in a way that's gonna trigger. 

That survival response in their brain or in a way that's just gonna keep them obsessed with food and weight. Because a lot of people that I work with are really looking to get free from that and really looking to have a great relationship with food, which I know you're helping people do too. So it's just, um, a concern to make sure we're sensitive to anyone listening. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah. And I think that's super important and, and one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on the show is because you're, uh, although I, I agree. Like when I first saw what you're doing, I'm like, all right. Yeah. I mean, I, I just straight up, I don't deal with people with eating disorders, and if I suspected a potential client had one, I wouldn't work with them because. 

I don't have the skills or experience and, and I think this, this is gonna be a good conversation. Like, how do you even know if you have a, because, because people have told me in the past, oh, I'm like outta control. I'm a sugar addict. I'm like, you're not a sugar addict. You had no food. You started eating processed food and instead of being able to stop when you felt like you had enough, you just ate the whole bag or the whole thing of ice cream. 

But do you have a eating disorder? And, and this person in particular didn't, right? Or, yeah. Hey, again, I don't diagnose people, but what, why say that is because they weren't formally diagnosed. Right. And they just say that and it's like, well. Eating ice cream. Like if I am hungry and I have a pin, Ben and Jerry's, it's gonna disappear too. 

And it's not because I'm like a loser with no self-control or no discipline, it's I was hungry, which triggers a survival response right. And this food is highly processed in a way that, again, triggers the reward system of my brain and even, and the calories don't kind of matter, meaning like I just ate 1200 calories because I like the Ben and Jerry's cookie dough and Brownie, you know, whatever. 

And uh, uh, I forget the name of the flavor, but, but yeah, I just ate it all, and that's a normal response. So I would even ask you, Catherine, how does someone know if they haven't, if it's not completely obvious or if they haven't been formally diagnosed, how does a person even know if they have an eating disorder? 

Kathryn Hansen: That's a really good question, and I like the example you gave because it shows that the behaviors that sometimes show up in people with eating disorders, usually in a more extreme way, also can show up to a smaller scale or on a smaller scale in people who are quote unquote normal eaters. Because we all experience this, right? 

The. The drive of hunger and what it does to our brain and what it does to that, those pleasure centers in our brain and makes us crave more. And when we get food, we want to eat it all. We all experience this. Like I tell people all the time, I've been recovered for 20 years and I still have food cravings. 

Or, you know, if I get really hungry, it may be a little harder to stop eating something pleasurable. This is something that I think anyone can relate to, but when it comes to eating disorders. It is a lot more extreme. I mean, there definitely are like is there's clinical criteria as far as binging, like a binge is categorized as in the clinical, like DSM five diagnosis as eating a larger amount of food than someone would eat under a similar time period and under similar circumstances. 

So like in a two hour period, you're eating way more objectively than. Any normal person would eat in that timeframe and the feeling out of being out of control. But again, like you talked about, that was sort of your experience in that moment too. So it can be a little hard to tell. There isn't an exact calorie measure of what is a binge and what is not. 

So a lot of it is kind of based on your experience. So, yeah, I mean that has to be happening often, like it's like three times a week or there, there's definitely like a frequency criteria as far as like  

Ted Ryce: you're out of control, you mean?  

Kathryn Hansen: Yeah. The, the frequency of of these episodes, which are categorized as eating more than a normal person would eat under that timeframe, has be, has to be happening about a few times a week to be, to receive a clinical diagnosis. 

So if this is happening. Often it's very possible that you could be struggling with some form of, of binge eating disorder, but like you're talking about, if it's just, oh, I had a little extra ice cream here and there, that's really not it. When it comes to binging, you feel. So bad afterward. You're so full. 

I mean, when I binge it was thousands and thousands and thousands of calories. I wouldn't be able to really move after I felt awful like the whole next day. I mean, it's really extreme amounts of food, but not everyone's binges shows up. Not everyone's binges show up that way. It can be less food and still kind of be categorized as a binge. 

So there is some like gray areas or ambiguity, but really the main thing is that it has to be really large amounts of food. Feeling out of control and it has to be happening often.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah. And so I used a client example, but I should have used, just said this, it's what Tuesday today, so on, on Sunday, I, I. Way, way too much. 

Right. I, I had a bit of a binge.  

Kathryn Hansen: Oh, I thought you said, I thought that was you, your story with the ice cream. That was a client. I apologize.  

Ted Ryce: Oh, no, no, no. Like, uh, yeah, the, the ice cream was me for sure. I was just, but I thought anyway. Um, but the client who said that they had a eating disorder or like disordered eating, I think people throw that around a lot without really understanding what you said. 

The, the clinical criteria for diagnosis. They just say, oh, I'm a sugar addict, or, oh yeah, I have this. I like, I have disordered eating without really understanding. The people who are struggling with that, it's quite extreme. It's not just, uh, it's not just these natural sort of situations where I, yeah, I was at a, a, a get together, a family get together. 

Not my family, but someone else's that I was invited to and there was a ton of food and there was a ton of. Um, sweets and I ate and had, uh, I had more wine, right, and more food, and I was totally stuffed. But to your point, that doesn't happen frequently to me, at least frequent enough to really show up. Uh, in a meaningful or, or disrupt my life in a meaningful way. 

And even later that night, I have some strategies that I, you know, teach my clients and use myself to kind of rein in, um, the amount of food that I ate because I, I'll feel like crap, you know? Or, or I, I, I was feeling kind of bad. So what advice would you give to someone who maybe even feels like they might have an eating disorder? 

Who should they talk to? A psychologist or? What, what advice would you give them?  

Kathryn Hansen: Yeah, that's a really good question and I wanna answer it. I also wanna go back to kind of what you were saying about eating so much like at a gathering, and that is a really important distinction because. The clinical criteria says you eat more than a normal person would eat under similar time period and under similar circumstances. 

And I feel like that circumstance of being at an event, a lot of food is around, it's pretty normal to then eat a little more than normal during that time. So like holiday meals when you go out to nice restaurants. And you're eating a little more than normal, that definitely doesn't fall under the criteria of a binge. 

So I think that's a really important distinction. A lot of times these binge, binge behaviors are happening in secret. It's a very isolated behavior. It's a lot it the way you're eating. You typically would never want anyone to see you eating that way. So most of the time it is. Like I said, in isolation. 

So that's a good distinction that what you experienced that day wasn't really binging.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah. Thanks for sharing that, because I think that's so important. I've definitely done things in private too in the past, which maybe we can get into because I feel like I, I think part of your concern comes from a lot of the fitness folks. 

Who l let's say, are very lean and muscular, both men and women. They're not that healthy psychologically. The fitness, uh, they're fit, but healthy psychologically. There's a lot of, uh, uh, there's a lot of issue. I mean, I was one of 'em. Right. I was very extreme in my approach with, with dieting. I thought I was being poisoned by everything, when in reality it was just kind of un unmanaged anxiety and, and like, um, not understanding some of the ways that I was felt wasn't connected with nutrition. 

It was these other things going on in my life that were affecting me in a negative way. I've also had some tragedy in my life too that I, I didn't really appreciate at the time. And nobody explained to me like, Hey, this is how your nervous system can change based on that and how it can affect how you feel. 

But I was just like, everything was about nutrition, which is not right. So,  

Kathryn Hansen: yeah. And as far as like if someone, if you resonate with that definition of binging and you feel like. This is really extreme in your life. I mean, it's important to, to look at it and to say, okay, I actually need some help here. And I'm a little biased, but like, I have a lot of help at my website, brain over binge.com, but that's not the only way, right? 

There's a lot of help out there for binge eaters. And of course if you think you have an eating disorder, the first place to start would be your doctor, right? Like just to make sure that everything is okay, like health-wise. Um. A lot of binge eaters do go to therapy. Now, that's a big conversation because a lot of my book talks about why therapy at the time and a lot of the things they still teach today in therapy for eating disorders weren't helpful to me. 

And my book is taking a different approach. So as much as I would like to sit here and say, yeah, just go to therapy and you'll be fine. Yes. If therapy works for you, absolutely go to therapy, get all the help you need. There's many great therapists out there, but understand that there is a more. Wait, there's a different way to approach this that makes it a little more, more efficient, which is what I teach people as far as like the brain. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah. Um, you're bringing up something so, so important because the, let's say the, the, the right answer or the not really the right, but the socially appropriate, or let's say socially responsible or maybe medically correct. Advice is to, to go get diagnosed, but at the same time, yeah. Can you talk a little bit about it? 

Because I, I've had experience like that with, you know, psych with therapy. I think it can be great, but if you look at the results sometimes, you know, anyway, so I would love to hear the difference between your, like, why wasn't the therapy helpful and, and what did you start doing differently?  

Kathryn Hansen: Yeah, so you bring up a great point about therapy. 

Like yeah, we're all told just if you have a problem, go to therapy and it, it certainly can be helpful, but that's what I did when I felt like my eating was out of control. And my story was that I went on a restrictive diet. And that's why I've been hesitant to talk about dieting with my, my audience. I started, um, it was just when I was a teenager and I just was naturally gaining the weight that teenagers do as they grow and mature. 

And it worried me 'cause I was weight raised in a very weight conscious environment and I just started restricting my food and I went on for about a year and a half, I got severely underweight. And during that time, my cravings just increased so much. Like I talked about that. Survival response of the brain. 

I mean, food had never really been an issue, and all of a sudden, that's all I thought about in my whole life, was revolving around how I was going to restrict my calories, how I was gonna stay on this, you know, low amount of food, which was. Literally starvation. And then about a year and a half after that, I had my first binge. 

I woke up one morning and just felt like someone completely took over my body. I felt like I was watching myself. I felt like I couldn't stop myself from just eating so much food until I was absolutely sick, and that. Just started repeating, and I would try to get back to my diet and exercise more. And it just happened, you know, once a week, once every, twice a week, you know, it started happening like more, more and more often. 

So then I thought, wow, I, and,  

Ted Ryce: and Catherine, this was just triggered from the, from, from trying to, to lose weight and trying to, it was, it wasn't anything else. It was, you started doing this to get in better shape and then these, this happened as a result.  

Kathryn Hansen: Yeah, I mean it was more of a fear of gaining weight 'cause I didn't like going through puberty and, and not knowing where my weight was gonna stop and always being told, oh, I was like, you have to control your weight, especially as a woman, you have to always stay. 

It was not good messages I received growing up. So it was more of like, okay, I have to start restricting now to prevent future weight gain. And yes, it was the dieting. I mean, I go through a lot of that in my book, and that's really the point I'm gonna get to with therapy is that. So I went into therapy completely feeling out of control with food. 

And they didn't tell me it was the dieting, they said it. It had to be some sort of emotional trigger. It had to be some sort of trauma in your life that we need to find. It has to be anxiety, depression, perfectionism, low self-esteem. And I believe them, and I'm not saying those things have no bearing on who develops an eating disorder and who doesn't. 

I certainly. Always had a tendency toward higher anxiety or depression or perfectionism, and I think that's part of why my dieting kind of got outta control. You know, some people would've just started eating normally again, but I was like, no, I have to keep going. I have to do it until my body just completely took over. 

Made me binge. So I really went on a journey of trying to cure my anxiety, trying to find some sort of underlying trauma and I found a lot of things right. Right. I feel like, and not to minimize anything anyone struggling with, 'cause I know that, you know, as far as like things I've struggled with in my life, there are probably pretty minimal compared to most people, but I definitely found past problems and issues. 

Things with my parents and siblings and family and all these different things that I thought maybe was causing it and maybe is why I was trying to quote unquote use food to cope. That's the big message that has been out there for a long time and I think it's changing and I'm sure we'll get more into that. 

I do think there's a shift, but that is a strong message and that was the main message I received is it's not about food, it's about your emotions. And I tried to work on my emotions so much, but I still binge over and over and over, so like. Six more years of binging while going to therapy and trying to figure out my emotional triggers and, um, it just didn't work. 

Um, and I'll, I can stop you there if you have any comments and then I can tell maybe more of the story as well.  

Ted Ryce: I just want to know what Yeah, no, no, no. Keep going. And, and I'm, I'm waiting to hear what did work for you if, if all that didn't  

Kathryn Hansen: Yeah. So. It what I learned, and it started with a book for alcoholics, actually. 

It was called Rational Recovery by Jack Trippy, and I don't know if you've ever heard of that book, but it was an alternative to Alcoholics Anonymous at the time. I mean, I think the book was written in like the early nineties, maybe late eighties. I'm not sure. An older book for sure, but I picked it up in like. 

Five. So anyway, I, I read this book and it was like, okay, alcohol, alcohol is anonymous, will tell you alcohol is a disease. You can't control it. But really it's this primitive response from your brain to seek pleasure and it's going to keep repeating once you keep doing it. It's like in urge, it's, he called it the beast. 

Sort of the beast inside you, this primitive part of your brain that regardless of what's going on in your life, regardless of how well you cope with things. It's just gonna keep sending this urge because it's basically addicted to this behavior. And I was like, huh, okay. That's interesting because that's kind of how I viewed my. 

Eating disorder, that it was a disease, that it was because of emotions. But what if it was just this primitive drive, this urge, and he, he recommended basically separating your true self from that primitive part of your brain. And I kind of interpreted this in my own way in relation to my eating disorder. 

But what I came to understand is that. The dieting had triggered this primitive response in my brain to really try to save me. Like it didn't mean something was wrong. I mean, I was a teenager who wasn't eating. My body was doing what it was supposed to do all along. It was encouraging me to eat, and because I didn't listen, I didn't listen. 

It kind of just took over. But the thing is, is when you, when you do follow that urge and you do eat all that food. Another brain process happens like it is a huge hit of pleasure. That relief from starvation, eating all the foods you were previously restricting, it's a massive dopamine hit, or all these pleasurable brain chemicals, so you automatically want to do it again. 

And the problem in the beginning is I kept going back to dieting so that I had the survival response plus that habitual drive and that that real urge to get that pleasure from all that food. And it just kept repeating and repeating. And I eventually did realize that dieting was part of it and I started eating normally. 

But there was still that habit, there was still that desire for pleasure and, and that it sort of became an addiction. I really do believe that. So what, what that book helped me see. Was that that wasn't me. Like that was just this primitive part of my brain that had fired up because of dieting that had perpetuated because of habit. 

But it actually didn't have anything to do with my true wants and needs. It didn't have anything to do with my emotions. It didn't have anything to do with coping. It was just this kind of, this loop that I was on repeat. And sure it got interconnected with my emotions along the way, and I perceived it as a form of, you know, escape or relaxation, or there's all these, this meaning I gave to it, but I realized I could stop giving it. 

That meaning, I could say, okay, these urges are meaningless. They're powerless, and they're, they're harmless. The higher part of my brain, the my true self prefrontal cortex, the human part of the brain had the ability to feel those urges, feel that familiar drive and not do it. And so that's really what I learned to do. 

And it wasn't perfect right away. Like I still acted on it a couple more times, but it was so different just to experience those urges as. Just this primitive force from my brain, instead of as something deep and meaningful that I had to figure out like, oh, what emotion is it? What stress is it? What do I have to do to cope with my anxiety? 

I realized I could be anxious and still not binge. I can be sad and still not binge like it was all the urges. 'cause you take away the urges. None of those things. Emotion, sadness, depression, none of those things cause binging without the urge to binge. So it was really like learning not to act on the urges. 

And then like any habit or addiction, once you don't act on those urges for long enough, they do go away.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah, I think that's such a great message and it's, um, it's something that I try to do in my work is try to sell, because I get a lot of high performing people. They're very successful, and they tell me because I'm not successful in this area of my life with health and fitness or weight loss. 

I feel like a loser. I feel like I question success in other areas of my life when in reality. The best, really the best, like let's say weight loss or healthy lifestyle advice, it would be don't live in the United States. Find like a hunter gatherer culture to, to get into Right. And then you'll, all these problems will go away. 

But none of us want to do that. We, we, you know, like the internet and, you know, all the other things. So, and, and the point being, it's like a lot of this isn't. To your point, it's not, it's not a moral failing. It's not that you're a loser or any of the type of negative stories that you tell yourself. It's us dealing with our brain and also. 

The fact that we're in a society, there's a lot of abundance of food, there's a lot of messages. Like you were quite, quite young when this started for you. And yeah, you don't, you if, if you don't have the, like I, um, my gosh, I can't even imagine, you know, what it would be like today to look at all the guys on steroids as a young guy thinking that's okay. 

Like, oh, that's what it means to be. And people tell me, I look like I'm outta shape all the time. It's like, no, I'm, I'm just not on steroids. Right. I'm not on TRT. And then with the women, you see the BL surgeries and then the, the apps that changed bodies to, to give women these, these bodies that are completely unachievable even with surgery, right? 

'cause they. They're just filters, these body filters and it's like, uh, yeah, I, I feel like this is gonna be a really important podcast episode for people who have children, especially, I would imagine, I'm not on top of the statistics with eating disorders, but if you would ask me, I would to guess, I would imagine that more women are diagnosed with them or, or say that they suffer from eating disorders than men or, or boys. 

Is that. What, what can you, uh, say about that?  

Kathryn Hansen: Yeah, and I, I can't say that I have the exact statistics in front of me now too, but it is a majority of women, but not as much as you would think. Like it definitely is. A lot of men do struggle with this, and maybe I can have the statistics better. You  

Ted Ryce: just don't talk about it. 

Kathryn Hansen: Yeah, they don't talk about it as much. And um, it is historically the sort of body standards were more pushed on women. And when I was growing up, it was all about like, be as thin as you can be. Now that's shifted a lot, like as far as women is you have to have a specific shape and you don't really wanna be too thin, but you have to have a small waist. 

And I mean, it's, it's very, um, specific about how you should be. So, but I think, like you mentioned, there is a lot of pressure on men now too, and a lot of it is maybe about getting bigger and bigger muscles, but still maintaining a certain body fat ratio and Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think the last I saw it was like a third of the people struggling with eating disorders or men, but I don't know if that's a hundred percent accurate, but definitely more women, but a lot of men too. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah. That's good to know. So, so if you're listening right now and you feel like this is an issue, so. Let's talk about, so for you, I, I, it, it's a great story because you, I mean, from the way you told your story, there's not like some, again, we all have stuff in our past. We could say, oh yeah, that kind of messed me up. 

But you didn't have like some great trauma or any big thing that you were dealing with. It was this. You were young. You wanted to lose weight because of these body images that, uh, you just said. Now they've kind of shifted. Right? And then once you started that journey and you started dealing, the problems arose with binging, you started to view those behaviors as like, oh, this is me who is outta control, or, or whatever the story was. 

I'm not a good person. I'm outta control. And then once you started to separate. Your identity from it and realize these were drives coming from your, your calories were too low. It was making you crazy, which I really want to talk about the Minnesota starvation experiment with you. 'cause I'm aware of it. 

I've read about it, but I'm, but I'm, uh, I, I think you're gonna have a really good take on it, but uh, when you're able to start separating it, you start to realize, oh, well I have, so you changed this story, right? That's what I'm hearing. And that changed everything for you.  

Kathryn Hansen: Yeah. I changed the story and it, it really did. 

And that doesn't happen to everyone. I mean, plenty of people I work with, yes it does happen to, they have that mental shift right away. Some people take longer to, to get that mental shift of like, this is not me. It's really not that far off from someone who, let's say, decides to stop smoking and then decides that all those urges to smoke are just no longer who they are. 

And anytime they have an urge, they simply don't act on it. And even if smoking is an anxiety relief, if in some way, I think a lot of it is just to get relief from the urge. So it's not like the smoker has to go solve their anxiety to stop smoking. They just need to stop acting on the urge. So. That message is not given to people with eating disorders. 

It's like your urge means something. Your urge is really important, and it means you've been traumatized in your life or whatever. And again, not to minimize anything anyone's been through, but I just really think focusing on the urge as the central problem really just changed everything for me. I realized I was binging to cope with the urges. 

I wasn't binging to cope because they made me feel so. I mean, they didn't make me feel good, right? To feel like you want all this food and to kind of feel like you're going crazy. But once I was able to step back and say, oh, like that is just an urge, that's just kind of my brain is doing it, doing its thing that's, that's just energy in my body that's, I called it neurological junk. 

It's just not a part of who I am anymore. I was able to feel those urges, but they weren't as uncomfortable anymore. 'cause I didn't truly think I needed anything in that moment. I knew it was just those false messages from my brain. So I was able to just let that urge move through me and then see on the other side, oh yeah, I actually didn't want that after all. 

Move on with my life and it would happen again. And it didn't take too long for them to be deconditioned because when it comes to the brain, which you don't use anymore, you lose. It's just the fundamental concept of neuroplasticity that our habits can go away, and we've all likely experienced that. With different habits in our lives, and I don't think the binge eating habit really has to be too much different. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah. I, I really like what you're saying there. And that, and it is more of a, you know, if you're trying to define it in terms of psychological approaches, like more of A-C-B-T-A, a cognitive beha behavioral approach where you're really, you're focusing on the behaviors and the cravings in the brain, rather than like, well, tell me what happened. 

When you were three or, or whatever, what, whatever the story is. And uh, yeah, maybe some of that can be helpful for some people if they're right. At the end of the day, it's really what helps you. But I feel like that has, that, that narrative has been pushed too much and where the, the big breakthrough in so many things, not just with. 

Eating disorders, but with social media use or drug use or, right. Is like, Hey, the brain is playing a role here and there's a reason that we, you know, we, we experience ourselves as like two different people. Well, I had to hold my tongue. What? What? What do you mean? Why didn't you just like not want to say it, right? 

Say the thing. Well, it's like, uh, our brains. Or wired in, in a certain way where there's some conflict sometimes, or I, I had to drag myself out of bed. Well, if you are you who's doing the dragging and who's being dragged, and just the reality of the wiring of our brain, it just, you know, it's these funky things that we have to deal with. 

And, and you mentioned right, the, the prefrontal cortex versus, you know, the more primitive parts of our brain. One thing I would say. Coming up for me, and what I do is listening to your story. One of the things that we work with, with our clients is making sure that they're eating the right amount of calories and they're not experiencing high levels of hunger. 

Because one of the things that happens with people who figure out, oh, it's just calories, so here's what I'm gonna do. Calories in, calories out. Got it. I'm gonna work out twice a day, seven days a week. I'm gonna have. Yeah, like a smooth, uh, uh, protein and water for breakfast. Gonna have a salad for lunch and then like a soup for dinner. 

And that's gonna work. And it does, it gets you to lose weight. And it drives you freaking insane because you're, you're not eating enough calories, you're doing a lot of exercise. And to your point, Catherine, and what you talk about it like it triggers what, what we know is hunger triggers a survival response. 

In fact, there's a really interesting study where, um, they were. I forget all the details 'cause it's been a little while, but, uh, this was Robert Polsky who I, who was telling the story about this, who's a neurobiologist. He was talking about how people who were seeing a judge, like going to court for a crime they committed, got harsher sentences right before lunch and they were trying to figure out why that was happening. 

They thought it was it racism or some other stuff. No hungry judges. Right. And there's several examples of that. So you can't fight hunger because it's such a powerful drive. You have to really work with it. Food choices play a big role. 'cause even, you know, if you've ever eaten a bag of chips that was maybe three, four, or 500 calories, and you're like, okay, well now I need a meal because I really didn't do anything for my hunger. 

You know, there's, there's a lot of strategies to, to. You know whether you're tracking calories or even interested in weight loss. But like, just making sure you're choosing foods that help satiate you so you don't fall into that survival mode  

Kathryn Hansen: because those, those foods do activate more of a pleasure process in our brain than the more natural foods. 

You know, it's, and when you're hungry, that's even more so. People I've heard too, oh, I'm just a sugar addict. Or these things that you say you hear, and some of it is the combination of starvation plus those highly pleasurable foods. It just makes those foods so much more rewarding. I mean, there are studies around this too, like people who are food deprived, the food is just much more rewarding when they do have it, and especially those processed foods. 

And I think, you know, we live in a world of food abundance, but we are wired for food scarcity just based on our evolution. So we're not really meant to be presented with these foods all the time and have this opportunity for pleasure all the time, but it's kind of where we are and we have to learn to deal with it. 

And I absolutely think. We're capable of dealing with it. But when you combine hunger and you combine, you know, in my, uh, case and people I work with combine starvation, anorexia, plus these processed foods, it's really just not a good combination and it leads to serious problems.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah. Really important to know that. 

Right. Uh, going back to that initial thing where it's like, well, I, that, that realization that it's really the environment. Especially in the us I'm actually in Brazil right now. Um, I've lived all over the world and you see the differences. You see the cultural and and societal differences. Like in the US people get less than 5,000 steps per day because it's very oriented around having a car and driving places, right? 

Very few people live in walkable cities. And then, uh, to your point, like the food abundance, we have this, what, what's referred to as an evolutionary mismatch. Right? Uh, where, where it's like, oh, gotta gotta eat all the food. You never know when the famine's gonna come. It's like, it's not coming. Yeah. It's not not coming. 

So we have to contend with that. Right. And there's serious consequences if we don't. But also we have to do it the right way, especially like with your work and, um, you know, where you can start developing this, uh, uh, an eating disorder. Even if you are, you know, don't have trauma in the past, just because you're going about it in a way that doesn't, that doesn't work with your brain and, and biology, Catherine, um, I would love to hear like your, what, so, so you had this eating disorder, you conquered it, you tried the, the therapy wasn't really hitting home for you. 

You started to figure out, oh, these, these, this, a lot of it for you was a brain. Right. Just understanding the parts of your brain allowed you to shift your perspective and therefore your behavior. And then, um, what did you get out of studying the Minnesota starvation experiment? Can you talk about what it is for those people who've never heard about it before and then the lessons that you learned and, and teach from it as well? 

Kathryn Hansen: Yeah, I mean this was a really important study 'cause it was really the only study we have on the effects of. Human starvation in a controlled study because for ethical reasons, we really can't be repeating those kind of studies. And it was done during World War II or during the recovery period? I think it started in 1944 where they recruited, I think it was 36 healthy men to volunteer to come go through semi starvation. 

To figure out what refeeding, um, refeeding processes or, or method of refeeding was gonna be the best because so many people were experiencing these atrocities of war and actually being starved. So they needed to know how do we best refeed. Populations, you know, so these,  

Ted Ryce: and, and they were all like Amish or something because they were all conscientious objectors and didn't want to go to war. 

So  

Kathryn Hansen: Yeah. Like nonviolent didn't Yeah, for sure. And they, they were really healthy men. They were all healthy men. I think that's, that's important to say here too. They were all at the start of the study eating about 3,500 calories a day and they were meeting all their nutritional needs and they did. I think a three month control period where that they ate normally and they really measured their psychological, um, tests. 

They did personality tests, they did physical tests, and they were all very, very healthy. So this is like the best starting point you can possibly get. People without huge trauma and emotional problems and all very. Ethical and trying to do right for their, their country and, and civilization. I mean, great starting point. 

And the only factor here was that they all got starved. So they went down from 3,500 calories to 1,570. I was just reading it this morning to like review and, um, they all started experiencing. Eating disorders. Basically, they got obsessed with food. They experienced all these things that people with anorexia experience, like body checking, moving food around their plate, trying to think about food all the time, cooking for other people, like all these different things. 

And plus their psychological tests went way down, like as far as they started. Stu struggling more with depression, anxiety. Really difficult emotions, not wanting to do things they previously wanted to do. All of the things you mean  

Ted Ryce: suicide too? If I remember correctly.  

Kathryn Hansen: Yeah. I, I don't know if anyone but that. 

Yeah. Suicidal thoughts. All these different things from starvation. I mean, and it's just when I learned about it, this was after I had actually stopped binging and I knew that starvation had caused my problem to start, like to begin with, I had kind of unlearned everything I learned in therapy and I was like, no, it was really the starvation. 

Yeah, with combination of some risk factors too, but. I was like, oh my gosh, nothing was wrong with me. Like, this is everything I experienced. It's that with the starvation. But then when they started refeeding them binging appeared, purging appeared. You know, they, they went to eating when they didn't restrict them, they were eating like 7,000 to 10,000 calories a day, and they started experiencing digestive problems and just eating way too much, eating food out of like trash cans. 

I mean. All these things that I experienced as a binge eater just from dieting. And I was like, it just gave me this huge sense of relief. Like, oh my gosh, nothing was wrong with me. I was starving and my body was trying to adapt and cope and trying to refeed myself and, and it's just, I don't know, the body just doesn't seem to know exactly how to refeed yourself. 

I mean, I think it has to be done very carefully, you know? And, um, so yeah, I mean, that study I think is. Is used a lot in educating eating disorder patients to say what I'm saying about myself. Like, Hey, nothing is wrong with you. Like this is a normal response to starvation. So, yeah, I mean, does that kind of explain it or do you have any questions about it? 

Ted Ryce: No, I just think it's, it's important. Again, just backing up this idea and reinforcing that this isn't about willpower, right? There are certain, 'cause I feel like another narrative, it's like I, I tell people sometimes and it pisses people off, or some people, I'm like, biology trumps psychology. And they, and they'll say like, wow, that's, oh, oh, you believe that. 

So it's true. I'm like, hold your breath and use the power of psychology. When you start gasping for air, keep, continue holding your breath and let's see how long that goes. Now, if you're like a free diver, maybe it'll last, uh, a few minutes, but eventually you lose, right? Same thing with, um, I. With so many, so many, uh, right. 

You, there's just like, we're just dealing, we're dealing with the biology of the human body, and it's, and it's definitely workable, but the way I think one of the, the, the best lessons from hearing your story, it's like working with it instead of trying to constantly fight it. Right?  

Kathryn Hansen: Yeah. And, and we absolutely can work with it. 

I think it just speaks to like sustainability of habit change, right? We can't just throw ourselves into it, you know, throw yourself into the fire and expect just to be able to maintain those habits. Like you talked about the person who's eat eating water and protein for breakfast and a salad for lunch, and it's not something your body can sustain over any period of time. 

So it's not. I'm against healthy changes. I absolutely think that people can take control of their health and feed themselves well and be in shape, but I just think that that dieting and starving yourself is, is not the way to get there. I mean, in my case, it led me to be about 30, 25 pounds over my natural weight, like what my natural weight is. 

The dieting led me to lose weight, but then it had me gain way more weight through binging. You know, so it, and then it took me a while after I stopped binging. I didn't have to, you know, work on it. I just needed to stop the binging and my body gravitated back toward what's normal and healthy for me. But I do focus on health, you know, to an extent. 

I'm a busy single mom of four, and I'm an entrepreneur, and I have, you know what? I can, and that's what I love about your work is that you teach people to fit it in their life how they can, and in a way that's sustainable and in a way that's not going to. Eventually cause harm to them.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah. It has to be done. 

Yeah. And you have to watch out who you work with. I, I don't know the, the coaches that I know, I think they do a pretty good job. But my, my promise is that I help people do this in a healthy way. Right, because what you said, food restriction, they're, we put people on a bit of a strict approach in the first week or two when they join, but after that, there's no food restrictions. 

We get out rid of that, uh, forbidden fruit effect, right? Because I think that psychological, like, no, I, I, I really want it, but I can't have it. I really want it. Oh, I shouldn't do it. I shouldn't do it. PE people who are really good, they don't eat this stuff. We get rid of that shit. And I think too, Catherine, there's almost an ex an a, like, I don't want, I, I don't wanna use the word addictive, but it's, but it's almost like people get hooked on. 

The excitement, like part of the excitement of doing drugs is not even doing the drug, the illegal drugs. I was just, uh, listening to Michael Easter's scarcity brain book. If you haven't read it, it's just fantastic. Um, talking about a lot of the things that we're talking about, but more broad, uh, not, not specific to diet, but he was talking about how a lot of people who. 

Who use drugs? It's about getting the drugs and how much will we get and you know, how strong will they be versus, versus pharmaceutical drugs. Like opioids for example. They don't get abused as much because you're getting it from your doctor and and prescribed from your doctor. Now buying it on the street, but. 

They don't get abused as much because it's the same dose taken at the same time. The, you know, it's just more boring, right? And so it's not as exciting and I feel strict and we try to get people away from strict dieting, like, get rid of keto and all that, because it's not necessary their frameworks that work. 

But again, um, yeah, I think people, you know, going back to the whole conversation we're having about, uh, our brains, we, we also seem to be wired for that, that quick fix instead of. Let me slow down like you, your story about, yeah, I dieted and lost weight, but I ended up gaining a bunch of weight longer term and had to deal with the effects of that because of these shorter term approaches. 

I think it's so, so important. I. Catherine, I feel like I talked to you for a really long time.  

Kathryn Hansen: I know. I feel like, yeah. This has been a great conversation and maybe as a final thought, like we're all living with this brain in our, in our head, this primitive part of our brain that the goals of it are to survive, to seek pleasure and to avoid pain. 

And that's kind of like what you were talking about with the drug addict. And they're trying to seek pleasure and. We all just kind of have to accept that right. And work with it the best we can and try to live our best life, even though we have this sort of primitive voice often trying to undermine us. 

But yeah, like I said, we can all work with it and, and really have a full life even in spite of that.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah. And it, I, I really enjoyed talking to you, talking to you today. It's no wonder that, uh, your book, uh, has done so well, you know, you have. Over 3000 reviews here and, um, you know, just, you, you talk about a lot of the things, even though. 

We're focused on different types of, you, you're, you're specialized in, in eating disorders, but it's clear like you've done a great job basing this in your personal experience, but also some of the best understand the bigger scientific or more recent scientific breakthroughs and, and looking into things like the Minnesota starvation experiment. 

So it was really great to have you here today, and if you are listening right now. You know, you want to hear more about Catherine, what she's up to, listen to her podcast or get her book. The name of her book is Brain Over Binge. Why was Bulimic Why Conventional Therapy Didn't Work and High Recovered For Good? 

The name of her podcast is Brain Over Binge and you can find all of that and more@brainoverbinge.com. Yeah, so yeah, I, I really enjoyed the conversation today. Catherine, I, I feel like it's not talked about enough.  

Kathryn Hansen: Thank you so much for having me, Ted.  

Ted Ryce: Absolutely. Gotta do it again