I want to show you exactly how I used brain science and my training at the FBI to curb overeating and emotional eating and finally lose weight that actually stayed off. And this was after eating my feelings my entire life. This was after losing and gaining the same 20 pounds over and over again. This was after 4 nutrition certifications completely failed me. And this is from someone who loooooves food.
I want to show you what I did, because it didn’t just work on me. I’ve helped hundreds of women do the same.
If I told you that 55% of the women in my community began dieting in high school or college, that shouldn’t surprise you. But what if I said that 22% started in elementary school? ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. One in four of you have been in the same dead end “diet job” for 30-40 years now. And it’s not giving you any kind of satisfaction or promotion.
We think that calorie in-calorie out is supposed to work. We think tracking our macros or weighing our food is supposed to work. We think that if we just have more motivation and discipline that we won’t eat everything in sight, and we can finally lose weight. Because there is an entire industry that, in my opinion, has well meaning nutritionists and coaches. But let’s get real. If any of this worked, why are 75% of women overweight or obese? And more importantly, why isn’t it working for you?
You have the motivation and discipline. You tell yourself you’re going to be good and not eat the thing. But then what happens?
You eat the thing.
You quit your diet.
Because you ate the thing.
Because you quit the diet, you now eat the thing even more because you’re not on the diet.
So you go back on the diet.
You tell yourself you’re going to be good and not eat the thing.
But you eat the thing.
And you quit your diet.
The answer is quite simple. Everything starts with how your brain is naturally wired.
Allow me to connect the dots between my former world at the FBI and my current world as a weight loss coach. I used to be the FBI’s Chief of Staff for Counterintelligence. In that role, I was a pattern nerd to help catch spies.
Fast forward to when I was struggling with emotional eating and my weight, and those 4 nutrition certifications didn’t work one little bit.
I went back to what I was good at. Patterns. And catching spies.
What I realized is that your brain has a specific way of functioning.
There are 2 modes of your brain that dictate your reaction to food. The emotional and automatic part of your brain, and the logical, slow, and rational thinking part of your brain.
Which brain state do you think you are in when your favorite food is in front of you, you have had the worst day, and the last thing you ate was a donut from the breakroom at 10:00 in the morning? The emotional and automatic part or the logical, slow, and rational thinking part?
If you guessed your emotional brain, you are correct.
But here’s the catch that no one in the weight loss space talks about. Emotional eating and weight loss are two sides of the same coin. Not everyone who emotionally eats is overweight. Not everyone who is overweight emotionally eats. But the two are kissing cousins. And I want to address this relationship.
Your brain runs through a specific sequence of events that will influence whether you are going to continue to be the woman who is overweight and constantly struggling, or if you are the woman who is at a healthy weight and doesn’t struggle. The more I studied this brain science, the more I realized… holy smokies. This is the same investigative logic we used in counterintelligence.
So I went into pattern nerd mode and this is when the Weight Loss Forensics Framework was born.
This is the 5-part sequence that your brain automatically runs through. I want you to think of this sequence like a pyramid. Everyone starts at the top - what you eat.
But if you want to eliminate the sabotage of emotional eating and lose weight that you can actually keep off and not gain back, you need to start at the bottom. Because there are 4 things your brain does before you ever put one bite of food in your mouth. And until you change what your brain does before you eat, your brain will continue to inform the same behaviors, and you’re going to keep dieting forever.
When you start at the top, every time you go on your diet or try to be good and just focus on the food, your brain is going to react the same way every single time. It will convince you…
“It’s been a long, hard day. You deserve a treat.”
“Just this one bite won’t hurt.”
“It’s a special occasion.”
“It’s a special treat.”
“You don’t want this to go to waste.”
Think of it like this. The food is just the evidence left behind by everything your brain did before you ate it. Most diets and nutrition programs start with the food. Weight Loss Forensics starts with a proper investigation. You and I are going to follow the evidence backwards.
This framework is how you break the cycle.
The first part of this process is the emotional eating focus. If you want to lose weight and you don’t think that you emotionally eat, I want you to still listen to what I’m saying because it will still apply to you.
The very first thing you want to do is just observe how you react, and ask yourself what is food’s role in my life? And if you’re already rolling your eyes and are like… ok, Holly… this is a little weird… stay with me. Because it will get a little weirder.
For many women, what you’ll discover is that your brain has learned to associate food with safety. Food is your comfort blanket. When you have big emotions, when you’re overwhelmed, when you’re operating out of chaos, your brain looks for safety and comfort and the quickest and easiest way to find safety and comfort is with food.
When you learn how you react and what those reactions mean, you can replace safety and comfort with something that isn’t food. When you do that, your brain doesn’t need to turn to food in the same way. Your first step is to observe and then cut it off at the source.
The second thing you want to do is to profile who you become around food. Let me explain.
When you are overweight or you’re trying not to eat all of the time, the loop that you say is, “I have to be good” or “I need to go on a diet” or “I have to get this weight off.” Those thoughts aren’t just about losing weight. They reinforce the identity of the woman who is always struggling to lose weight.
It’s just like a smoker who always talks about how they are going to quit, as they are walking out the door for their smoke break. You know they are all talk, and they are never going to quit.
But if you were to offer a cigarette to someone who has never smoked their entire life, they would look at you weird and be like… “No thank you. I don’t smoke.”
WITH ZERO HESITATION.
Women who aren’t constantly battling with themselves around food have a very different program running. They aren’t constantly thinking, “I have to be good.” They view food (and themselves) from a completely different perspective.
Do your own investigation. Go find a woman who has a peaceful relationship with food and ask her about this. Listen to how she thinks about food and compare that to what you currently think about food. Your second step is to profile who you become around food and lean into who you want to become around food.
The third thing you want to do is understand the patterns you have on repeat. This is where the rubber meets the road, and the line of demarcation, which is why I have it circled. This is the glue that connects emotional eating with weight loss.
Because the more you repeat the pattern, the more automatic it becomes. These patterns give your brain an assignment. It knows exactly what to do without you even thinking about it.
Do you hit the drive through on the way home when you’ve worked late and you had a bad day?
What is your answer when someone pushes seconds or dessert and you don’t want to eat more?
Do you always grab a mini when you walk by your co-workers desk?
Do you have a Reese’s Cup and Coke every afternoon at 3:00?
Is there a bag of chips or a pint of ice cream on your lap while you’re watching TV at night?
Your brain likes repetition and routine because predictability requires less thinking. Those predictable patterns with food become the cozy blanket your brain is snuggling up with. Your third step is to understand the patterns you have on repeat.
Let’s look at what we’ve uncovered so far. You observe how you react. You profile who you become around food. And you identify the patterns with food that you have on repeat. All three will inform what you do next.
But before we get to that, I want to share what these three steps look like, specifically through the lens of emotional eating.
When you work through these three, the process I take my students and clients through is called See It, Stop It, Shift It. This is where we geek out with the neuroscience.
Think of what you are currently doing like a red Chevy truck that can only drive down one road. That is your well-worn neural pathway. This is the road your brain has driven down so many times, it knows exactly where to go.
When you See It… observe your reactions… you are now aware of what’s happening, so you can interrupt the pattern before it plays out. At that fork in the road, you tell the red Chevy truck to stop driving in that direction… Stop It… and take a different road instead… Shift It.
This is See It, Stop It, Shift It. And this is how my students inside the Break Emotional Eating Accelerator use neuroplasticity to train their brain to create a different response, until the new pattern becomes automatic.
Once we’ve made progress with what’s happening underneath the food, it’s time to move up the pyramid and get into what you actually do and eat. This is where we dive into weight loss.
But here’s the catch. Do you just want to lose weight? Or do you want to keep it off? Do you want that weight loss to finally stick so you never have to worry about going on another diet again? Because that’s the difference in what we do next.
And oh… I forgot to mention, I’m a 20-year PMP - certified Project Management Professional. So now that we understand why you eat emotionally, we’re going to do what I do best: build a system and a project plan.
The fourth and fifth pieces go hand in hand - your behavior - what you do, which ultimately determines the evidence - what you eat.
Let me ask you, how many times have you tried to change your behavior and the food you eat? And how long did that behavior last? How long did you eat the healthy food before you gave up? How long did you go to the gym before it got too hard to maintain?
Think about what we talked about at the beginning - this is the spot where everyone jumps into their diet. Are you starting to understand why it doesn’t work? It’s because there’s an entire eco-system driving your behavior and what you eat.
So how do you change your behavior? I invite you to geek out with me some more.
Rather than quitting your diet on Friday and starting over on Monday, or losing 20 pounds and gaining it right back… what if… you just didn’t quit in the first place?
What if you could figure out a way to keep doing those behaviors that get you results? What if you could incorporate those behaviors into your crazy life so that they still work even on your worst days and your I don’t wanna days?
Do you think that constantly repeating these new behaviors will help it feel less like something you have to do to lose weight, and more like part of your life? Do you think if it’s more ingrained into your life, it’s easier to stick with it?
There are 4 phases that I take my students through so they can create this kind of sustainability. We do it inside the Sustainable Weight Loss MACHINE.
Phase 1 - Build the Foundation
This is when you put on your project manager hat and actually create the systems to start doing things differently than what you’re used to, and still make them work even on your worst days, even when you’re on vacation, and even when life is nutso.
Phase 2 - Optimize Your Environment
This is when you start making the healthy choice the easy choice. You’ll optimize your surroundings so healthier decisions require less effort, negotiation, and willpower.
Phase 3 - Lock-In Your Boundaries
This is where you lock the gates and secure the fortress to protect everything you’ve worked so hard to build. And yes... even if you are the biggest people pleaser. I got you.
Phase 4 - Trust Yourself
This is when you stop looking for someone to save you, and you finally become the woman you’ve been waiting for. You’ll learn to trust yourself and food again (or for the first time) - your hunger, your fullness, your routines, your boundaries and most importantly, your own decisions.
That is the Weight Loss Forensics Framework, and I’m curious which part of this is really resonating with you right now.
One thing that’s really important if you don’t know where to start is to ask yourself… Am I struggling more with eating when I’m in big emotions, or because I know what to do, but I can’t make it work consistently?
That’s where you need to start.
So if you find yourself numbing out and not having any control around food, or eating when you’re overwhelmed or stressed or experiencing big emotions, start with the Break Emotional Eating Accelerator. This is where we break those sabotage patterns with automatic and emotional eating.
If you feel like you know exactly what you need to do, you just can’t figure out how to make it fit with your chaotic life, you get this framework inside the Sustainable Weight Loss MACHINE. This is a back-to-basics approach to build the systems that eliminate the predictable failure points in your weight loss journey, so that you stop quitting, stop starting over, and can finally lose weight in a way that’s healthy and sustainable.
Here’s the thing, too.
You probably noticed that not one time during our time together did I mention anything about starving yourself with sad little salads in tiny plastic boxes. Because diets have cooties.
We follow the evidence backwards. We focus on what matters most, because I want this to be as efficient as possible for you.
And if you’re still thinking, “I don’t know if I can do this.” Good. You don’t have to know yet. That’s the entire point of having a framework. I walk you through it step-by-step inside both the Break Emotional Eating Accelerator and the Sustainable Weight Loss MACHINE. Both programs use the Weight Loss Forensics Framework. Each one has a different focus and entry point.
I want you to remember something as you work through this. You do not need to fix all five of these things at once. I’m showing you the entire framework so you can see the big picture and understand how everything fits together. We’re going to take it one piece at a time, in the right order, and I’ll show you exactly what to focus on as you go.
Ask yourself which side you’re struggling with most right now: the emotional eating, or knowing what to do but not being able to consistently do it. Then check out the program that matches where you are.
If you’re ready to crawl inside your brain to understand why you emotionally eat, and how to actually stop those sabotage patterns, that’s exactly what you get to experience inside the Break Emotional Eating Accelerator.
When you’re ready to drop the nonsense about starving yourself, counting calories and macros, or weighing your food, and instead become a Sustainable Weight Loss MACHINE...
This is your back-to-basics approach to achieve healthy and sustainable weight loss. We kick it old school, and we do it in a way that you build an environment and lifestyle that works for you to create that sustainability.
We do it in a way where you eat platefuls of satisfying and nutrient-dense food. We do it in a way where you enjoy moving your body. You learn what your body actually needs.
I’ll bet you’ve never seen FBI tactics deployed to counter binge eating. Let me show you how.
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