How Your Experiences in Childhood Impact Your Relationship With Food With Amanda

Calvin and Brooke Masters: You've counted every calorie, tried every diet, spent hours in the gym, and still something's missing. You want more than just weight loss. You want your energy back. You want your confidence restored. You want a way of living that doesn't feel like punishment. Welcome to Master Your Metabolism, where we cut through the noise, ditch the fads, and give you a real plan to become the healthiest, strongest version of you. hosted by our team of expert coaches with proven strategies, science-based tips, and real life encouragement, not just to help you lose fat, but actually create that lifestyle that you love. You've tried everything. Now, let's try what actually works. This is your turning point. Let's go. Brooke Masters: Hey everybody, welcome, welcome to Master Your Metabolism. I am here today with Amanda. And I thought it would be a really cool topic if Amanda could talk about the experiences that you have as a child and how that develops into your relationship with food and different circumstances because the more that I am learning from her and things that I am seeing in the clients and why they have certain behaviors. why they tend to self-sabotage, why they tend to have certain things that happen when they are really trying their best. So it is understanding and working through what people think and how they were programmed. and it's funny because most people are like, I don't want to like talk to a therapist about my food. And it's really it's a tool. It's if you understand why you do something, it makes it a lot easier to kind of rationalize why you are making those choices rather than the guilt and beating yourself up about those choices, but it's understanding why. So, Amanda, thank you, thank you for being here. I thought it would be really helpful for people because I think a lot of people are gonna listen to this episode and have those aha moments because I know them when we had done this on one of our group calls, it was, huh. That makes a lot of sense. And a lot of people during our group calls were nodding their heads and understanding. And I know that this is something when we do have new clients jump on and they speak to you and understanding why they do what they do. So we could share with everybody and give them a little insight. So let's kick Amanda Blumenstein: Yeah. Brooke Masters: it off. Amanda Blumenstein: So yes, therapists like to talk about childhood. that comes from a place that historically is very Freudian, psychodynamic, that says that everything comes from your childhood. Well And the reason that people don't want to go there is usually because it's very deeply rooted and you have to uncover a lot of stuff before you get to what's really there and what was there when you were young. So they call it your formative years for a reason. During your childhood, you are exposed to the world for the first time. You are exposed to the world as far as the things you do, the way you speak, the things you know, how you behave, how you engage. All of those skills are taught when we're little, which is why our parents work so hard to try to make sure that we're instilling the right things in our children. for example, why do you say please and thank you? Well Somewhere when you were really little, you were told that you had to say please when you asked for something and thank you when you received it. And that sunk in so much so that you don't think about it when you say please or thank you to someone. It's just what you do. Well, hopefully. Brooke Masters: Hopefully. Amanda Blumenstein: So, by that standpoint, if we learn things in childhood and they become just what we do. Then when we do things that become maladaptive or don't work for us anymore, we have to see where they came from so we can undo all of that. you know, from a cognitive behavioral standpoint, which is where I come from, we look at things from a cognitive standpoint, thoughts, feelings, beliefs, fears, and a behavioral standpoint. This is more behavioral. So when we think about behaviorism, we think about positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, and punishment. So as humans and as children in particular, when we do something good, we're positively reinforced for it so that we do it again. And when we do something bad or negative, we're going to receive punishment to deter us from doing it again. Well, those types of adaptations can occur without our our knowledge of them occurring, and then they manifest in our adulthood. So I have a list of all of the things that I could come up with that stem from childhood that are related to our experiences with food and how they can manifest in a maladaptive way in our adulthood. So Brooke Masters: Letter right. Amanda Blumenstein: The first one that I came up with was food as emotional regulation. Sounds like some jargon there, but let me explain. So you have a bad day, you come home from school, mom is waiting for you with some freshly baked cookies. She sits with you, she gives you a hug, a pat on the back, you have a cookie with some milk. Everything is better. And now as an adult, you have a hard time self-soothing when things Brooke Masters: Mm-hmm. Amanda Blumenstein: go wrong without using food. So it's not to say just because your mom did this one time that it's going to lead to a behavior in adulthood. But if you've grown up in an environment where food is used as a self-soothing mechanism, that's gonna be your go-to. And that's gonna be something that we have to kind of unravel. And I know that that's something that Brooke sees a lot with clients, that's self-soothing. Brooke Masters: Yep. Or I did something, I had a stressful day, it was awful. So I went and I had a piece of cake, or I went and I ate this, or I had to go to dinner and I just order whatever because it was just a stressful day. I've seen it with alcohol too, that I just needed to sit down and have a drink because today was crazy. And they're using either a substance or food in order to kind of chillax and feel better. Amanda Blumenstein: Which brings me to the next one, which is food as a reward. So let's say you studied really hard for a test, you got an A, you come home, you tell mom and dad, I got an A on my test today. Aren't you so proud of me? And they say, Absolutely, let's go get some ice cream. It's always ice Brooke Masters: Ice cream. Amanda Blumenstein: cream. I don't know why. I think it was always ice cream in my life too, but Brooke Masters: It's probably where mine came from. Amanda Blumenstein: Or a dessert or a cake, or maybe mom makes something special for dinner. but we're looking at food as a reward. This is a particularly dangerous one because food is very accessible. Rewards theoretically should be hard to achieve. So, if you're able to get a reward without doing much, you're going to replicate that behavior over and over again. It's going to be really hard to kind of dismantle that when you want to reward yourself with something. So it's Friday, the weekend's here, you had a long week. I want to reward myself with some pizza or a glass of wine. Now Brooke Masters: I did good with my macros all week, so I'm gonna go ahead and have a f a meal off plan. Amanda Blumenstein: So, you know, when food is used as a reward, it can be very detrimental in the long run because we're choosing to reward ourselves with something that is readily accessible, you have access to, and you think in your head it's justified. So on the flip side of that, food as a punishment. I don't know that this actually happened to me, but I know it happens to children all over the world. Going to bed without your dinner. You Brooke Masters: Mm-hmm. Amanda Blumenstein: did something wrong. You're gonna go to bed without food. You're gonna go to bed without the dessert that the rest of the family is having. Using food as a punishment there can actually lead for you to then hoard that same food because you're afraid it's going to be taken away from you. Brooke is this one that you see a lot? Brooke Masters: And also with people, and I know that we've discussed this, that sometimes there was a client, two clients in particular that I can think of that grew up and didn't have much money and didn't have much food. And that was something that was a problem and that they'd always have to clean their plates. They'd always have to like finish all of the food that's in there because they didn't want to go to waste. but Going back to the one that you were talking about with the food as reward, like, dude, I'm guilty of that. I remember potty training my kids with literally Cheerios, MMs, Skittle, whatever was quick and little to give them very quickly to make them go to the bathroom. And I'll tell you, like, I had to do something. He was turning three soon. So Amanda Blumenstein: I will share my own, which is that my parents use chocolate chips to podgy train me. And that is the one food after 10 years of working on my relationship with food that I cannot be held responsible for. I can't have them in Brooke Masters: Yeah. Amanda Blumenstein: the house because I do. I remember those MMs being or the chocolate chips being used Brooke Masters: Chocolate chips. Amanda Blumenstein: as a reward. Brooke Masters: Mm-hmm. Amanda Blumenstein: but what Brooke is talking about is actually it has a name. It's called food scarcity. So if you grow up in a home where you don't have access to a lot of food, so either food volume or particular types of food, that can also lead to that hoarding type behavior where this is valuable. This is something that is valuable to me. I have to make sure that I have enough of it. And that type of thinking is going to definitely work against you if you're working on trying to balance your macros and eating, you know, healthy, clean food options. But if you're feeling as though something is going to be taken from you forever, that perspective is going to impact you. So that was actually like the next one on my list. So check that one right off. Brooke Masters: Done. But I see that also. I had someone recently that she had been on lots of restrictive diets Amanda Blumenstein: Diets. Brooke Masters: for many, many, many, many, many, many years. And what we had to put in place And it was. It was something you enjoy that is not on the plan that we had to teach her that it was still gonna be okay because she was always so scared in the opposite direction to have a little something. So I almost feel like there's there has to be some like middle grayish ground that we always talk about because I have the people that like can't do anything and then we're doing it that they'll binge and restrict. But then I have the other people that are so restrictive that they can't sustain it. And then they wind up, they can't do it. Forget it, I'm off. But meanwhile, now this person has had so much success and continues to get better. And she still has that meal that she enjoys with her family because it's the time with her family. She's made the connection, but she's also made the adjustments that she has something that's not in her plan, but she doesn't go. Bananas now, where she binges because she knows it's coming every week. And she knows I can have this. Whereas before she would order like the large wits double stuffed with all the toppings, that now she has a kid size, so she has a taste and she's good. She always goes to this one restaurant, but now she orders a dish, packs up half of it, and then has it, you know, for lunch or whatever. But she knows. what her limits are and just having that ability to see that she's okay and that she continues to drop and she's down like 40 pounds now. So it's also again looking at what the behaviors were before, what why she failed before, understanding what the dynamics were and now putting it into her plan and making her plan specifically for her. So now it's like this is her lifestyle now. Amanda Blumenstein: That's really it, is you can't find the gray area until you're s absolutely certain of what the black is and the white is, what Brooke Masters: Mm-hmm. Amanda Blumenstein: the all is and what the nothing is. Without understanding that first, you're just gonna go try to moderate and it's never gonna work because you're fighting a battle against something that you're not addressing. And Basically, what you were just saying is the next one on my list, you know, people who overeat or undereat. Maybe you were picked on for being too big or too little. It really doesn't matter what was actually taking place when that mindset set in. So if you were an overweight child and now you restrict, or vice versa, that comes from somewhere. And it's really important for us to understand the childhood experiences and where that comes from and how that leads us to this place that we're in right now. For me, I had a really hard time finding the great place because I was really overweight and I ate everything I wanted. And it brought me immediate pleasure. And then afterwards, it brought me a lot of shame, guilt, and disgust. So instead of saying I can have a little bit of that, I trained myself to say, we're not having any of that anymore. Well, it works to do that. As long as that's the method you're taking, but it's not necessarily healthy and it's not good for your long-term relationship with food. So it's kind of like a band-aid that you put on a gaping wound. We need some stitches. So that's where the stitches come in. Brooke Masters: Mm-hmm. Yep. Amanda Blumenstein: how about you grew up in a traditional household and you could not leave the table until you cleaned your plate? Brooke Masters: Mm-hmm. Amanda Blumenstein: And now you have a hard time with moderation. You have a hard time, like Brooke said, her client now goes to that restaurant and boxes up half her meal. Well, when I was growing up, that wouldn't have been allowed. We don't box up half the meal. You eat everything on your plate and you're thankful for it and you thank your grandma for making it. All Brooke Masters: Mm-hmm. Amanda Blumenstein: of those things. Very relevant. and a lot of these come from more like old school mentalities. But I think they manifest in modern families even today. you know, what we tell our children around food, something's gonna stick. Unfortunately, as a parent, you don't get to decide what sticks. I had a conversation with my father a couple weeks ago where I told him about something I remembered, and he's like, that's what you remember. And I'm like, Brooke Masters: Mm-hmm. Amanda Blumenstein: yeah, that's what I remember. They're fun. Brooke Masters: Kids are great. Kids are great. Amanda Blumenstein: also people who grew up in a health conscious household. So forbidden foods. That was how I grew up. I grew up in a household in the 90s when everything was low-cal, low fat. We always had those like fake cookies, like snack wells or something like that. Brooke Masters: Yep. Smack wells. The marshmallow chocolate ones were dope though. But Amanda Blumenstein: They were good. Brooke Masters: we only had like Cheerios and rice plain rice krispies. A treat was the honey nut Cheerios. But Amanda Blumenstein: Yeah. Brooke Masters: then I go across the street and we only had wheat bread and all the things. And so my friend across the street only had sugar cereals, wonder bread, and all the things. So I would go to her house so I can have. The wonder bread and all the sugar cereals. And then she would come to my house because she liked the wheat bread. I'm like, what is wrong with you? Like it's gross, it's dry, it's nasty. But it is, I guess it's just like what you have, like you always want something else. but it was, and now kind of the same as that. Now she's super healthy. And just because she grew up, I mean, she was just a I'm not doing that. So it it is very funny. Olive loaf too, they had. What it what is that? So gross. That wasn't something I enjoyed. Amanda Blumenstein: For me, ew. I didn't think anyone actually ate that. For me, it was I grew up in a very healthy household. My parents were athletes, they ate healthy always, which is turned out to be a phenomenal thing because they're in their 70s and they're killing it. So it's Brooke Masters: Mm-hmm. Amanda Blumenstein: great. However, when I went away to college, we ran into a problem. Brooke Masters: Mm-hmm. Yep. Amanda Blumenstein: The freshman 15 for me was a hundred pounds because There was no limit to all these foods that I was never allowed to eat, and nobody was gonna tell me that I couldn't eat them. So I found myself in a place where I didn't have the skills to moderate myself because I had never been taught to moderate. I had just been taught to remove. So, Brooke Masters: Mm-hmm. Amanda Blumenstein: for you know, in thinking about your childhoods, what were things that were forbidden? What were things that were permitted? Those are going to be the things that your brain thinks are good or bad. Again, that all or nothing thinking is gonna creep in everywhere, every time. how about the stress of family meals? Eating, Brooke Masters: Mm. Amanda Blumenstein: being stressful. You and your siblings are fighting, you're throwing food, dad's yelling, mom's crying. Granted, I'm sure not every meal is like that. and I Brooke Masters: No. Amanda Blumenstein: don't have siblings, so I didn't have that benefit, but I do know that family meals can be very stressful. So Brooke Masters: Mm-hmm. Amanda Blumenstein: just the environment around eating and wanting to shovel as much food in your face as you can so you can leave, that's also a component that can follow us into adulthood. So these are all little things that you probably don't think about on a regular basis, but now that I'm saying them, you're thinking, yeah. Brooke Masters: Now I see. Amanda Blumenstein: I think I think we did do that. I think I did shovel all the food in my face as fast as I can. I think about like a Christmas story. Do you remember the little boy who liked the little Brooke Masters: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Amanda Blumenstein: piggy and he eats all the food really fast? I mean, it depends on how your household was growing up, but everybody's household was different and each of those experiences are going to inform how you behave as adult around food. Brooke Masters: Yeah, I see with the boys now too. Like, it's crazy. Logan comes over to eat. I'm like, slow down. Why are you eating so fast? And it's crazy. Sometimes I'm like, when they were little, like, were they eating each other's food? Like, what was the problem that they're all eating so fast? But all three of them do it. Like, Chase has slowed down a little bit. But just so y'all know, like wherever it came from, when you are shoveling food that fast. Just know from a perspective of anatomy and physiology, like your body, if you are eating that, that number one, you are in a state when you're eating like you're being chased by a bear. that response, that fight or flight response that you're shoveling, your body is shutting down digestion because who is going to be having a snack while you're being chased by a bear? So you basically won't be digesting food if you're not chewing and spending that time like smelling your food, being present for your food, all of the things. Your body doesn't start that process to have the enzymes to break down the food. So if you are the person that rushes through those meals and do it and you find, wow, I have acid reflux, wow, I get bloated all the time. Wow, I feel like really crappy after certain foods. Like start taking notice of the rate that you are eating. And if you are chewing, like they say to chew your food into a paste before you are actually going to swallow it. I know you love that texture, Amanda. You're welcome. Amanda Blumenstein: Yeah, I'm gonna be haunted by that now. but that's Brooke Masters: You're welcome. You're older now though. You can hack it. Amanda Blumenstein: true. So yeah, learning to eat quickly, even let's say you come from a big family and you have to eat quickly before it's gone. I mean, Brooke Masters: Mm-hmm. Amanda Blumenstein: let's say there's only so many rolls or so much potato salad, and you wanna make sure that you get yours, you not only wanna get yours, you wanna get it, eat it, get a second helping of it. And Brooke Masters: And seconds. Mm-hmm. Amanda Blumenstein: That is going to impact you lifelong. also healthy food is a punishment. That's my favorite. It's like you can't have ice cream until you eat your broccoli. So you're as a kid, you're Brooke Masters: Mm-hmm. Mine was beats. Mine was beats. I would sit at the table and you're not going you're not leaving the table to the beats. Okay. I'm gonna go ahead and just get my blanket and sit down here Amanda Blumenstein: Yeah. Brooke Masters: and take a nap. All good. I am not eating those beets. It's nasty. Amanda Blumenstein: But that creates, there are negative and positive associations we have with food. So for example, ice cream. Most people, that's a a bell going off. That's a happy food. Well, what Brooke Masters: Mm-hmm. Amanda Blumenstein: if you have a severe allergy or you're severely lactose intolerant? Your response to ice cream is not gonna be the same. So we have to think about those food associations. And if broccoli was disgusting and you had to choke it down and feed it to the dog and put it in your napkin in order to get up from the table where you didn't want to be because your show was on TV, all of those factors are still living in your subconscious. And by bringing them into the conscious mind, which is what we're doing right now by talking about them. We can then do something about it. So if you have behaviors around food where you're like, I don't know why I do this, chances are talk to me, we'll have a conversation, and I'll tell you why you do it. Because there's always gonna be a reason. so if healthy food is a punishment, dessert is also a special event. So we're looking at high caloric sweets. pastries, cakes, ice creams, things of that nature, that's Brooke Masters: I felt. Yep. Amanda Blumenstein: a positive association. The broccoli and the beets are a negative association. Where is that going to leave you in the long run? And then I think this one that I thought of was interesting, learning to eat at specific times. So dinner time in most households, everybody eats together. Well, that might mean that you're eating when you're not hungry because it's Brooke Masters: Mm. Amanda Blumenstein: time for that meal. So Brooke Masters: Mm. Amanda Blumenstein: if you're making that association that whether I'm hungry or not, I have to eat right now. Brooke Masters: Yeah. Amanda Blumenstein: That's gonna turn into a problem. Brooke, I see you nodding your head on that one. Yeah. Brooke Masters: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It's true. I didn't even think of that one, but it is. It's like, and now we kind of do it for people that aren't hungry, like that are never hungry, to set different times to kind of allow them to start feeling hunger and training their body to be hungry at certain times. so it's interesting to say that of, you know, you think of People that are eating when they're not hungry, but it does get to a point. I think that's that's one that would be a little tricky because I have clients that have restricted so much for so long that their bodies have adapted and now they don't have hunger signals or their hormones have downregulated. So they don't have normal hormones to trigger the satiety and the left-in, you know what I Leftin and ghrelin if their sleep is off and things like that. So that's like that that. interesting one that we would have to dance around because again, you don't want to create that negative behavior, but you also have to have someone that has food that is coming in that learns to say, okay, let me train my body how to have the hunger again. Amanda Blumenstein: Well, that's the thing. That's what we can do is if we can identify that, let's say you were forced to eat when you weren't hungry and you have an issue with your hunger cues, we can now address your hunger cues with a different motivation. So the motivation isn't to get the whole family together to eat together, which from a child's perspective is probably kind of silly. Brooke Masters: Mm-hmm. Amanda Blumenstein: From a parent's perspective, I can understand why you would want your whole family to eat at the same time. But if we can identify that that is an issue with your hunger cues, we can then address that and create new associations. So again, it's about identifying what the problem was to begin with. And then we can address it no matter which direction it's going in. Brooke Masters: Mm. Amanda Blumenstein: The last one is probably my favorite one because we don't think about this very often, which is that children do not have vices except for food. So as adults, when we need a vice, we're not quantifying, qualifying that, whatever it is. We have alcohol, we have cigarettes, we have food, we have recreational substances, sex, gambling, shopping. Pretty much there's a wide variety of vices. Children do not Brooke Masters: And Amanda Blumenstein: have vices because we live in a society that does not believe they should have them. Again, not the point. But the point is, as kids, if the only thing we can use to create a pleasure response is food, that's going to be heightened and it's going to follow you into adulthood. So I think that it's important to remember that when we're children, the things that seem really appealing are going to kind of sit on our shoulder. And they're going to follow us into adulthood. And we're, it's just like those chocolate chips that my parents potty trained me with, right? I know that I don't really have an issue with control around food, but these chocolate chips, man, like I can't seem to get the handle on it. That's because they come from somewhere else. so I think all of these examples kind of. Shine a light on the fact that it's much more complicated than we give ourselves credit for. It's not just I'm overeating and I can't stop, or I'm under-eating and I can't stop. It's looking at where it comes from, why we do it, what it's addressing, what is that behavior addressing, what are the associations with it. And then from there, we can figure out how to adjust. But until we make that first awareness and that first identification, we can't adjust for new future goals. Brooke Masters: Yep. And I see it also. Like we had someone recently that we were talking about that, you know, when they're super stressed out that they go and have something, or like, I have so much going on, I just couldn't take care of myself and I couldn't do things, or you know, I'm really good during the week, or I went on vacation and I just went bananas, you know, and and it is it's partially that all or nothing, but partially it's just that. awareness of understanding what our experience have been and using someone to help you to identify that and give you strategies to to kind of what would it be to Amanda Blumenstein: Reframe it. Brooke Masters: reframe is a great idea. Thank you. and and learn different ways to be able to satisfy that same situation of whatever you need. So I definitely think that this is why it is so helpful for people because a lot of people that come into our program, like they all want to have the end result, but they don't understand why they can't stick to it. They don't understand why they have such a poor relationship with food. They don't understand why, and even, you know, their body image, all of the things like you were talking about, especially these young girls now and social media and everything like that. Of this is what they're growing up with. This is what they're learning. This is what they're seeing. And now we're expecting them when they get older to have a different, but it's the same thing. We grew up, it was like, okay, let me over-exercise, let me go through all of the diets, let me do all the things. So not even childhood, but my adult life. Like I remember, like we restricted. Like that's just what we did. We restricted and we over-exercise. So now I'm seeing all of these women that are coming to me in perimenopause and menopause that are like, They've been dieting most of their life. And you're wondering why it's not working anymore. Well, you've been, your body's been really angry at you for a really long time and you've been ignoring it. So, you know, recognizing what the patterns have been through childhood, through your adult life even, and understanding like sometimes it takes somebody from the outside looking in, and especially someone that is trained in these behaviors, to be able to help you to identify them and be able to give you the strategies to be able to move through them and create new patterns. So that you can have a different result. Because a lot of people keep getting stuck in the I'm good for a little while and I fall off. I'm good for a little while and I fall off. It's because you keep falling into the same patterns. But once it's identified and you speak with someone and work with them and then be able to have the tools that you need in your toolbox to be able to change the outcome, that's where it's the forever. That's where our clients are more successful because they have this support. So I appreciate you, Amanda. I think this was a really great one. I think a lot of people are definitely going to have those aha moments. So I hope you guys had some value that you took from this episode. We would really appreciate it if you would share a review. And definitely, if you have anything that you would like us to share in the future and future episodes, please drop it in the comments and definitely follow along. We have lots of great episodes coming up. And until next time, we'll see you guys later. Amanda Blumenstein: Okay. Calvin and Brooke Masters: Thanks for tuning in to Master Your Metabolism. 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