The health and fitness trend is a good thing, but are people actually tackling the issues that cause overeating and subsequent weight gain? Tricia Nelson is an emotional eating expert and the author of the bestselling book, Heal Your Hunger: 7 Simple Steps to End Emotional Eating Now. She is also the host of the popular podcast, The Heal Your Hunger Show. In this episode, Tricia joins Baeth Davis to discuss why people overeat and why a simple diet and exercise don’t work. As someone who’s struggled with her own weight and an abusive relationship with food, Tricia’s passion for helping others runs deep, as seen in her human design and how it reflects in the work she’s doing. Get to know more about Tricia’s journey and stay tuned as they dive deep into eating disorders, the body positivity movement, and self-care.

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Tricia Nelson, Generator 6/3

In this episode, we’re going to talk about a common yet very hot-button subject. That would be your relationship to food. There are people with eating disorders. There are people with eating addictions. There are people that eat to stuff their feelings. There are some people that eat for nutrition, energy, and relaxation

Ideally, whatever you’re consuming is helping you evolve and shine, not something that’s making you energetically heavy. I don’t mean on the scale. When you are not kind to yourself, and you’re filling yourself with the toxin, you’re taking yourself further and further away from your purpose and creating more and more suffering, discontent, and pain, which can often result in physical issues, knee replacements, hip replacements. You get the idea.

In the United States of America, the last I checked, the obesity rate is somewhere between 65% and 70%. I would argue that almost all physical problems are emotional problems. Our guest, Tricia Greaves Nelson, not only agrees with me. She knows a whole hell of a lot more about this subject than I do. I’m going to tell you about our amazing guest, and we are going to get right into our subject.

Tricia lost 50 pounds by identifying and healing the underlying causes of her emotional eating. I would offer to all of you reading this that healing the underlying causes of all the problems in your life is the solution, and you’ve got to heal them emotionally. Tricia has spent over 30 years researching the hidden causes of food addiction. She is an emotional eating expert and the author of the number one best-selling book, Heal Your Hunger: 7 Simple Steps to End Emotional Eating Now.

She’s also the host of the popular podcast, the Heal Your Hunger podcast. She’s a TEDx Speaker, a highly regarded coach, and has been featured on The List, NBS CBS, KTLA, Fox, and Discovery Health. Tricia is a personal friend of mine. We met at a charity event many years ago and became fast friends from that meeting. We have stayed in each other’s lives ever since, helping and encouraging each other to get out there and shine, bringing our gifts and general mutual admiration to society, which all of you want to cultivate if you don’t have one.

You need people in your life that think you’re top, and you feel the same way about them, those no conflict, no drama, no-nonsense, but delightful and joyful relationships. I have that with Tricia because Tricia’s in her body, heart, and purpose. Tricia is aligned with her design. At the end of our interview, we’re going to have a look at her design. She’s a very rare 6/3 profile. We’re going to talk about that because I don’t know many 6/3s personally. She’s the only one I know. She’s rare, and you are going to get to meet her. With that, let’s bring on Tricia Nelson on the show. Welcome.

Thank you. What an incredible introduction. Thanks for that.

Everybody needs their gift and accomplishments reflected back to them. Let’s dive right into this concept of emotional eating. How did you first discover that you were an emotional eater and transform that situation for yourself?

I didn’t think of myself as an emotional eater. I just like food. I was convinced of it. I love to eat, cook, serve it to other people, and go out to dinner. I would have heart palpitations if we were going to a super nice restaurant. It’s an exciting thing for me. It wouldn’t have been a problem, but I started to gain weight in adolescence. By age 21, I was 50 pounds overweight. That was miserable for me.

I tried lots of diets, exercise programs, pills, potions, lotions, Twelve-Step programs, and eating disorders therapy. I was at it. I was doing everything I could, looking under every rock. At the end of the day, I would do the same thing. I’d lose weight for a time. It would get hard. I’d put the weight back on. I was a yo-yoer. I had five different sizes of pants in my closet as a result because I never knew what size I’d be. That’s how it went for me.

I remember my sister came home one day and announced that she was an emotional eater. I did not have a good relationship with her, so she had zero credibility with me. I’m like, “Whatever.” I said to myself, “I like food. I’m no emotional eater,” but I couldn’t unhear it. I started to look at my relationship with food. I’d go out to Friendly’s. We’re both from Massachusetts, where there’s a Friendly’s in every town.

I’d go to Friendly’s with my friends, and they’d order a sandwich, and it would come with fries. They’d eat their sandwich and pick up their fries. I’d eat my fries and pick up my sandwich. I would look at them and think, “How can somebody leave French fries on their plate?” I was consumed by this. I couldn’t understand. I started thinking, “I am not the same as these people. I’m different. I had this obsession with carbs and sugar. I can’t leave it alone.”

It started to seep in that maybe I am different with food. Maybe there is more to it than I like food. That’s where it started and unfolded. I started to realize it’s an unhealthy and abusive relationship with food where I would eat to excess, feel stuffed, be mad at myself, and have all these self-recriminating thoughts of, “Why did you do that? You’re a loser. Why can’t you stop? There you go again,” all these thoughts about my eating behaviors and my body.

I had this roll in my tummy that I would scrunch up and imagine cutting it off like you cut the fat off the side of a steak. I had a lot of harsh thoughts. This is where the knowledge I was an emotional eater came in. It wasn’t until I addressed the emotional eating that I was able to lose weight and keep it off. None of the diets worked for me. No treatment of the symptom got me where I needed to go. I need to go deeper and deal with my emotional dependence on food. That changed everything.

What emotions were you stuffing or repressing with the eating?

The thing about emotional eating is it’s almost anything uncomfortable was worth stuffing. This is not a conscious thing like, “I’m uncomfortable. I’m going to find some carbs.” It’s not like that. It’s a habit. You start young typically, using food as a crutch. It turned into this nasty habit where you’re always reaching for food. If there’s anything ooey-gooey or chewy, it’s got your name on it. It is magnetized by heavy, starchy, carby, sugary things. I love them. Once I started, I couldn’t stop.

Regarding emotion, I do have something to share that is helpful for people who might be thinking, “That girl is crazy.” I am not an emotional eater. I want to help people come along on this. We’re all emotional eaters to some degree. We can go over aboard once in a while or comfort eat. We’re hard-wired to have some comforting relationship with food. It’s not a bad thing.

If you take it too far too often, you have mounting consequences as a result. That was me. Some people are maybe running the mill, emotional eaters, and eat for comfort once in a while. You have people who binge eat. They eat to excess and can’t control their weight. That was me. I was more of a food addict, which is an emotional eater, but I took it to places where there were a lot of negative consequences with very little control. Those are the two things that inform where you are. It’s a spectrum.

I have a quiz on my website that people can take to find out where they’re on the spectrum if they’re an emotional eater or a food addict. It’s the amount of control and the consequences you have. The longer you do it, the more consequences you tend to have. If you’re a yo-yo dieter and you do it for decades, your body’s going to say uncle. It’s like, “Don’t keep doing this to me.” Our bodies are going to have joint pain. We’re going to be prediabetic or diabetic. We’re going to have autoimmune issues and gut issues. It goes with the territory.

If you eat crappy, unhealthy foods for long enough, your body’s going to rebel and say, “Ouch.” Regarding the emotion question you asked, I want to talk to you about the PEP Test. This is a good way for people to start seeing the connection between their emotions, food choices, and amounts. PEP is an acronym. We all know what unhealthy foods do to us if we eat them long enough, but this is more of a way of seeing what it’s doing for us.

Are these the benefits like the payoffs?

Yes. The first P in PEP is Painkiller. I ate as a form of killing uncomfortable emotions. Let’s put the umbrella term pain on it. I ate when I was in pain. I was so allergic to uncomfortable feelings that everything felt painful to me, a job that was not working, a relationship that was stressful, financial concerns or worries, a parent whose health was fading, or whatever. Their life has a lot of pain to serve up. A pandemic, for instance. It puts the squeeze on us. We feel uncomfortable. We don’t know how to cope. We turn to food to soften the edges of that pain. That’s the first thing.

The second thing is that we use food as a form of Escape. Part of this is because, as overeaters, we tend to be overthinkers. This is my experience with emotional eaters. We have racing minds, and we’re constantly overthinking everything, “What did she mean by that? Why did they do that? Why are they all looking at me? I think they hate me.” We’re always thinking of all these things, most of which are not true. We’re projecting our insecurities.

The point is that we’re so busy upstairs between our ears that sometimes we need a break from it. It’s exhausting to overthink everything. You get your favorite foods, sit in front of the TV, and veg out. One of the ways that we use food is to get out of our heads, worrying, awfulizing, and thinking of all the terrible things that could happen. It gets stressful. We use food to check out. It works, and carbs give us a serotonin effect. It calms us down. That’s a very typical reason why we eat.

The third one, the last P in PEP stands for Punishment. This seems a little counterintuitive at times because we eat to reward ourselves. We constantly think of food like, “I’ve worked so hard this week. I’m going to have cookies. I’m going to get my favorite chocolate.” We think of it as a reward. If we’re one of those people like me who overshot the mark, like we ate too much, sitting there, rewarding ourselves in front of our favorite TV show on a Friday night, but then we overshoot, feel sick, and we’ve spilled ice cream on our favorite sweater. The next day we’re like, “I’m not going anywhere. I don’t want anybody to see me. My face is bloated.” That’s not a reward. That’s a punishment. I did that to myself.

Overeaters tend to be over-feelers. We feel guilty about everything. We’re always feeling it’s our fault. Everything sticks to us. That gets heavy. Plus, when we’re overeating, we’re not at our best. When we’re feeling depressed and down on ourselves, other people get the spillover of that. Sometimes we’re bitchy and snappy. We feel bad and use food to beat ourselves up.

These are some of the things. The PEP stands for Painkiller, Escape, and Punishment. We’re talking about any painful feelings, fear, and guilt. Those are some primary emotions, but those are umbrella emotions, and there are offshoots of all of those as well. It’s free for all. When we’re in the habit of medicating our emotions, like softening the blow of things that are uncomfortable, those feelings come in all different shapes and sizes. Whatever it is, you would reach for the food.

I’m so excited to talk to you about your design in a little bit here because you’re not an emotional type. I have chills. One of the issues you’ve dealt with is that most of those feelings were never yours. When people unconsciously take on other people’s feelings, there are two main side effects. The first one is the mental anxiety of the obsessive looping racing kind. The other is, “I need to discharge this energy because it’s not mine.”

Food creates this cascade effect. Bill Burr says, “Your blood sugar floods your body with all these hormones and chemicals, and you are dopamined out.” We live in a dopamine culture. I was listening to this lecture about how different hormones have taken center stage throughout history. Up until the dopamine age, we were in the testosterone age, which was industrialization, factories, and battle. We moved into this dopamine culture where everyone’s like, “I want to chill. I want to not feel it.” Food, drugs, whatever it might be.

I have another question for you. One of the things that makes me a little bit crazy is this messaging that it’s perfectly fine that you are way overweight. I want to clarify. Everyone’s soul is beautiful. Destroying your body isn’t. No amount of ad campaigns are going to take away the fact that you might be an emotional eater or have a real eating disorder like anorexia or bulimia, which is the extreme of emotional eating. Will you speak to why you think this campaign is being rammed down our throats? It’s deception. I wonder what your thoughts are about it because a lot of these people come to you.

They do, and they don’t. The ones who aren’t feeling body positive at any weight come to me

They could be 10 pounds or 100 pounds overweight, but they don’t love their body.

They’re not happy the way they are.

It’s one of those things I’m curious about, but I’m careful about how I approach it because I don’t want anyone to feel ashamed. Success in life is self-love. It’s loving yourself. I know you’ll address this articulately and much better than I. I want to hear your thoughts.

First of all, I’m grateful for the body positivity movement. In our culture, we do discriminate against fat people. It’s part of the culture. If you’re not thin and beautiful, you’re at a deficit. You are being discriminated against. It’s the way it is in jobs, relationships, and who knows the amount of pay that you take in? That’s a big problem.

The body positivity movement can move the needle on raising awareness that all people in all shapes and sizes are equal. That’s important. I’ve been fat, and I’ve been thin. Thin is better. There’s no question. The reason why I’m here talking to you and why I’ve spent the past years on the topic of emotional eating is because to my toes the darkness of being obsessed with food and out of control binge eating. That is freaking miserable.

I’ve been there so many times. I’ve been like, “I’m done. I’m never doing that again,” and then I’ve done it again. I know the hell of it. It drives me to help people get out of that. What I also know is that people have been at the weight loss game for a long time. Most of my clients are in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s. They’re not spring chickens. They’ve been around the block. They have dieted and blown it tens and hundreds of times.

It is so demoralizing and defeating that many people, after doing it for decades and never moving the needle at all, there’s still obese. Many people, out of a sense of self-protection, will stop trying because the statistic is that 95% to 98% of all diets fail. For people who struggle with obesity, most of what’s offered are diet and exercise solutions. That’s pretty much all that’s out there.

That doesn’t work. Diet and exercise are later.

It’s not even necessary, but nobody knows that because nobody’s talking about the crux of the problem, which is emotional eating. When people are given over and over something that is statistically never going to work for them, they have to protect themselves from disappointment at some point. They cannot afford to hold again that the next diet’s going to work. Why would it? They do delude themselves that they don’t even care anymore like, “Forget it. I’m going to be happy with the weight I’m at,” which is a smart decision to make if you have no other solution.

It’s a starting point. Don’t you think self-acceptance is the bottom starting point? “First, I’m going to accept that I have this problem I don’t know how to solve. I’m going to stop punishing and judging myself.” When people do that, don’t you think that opens a little door?

Yes. You cannot hate yourself for doing the right thing. It’s not going to work. You have to get on your side. One of the big benefits of my program and the people in it that I hear is that if they overeat, they’re starting to do better. Their diets are changing. I don’t even give them a diet. I don’t give people a food plan. I’m like, “You’re not stupid. You know what to eat.”

Everybody knows what to eat.

It’s not like they need a new diet. I teach them to get off the diet track and stop beating themselves up. It’s not a straight line to freedom. You’re going to mess up here. It’s like the stock market. It goes up and down, but overall it’s going up. First and foremost, they learn to stop beating themselves up if they mess up and fall down the rabbit hole. It’s pure love and love and acceptance. That’s the only way to travel.

What people don’t realize is that they can’t do the diet and exercise plan because they have an emotional connection with food. Unless and until they address that, they will always crave the French fries and pizza versus the salad. They will have no interest in a salad until they no longer have this burden of emotions that compels them to cover up with food, to annuitize with food. That’s the missing piece.

People think, “In order to lose weight, I have to be miserable. I have to want French fries and pizza and eat salad.” That can only last a couple of weeks. That’s how long I lasted on any diet. At first, you’re like, “I’m doing it.” You’re on that New Diet syndrome. The New Diet syndrome is that you’re excited, you have the adrenaline running, and it’s like nobody can stop you.

After two weeks of not having your favorite foods, you’re no longer excited. You’re dull. You lack energy. You’re craving the hell out of your favorite foods that you can’t eat. You feel deprived for not being able to eat them. That is not sustainable. The only hope is to have that compulsion for those things removed where you don’t crave them, then not having them. It’s like if I said to you, “You cannot eat chicken feet. I saw them at the store. They were so gross.” That’s my point. You’re not thinking about chicken feet.

I’ve never thought about chicken feet as a food product until this very moment. This is a new experience.

You’re not feeling deprived of chicken feet because you don’t have a compulsion for chicken feet. There’s a way by which a person can have the compulsion and obsession for whatever their chicken feet are. They can have that removed where it’s a non-issue. It’s not magic. There’s work involved, but it’s not work on your diet.

I take people off the diet focus and onto the real focus, which is, “What’s going on inside of me? What’s in my heart? What stress have I put myself under by being a people-pleaser, taking on too much, and not speaking up for myself? What stress have I created, and how can I stop creating it so that it doesn’t turn into this monster of a compulsion to binge on cookies and ice cream?” That’s what it’s about.

People imagine the only hope and solution is the diet and exercise solution. That doesn’t work 9 times out of 10. What people don’t know is there’s a different tack they can take, which gets them off their diets. They don’t ever have to diet again. They don’t have to darken the doors of the gym again. They can get to where they’re neutral around yummy, sweet foods where they could take it or leave it. That’s because of the emotional energy with that thing. They’re not using it as a painkiller, escape, and punishment. Remember the PEP. We got to address that emotional draw that we have. If that comes down, it’s just food. It’s not our savior, solution, or our lover.

It’s fuel.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t enjoy your food. I love my food. I bet you love that salad.

It’s wonderful. I also eat cake, fries, and pizza when I feel like it. I eat everything. I eat all the things. I don’t eat dairy because I’m lactose intolerant. If I wasn’t lactose intolerant, I’m sure I would have more ice cream. I don’t like ice cream, so that’s not a problem. Eating chicken’s feet won’t be happening. Anyway, I was never overweight particularly. It wasn’t my thing.

You’re very blessed.

I am because my relationship with food is that I eat what I want to eat when I want it. That’s it. I’ve had problems in other areas of my life. I will say it for the same exact reason. The problems in our lives are from whatever overlays we got as children. Whatever the family behavior was, it could show up around money, food, or relationships. I love the work that you’re doing.

If someone comes to work with you, how do you work with a client? What are the basic bullets of taking someone through the journey to recover a healthy relationship with their own emotions and nourishing their body with fuel rather than being compulsively obsessing about their next meal? That sounds horrific to me to talk about a waste of energy. People talk about, “What are you going to have for lunch?” I’m like, “Who cares? Why are you thinking about that? What is going on?” It’s always perplexing the amount of time people spend on food. I’m like, “Don’t you have the stuff to do?”

That’s the problem. It robs us of the present moment, that obsession with food. “What am I going to eat? When am I going to get it? How am I going to eat it so nobody notices how much I’m eating?” It goes on and on. It sucks the energy out of life and our family relationships. I was amazed. I’d be looking at somebody and smiling and not know one word of what they said because I’m off thinking about food.

That obsession will rob you of your relationships. To answer your question, it’s three-pronged. First of all, I get them off the diet track. “Let’s put away your scale. You don’t need the scale.” When we give the scale the power to make us feel good by giving us a number we like, we also necessarily give it the power to make us feel bad when it gives us a number we don’t like. It’s a total setup for failure.

It either gives you a number you like and then you’re like, “I got wiggle room. I can eat cake now.” You go right back up to the other number, or it gives you a number you don’t approve of. You’ve been working out at the gym all week, and you’re like, “Screw it. What’s the point of going to the gym? The number didn’t move.” Either way, it’s an excuse to eat.

I don’t find that a scale is an empowering tool at all. Get off the scale. Stop making it your higher power. Let’s deal with self-care. Let’s make it about self-care. Let’s not make exercise about working off a number of calories. Stop working out if you’re beating yourself up in this terrible cycle of trying to work off food or wait, and then you do it all over again. You binge. I could never work off my binges. I ate so much food in a sitting. It was terrible.

You weren’t a puker, so you kept it down.

I put it on my ass. It was uncomfortable.

Pack it on.

That’s exactly what I did. It was so self-abusive. The point is, I get them off the diet track and shift their consciousness to one of self-care like, “How can I take better care of myself?” Stress plays a big part in stress-eating. Overeaters are over-doers and over-complicators. We do way too much. We stuff our schedules with activities. Why? It’s because we don’t want to feel. We don’t want to be present with ourselves and what our feelings are, so we’re on the run, adrenaline rush, one thing to another.

We’re also people-pleasers, and we overdo to please people. We want people to be super happy with us. We want Atta girls. Part of this comes from the fact that many emotional eaters have a history of trauma or dysfunction in their families, which I did. I did not grow up with a strong sense of myself, so I saw validation from outside myself and would do anything to get it.

No wonder you were so anxious and needed to stuff yourself. That’s a horrific experience. It’s almost like being outside of yourself. Your sense of feeling good is totally dependent on other people’s validation. It’s very akin to any addiction.

You can substitute the stuff I’m talking about with another addiction. It’s that emotional eaters do have a corner on the people-pleasing market.

You notice the jolly fat person. That’s the archetype. A lot of the people I know who have been jolly and overweight when I’ve talked to them are so unhappy. They’re lonely and isolated. They want love and creative expression. They keep saying, “No, not until I lose the weight.” It becomes the weight and not be visible.

What’s also true is that emotional eaters are very resentful. This was me. We have a smile on our faces. We’re people-pleasers. We don’t want people to know we’re resentful. A lot of times, we don’t even know we’re resentful.

Maybe we want to hit you with our butter knife.

I was so resentful. I was enraged. I didn’t know it until I stopped overeating. I was like, “I’m not this nice persona I put on.” That’s why I’m eating. I’m trying to keep all those resentments down so they don’t slip out, and somebody doesn’t think I’m a bitch. Even though in my head I am a bitch, but I don’t want people to know it. I keep the food. The food stamps down those emotions I don’t want anybody to know I have.

The reason why I have so much resentment is because I’m a people-pleaser. I say yes to everything. I’m like, “I’ll do the extra project. I’ll host the party. I’ll do the driving. I’ll bake all the cookies for the kids.” I’m constantly adding more and more to my plate. Nobody’s ever as pleased as you think they are going to be. That’s the problem with people-pleasing. You think you’re going to get this big payoff, and people barely notice. They take you for granted, and then you’re pissed off. You go home and justify the, “I deserve it,” binge.

This is a good example of how it isn’t about the food. The food is the end result, but it’s how I’m living. I often say it’s a living problem, not an eating problem. That’s why diets are so silly. If you take away your favorite foods, don’t change how you’re living, don’t put boundaries on your time, don’t take time for yourself and self-care, don’t start letting other people pick up the slack, and stop being the one to always do it, you will have the same amount of stress and resentment, and you’ll need the same amount of food.

You’re so smart about this. I love your passion and conviction. It moved me.

I’ve been around the block a few times. Thank you. It’s all I’ve done my whole life. This is what I do. This is what I live and breathe because I’ve been there. I know the pain of it. I happen to have a very simple solution for overcoming it that’s not diet-related. I’m super passionate.

What are some other surprising reasons that you found that people resist getting the help they need?

A lot of it comes from worth. A lot of people don’t feel worthy of spending money to get help. They’ll spend money away all day long on stupid diet programs. Don’t get me wrong. They’ve spent thousands and thousands of dollars. Spending money to invest in yourself to heal at a deeper level, which affects every area of your life when you do, is a different tack. That takes a commitment of resources to get coached, but time as well.

When you’re running around, carrying the world on your shoulders, you’re like, “I don’t have time for self-care.” The thing is, you don’t have time to not have self-care in your life. You cannot continue to burn the candle at both ends and expect to not overeat. It’s a lose-lose proposition. People don’t feel worthy of spending time and money on themselves. I’m sure you see that as well.

Yes, all different scenarios, but for the same reasons.

It’s self-worth. Women, mostly that I help, are so used to spending time and money on their families and people in need, and they come last. They don’t realize there’s something wrong with that picture. If we don’t take care of ourselves, we don’t have anything to give other people. When we’re burned out and exhausted, our adrenals are shot and are tired. We’re also cranky.

We have low energy, and we’re not very happy. That’s what we’re giving our families. Is that what we want to be doing? People don’t realize you need to take time for yourself and invest in getting yourself supported. Many of us are caretakers or take care of spouses, parents, or kids. It’s like an oxygen mask scenario. It sounds trite, but it’s so apt.

The oxygen mask scenario is pretty much the answer to having a good life.

Help yourself. Get the help you need. Get supported. You will show up in life with more energy. You’d be happier. Your light will shine brighter. People will get the best version of you.

Tricia, have you heard the song Vitamins by Qveen Herby?

No.

This is an anthem for your work. It’s all about this woman deepening her self-care and becoming the queen. Everyone’s noticing that she’s putting so much time and energy into loving herself. It’s a fun song. It’s cool.

I’ll check that out.

I have one more question for you. I want to look at your chart. Do you feel that the 5,000-plus years of patriarchy, the stress of patriarchy, and the toxic masculinity that’s affected men and women might have anything to do with what we’re seeing around people’s relationship with food? Are most of your clients women?

They are, and they’re mostly middle-aged women. Not that it isn’t trickled down to younger people, but I see the stronghold of the diet culture is so much stronger for older women. That probably does come from the part of that sexism that we grew up in. There’s no question that it has an impact. Personally, the only way I’m going to heal is by taking responsibility for my buy-in to that stuff.

It’s like whatever conditioning you’re going to take on. In a sense, whatever’s going on in the collective, we’re still responsible for our own choices.

If I’m using all I grew up in on myself, the buck stops here. I got to do something about what I’m doing to myself. I can’t do anything about the airbrushing on the models and the magazines. I don’t like it. I walked into Nordstrom, and they had sick-looking mannequins. I got pissed off and wrote to the manager of the store. I’m like, “How are girls ever going to heal from eating disorders and body dysmorphia when you’re doing this?”

She explained. It doesn’t matter. I took whatever action I could take, and then I got to come back to myself. “What am I doing to myself and my body? How am I talking to my body? Do I love my body if I’ve gained a few pounds? Am I being sweet to myself, or am I beating the shit out of myself?” I got to take responsibility for that and change that.

Should we look at your chart?

Yes.

I’m going to pull that up here. I’m very excited to see what’s cooking. Your chart is so fun. It’s so cool to tie it all together. You see why people do the work that they do and how your soul led you to this. This looks like you’re a Generator 6/3. I wanted to talk about your 6/3 profile over here. In human design, there’s a profound relationship between the I Ching and the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching. The number 64 is interesting because we have 64 codons of DNA. In the human design body graph, there are 64 gates. You can see that not all of them are colored in because, on the personality side, this is your regular Astro chart.

The design side is 88 days before you’re born. This is when your soul crystal comes into your pineal gland. This is what’s so cool. In our soul crystal, our soul is in our forehead. It’s where your soul lives, technically. The soul crystal comes from out space. It comes from the environment and plants in a physical body. Your body is the vehicle for your soul.

Your G center here in the middle is in white. It’s undefined. The G center is the driver through time and space. The mind, which can overtake things, is comprised of the soul crystal and the head center. The green triangle for you is the neocortex. The head is the gray matter behind your pineal gland. In the chart, you don’t have all 64 gates because there are only 13 celestial positions available on the personality side and 13 on the design side.

It’s due to what our solar system does. There’s this sun, the Earth, moon, Mercury, and all the way to Pluto. We have the nodes of the moon, which are about life themes. The decimal point will always be a number. It will never be higher than 6 because there are 6 lines in the hexagram.

Someone else could be Gate 58, which is joy. Part of your life’s purpose is creating joy. Joy is fuel. Joy comes down from the root. Fuel comes from the earth, like food, mineral, and oil, even if you have solar panels that are built by humans to capture the sun. There are nine gates at the root, which is your tailbone down to your feet. That rooted the legs and the feet of the body and tapped into the earth.

Depending on your design, you have access to different fuels. You have Gate 58, which in many ways is one of the endpoints of the journey, which is joy. When you arrive at joy, you have cleared the issue. Joy is the sign that you’re healed. When you feel joy, no matter what’s going on around you, you are aligned with spirit. You’re aligned with God. You are aligned with truth, and you feel it. You’re very joyful. You’ve taught me so much about joy.

I’ve noticed that the most successful people that I admire are people that have eliminated negativity from their lines. They have eliminated all forms of toxins, foods, medicines, people, experiences, and environments that are toxic. You come in, and you don’t have the other side of it, which is Gate 18. You pull in people. You attract people to you that want joy, but they feel that they’re spoiled.

It’s not spoiled like indulged but spoiled like broken. They feel broken, worthless, unnecessary, irrelevant, and ugly. The list goes on. They see your joy. That is why they want to work with you. It is your joy. The more Tricia ups her joy quotient, the more successful you become because people are like, “She was depressed and emotionally eating.”

I saw the pictures. You were struggling with food for a long time. You kicked it, and you never yo-yoed. You healed it. You are bringing consciousness to a planet that’s relatively new. I want to talk about your profile because you are a 6/3 profile. You have a 6 line beside your personality sun and a 6 line beside your personality earth.

Your personality earth, what people feel around you that grounds them and grounds you is joy. What grounds me is listening to someone talk or listening to music, or I have a water fountain. I got sounds all around me. The acoustics in my design center me. Everyone has a different way that they ground themselves.

You ground it through Gate 58, the fuel for joy, and it’s line six. There’s no line after six. It’s like you’re sitting on the roof, getting a few rays, sipping a little kombucha or something, looking out at the field, and seeing the patterns. The thing about the sixth line is that it’s not the heretic. You’re not the person poking people to provoke or shock them. You’re not particularly confrontational. You’re very gracious. You’re in your love, energy, and compassion.

The sixth line is acceptance. The bottom line is that the energy of the sixth line is a total of 100% unconditional love. It’s God frequency. We talk about 5D. Let me explain 5D in two sentences. 5D is sound, AKA your voice, if you want to manifest. When you speak your true voice, ask honest questions, give honest answers, and state honest intentions, you manifest in the 3D.

5D is acoustic. It’s all forms of sound. 6D is light. It’s light energy. You have a very high capacity to absorb the photonic light that comes down onto the planet. Anyone who leads with a sixth line as you do is the spiritual teacher for humanity. You are the highest frequency possible for humanity. You are the trailblazers of higher consciousness.

The diet exercise thing is a particularly mental overlay. It’s an idea of, “I’m going to start my diet tomorrow and start working out.” Whenever people tell me that, I’m like, “That’s not going to work. Good luck with that. You’re going to fail and call me in two weeks, but go see Tricia.” People do a mental overlay and try to use their minds. You’re never supposed to use your mind to make decisions ever.

Your mind is for gathering data and having conversations and all that good stuff. This sixth line energy you have is profound. The earth energy is where you are evolving. You evolve the more joy you give to yourself, the more you up your self-care gain, the more you avoid over-giving, martyring, and people-pleasing. I don’t think you do much of that anyway, not anymore, but checking yourself like, “Am I satisfied?”

You’re a Generator. You got an active sacral. Your whole life is about, “Am I satisfied or not?” Your personality sun, the biggest energy in your chart, and the energy people feel the most from you is in Gate 52 down here, known as the mountain or stillness. Gate 52 teaches people how to go inside. For example, I wouldn’t be surprised if you teach people different exercises to track these sensations throughout their bodies.

I’m more on an emotional level, tracking what’s going on with them emotionally.

What I mean is their feelings, tracking their feelings like, “How do you feel before you eat? How do you feel after you eat? What feeling are you having? Why are you having it?” Gate 52 says to the individual, “Let’s learn how to meditate and get real quiet.” That’s what you lead with. What people feel when they encounter you is, “She’s so grounded in her joy. She’s so present, clear, and calming. She makes me feel relaxed, loved, and at home.”

I’m going into the frequency of Gate 52. Gate 52 is the voice of those meditation CDs. “You’re getting very sleepy. We’re going to go on an astral journey back to the roots of your beautiful soul.” You take people on a journey inward. That’s the essence. Your design is what you need to do to keep yourself healthy.

First of all, what keeps your body healthy is 21 line 3. Gate 21 is about the freedom to dress, eat, live, and work as you please. You cannot have anyone try to control you with Gate 21. It doesn’t always make for the easiest time for traditional, intimate relationships. You need something a little more unconventional. Anything that would cause you to feel trapped or stifled, you’re out of there.

The third line is about comedy, celebration, and joy. What keeps you healthy is parties. You always have parties. This is so interesting because people feel your stillness and want what you have. The way you stay healthy and celebrate is to celebrate life. The 21/3 is like, “I want to celebrate life on my terms. I’m going to throw myself a party, and you’re all invited.” It’s very lighthearted.

You’re not a heavy energy. You are the person that comes in who’s the fool with the sense of humor. It’s like the sage telling the king to lighten up and telling him good jokes. You’re keeping the castle laughing. It’s that energy like the wise jester who creates transformation by catching people off guard and helping them feel lighter.

Your genius is your depth. You’re so deep. Gate 48 is the well, and it’s off the spleen. It’s instinct and the depth to help the collective heal. The way you help the collective heal is to give them the healing strategies and help them laugh and celebrate. Isn’t that wonderful? Your incarnation is called the left-angle cross of demands. With this incarnation, you are dealing with people who haven’t learned how to manage demand. This is the demand when you’re in school, you need to turn in your homework, or you’ll fail, the demands of being a mother or father. It is the responsibility, essentially.

You are good at handling responsibility. A huge part of what you’re teaching people is how you handle the demands of being in a human body as a spiritual being. A spiritual is so fractal. It doesn’t need a body. It already exists. It’s eternal. It’s a piece of data that goes on forever. When we talk about eternal life, it’s a real thing technically and scientifically.

However, that life doesn’t poop. It doesn’t need to eat, so what happens? A lot of the people you’ve attracted are very spiritually aware. They are channels and are here to be healers, coaches, and teachers. They are hugely distressed being in a human body because there were not those demands where they came from. If you have a human body, you have to feed it, or you’ll die eventually.

Some people need more food than others. I don’t eat very much. I eat once a day. I don’t even eat that much. In my design, I don’t need that much food. Some people’s designs, I see, they’re not eating enough. They’re the people like you who need regular meals, snacks, and healthy ones. All of your food needs to be local, organic, and green.

I can eat McDonald’s with no negative effects. I’m not saying I recommend that. I don’t recommend eating fast food as a regular thing, but I can have it, and it’s like, “Whatever.” That’s the difference. A lot of these people coming in are shocked to find themselves in this human body that has all these demands of the physical. You help people understand the demand of the physical as a gift, that it is an opportunity and a blessing to have chosen a human body as your vehicle.

In order for you to fulfill the intention of the soul crystal, you need to treat your vehicle like a Maserati and not that shit-kicker bicycle that’s rusting in your garage. That’s the difference. The individuals didn’t know this. They didn’t know they were resentful that they had a body in the first place. They’re mad at their bodies. Their bodies betrayed them. How would you know about this?

You have to know the thing to teach the thing. The 6/3 profile is quite rare. They’re 1.5% to 2% of the world’s population. Your incarnation cross is quite rare. As a 6/3, you’re dealing with three 3s. A six is a double 3 followed by a 3. That’s 333. Three is the most powerful number there. The strongest structure is the triangle. Three is the number for the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, Holy Ghost, mother, father, child, body, soul, and mind.

What your life was about until about age 30 was a lot of trial and error, bumping into things, pain and struggle, and physical abuse. That’s typical for anyone that has a three in their profile. You have three 3s. At age 30. It’s the awakening of, “I want to get my life together.” At age 50, you come down off the roof and share with the masses but what you are sharing are strategies for joy. There are strategies to create joy.

You can’t have joy when you’re obsessed with food and hating on your body. If you overcome that, you can fly like an eagle.

You’re an earth angel. That’s why you’re here. The other thing, too, is you’ve got the 50/27 channel, which connects your spleen to your sex organs. The 50/27 is the channel of nurturing. My experience of you is that you’re so profoundly nurturing. Going to your party, you’re like, “I have this dessert for this group and this dessert for this group.” There are six salads and all the things.

You make sure everybody’s comfortable and has a great time. You’re naturally nurturing. It’s mother energy. One of the other things people come to you is to be re-parented by a loving mother figure. They know you’re not their mother, but you bring them the nurturing, unconditional love and support that many times they didn’t receive. This is quite profound for people.

The other thing you’ve got is the 38/28 channel which is about the fight to find your life purpose, the inherence and all of this work for you. Once they clear what’s blocking their joy, you help them find the fuel to stand up for themselves and fight for their own life and purpose and not go to their grave not having fulfilled their potential. After they conquer the food thing, it’s like, “Now what?” That’s when you come in and say, “We’re going to get down to business and you’re going to manifest that purpose that’s so important to you.” That’s a little taste of your human design.

Thank you.

You’re welcome. It’s a very interesting chart. When I looked at it, I went, “Wow.” That makes sense because you have brought original work to the planet. You have a very unique approach to all of this work.

Thank you so much. That was a gift, Baeth. That was awesome.

You’re so welcome.

It’s incredibly right on. I love it. It was only about a few years ago that I embraced that my primary value in life is fun. Somehow I was in the closet about it. I somehow thought that was too light and fluffy. I’m like, “I got to be deeper than that,” which I am deeper than that, but I love having fun. If it’s not fun, I don’t want to do it. I bring to my work and my personal relationships. That’s what people appreciate about me. I embraced, and I’ve been flying ever since. I wake up happy every single day of my life.

Me, too. The path to abundance always starts with an open heart. You have to start with the love first, the self-love. There’s no place else to start. You must love and respect yourself, or nothing works.

If you say you love yourself, but you’re beating yourself up with food, there’s a disconnect.

When I’ve been dating, I try to keep an open mind. I’ve gone on some dates with people who had interesting relationships with food and alcohol. I sat there watching the person. I’m like, “They’re more interested in the food than me. There will not be another date.” They kept talking about it. They knew. They’re like, “I can’t stop.” I’m like, “I have a person for you.” Are there any final words of wisdom for our audience?

I will say, “It’s not about the food.” I want to put a little bug in people’s ears that many of my clients start with my quit sugar challenge. It’s fun. Speaking of fun, it’s a five-day quit sugar challenge. I do morning mindset calls to address people who are like, “Sugar? I want to give it up, but I don’t want to give it up.” I do mindset calls so they can help detach from their emotional dependence on sugar. I show them all the different ways that sugar is sneaking into their diet.

We talk about emotional eating, and they clear sugar out. You don’t have to quit sugar in five days, but you can at least make some progress and clean things up. It’s fun. I want to suggest that. They can go to QuitSugarChallenge.com and get on the waitlist to get the announcement when we have our next one coming up. It’s a great way to get started to get to know me. I also have a book and a podcast, too.

Tricia, thank you so much.

Thank you, Baeth. I get that you’re a listener because you’re good at it. Your show is awesome. You’re a great friend. I love you so much.

I love you so much, too. You have been an earth angel and continue to be in my life. You’re one of the people that is a role model to me because the 6/3 is the role model martyr. All your trial and error benefits humanity through your spiritual teaching and being a role model. That’s what you’ve been to me. You are a role model of joy.

I’ve noticed that in your life. I’m like, “Tricia remodeled her gorgeous home and started throwing lots of parties and being joyful all the time. Her business took off.” Those two things are connected. The other thing about you is that you’re very clear and direct, but you don’t gossip. I’ve never heard you put anyone down. I’ve never seen you ever even be slightly off-color or rude to anyone. You don’t make fun of people.

A lot of people are present in front, but behind closed doors, they nudge on their values. They allow themselves a little toxicity. You are the same publicly as you are in private. That congruence is where joy is right there. That’s healing. It’s so appreciated when someone’s the same on the inside as they are on the outside, and it’s not a front and a way to extract people’s money. I respect you so much.

Thank you much for all your nice words.

This has been another episode of the show. We’ll see you all soon.

Important links

• Heal Your Hunger: 7 Simple Steps to End Emotional Eating Now
• Heal Your Hunger
• QuitSugarChallenge.com

About Tricia Nelson

Tricia Nelson lost fifty pounds by identifying and healing the underlying causes of her emotional eating. Tricia has spent over thirty years researching the hidden causes of the addictive personality. Tricia is an Emotional Eating Expert and author of the #1 bestselling book, Heal Your Hunger, 7 Simple Steps to End Emotional Eating Now.

She also certifies health coaches so they can get better results, referrals and revenue by helping their clients overcome emotional eating. Tricia is the host of the popular podcast, The Heal Your Hunger Show. She is also a TEDx speaker and has been featured on numerous media outlets, such as NBC, CBS, KTLA, FOX and Discovery Health.