Welcome, new people!

There are a lot of new ppl on this list this week, and I am really happy to have you here. If we’re meeting for the first time, I’ve been a life coach for 15 years, and I wrote a book on the fastest, easiest way to quit overeating.

Low mood, low appetite?

Today’s question comes not from you but from an informal chat with a friend. We were talking not about emotional overeating but emotional undereating. Low appetite due to low mood.

Now, I’m not a first-person expert in lack of appetite.

(Or I wasn’t until recently. Icymi, I started taking a GLP1+ in June. It has been an all-day superextravaganzaparade of high-key miracles, most of which are surprising and not related to weight.)

Anyway I was never the kind of person that met a life setback by pushing my plate away. Upsetting events were usually met with donuts, bacon and rum raisin.

What I do know about is eating on a schedule, so here’s why I think you should make yourself eat even if you’re feeling low:

Because the physical body needs to be fed regularly, even if your emotional self does not.

There are some emotions that should maybe be let to subside before feeding the body. Rage comes to mind. Don’t eat angry!²

Sadness doesn’t come to mind, I wouldn’t say. Rage burns itself out pretty quickly, as a rule. Sadness can last longer, long enough that if you make its absence the precondition for eating, you could really suffer from lack of nutrition.

Maybe you are too low to care about fuel and nutrition and physical health. I have felt that low, as I think most of us have.

But that is why meals at mealtimes. When it’s time to eat, you eat, even if you feel like shit.

You eat even if it seems pointless, because it isn’t pointless, it only seems that way, and that’s a trick of the mood.

You eat even if depressed because you’re not going to get less depressed by not eating, these systems don’t interact with each other in this way. (The opposite, in fact.)

You eat even if despondent because somebody like me has reminded you that coming out of despair may seem to happen on its own, some better day, but it doesn’t happen entirely on its own, it needs energy, and energy comes from food.

You eat even if sad because although you may not have experimented with this idea very much, you can be sad and do anything. You can be sad and pay the bills. You can be sad and go to the mountains and be sad there. You can be sad and make the kids breakfast and even if it’s a sad breakfast they’ll do better in class than if they didn’t have sad breakfast.

You can be sad and eat because your body needs you to. You can be sad and tell the sadness, Fine, I’m hella sad, but I don’t have to cosign your bullshit about how nothing matters because that’s a lie and you’re just a demon trying to ruin my life because for some unfathomable reason that not even the Lord Buddha got to the bottom of, my sadness is your breakfast.

So I think meals at mealtimes is how you handle eating when you don’t have any appetite or enthusiasm for eating, no matter the reason. You have an agreement with yourself about an easy way to get some minimum number of calories in, something simple that you like well enough, and you just eat that. A salty lassi with protein powder works for me at the moment. (It will fail at some point, becoming completely repulsive and then I’ll have to figure something else out.)

Just pick anything that will not make you even more bummed out. (We all have meals that we know will make matters worse!) 

And if there just isn’t anything coming to mind, then just eat ANYTHING and remind yourself that calories = energy and energy = motion and motion is what you need to oppose stuckness and despair.

If emotional undereating is something you know firsthand, and you want to disagree with me or add something, I want to hear from you! Just hit Reply.

Quick update.

It appears that I worried some of you when I mentioned my divorce, which lives on thru the unfinished mechanics of property division.

Have you read genre-defining legal thriller Bleak House by Charles Dickens, in which a court case drags on for literally generations, benefiting only the lawyers and bankrupting everyone else? It’s like that, ugh.

OMG. I exaggerate. It’s not like that. It’s just irritating.

But listen! I AM FINE. My post-divorce life: objectively better in every respect except for the coffee I drink in the morning.

And even that is not that bad. I am sorry I caused anyone to worry! And I was touched by your kind thoughts.

Recommending.

Concentration without Effort, my friend Cameron Steele’s Tarot class, has begun. There are a couple open spots left, and we’re only a week into it, so it’s not too late to join us!

I have to say, I have been working with Tarot since I was a teen (like 50 years!!!) and in this single week I have already gone so much deeper in my practice. Cameron is one of the most generous and conscientious teachers I’ve ever encountered, and so it’s not surprising that the group is likewise kind and generous. If you’re interested in Tarot from any point of view, I can’t recommend this course highly enough.

That’s a lot of superlatives! And I’m still understating!!

Time to move on with the year!

Here to remind you that if you haven’t done so yet, it’s time to grab your annual planner and map out your vision for the year.

It’s going away Friday the 13th. If you get it before then, you can spend Valentine’s Day (patron saint of beekeepers, not for nothin!) setting yourself up for a glorious 2026.

Retreat at Home: Virtual Workshop with Modern Daily Knitting

Coming up on Friday March 20th, I’ll be doing an online workshop in which we’ll plot out a DIY at-home self-led retreat. Affordable and convenient, for when you can’t get to the mountaintop.

But also because inspiration and transformation can be found at our own doorstep.

You can do an at-home retreat on your own, or grab a friend and do it together. Details and signup here.

This short little book will make you laugh, probably make you angry on your own behalf, and show you a really smart, easy, fast and no-cost way to 10x your life. If you’d like the chance to demolish your eating problems by bedtime tonight for next to nothing, GET IT HERE.