ANEW Insight

Defeat Your Cravings: Overeating, Emotional Eating & Food Freedom | ANEW Ep 105

• Dr. Supatra Tovar • Season 1 • Episode 105

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In this episode of the ANEW Insight Podcast, we discuss overeating, emotional eating, and food cravings with psychologist and author Dr. Glenn Livingston. Drawing on decades of research—including a 40,000-participant study—Dr. Glenn shares how cravings are engineered in the brain, why diets fail, and how his tools help people finally find food freedom.


🔑 Episode Highlights

  • Dr. Glenn’s personal story of battling food obsession and weight struggles
  • How food manufacturers target the reptilian brain to fuel cravings
  • The role of clear boundaries and mindfulness in breaking overeating cycles
  • Insights from his book Defeat Your Cravings
  • Emotional roots of food habits and how awareness creates lasting change

⏱️ Episode Notes / Timestamps

  • 00:00 – Introduction with Dr. Supatra Tovar
  • 02:00 – Dr. Glenn’s personal journey with food addiction
  • 06:00 – Why cravings are rooted in brain science, not weakness
  • 09:00 – The “inner pig” method and setting food boundaries
  • 12:00 – From personal journal to bestselling book
  • 15:00 – Why people relapse: the “screw it, just do it” response
  • 18:00 – Childhood roots of chocolate addiction & healing conversation with his mother
  • 22:00 – Rules and mindfulness as allies, not opposites

📚 Resources & Links

Social media links of Dr. Glenn Livingston: https://www.instagram.com/livingstonglenn/?hl=en, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/contributors/glenn-livingston-phd, https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B00RM133ZY, https://www.neverbingeagain.com/, https://www.linkedin.com/in/drglennlivingston

If you’re ready to break free from emotional eating, subscribe to the ANEW Insight Podcast on your favorite platform. Follow us on social media for updates, and explore our resources to continue your journey toward health and self-awareness.

#drsupatratovar #drt #anewinsight  #emotionaleating #bingeeating #anewinsightpodcast #deprogramdietculture #nutrionalpsychology #drglennlivingston



Thank you for joining us on this journey to wellness. Remember, the insights and advice shared on the ANEW Body Insight Podcast are for educational and informational purposes only and do not constitute medical advice. Always consult with a healthcare professional before making any changes to your health routine. To learn more about the podcast and stay updated on new episodes, visit ANEW Body Insight Podcast at anew-insight.com. To watch this episode on YouTube, visit @my.anew.insight. Follow us on social media at @my.anew.insight on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Threads for more updates and insights. Thank you for tuning in! Stay connected with us for more empowering stories and expert guidance. Until next time, stay well and keep evolving with ANEW Body Insight!

Dr. Supatra Tovar:

Hello, and welcome to the ANEW Insight podcast. I'm Dr. Supatra Tovar. I'm so excited to have overeating specialist and psychologist Dr. Glenn Livingston with us today. Dr. Glenn, how are you? I. Sure. Of course. Okay. Dr. Glenn Livingston is a veteran psychologist and former CEO of a multimillion dollar consulting firm serving Fortune 500 food industry clients with decades of experience researching binge eating and food psychology, including a landmark, self-funded study with. Get this you guys, over 40,000 participants. Oh, well no, you have like amazing experience and I like to make my bios pop, I tell you. So, tell me, Glenn, I would love to know what is your inspiration? This is a big part of, the first part of my podcast always, is really delving into what inspired people to go into the work that they do. I think that there's something really deep and something that the audience can really glean from when they hear the why behind someone's work.

Dr. Glenn Scott Livingston:

Well, well, it's not just an intellectual curiosity. It's not like I'm a doctor who just decided to work with overeaters. This, this was the bane of my existence. I was almost 300 pounds and worse yet, I couldn't stop thinking about food. I. I'd be you, being a great psychologist, it's not so much about everything, although that's a big part of it, it's, it's about getting people to love and trust you enough that they'll listen to what you know, that requires that you lend them your soul. You have to be just a hundred percent present with them. In my twenties and thirties, I really had a hard time doing that. I would think I was decent anyway. I like to think I was decent anyway, but I, I had a hard time being emotionally present a hundred percent because of my own food struggles. I went to all the best psychologists and psychiatrists and Overeaters Anonymous and nutritionists. And I took medication and, I kind of cried and screamed and confessed all the guilt in my soul. And it helped me as a person. I think it made me a more compassionate person. I forgave myself for a lot of things, but it didn't help me so much with food. And, and that was me for here is eat, mate, or kill what's really going on. we push all of our best thinking aside and say just hand over the cheesecake and nobody gets hurt, is, is that this thing is getting active, this thing is getting active, and we're designed from an evolutionary vantage point be able to push the higher brain out of the way when we need to take action to survive. If there is a hungry tiger chasing you, that's not the time that you can rest and digest and chill and think about your long-term goals. That's time to breathe fast and get the hell out of there. Similarly, in a primitive environment when food was relatively scarce and we had to compete for it, when you perceived the availability of food resources, you'd have to push your rational brain out of the way, um, and just take action and go get them. There wasn't time for really think and make decisions. It's so that's what's going on. It's a very physiologically and evolutionarily healthy mechanism, but it doesn't work in the modern food environment, 'cause I can go downstairs and buy a hundred thousand calories for a hundred dollars. And then I can go across the street and do the same thing. Right? here is eat, mate, or kill what's really going on. we push all of our best thinking aside and say just hand over the cheesecake and nobody gets hurt, is, is that this thing is getting active, this thing is getting active, and we're designed from an evolutionary vantage point be able to push the higher brain out of the way when we need to take action to survive. If there is a hungry tiger chasing you, that's not the time that you can rest and digest and chill and think about your long-term goals. That's time to breathe fast and get the hell out of there. Similarly, in a primitive environment when food was relatively scarce and we had to compete for it, when you perceived the availability of food resources, you'd have to push your rational brain out of the way, um, and just take action and go get them. There wasn't time for really think and make decisions. It's so that's what's going on. It's a very physiologically and evolutionarily healthy mechanism, but it doesn't work in the modern food environment, 'cause I can go downstairs and buy a hundred thousand calories for a hundred dollars. And then I can go across the street and do the same thing. Right? This, this is not about my personal psychology. This is not about that hole in my emotional heart. Thi this was about this thing getting too stimulated and active and pushing the rest of Glenn outta the way. And, and so like, I was not, I was a child and family psychologist. I was not going to teach this stuff. And I did something a little crazy. I decided, I have to know when this thing is awake. If I was gonna get better. People are frightened of very clear lines when it comes to food, which is really interesting. We're talk about that later. I'm gonna say something like, i'm never gonna have chocolate on a weekday again. So here's that line in the sand and it functions like a trip wire. It's, I'm only ever gonna have chocolate on a weekend and no more than, two ounces after a workout. And by defining that really clear line, this thing would wake me up when my reptilian brain was trying to get through. And I would say, let's say I'm at I'm at a Starbucks on a Wednesday, and there's a big chocolate bar on the counter, I hear this voice in my head that says, you know what, Glenn? It'll be just as easy to start your silly rule again tomorrow. You worked out hard enough and a little is not going to kill you. Go ahead. We'll just start again tomorrow yipee. Let's go get some right? Chocolate on a Wednesday afternoon is pig slop. I don't eat pig slop, so I don't let farm animals tell me what to do. And so I wish I could tell you that was a miracle and that I was all better right away, but it wasn't. What happened though was I got clarity and I, I got a little bit of space between stimulus and response to make the right decision just a little bit more space and over the next eight years for me personally, I, I can teach people how to do this in a month now, but for me it took eight years 'cause I didn't have all these tools. I started challenging the things that my pig was saying. For example, if the pig says it'll be just as easy to start again tomorrow, I would say, wait a minute, that's not true. Because the way that neuroplasticity works, what fires together wires together. So if I have a craving for chocolate and I say, I'll just start again tomorrow, and then I eat the chocolate, I've reinforced the craving and I've reinforced the idea that I can just start tomorrow. My craving's gonna be worse tomorrow, and I'm gonna be more likely to say, I'll just start tomorrow, tomorrow. So if you're in a hole, you better stop digging. You can only use the present moment to be healthy. And I'm almost done and then I'll pause, and you can ask me whatever you want. I, I know I got wound up about these kind of things. But the basics are important. And, and, and in that space between stimulus and response, I had a few extra microseconds to make the right decision. Sometimes I would, sometimes I wouldn't. I no longer felt confused. I no longer felt like this had something to do with my very deep personal history or something that was broken inside. I didn't think I had a disease. I said, this thing is just too powerful. It wakes up and it does what it wants to do, and I'm just starting to get a little control here. I focused on that in my journal. I kept a log of all the things that Pig said and all the things that it was wrong about, and I gradually pulled this apart and it became easier and easier to make decisions. I found it was important to make that I could and would follow as opposed to trying to follow a strict diet. I found that the control was more important than the particular diet that I was following. prevalence, get better over that period of time. In 20 15, I'm kind of headed towards a divorce and I realize I'm gonna have to do something different. So I call I call the CEO of a publishing company that I had a minor stake in from all of my business dealings. And I said, I'm trying to figure out what to do. And he says, well, we need to write our own book because we need to show other authors that we know what we're doing with marketing and I need you to be able to go out and talk about it. And I said, well, I have this crazy journal. He says, I love it. Put it into a book. I take a few months, I put it into a book. Two weeks later, he calls me back and he says, Glenn I don't eat pigs slop. I don't let farm animals tell me what to do. And he proceeds to lose 90 pounds. I got a gig on Psychology Today. I got a million readers there too. Wrote a bunch more books. Wound up running an agency with 2000 clients over the next eight years or so, and we were keeping stats on the agency about the efficacy, and we'd find it was really good for people who would engage. Some people, sometimes people buy programs and they don't engage, but for the people who would engage with their coaches, we had an 84% reduction, 89.4% reduction in overeating in the first month. Then the rest were up like 75, 80% and they were people who had kept using the tools. And I thought, well, why would you stop using the tools? Like, like you're making the rules. Nobody's telling you what to do, nobody's telling you what you can or can't eat. It's a miserable life when you feel like you can't control your food. Like everything from the most mild case where you're just eating beyond your own worst judgment, on own best judgment, to feeling like you can't stop eating all day long. It's, it's not a happy life. And this is not an invasive procedure. There are no pills or powders or potions you have to buy. There are no surgery procedures you have to go through. There's no recovery. Like why would people stop doing this? So I really get interested in investigating that over the next year. And what I found was it all clusters around what we, psychologists would call organismic distress, where the brain perceives there to be an emergency. Not enough nutrition, not enough sleep. Too many decisions to make. Willpower is mostly just the ability to make good decisions, and you can only make so many good decisions every day. So when people are overwhelmed in business or they've got five kids, or they just have to figure out who's taking Jenny to soccer practice, too many decisions, and it wears down their executive function, it wears down their willpower, feeling isolated from your tribe. You don't have to be a social butterfly, but you do have to feel like you have a tribe.

Dr. Supatra Tovar:

So I love it. There's, I am a not food rules person, so when I hear about food rules, I'm like, whoa. I always kind of, and then the main reason why is because I think that tends to feed into the cravings themselves when we make something taboo or we say we cannot eat something. But I think the, the way that you have distinguished it is that you're not necessarily is related to that distress. That's where I really kind of delve in with people is, what is behind the actual urge. And so my question for you is when you found yourself overweight and not, not happy with yourself and with your body, what do you think were the main drivers of overweight. I, I mean, I would say you, you worked in the food industry.

Dr. Glenn Scott Livingston:

Sure. I'm gonna, I'm gonna tell you two things first about your concern about the rules. One is that the vast majority of our clients are not necessarily making a rule that says have to give up sugar entirely, or they have to give up pizza entirely, like two outta three people come up with some conditions that they'll have it twice a week or something like that, and you can change the rules whenever you want to. I say, it's kind of like we present it to our pigs as if it were set in stone or our food monsters as if it were set in stone. The same way that I told my niece Sarah, that she couldn't cross the street without holding my hand ever when she was too, never, ever, not, not when she's a big girl. I didn't want her thinking about it. It was too scary. But of course I'm gonna teach her how to do that later on as she evolves and gains experience and wisdom. So what. I wanna answer your question directly, what led to problem in the first place? I mean, I could tell you an emotional story about my mom after I got through that 40,000 person study, which showed that people who struggled with chocolate like me, 'cause my binges always started with chocolate, that they tended to be lonely or brokenhearted or a little depressed. I called my mom and I said, mom, I know I'm not in a great marriage and I'm a little lonely and broken hearted, it makes sense. But how did this all start? Where did it, where did it come from? And she got this horrible look on her face. This was on Skype. And remember the days when we had Skype she goes, oh honey, I'm so sorry. I think I was 41 years old or something at the time, and I said, mom, it was 40 years ago. I love you. I forgive you for whatever it is. I just want to figure it out. And you're a therapist and you struggle with chocolate also. Let's see if we can figure this out. So she says, you know what, honey? When you were 1-year-old in 1965, your dad was a captain in the army and I was frightened that he was gonna be taken to Vietnam. We're trying to get pregnant with your sister. I thought I'm gonna be a, an army widowed with two little kids. At the same time, your grandfather and my dad had just gotten outta prison and I had no idea where he was. It was a really good moment. My mom and I had a little cry and a metaphorical hug 'cause we were at a distance and I hated myself less like, like some of my self hatred dissolved at that point. I could ask my mother all types of things about that time in her life, which was very meaningful. reason. And so for me, now, I know that other people work it out by solving the emotional, leading part of the equation. But for me, it turned out to be a lot faster to figure out how to sever the link between the emotions and the overeating, but by being able to wake up and knowing exactly what role I want the chocolate to play in my life, like I, I knew where the boundaries are. The same way that you, know where a red light is, you know where a stop sign is when you're driving around and yes, you feel rebellious when you come up against a red light.

Dr. Supatra Tovar:

Wow. That's so powerful and it, it's heartbreaking to hear, I'm sure from your mom, having that self-awareness it was difficult to be able to admit that to you, but even though it increased your chocolate consumption more after having that conversation, having that realization, I think is everything. But with awareness, and that's, that's at the heart of the work that I do, is that I think self-awareness is the key to really, truly tuning into your body and listening and understanding what your body is trying to tell you as opposed to what your, your mind is trying to tell you and discerning the difference.​

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