192: Laura Coe, part 1: Emotional Obesity and Environmental Obesity

June 26, 2019 by Joshua
in Podcast

Laura and I go back a few years, from being on her podcast.

We talk about her concept of emotional obesity: a parallel between physical health and emotional health. I find it a rich analogy on many levels. Characteristics of addiction to food that cause obesity resemble thoughts that cause emotional obesity.

She describes her concept in more detail, but I find most helpful about it that it enables you to make yourself emotionally healthy in the ways you make yourself physically healthy. You’ll note the parallels in problem and solution as she describes it.

Think of thoughts you kick yourself with. If your friend said those things you’d leave that friend. Yet we keep doing it, unable to see that we can stop it.

Dwelling in unproductive thoughts and blame doesn’t help.

We expand it to environmental obesity, where we look at addictive environmental behaviors, another approach that helps understand and solve behaviors we don’t like.

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