Episode 18- The Neuroscience of Why You Eat: Stress, Dopamine & Why Willpower Is Often the Wrong Explanation

Coming Home: Learning to Trust Yourself Again

Evet DeCota is the owner of DeCota Life Coaching and a psychology-informed life coach exploring resilience, mindset, and the courage to become your authentic self. Between the salon chair and the coaching session, she's spent years watching people move through life in patterns they rarely notice. This is it, the final episode of A Psychology of Food. Eight episodes ago, this series opened with a question: what happened to us around food? Episode 22 turns that question around and asks it the other way. Who were you before you were taught how to be around food? This episode is about the practice of finding out, and about learning to trust the answer. In this episode, you'll learn: ● The practical difference between physical hunger and emotional hunger, and where each one tends to register in the body ● Why undereating during the day can produce something that feels exactly like emotional hunger by evening, and why that isn't a willpower problem ● What interoceptive awareness is, and why researchers Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch describe it as something close to a superpower ● Kristin Neff's three components of self-compassion, and why self-compassion is the actual condition that makes listening to your body possible ● Why comfort eating was never the enemy this series was describing, and where the real concern actually lies ● Evet's own closing reflection, including her experience with a GLP-1 medication, what it did and didn't do, and what coming home to herself has looked like This episode marks the final chapter of A Psychology of Food, an eight-episode series exploring the systems, biology, and psychology that shape our relationship with food. Thank you for listening to the whole arc. Contact Evet / DeCota Life Coaching Website: decotalifecoaching.com [http://decotalifecoaching.com] Email: decotalifecoaching@gmail.com [decotalifecoaching@gmail.com] Phone: 415-548-1964

Episode 21-Food Addiction and The Science Behind Diet Culture Guilt

Is it addiction, or is it something else wearing the same symptoms? Episode 21 opens the final section of A Psychology of Food, The Self, by taking on the food addiction debate directly, then following the thread into the binge-restrict cycle and the cheat day culture that keeps it spinning. What you'll learn in this episode: ● The 2025 research proposing "Ultra-Processed Food Use Disorder" as a diagnosis, what the Yale Food Addiction Scale actually measures, and why researchers are still divided on the question ● Why food doesn't fit the abstinence model every other addiction framework is built on, and what that means for anyone who has felt like they don't fit the label ● The four stages of the binge-restrict cycle: restriction, craving, bingeing, and guilt, and why each stage sets up the next ● The forbidden fruit effect, including a story from Geneen Roth's Kindness and Calories about a mother, a pillowcase, and a bag of M&Ms ● Why cheat days often function as restriction with a due date, and what the research says about the alternative ● Evet's own history with sugar and hyper-palatable food, including thirteen years as a smoker who quit for good, and years of nutritionists, food therapy, and food retreats ● The shift from blame to curiosity that carries through the rest of the series, and a preview of the final episode This episode closes with a preview of Episode 22, Coming Home: Learning to Trust Yourself Again, the final episode of the series. If you'd like to learn more about working with Evet, you can find her at decotalifecoaching.com [http://decotalifecoaching.com], email decotalifecoaching@gmail.com [decotalifecoaching@gmail.com], or call 415-548-1964.

Episode 20- Menopause, Metabolism, & the 8 PM Problem

Episode 20 turns to one of the most misunderstood stages of a woman's life: menopause and the very real metabolic and neurological shifts that come with it. Evet DeCota walks through why the strategies that worked in your twenties and thirties stop working the same way at midlife, and why that has nothing to do with discipline or effort. Key takeaways: ● Estrogen decline during perimenopause and menopause weakens a natural appetite brake, shifting the balance between leptin (fullness) and ghrelin (hunger) toward increased cravings. ● Visceral fat redistribution toward the abdomen after menopause is a documented, estrogen-linked shift, not a reflection of effort. ● Appetite hormone changes continue for 18 to 30 months after the menopause transition itself, meaning the body keeps recalibrating well past menopause. ● The 8 PM problem is driven by evening cortisol that fails to decline on schedule, compounded by hot flashes and disrupted sleep that independently raise next-day hunger. ● PCOS, recently renamed PMOS (polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome), does not resolve at menopause. Reproductive symptoms often ease, but insulin resistance, the metabolic core of the condition, typically persists or worsens. ● Evet shares her own PMOS story, including a hysterectomy recommendation at seventeen, decades on birth control, and later conversations with her doctors about HRT and GLP-1 medication. ● Research from neuroscientist Lisa Mosconi shows the brain's glucose metabolism drops measurably during perimenopause, offering a possible explanation for menopausal brain fog and for why nearly two-thirds of Alzheimer's patients are women. ● Mediterranean and MIND-style eating patterns have the strongest evidence base for supporting cognition through midlife, while ultra-processed foods and refined sugar are linked to worse brain fog. This episode is part of A Psychology of Food, a nine-episode series exploring the systems, biology, and stories that shape our relationship with food. Episode 21, Food Addiction, Food Shame, and the Cheat Day Lie, continues the series next. Contact Evet / DeCota Life Coaching Website: decotalifecoaching.com [http://decotalifecoaching.com] Email: decotalifecoaching@gmail.com [decotalifecoaching@gmail.com] Phone: 415-548-1964

Episode 19- Born into It: Where Your Relationship with Food Really Began

When most people think about their relationship with food, they point to their first diet, a painful comment about their body, or years of struggling with emotional eating. But what if the story began much earlier? In this episode of The Original Self Podcast, we explore the science behind how our relationship with food begins long before conscious choice. From prenatal flavor exposure and epigenetics to the infant microbiome and childhood food rituals, we examine how biology, environment, and family traditions quietly shape the way we eat. You'll learn how the body adapts before birth, why the gut and brain begin communicating in infancy, how Saturday morning cereal became more than breakfast, and why many of our lifelong eating patterns developed long before we understood nutrition. Most importantly, this episode isn't about blame. It's about replacing shame with understanding. The body is remarkably adaptive, and the same biology that helped shape our early experiences remains capable of change throughout life. In this episode, you'll discover: • How food preferences begin before birth • What epigenetics teaches us about inheritance and environment • Why the infant microbiome matters for lifelong health • How childhood rituals and family traditions become emotional maps • The psychology behind classical conditioning and food memories • Why understanding your beginning doesn't determine your future • How neuroplasticity, the microbiome, and lifestyle continue to support change throughout adulthood Contact: decotalifecoaching@gmail.com [decotalifecoaching@gmail.com] www.decotalifecoaching.com [http://www.decotalifecoaching.com] Listen wherever you enjoy podcasts. Research & References Featured in This Episode: • Dr. Julie Mennella (Monell Chemical Senses Center) • The Dutch Hunger Winter Studies (1944–1945) • Dr. Rachel Yehuda (Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai) • Dr. Martin Blaser (Rutgers University) • Dr. Jack Gilbert (University of California San Diego) • Cornell University Food and Brand Lab • Human milk biology research Further Reading: • The Omnivore's Dilemma – Michael Pollan • The Hungry Brain – Stephan Guyenet • Metabolical – Dr. Robert Lustig • The Psychobiotic Revolution – Scott Anderson, John Cryan & Ted Dinan • Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers – Dr. Robert Sapolsky Educational Disclaimer: The information presented in this episode is intended for educational purposes only and should not replace medical advice from your physician or another qualified healthcare professional.

Episode 18- The Neuroscience of Why You Eat: Stress, Dopamine & Why Willpower Is Often the Wrong Explanation

Have you ever reached for food and only realized what you were doing after the fact — as if the decision had already been made without you? You're not imagining it. In this episode of The Original Self Podcast, psychology-informed life coach Evet DeCota explains why that experience is neurologically real, and why willpower is often the wrong explanation for what's happening. Drawing on her graduate research on stress, impulsivity, and hyper-palatable food consumption, Evet breaks down the brain systems that drive eating behavior — and why they so often override our best intentions. In this episode, you'll learn: • Why the decision to eat often happens before conscious awareness catches up — and what that tells us about how the brain actually works • The difference between the Wanting System and the Liking System (and why you can keep eating long after the enjoyment is gone) • How stress and cortisol specifically direct appetite toward calorie-dense foods — and why this is a survival mechanism, not a character flaw • Why some people lose their appetite under stress while others reach for food — and the neurological reason behind both responses • How the gut-brain axis shapes cravings through the microbiome, serotonin, and hunger hormones like ghrelin and leptin • What happens to the prefrontal cortex under stress — and why the brain simultaneously hits the accelerator and weakens the brakes • A simple awareness practice, backed by UCLA research, that interrupts automatic eating patterns without requiring willpower or restriction This episode is part of the ongoing series A Psychology of Food — a multi-episode arc exploring the systems, biology, and history that shaped your relationship with food, long before you had the language to question any of it. If you've ever asked yourself, 'What is wrong with me?' around food, this episode offers a different question — and a more honest answer. To learn more about working with Evet, visit decotalifecoaching.com [http://decotalifecoaching.com]