What if the way to healing your heart isn’t through your head… but through your gut? In this episode, we welcome Shirley Billigmeier—author, intuitive coach, and gut-brain expert—for a powerful conversation on grief, food, and reclaiming your inner wisdom. Shirley shares how emotional eating, especially after deep loss, is often not about willpower—but about unspoken sadness and a longing for connection. You’ll learn why you were born with built-in hunger cues, what your gut is trying to tell you, and how listening to your body—truly listening—can transform your relationship with food, water, and ultimately, yourself. Whether you’re carrying extra “storage” or simply craving peace after loss, this episode will open your eyes (and heart) to what’s really happening beneath the surface. Quote: “The appearance of the body is a visual, an interpretation of our brain. It is not a sensation felt internally, like hunger. Innergetics has proven that honoring the gut’s simple hunger and taste messages will result in a slender body that is balanced overall. In contrast, a narrow focus on the size of the body will only result in continuous struggle and frustration; intellectualizing about food actually blocks information that our body sends about hunger, satisfaction, and other needs and feelings. In essence, work is created where there is meant to be no work. Eating is natural, is pleasurable, gives energy, and was never meant to interfere with our creative minds.” I am sharing my experience of loving the same man for 32 years, a mother to two adult children, a retired military officer, a breast cancer survivor, and my connections with others.   Anyone experiencing suicidal thoughts should reach out to a suicide hotline or local emergency number in their country: Psychology Today Suicide Hotlines and Prevention Resources Around the World. — Watch the episode here   Listen to the podcast here   Healing Grief Through The Gut: Emotional Eating, Inner Wisdom, And The Power Of Listening To Your Body With Shirley Billigmeier Our guest, Shirley, is going to talk about something that we really don’t speak about a lot, eating our feelings in this grief journey. I talk to people and sometimes, they’re not eating, sometimes they’re eating too much, they’re eating late, but eating becomes a huge part of this grief journey. Shirley’s going to share with us about our gut brain feeling the ability to know where we are on a level of 1 to 10 in eating and so much more. Let’s get into this conversation now.         Shirley, welcome to the widowhood. Thank you. I’m looking forward to it. Thank you. When you hear, “Welcome to the widowhood,” what comes to mind for you? The Gut Brain And Emotional Eating What comes to mind is there’s a sadness in it. In that sadness, it’s there because that person meant a great deal and that sadness is very real. What starts to happen is that instead of really feeling that sadness, you start detouring to eating because you feel lonely. That’s where I end up working with people who feel that deep sense of loneliness when they’ve lost their spouse or lost somebody very close to them. It can be a parent, it can be a spouse, it can be a sibling. When I hear widowhood, I think, “Okay, there’s probably some sadness. There’s probably some really deep work that needs to be done.” You are telling me that eating my feelings is a real thing. It’s not something just made up in my mind. This is a real thing. No, because I work with the gut brain, and that’s where your eating boundaries are located. We’re born with them. When you think of an infant, they know what hunger feels like. When they’re born, they feel that hunger. They know when to start eating. What’s amazing is they know when that hunger goes away, they truly want to stop eating and it’s very strong. Those eating boundaries we’re born with. We’re also born with over 10,000 taste buds. Not just on the tongue. They’re all in our gut brain. How do you feel? Imagine how many times you say, “I just had a feeling?” There’s a brain in our gut that has a lot of information. In fact, it is 9 messages to 1 from the gut to the head versus the head to the gut. You really want to listen to the messages. Those eating boundaries are within us. Yet, like somebody would say, “Shirley, how do you work?” I said, “You listen to hunger, that feeling of hunger, that’s your natural eating boundary.” She said, “Shirley, I’m always hungry.” I said, “Not every feeling below the neck is hunger. There’s where your feelings are housed. You really need to tap into those feelings when you’re hungry, when you’re not hungry, what’s going on. When you’re not hungry and you have the desire to eat thought, something is being told you to pay attention to.” I often hear people say sometimes they’re hungry or they’re thirsty. How do I tell the difference of all this? If I’m a ripe age of 40, 50, 60, and I’ve never heard this, am I too late to be able to tune into this? Reconnecting With Hunger Using The Hunger Scale Never too late because it’s all there. We all own it because we were all an infant at one point in time. I can show you. This is how I start. I have a hunger scale. Imagine now a scale from 0 to 10, 0 meaning starved, 10 stuffed, 5 is the feeling of nothingness. You don’t feel crowded in your stomach from eating a little bit too much. You don’t feel a little bit hungry. I’m going to have you do this also. If you put your mind in your stomach right now, what number would you be at? I’ll say again, 0 starved, 10 is stuffed, 5 is a feeling of nothingness, 4 is a little bit hungry,