Emotional eating

I do most of my exercise at a new fitness studio owned by a woman named Caroline. She's about my age (50 something), has a BS in health & exercise science and 30 years experience in the fitness field. Her approach to exercise has made an enormous difference in my life and I think it's helping my fibromyalgia as well as my muscle tone, flexibility, balance, and cardio fitness. I have a lot of confidence in Caroline.

About a week ago, I had Caroline do a postural assessment of me because I think some of my pain problems may be postural, and on Friday I'm starting the first of 4 personal training sessions with her (if it goes well and I can afford it, we'll do more than 4). While talking about my fitness and health goals, Caroline asked me a few questions about my band surgery. One of them was, "What has been the hardest thing for you to deal with since your surgery?"

Good question. I answered, "The hardest thing has been learning ways to deal with stress, boredom, and emotions that don't involve food."

She said, "Huh. I never thought of it that way before." At the time I thought it was a slightly weird answer, but maybe I had misunderstood her. Had she meant that she'd thought that weight loss surgery removes ALL eating urges, physical and emotional?

A few days later we were alone in the studio while waiting for the rest of the class to arrive, and Caroline said, "I've been thinking what you said the other day, about the challenge of dealing with emotional eating when you're trying to lose weight. I just hadn't ever thought of that aspect of it before, but it's very interesting."

At that point, other students started coming in, so our conversation ended. But ever since then, I've been wondering how on earth Caroline could spend 30 years in the fitness field, including a bachelor's degree in health and years of working as a personal trainer with people trying to lose weight, and never before encounter the reality of emotional eating?