Curing Emotional Eating Habits vs Controlling Them | TMOHP Episode 170

Welcome back to the podcast. Today we are talking about curing your overeating. Curing it versus controlling it. And specifically I want to talk about why diet mentality, why that deprivation thinking is so seductive and keeps pulling you back. I am all about helping you avoid the traps that come up with changing your relationship with food, the ones that can keep you going in circles.

Today I want to take a look at a key part of the approach that I teach my clients and talk about why, as a listener of this podcast, it might be difficult to wrap your head around it, or it might be one of those ideas that sounds really good, but then when you go to try to implement it, it feels really slippery. It starts to slip through your fingers or feel incredibly difficult to nail down. You like the idea of it, but you can't figure out what that would look like or how to do it in your own life.

Okay? So today's episode is about curing overeating versus controlling it or trying to control it, and why this can feel next to impossible to do when you're taking specifically a DIY approach to it. Traditional approaches to overeating or emotional eating teach you to control it.

We have been over this, but it is well worth repeating because it just feels so familiar and it feels so normal, like what you're supposed to do. So when given a choice, would you rather cure your overeating habits and be done with them, or would you want to have to stay in control for the rest of your life?

Most people, when just asked that question, for most people, the decision is a no-brainer. In fact, one of the most common things I hear from women who join my group coaching program is how tired they are of thinking about food. How tired they're of fighting with food, about filling their brain up with information about how to eat and what to eat.

So often they say, I just wanted to stop. So often their definition of freedom is quite simply that they want the battle with food and eating and their weight to just be over. To be behind them.

So why is it so hard? Why might you have had the experience of listening to this podcast for maybe a while and still finding yourself going back to vigilantly, weighing yourself, or tracking or telling yourself you need to be better at X, Y, and Z. Or deciding that you need to give up a category of food or limit your eating to some strictly defined times of day.

Curing your overeating sounds so appealing. But diet or deprivation mentality is incredibly seductive. And if you want to untangle yourself from these things, it's really important to understand how it has its hold on you, how its tentacles have gotten into your life.

So first, let's not ignore the obvious. Let's talk about the elephant in the room. That diet industry, which keeps you focused on what and how much you should eat, and what tools or drugs or systems that you should use to control these things, including controlling your actual appetite.

That industry is a multi-billion-dollar industry and there's a lot of money being made instilling and enforcing the beliefs that lifelong control, lifelong vigilance or lifelong consumption of their products or groups or systems. That's what you need if your vigilance or your self-control or your motivation fade?

Well, the message that people are spending a lot of money to propagate the message is if those things fail. Blame yourself. Tell yourself you need to do better next time. Tell yourself you need to try again. You need to jump back in. which of course means to continue to give your resources, your money, your attention, and also your confidence and your hope to this system. It is a hamster wheel.

One thing that surprises a lot of people, I think when they join my group coaching program is the power, the actual power of simply being in that group. And the power of witnessing others in the group, talking about what they're working on. The power of witnessing other people asking for coaching on the situations that are coming up for them. Experiencing other people being coached.

I know that often people join Your Missing Peace because of the individualized component of it. Because that a part of the group program is getting individual coaching and individual attention. And often people join the program because they're wanting that, and that is a piece that really speaks to them. And they're often surprised by what they also get in the program, in their experience, when the focus isn't on them.

See messages about deprivation are everywhere. We pick them up without even realizing it. It's like they're absorbed through our skin. And when you surround yourself with a community of like-minded people who resonate and who reinforce something really different. And when they are expressing some of the things that don't get talked about and then getting support in a different way. This is one of the most empowering things that you can do for yourself.

Putting yourself in a space where not only are people reinforcing a different approach, but helping you see where you are unconsciously activated by that old deprivation thinking. This is invaluable. It's also almost always incredibly new for people and surprising.

We're on Zoom, right? And it's often fun to see it take the look on people's faces, as they realize, as one woman said, oh my gosh, I found my people.

And experiencing things like, I didn't know that there was a community like this. I didn't know that we could talk about these things. I've never said these things out loud in a place where it felt safe. And I can't quite believe how it feels.

I shouldn't need help with this, that thought, or I should have had this figured out by now. Or I should spend more energy figuring this out on my own, I should just work harder. These are all such common beliefs that end up being roadblocks for women. They end up being roadblocks for women who are investing so much of themselves into trying to make changes with their eating and their weight, and they are often reinforced by the diet culture.

The messaging that is out there is going to keep reminding you that it's okay to keep jumping back into the old approaches. It's okay to do it again, and it's really your fault. You should push yourself harder. You should blame yourself for not figuring things out. And if you do it one more time, maybe eventually you will.

Here are some other things that I want you to know today, and I want your brain to absorb.

The self-control deprivation path. It is familiar to you and it is probably very firmly wired into your brain.

If you decide, okay, it's time to start over. It's time to eat better. I, I'm going to do it this time. You can probably come up with a plan or some ideas of a plan or even a very regimented set of steps of what that is going to look like, or what that should look like. You could probably do that in your sleep.

When it comes to the deprivation plans, even though they don't work, they are a dance that you know. You know how to do this dance. Or maybe you know how you should do it, or you know how you should think about it. Or you know, how you should beat yourself up for not doing it. The deprivation path is familiar to you.

And as much as you might not like it or even hate it or be so sick and tired of doing this dance, it is one that is comfortable and familiar to you. That's important.

It is part of why doing the diet and deprivation thing is so seductive. We don't like unfamiliar things, both on a cognitive brain level and psychologically. Brains and high achievers hate to feel confused. Brains and high achievers both don't like being unsure. We don't like not knowing what we're doing. And that's exactly what it feels like when you ask yourself to stop doing what's familiar.

Stop doing that old dance that you know so well. And try something new and different that also is unproven to you or unproven for you. Hasn't worked for you. You haven't done it before. You haven't done this dance. You know the old dance.

I am going to go as far as saying that in my personal experience as a high achiever and in working with hundreds of high achievers personally over the years, we high achievers are really good, really talented at avoiding unfamiliar things. Avoiding things we don't feel like we are good at. And all the while, we are also very talented at making the most believable, justifiable case for why it is the most reasonable thing to do to avoid these things. Or to do it the old comfortable way.

I cannot tell you how much this keeps amazing women stuck in overeating patterns. We high achievers can rationalize our way out of just about anything. And I am kind of known for calling people out on this. Not in a mean or belittling way, but in a truthful way. Because I really believe this, my clients deserve this. You deserve to be told the truth that is going to help you get where you want to go.

And I also can't tell you how many women have thanked me and told me that no one had ever noticed that they were bullshitting themselves before. Nobody had ever called them out. Strong women need and deserve and greatly, greatly benefit from strong mentors. Strong, competent allies who help them get where they want to go. Let the good help in it is really important.

Here's another related reason why it can be so easy to stick with diet mentality and deprivation approaches. Instead of pursuing what it really takes to cure overeating. On the outside, that path to curing your overeating, it isn't as straightforward or as linear. The reality is the path to pursuing freedom, the path to curing your overeating, it isn't linear.

And to go back. We don't like feeling unclear or unsuccessful. And I will be very honest with you. There are places on the journey to creating freedom from overeating where you feel like you are halfway through cleaning out the messiest closet in your house.

You know that experience where you have pulled everything off the shelves. You've pulled it out into the hallway or wherever. You're not sure how you're ever going to fit anything back in the first place, and you can't quite see what the finished product is going to look like.

You are tired. You're starting to doubt yourself. You wonder why you have done this. Why did you even start this? This was the absolute wrong thing to do., sometimes pursuing freedom from overeating is going to feel like that.

And remember, there's an old dance that your brain knows really well and it's going to say, you know, if you'd just gone on that drastic plan, you could have lost five pounds by now. That thought is going to come up. It does come up. And again, having support, having reminders, having tools that prop you up and encourage you and help you see a different kind of progress and remind you why you are pursuing a different kind of progress, and that also remind and support you in the reality that that old hamster wheel didn't work for you. It was a hamster wheel.

Another reason the deprivation path can be so seductive is that curing your overeating means focusing on the reason that you're overeating. Right? It's, it's dealing with your overeating by the roots. On the surface, this sounds right. But know this. This is important.

You're a smart woman. You have chosen overeating because it has felt like the best-known option to you. It is a way of coping. And you probably have beliefs telling you that spending time on this reason, the reason you're overeating isn't really going to be helpful. You probably have those beliefs in your head. Maybe you have beliefs that it is really unsolvable, so there's no point in thinking about the reason that you're overeating.

Maybe you have some thoughts or beliefs that it's really self-indulgent to do all this mental work. You shouldn't have to think about the reason you're overeating. You should just suck it up buttercup. Right? And get over it.

Or maybe you have the thought or belief that, you know, I could spend all day playing around with the reason that I'm overeating, but really, it's not going to make a difference. Again, having a structure that keeps you clear on how to do this and why you're doing this, and why to do this, and the benefits of doing this, and also if you're in a community having the benefit of watching other people have the experience. Have you ever noticed, sometimes it's so much easier to see other people's progress and other people's wins than it is to realize your own. Just like it's so much easier for other people to point out what is working for you when you can't quite see it.

Having those things in place that help you see what is going on and experience it in different ways that benefits you. And that fights against the daily deprivation messages that you are seeing, in the outside world. And also the deprivation messages that are so ingrained in your brain. This is, again, important.

And I know I talk a lot about mindset, but this is not only about psychology and mindset. The deprivation dance is familiar. The habits that go with depriving yourself and starting that program once again, that is familiar. The freedom from overeating approach is something you're maybe just hearing about.

You don't necessarily have the tools for curing your overeating yet. Which makes it more confusing and more ambiguous. Right? Remember what I said about brains and high achievers not liking to feel confused or unprepared or incompetent?

You may need more tools and resources, and when you have this deprivation mindset that you should have figured it out by now, that can feel like a roadblock if you don't have permission to go get those tools and resources.

There are two more things that I want to talk about that are really important to know about if you want to cure your overeating, instead of having a lifetime of controlling it. The first one is that it is really important to acknowledge blind spots.

You cannot necessarily know what you don't know. You can't know what you don't know. And when it comes to the whole area of shifting your thinking, I'm going to think about this differently. This gets really tricky. You are asking your brain to be aware of your brain. You are using your thinking to be aware of thoughts and beliefs and rules that are being generated by your thinking.

And then you are asking yourself to choose and to generate new thoughts and beliefs that are different from the ones that you are probably generating with probably without even conscious awareness. That is a tall order. Especially, I'm going to keep coming back to this, but it is especially difficult if you are trying to make these changes in isolation.

I talk with so many women who have all this very compelling knowledge, but they can't execute on it. Right? They're like, I can see the whole map. I can see how this works. I'm a smart cookie. I feel like I have all the pieces of the puzzle here. And yet I can't put them together. I can't figure out how to make this work in my own life. And I don't know what the disconnect is. What's the missing piece here?

This is one of the places you're going to get the biggest bang for your buck. Working with an expert and putting yourself in the right community. Okay?

And then the last thing I want to talk about is something we got to address very directly. Our brains, every single one of us, our brains have a confirmation bias. What does that mean? That means that we all have this ingrained tendency to search for, to interpret, to favor, to remember the things that confirm or support what we already believe. The values that we already have. The thoughts that we already have.

We are constantly reinforcing what we already know. So think about what I just said about blind spots. Not only can you not know what you don't know. Your brain doesn't want you to know it. Your brain has a confirmation bias. It just wants to keep reinforcing what you already believe is true.

So what does this mean? It means that if you're coming at your overeating with a belief inside that nothing works for me. Or I'm going to have to really be a lot hungrier if I want to get to my goal. Or I'm going to have to work really hard to lose weight. Or the only thing that works for me is to track my food. Or there really is nothing I can do about the reason that I'm overeating.

Or any other deprivation-based belief or any other belief that puts you on that deprivation track. If you are coming at overeating with any of these beliefs, and guess what we all are because we all live in this world, then you are going to naturally notice and collect the signs that support your beliefs. You are going to be naturally reinforcing those beliefs all day long.

And if you sign up for another deprivation-based approach or follow another deprivation-based expert on Instagram. You are going to be again, reinforcing, reinstiling, those beliefs. Instead of building the support in recognizing the beliefs. Seeing them as just thoughts. Seeing them as just one set of possibilities and beginning to reinforce a different pathway that's going to work better for you. You're going to keep going in circles.

So I hope it's not a surprise that much of what I talk about on this podcast is going to help you avoid confirmation bias. Which is going to help you avoid the trap of convincing yourself that the only true path is to be harder on yourself and to deprive yourself and to be strict, and restrictive and disciplined.

The more you can be aware of the wiring, the more you can start to build freedom. It is hard to act in a different direction when your brain is wired to keep you on a path that feels familiar. And because it's familiar, it is safe and comforting. And it is way harder to do that if you don't even know that all that stuff is happening.

Basically all the work that I do is really a resource to introduce a new set of options and a new approach to you and to your brain. And then to help make it more familiar. And my group coaching is a way to make freedom from overeating and the path to it your new normal, your new cognitive bias.

In fact, there are a number of tools inside the program or that I use with my clients that are actually designed to help you shift your bias so that you're beginning to look for all the evidence that this new freedom approach is what works. You're beginning to see that stuff everywhere instead of all the evidence that tells you, you should just go on another deprivation plan.

Think about that. When your brain starts working with you to see all the wins, to move you toward curing your overeating, to move you toward freedom, and when your brain begins collecting the great stuff that this new way of dealing with overeating from the root works for you and helps you? I want you to kind of picture what happens there.

Your brain is like, this is working. I see this. Oh wow, this cool thing happened today. Oh wow. I don't do this anymore. When you start to shift your bias in this new direction, this becomes motivating. Your brain becomes a source of motivation. You go from fighting your brain in order to keep going. To a place where your brain becomes a source of momentum.

It is so cool. I just love this stuff. I love the stuff that you can do when you start playing with this.

So if you're not inside my program, how do you begin to avoid confirmation bias? First of all, you want to be aware, as we're talking about here, that you are actively collecting evidence that pulls you in a deprivation direction. Start becoming aware. Take an inventory of your social media feeds. What do you read? What do you listen to? What is the voice in your head telling you?

All of these are ways that we reinforce our existing bias. It gets confirmed all day long. So start with awareness. And then to start pushing back against confirmation bias. Start practicing critical thinking.

Start looking at the other side. To the things you're telling yourself or the diet thinking. As you become aware of these things, ask yourself questions. Is this really true? Is this always true? Is it possible that sometimes it's not true?

These can be really powerful questions and they can get your brain moving in a different direction. Building new pathways. Bottom line, you want to be curious. Seek out perspectives that support the relationship with food that you want to have. The relationship with eating, that you want to have the relationship with yourself, that you want to build.

The curiosity about the reasons that you're eating and overeating and emotional eating. Most of all, start playing with the idea of being open to letting go of the certainty, that this is your fault, that you haven't done enough, that you should have done things differently.

Start playing around with the idea that maybe you deserve more self-compassion and more self-kindness and more openness.

And more choices, like asking yourself, is this thing I'm doing, does it really feel like freedom from overeating? Or does this feel restraining? Is this what I want to do? Which is being curious. Right?

I know the things that I'm talking about here probably seem like a tall order. It is a lot of new, a lot of doing things differently. You are not going to succeed if you aim to get it all perfect. And the good news is you don't have to. And that's another thing that you can add support to. The more reminders you have, the more support that you have that freedom from overeating can be a wonderfully flawed, imperfect, messy, and yet incredibly successful journey.

The more that you add that support and those reminders to the mix, the easier and the faster you're going to move in that new direction.

I hope this is helpful.

And I'll talk to you soon.