End Overeating by Shifting Your Focus | TMOHP Episode 172

Hey everybody welcome back to the podcast. You know, I think that one of the most frustrating things about trying to change your eating or stop over eating or break habits of emotional eating is that so much of the advice literally helps you to aim your GPS. Like aim your focus in an unhelpful direction. Or definitely not the direction that would be optimal if what you really want to do is create peace with food and freedom from overeating.

Sometimes we think we're doing everything right. Tell me if you can relate to this. Do you think you're doing everything right. You work really hard and you're not getting the results you want. And you want to scream with frustration. You're working really hard and what you're trying to do just doesn't stick. Or it just doesn't work.

So much of the time it is because you've picked the wrong habit to nurture or to focus on. And what goes along with that is that so much of the time in focusing on certain habits that you are trying to change or nurture or so much of the time you're trying to stop. You end up ignoring the habits that are actually the foundation for creating lasting success with ending overeating.

I thought it would be useful to give an example from somebody that I worked with. In this episode, I'm going to call her Lisa, although that's not her real name, because we want to protect her privacy. So Lisa, as many women do, came to work with me with this energy behind wanting to change, and it's like this energy of I want it done yesterday. And she was so vehement when she was describing her eating habits to me and what needed to be fixed. Right? And what needed to be changed.

She had been around the hamster wheel more than a few times. And she knew exactly the way of eating that she wanted to land on. She felt really certain about the pattern of eating that worked best for her. When she could stick to it, and the problem was she couldn't stick to it.

She described to me in such clear detail how she likes to focus on eating fresh vegetables and high-quality protein. And how she doesn't believe in snacking. And she was able to describe the way she preps her food on the weekend. And how she keeps her refrigerator stocked with just the right food. She told me how much she really likes to eat this way.

What a great fit it is for her. And the results that she sees with this approach. She believes very strongly in it. She told me she was so happy with the systems and the habits that she developed that worked for her. She had it all in place. Except she keeps losing her grasp on these amazing systems and habits.

As amazing as they are, as much as she loves them, they don't stick. She gets started, she can stick with it for a while and then things fall apart. And as confident and as sure as she sounds, she is feeling like she's going in circles. One of her goals is weight loss. She's working on losing the same 25 pounds that seem to be this struggle that she can get somewhere with. And then they come back and she can, make some progress with, and then things fall apart.

She's frustrated. It feels like she's working so hard with this very clear picture of what she wants to do and she's never getting to her goal. Lisa had taken all of her strengths and her abilities, and she'd put together a very solid set of habits around food. But staying on the path with food that she had chosen just wasn't happening.

Here's why I'm sharing this with you. I'm sharing this with you because A, you can probably relate. You very well, may have been in the same position as Lisa or maybe you are now.

And because as Lisa and I started to work together, what became very clear is that she was caught in this trap that I see so many smart, ambitious women get stuck in with overeating and emotional eating. She was focusing way too much energy on the wrong habits. They're perfectly good habits, but they were not the habits that were going to get her where she wanted to go.

She was focusing too much energy on those habits. And in doing so, was missing the source of her real power to create freedom from overeating to create lasting effective change that was going to stick for her.

 I hope you heard that phrase, the source of her power. Part of creating freedom from overeating and emotional eating means taking your power back in your relationship with food, taking your power back from habits that aren't serving you.

There is a huge difference between creating habits that you have to stick to and habits that actually create ease and freedom in your life, and also in your eating and the way you think about eating and in how you choose what you eat and in the results that you get from your eating.

When Lisa and I started looking at things and where this solid plan and, and these habits were breaking down in her attempts to implement them. We found something that I see pretty commonly. Lisa often had two habits or two desires that were bumping up against each other. That were fighting each other.

She wanted to do something and she didn't want to do something at the same time. One was this healthy in quotes habit. Right? That she tells herself that she needs to do this healthy habit. That would be so good for her. The other thing though that kept bumping up against the old thing would be a comfortable habit or a comfortable belief, or a thought that was undermining the action that she was trying to take.

So she wants to do something. She doesn't want to do something. She wants to not eat dessert after dinner. And she wants to eat dessert after dinner because of all the things that she feels and believes and gets from eating the chocolate after dinner. Right? So when you have these two conflicting things, it means that whenever she pushed herself to do the healthy thing, she was also fighting an urge not to do it.

Whenever she pushed herself to do the healthy thing, she was fighting an urge that maybe she was missing out. Or she was depriving herself, or she was making a hard choice.

On top of that, Lisa was doing what so many people do when we jump into a new plan. Right? We're going to take action. And so she was putting all her energy into these new habits. I'm going to put all my energy into healthy eating habits.

And again, because she was putting so much focus on that, she was ignoring the old patterns. The old ways of doing things and trying to power through them, hoping they would just not show up or hoping that she could be strong enough to not act on them. Instead of trying to understand them or to interact with those old patterns or shift them in a way that would help her get what she really needed.

 Let me give you some actual examples of things that we uncovered in our work together. I'm going to share with you the healthy habit that Lisa thought that she had, or that she wanted to have. And then the other overeating habit or thought or belief or behavior that was operating in the background unless she could be super disciplined and focused and push it away. Or ignore it or overcome it.

So one healthy habit that Lisa had sometimes and wanted to build was this idea that I eat when I'm hungry and I stop when I'm full. And she had these old thoughts and beliefs, some of them from childhood.

I clean my plate. If I'm eating out, the restaurant gets to choose the portion. And I eat whatever they bring me. She had the belief that it feels great to eat everything. Even though she also knew it didn't. When she ate everything, when she finished everything on her plate, when she ate beyond being full, she often felt miserable. Right?

Just like we all do when we're overstuffed. She slept poorly. She felt bloated the next day, but her mind kept saying, it's a treat to be able to eat everything. It feels great to be able to eat everything. And another thought it's a sacrifice if I leave food on my plate, if I do that, I'm going to miss out. I should get to finish everything.

So I eat when I'm hungry and I stop when I'm full. It sounds so simple. But if all this other stuff is operating in the background, all these other thoughts and beliefs and feelings are going on. And your only response to them is to try to push them down and be strong enough to ignore them. Do you see that inner battle that gets set up?

Another healthy habit that Lisa was working to nurture came from this certainty that she felt energized and more alive and more refreshed when she ate fresh vegetables and got enough protein and water every day. This is something that Lisa was pretty certain about.

And she had these other thoughts and beliefs like, I get to treat myself when I've earned it by not following the rules. Not following the rules is a [00:09:00] treat. Sometimes I get to eat whatever I want. Without really looking at what want was. Right? I get to eat whatever I want and that means all the things.

and there was another thought in the background. Which was what I really want, when I really get what I want, it's to not eat the food that is good for me.

I want to interject here and say that this episode is not about whether all these thoughts and beliefs and old habits that were swimming around inside of Lisa were true or untrue. And I'm certainly not putting a value judgment on them.

What I'm talking about in this episode is that there's a lot going on in there. And if you only focus on the one very objective, very concrete habit of, I'm going to eat fresh vegetables, I'm going to get protein and water every day, and you ignore all that other stuff, you are ignoring this stuff that is creating the static, that is making things harder.

Also, this story that what I really want is to not eat what is good for me. And when I'm really treating myself, I get to not follow my own rules. These are stories that become obstacles for so many women. Lisa had this story that when we talked about it, she says, absolutely not true. But the story that she was feeding herself was that life is better when she gets to eat whatever, whenever, and how much ever there is.

It was an untrue story, but it was something that she was reinforcing all the time in her brain without even realizing it. And it actually boiled down to the belief that freedom equaled overeating.

Again, this is not about putting a value judgment on your thoughts and stories. This is about the importance of paying attention to them. Because in part, when you pay attention to them, you can start to be curious about them. You can start to examine them. And here's where that got interesting for Lisa because it was very clear to Lisa that overeating didn't feel like freedom when she stopped [00:11:00] and said, wow, I am telling myself that, aren't I?

. Overeating felt like a trap to her. Overeating was so frustrating to her. Overeating wasn't leaving her feeling good physically. but when she didn't give herself the time and space to examine all the pieces that were going on, and she was just focusing on, I'm going to eat fresh vegetables, I'm going to have more protein. She wasn't addressing all the inner turmoil that was setting her up to make things much more difficult.

While we're looking at all the contents that were floating around inside Lisa's brain, I want to point out that there was another old overeating story there as well. And that was the idea that eating healthy isn't enjoyable that the real treat starts when you go off track. When you go rogue from the eating healthy.

Eating healthy is a should. Eating unhealthy is a reward. What is interesting for so many women I work with, and it was true for Lisa. Is that again, that wasn't true. It wasn't just that she loved how she felt when she ate the way that she had decided was the best for her. It wasn't that she just got good results if she ate vegetables and proteins and drank enough water.

Lisa was and is somebody who actually loves eating big, flavorful, colorful, fresh foods. She likes vegetables. She likes cooking. She likes making these amazing salads that were not just, you know, a wedge of iceberg lettuce with no dressing. Right? She likes flavor. She loves the energy that she has when she eats that way.

And she actually feels a sense of freedom when she's in the groove with her healthy eating plan and not feeling like she's constantly thinking about food or feeling frustrated with her choices. However, we had to take things apart so that we could actually get her to that place in her life because remember what was going on is she had a part of herself saying, must eat fresh vegetables, must eat protein, must drink water. And this other part that was fighting it, saying You're taking away the best things in life.

When you make changing your habits, a project of focusing on building only healthy nutritional habits, focusing on eating healthy food, and you don't examine all the other pieces that are going on. You don't examine the kind of habits that are going to allow you to create freedom and peace and enjoyment in all that you're doing. It is not going to be as easy as it could be.

And it may be so hard that you don't get the results that you want at all. Things certainly weren't as easy as they could be for Lisa.

So in working together, we found these habits and these thoughts and these beliefs that were bumping up against each other and creating this cognitive dissonance. And we discovered habits that were not being focused on at all. And this was also making things a lot harder for Lisa.

So her plan, when you really got her talking, was actually to use food only as fuel. And I hear this a lot from women who are so tired of being stuck in these cycles. And you might say it yourself. You may say, I am so tired of thinking about food all the time. I just don't want to think about food.

Well, Lisa was saying that too. But the problem is it's not actually true. Lisa really loves tasty food. I was just telling you. She loves to make flavorful food. She loves to play with food, she loves to cook.

Her habit that she was trying to build. And the way she was trying to create a habit of thinking about food didn't take into account the flavor, the texture, the enjoyment that she wants, the sensory pleasure that she wants to get from food that is a part of who she is and what she needs her relationship with food to be.

 If she didn't take these things into consideration, even if she got as close to perfect as you could with eating her healthy menu. She was going to always feel deprived.

Another example of things that were missing in what she was focusing on in trying to create this winning relationship with food was life challenges. When we looked at the times that were the most difficult for Lisa when it came to her eating, there was a clear pattern.

She got off track when she was on vacation or when she was extra busy at work. And it probably won't surprise you given what I just told you about the stories and the beliefs that she had about being good with her eating and the cognitive dissonance about what she really deserved and what was a treat.

What she tended to do when she was on vacation or when she got extra busy was, she would just tell herself, okay, those are free days those are days that my habits aren't going to work, so it's just that's the day I get to treat myself. Those are reward days. Those are cheat days. Even though traveling and getting busy with work, were fairly regular parts of her schedule.

Her idea of her healthy relationship with food didn't include those. It was like, I have my normal life and then I have my vacation and my busy times, and those times will just be free for all because it's kind of all or nothing. They don't fit into my plan.

I am guessing that you are somewhat like Lisa in that the chaotic times, the busy times, the stressful times, the unexpected times, you may not like them. But they are also a routine part of your life. What you want your relationship to do is fit not just the perfect times or the regimented times or the very predictable times.

You want a relationship with food in a way of eating that flows and moves and fits the routine UNT routine parts of your life as well. So Lisa needed a plan for eating on vacation. She needed a plan for eating when she traveled. She needed a way of eating that worked when she was extra busy at work.

There's at least one more thing I want to make sure to cover here. And that is that when Lisa and I talked about the patterns of her overeating, one of the things that stuck out, which again is not unusual at all, is that she tended to overeat in the evening. Especially after she'd had a really long or stressful day.

And when I asked her about the eating in the evening and at night and at the end of the workday and I asked her, what's the habit that you wish you had instead? What she said was, I just want the habit of not doing it. You all not doing something is not a habit.

When you are looking at what to focus on to create effective change. Focusing on not doing something is not focusing on creating that change. Having a replacement habit, a habit that you want to put in place instead of the thing that you are trying to get rid of. That is almost always a key piece of success.

Lisa had been doing what most busy women do. She'd been trying to stop her very entrenched patterns of overeating by focusing on what to eat and how much to eat and when to eat it. At the time we had that conversation, she didn't have habits that helped her deal with the triggers for what was really comfort eating and stress eating, and mindless eating. She was simply trying to manage the food. And while she managed the food, not stress, eat not comfort eat, not eat mindlessly.

In the meantime, back to all that conflicting stuff. Right? She's saying, food is my comfort, food is my reward, food is my stress release. I need this. This is the best time of my day. All that stuff was churning around in the background.

When you're feeling triggered to overeat by something that isn't hunger, focusing on portion size or focusing on the quality of your food is just going to feel like you're not giving yourself enough. When you develop new habits and new ways of dealing with your feelings and your beliefs that target the trigger directly, the craving and the hunger decreases or goes away. You cure it versus controlling it.

Lisa is a high achiever. Lisa is smart. Lisa is incredibly capable, and Lisa is really good at putting together an elaborate high-quality plan. And so she had this plan of these habits that she was going to follow, and she couldn't figure out why she couldn't keep following them. Creating a set of habits that feel difficult to maintain or that aren't maintainable if life isn't perfect, is not the long-term solution to overeating.

What works is building habits that fit you and that work so well that they become habit forming, that there is incentive to keep doing them. That it is easy enough for you to continue to be consistent.

Habits become habit forming when they work for you. Which is very different from you needing to control and stress out over a set of habits that you need to maintain. This might sound like a no brainer, but when it comes to changing your eating, so many smart women are trying to create or stick to a set of habits that basically just feel like more hard work.

So they're focusing on the hard work habits, and they don't have enough habits that make food and overeating less powerful or less of a focus or a force in their life. Lisa had plenty of items on her healthy eating to-do list. And what she really needed were habits that worked for her that addressed the reasons that she was overeating, that addressed her triggers.

Lisa needed habits that would help catch herself when she's falling into old ways of thinking or old behaviors. That would help her get back on track when she didn't get it perfect. Because guess what, she's not going to. She needed new habits for taking care of herself when she was tired and discouraged that didn't involve collapsing into her chair at the end of the day with a bowl of ice cream.

She needed habits that would help her avoid the old ways of thinking that sabotaged her. Like it had to be perfect. Like vacations didn't fit into her plans, and so those were free days.

She needed habits that fit her for ordering in restaurants. That worked when she's busy or when she's traveling in the airports or dealing with jet lag. She needed habits that actually helped her with triggers like stress and boredom and difficult emotions. And that did the job better.

Here's the key thing. She needed habits, and this takes practice and this takes trial and error, but she needed new ways of approaching things that actually did a better job than her old overeating habit. So new ways of dealing with stressful situations, busy times at work, boredom, difficult emotions that actually worked better than the bowl of chips.

Lisa was a rock star at coming up with a list of great habits around eating and food. But basically what she was missing was habits that make her life easier. That take care of her better. That address her feelings and her needs and make overeating less interesting, less desirable, and ultimately less of a powerful force in her life.

 Habits that are going to take you to the finish line in creating freedom from overeating almost always, I was going to say often, but really almost always don't involve food. They address the reason that you overeat. They address the reasons that you want to eat. They address the reasons that you are thinking about food all the time, if that's what's going on.

And it's important to remember that habits become habit forming through trial and error. And discovering how to fit that habit to you instead of working really hard to adopt a habit that doesn't really fit. And instead of ignoring the reasons that that food habit that you're trying to put in place keeps not working or slipping out of your grasp. Habits become your habits over time with practice and with gentle reminders and with you continuing to return to them. And sometimes that takes support.

Lisa knew a lot about eating. Lisa knew a lot, probably about what was the right way of eating for her. Lisa had gathered a ton of information and she was very smart about it. But here's the thing, and I think it's a great place to end this episode focusing on food alone, doesn't break habits with overeating.

I'll talk to you soon.