Today I’m inviting you inside a 3-part series I taught earlier this year on how to use psychology to stop overeating. If you want to stop overeating, emotional eating, or your weight, then your brain is your most valuable asset. If you’re tired of worrying about food, your weight, or what to eat; if you’re motivated and ready to make a change - but you know that what you've been trying doesn't work, and you honestly don't know another way; or if you’ve heard about how psychology, mindset, and your emotional relationship with food might be driving your overeating - but you don't know how to apply these things in a helpful way; you’ll want to catch the next three podcast episodes where I’ll help you wrap your brain around what “doing it differently looks like.
In this first session, I’ll be teaching you about diet mentality and some major shifts in your thinking that can lead to big changes in your eating.
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Full episode transcript:
Today, I'm inviting you inside a three part series that I taught all about how to use psychology to stop overeating. If you want to stop overeating or emotional eating, or if you want to change your weight, then your brain is your most valuable asset. If you're tired of worrying about food or your weight or what to eat, if you're motivated and ready to make a change, but you know that what you've been trying to do doesn't work and honestly, you don't know another way. Or if you've heard about how psychology, mindset, and your emotional relationship with food might be driving your overeating, but you don't know how to apply these things in a helpful way, then you're going to want to catch the next three podcast episodes. These are the three parts of the series that I am sharing with you, where I'll help you wrap your brain around what doing it differently, what that looks like.
You're about to hear part one of the series. So if you're ready, let's do this. I have been having a lot of conversations with people. I always have a lot of conversations with people about what it takes to stop overeating and why people get stuck and what to do about emotional eating. And one of the things that I do a lot in my programs and in my coaching with clients is focus on the pieces that get left out of what I think of the puzzle that needs to be solved. If you want to leave this stuff behind really solve it. And the biggest piece of that has to do with your brain and your thoughts and your beliefs about what is possible and your thoughts and your beliefs about food and your thoughts and beliefs about weight and the scale and a million other things.
Biggest source of power that people have when it comes to making changes, particularly with changes that have to do with habits that maybe you've had for a while or habits that you've struggled with. Your most powerful asset is your brain and understanding how to use psychology to make changes. So that is why I decided to do this popup series.
Most of you know me and are familiar with me. I noticed that there were some people who had signed up for the, or the, for the series that this was looked like their first introduction to me. So let me really briefly tell you who the heck I am. I'm Dr. Melissa McCreary. I'm a clinical psychologist. I have worked with food and women and overeating and eating and weight and every way you can probably tangle that up for my entire career. And I am passionate about helping women not have to work with that stuff anymore. Not, not just have mastery over it, or feel like you've found something that's working for now, but to really make changes that last, that you feel confident with, that feel comfortable for you so that you can leave the stuff behind and put your time and energy into things that are more fruitful for you, right?
Because people just get caught in these loops where this is what they're thinking about and focusing on. And I have so many clients tell me that if they could just wake up in the morning and not have this be their first thought or one of the first things they think about or judge themselves on, they would be so happy.
So that's what we're going to talk about today. I want to cover two things today. We're going to talk about peace with food and freedom from overeating. And I just want to really briefly talk about what that is, because it sounds like a lot of fancy words sometimes, or it just sounds, you know, it sounds good, but what does that really mean?
So whatthe difference is between peace with food and freedom from overeating and diet mentality. So we're going to talk about that. And then I want to give you the four, what I think of as the four main obstacles that get between smart women who are working really hard to make these changes get between them and their success.
I'm going to tell you what the obstacles are, and I'm going to tell you what it looks like to do it differently. If you follow me, you know, I talk a lot about peace with food and freedom from over eating. And those with actually peace and freedom are the words that I hear from people in the Missing Peace program, people that I coach privately, those are the two words that come up all the time. When I ask people what they want, peace and freedom. It's really important to pay attention to that if those words resonate in your body, if those are things that you want. Because part of what we're going to be talking about in this series is how traditional approaches most of which fall under the rubric of diet mentality, and getting you to think in a certain way.
They don't lead you anywhere toward peace with food and freedom from overeating. And knowing this difference is really important. It's really important when you choose your approach. And it's also going to be really important when you are wanting to stay motivated with whatever it is that you are trying to do to make changes.
Diet mentality, diet thinking, focusing on how you will change your food and how you will eat and how much to eat and how many points and what you need to do next to, you know, to play around with the food, to make it work for you. It doesn't create peace. It does not create peace with food. It does not create peace.
It creates a set of rules that come from outside of you. That if you're going to be successful, you have to maintain. It actually creates more pressure and expectation. It teaches you diet culture, and diet mentality, teach you to submit to a process. So what happens in the traditional world of weight loss and controlling your eating (and control is a big part of it) is that somebody tells you or you decide that you are going to adopt a way of eating that somebody said would work or that worked for somebody else, and then you're supposed to fit yourself into it. You're supposed to twist yourself up like a pretzel to, to make it work for you. And then if it doesn't work, it's your fault. You didn't twist enough. You weren't flexible enough. You couldn't, you couldn't fit into that. It is not empowering diet mentality.
Peace. Think about the words, peace and freedom, peace and freedom. Come from a place of empowerment. Peace and freedom come from a place of not having to hold on. Not having to stay in control, but having something that well, having something that frees you so that you're not connected to this struggle anymore.
So when you start with diet mentality, you start with a food plan. Usually you're going to eat a certain way or you're going to not eat a certain way, but it it's about the food. Right? You start with food plan. You're going to see this. When we get into these four obstacles today, a food plan does not solve the problem of over eating.
A food plan might control your eating for as long as you can stick with the food plan, but it does not solve the problem. So the, the example that came to mind and I'm sure there are better ones. And if you have one just type it into the chat. But the example that came to mind was my son had a plumbing problem recently.
And I was thinking about that. So I was like, so what's imagine you have a pipe that is leaking in your house. And you are not a plumber and you don't have a lot of tools, right? You have this pipe that is leaking and you do not want to get water everywhere. You want to contain the mess or you want to stop the mess, right?
So you can maybe get some rags or some duct tape or something, and you can wrap it around the pipe and hope that it lasts for a while. Or you can stick a bucket under the pipe to catch the water that's leaking. And in a way you have solved your problem. You, you don't have water gushing all over your house or ruining your wood floors or whatever it is that you're concerned about.
But you haven't solved your problem at all. You haven't fixed the problem until you fix the pipe. You are always going to have to be vigilant about the leak. You are always going to be having to check to see if the bucket is needs emptying or the rags have soaked through. Or if the duct tape is coming off or you are always going to have to have this thing front of mind, because it is a problem waiting to become a bigger problem.
That is what diet mentality is. Diet mentality gives you this way to manage a leak, a problem, something that really isn't working ideally for you, but as long as you're doing it that way, you have to keep managing it forever. Or what happens for most people is we think we can manage it forever. We can't because we're human beings.
And so you end up in this cycle of managing it and not managing it and managing and not managing it. And maybe sometimes you stop paying attention to the pipe and the leak gets worse. So now you have a bigger leak. You have a bigger problem, which is like, when you, you know, stop paying attention to your eating or you get overwhelmed, or you have a big binge because the plan didn't work.
And then, you know, you now weigh five pounds more than you did before you started. That is the trap and the path of diet mentality. Because you can never get it. Perfect peace with food and freedom from overeating. And we're going to talk about this more in the second session. You're not always worrying about the leaky pipe anymore because peace with food and freedom from overeating are only possible when you fix the leak.
right. Okay. So if there's a better metaphor, I can use that next time, but I hope that is that making sense to people. So that's the difference, the way that you start to fix the leak has it starts with shifting your whole perspective, because if you're stuck in diet mentality, you're thinking about, okay, what do I need to do?
What do I need to eat? What do I need to count? What do I need to cut back on? You're not really focused on fixing the, the leaky pipe, right? That's where starting to use your brain comes in. That's where starting to use psychology comes in because when you learn to see your overeating from a new perspective, it shifts everything and it can get bigger than that because we also have all sorts of beliefs and ideas and thoughts that we carry around about who we need to be to be able to change or what is possible for us.
If you, if you've ever thought for yourself to yourself, you know, food is always going to be an issue for me. I'm always going to struggle with this. Sugar is always going to be a problem for me. Those are thoughts, thoughts that keep you stuck in diet mentality, thoughts that keep you stuck in a battle with food.
So learning how to use psychology and learning how to think differently about the problem and about yourself gives you a source of power. That is impossible to even describe to you until you start to take that power. Back diet mentality keeps you disconnected from your power diet mentality is about telling you, try this, do this.
Why aren't you strong? Be strong. Right. Don't give in distress, eating, just be strong, be powerful. Um, but it's not empowering. You're trying to be that pretzel, trying to follow someone. Else's plan peace with food and freedom from overeating. Come when you find your power. The thing I love about freedom from overeating and peace with food is that it lets you move on.
You don't have to keep coming back to this. You don't have to keep coming, you know, starting over again or realizing, oh, I stopped paying attention and the scale, why not for my pants don't fit or what happened or, oh, I've been eating too much again, I know a lot of women who are really passionate and ready to make these changes with their eating.
They are really tired of struggling. They really like the idea of peace and freedom, and they are people who have done tremendous things in their life and know how to, they know how to get crap done. And they can't figure out why they're stuck in this one area. In fact, that's a sentence. I hear a lot from people who join your missing piece or people who work with me is like, why is it, why can I not do this one thing?
and they'll tell me all these other amazing things that they've done. And here's what I want to start this series by telling you why and how to, how to move into the other formula. Instead of the formula that isn't working, a quote that I was thinking of this morning, I was going over my notes and there's a quote by.
Abraham Lincoln that you're probably familiar with. He says, give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the acts. Let me say that again. Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the acts. That is what happens when you start being strategic with your brain when you start using psychology and when you start taking the time and it will feel, I'm going to tell you brains, do not like to change the way they think about things, but when you start investing the time to change your thinking and to change your approach.
To food and weight and overeating and binging and emotional eating and eating at night and stress eating and boredom, eating and comfort, eating and mindless eating and all that stuff. That's you sharpening your acts and making that shift out of diet mentality into a freedom mentality can feel, can feel uncomfortable and slow at first.
But I want you to remember it is because you are spending. Those important hours, sharpening your ax. And when your ax is sharp, you're going to cut down that tree faster than anybody else. So the four obstacles that get between smart women and their goal, when they're trying to change their eating, the first one is focusing on changing your eating with food.
Which sounds perfectly logical and reasonable. And it's the idea that changing your eating equals focusing on what to eat and what not to eat. I think we're all familiar with this obstacle because it doesn't seem like an obstacle. If you go into your closet and try on your spring clothes and you don't like the way that they fit, or you are frustrated because your knees are hurting.
Or you just are not happy with the amount of weight that you've gained or the way that you're eating. It's perfectly logical on one level to have our first stop be okay. I need to clean up my eating. I need to start eating differently. Right? I need to throw out the cookies or I need to, whatever it seems like it makes sense.
Part of what I've been describing to you though, is you, you're not sharpening your ax. And these four getting past these four roadblocks are going to be a lot about sharpening your ax. The block is focusing on food. The first step out of that block. The kind of success mindset that I want to teach you today is something that if you have attended anything I've taught, you've probably heard me say before, and that is changing your eating begins with knowing that there is a reason that you're eating.
There is always a reason that we eat. Sometimes it is hun. It is hunger. Sometimes it is because we are tired sometimes it's cuz we are bored. Sometimes it is because we have a situation. We don't know what else to do. Sometimes we're being polite or we think we're being polite. Right? So the difference between focusing on the food and the smart kind of leverage is to know that there's always a reason.
There is always a root cause for your eating. It's not. And notice it's not doing. Because part of diet mentality is always telling you, you have to do more, you have to be doing, what are you going to do? Do next, the smart move, the sharpening, your ax starts with noticing. There's a reason. There's always a reason that you're eating obstacle.
Number two is it's kind of like you get over hurdle number one, and you know, that there's a reason or a trigger. Lots of people are very comfortable saying, well, this is my trigger. Or I get triggered to overeat because of, because of stress or when I get angry, I'm triggered to overeat or I'm always, I get triggered in these meetings.
We, we love to use that word. Right. But the obstacle number two is when you treat the reason or the triggers with disdain or self judgment, or you just dismiss them. And then what happens when you do those things is you double down on focusing on how to eat and what to eat, right. So that would be things like saying, and we all do this by the way.
There's no self blame in this. First of all, it's name calling. Right. It doesn't. Yes, of course. Yeah. I was busy. Yeah. I was tired, but you know what? I'm really just lazy. If I was more disciplined, I wouldn't have done that or it, um, I'm so stupid. I did it again. I fell on that same trap again. So blaming yourself, which is a complete dead end when it comes to changing anything.
It's like psychological. Superpower advice. Number one, knock that off. Because it's not helping or figure out, get some help with somebody who can help you knock that off. So it can look like self blame. It can also look like thoughts that you are absolutely convinced are true. And nobody's going to argue out of them like, well, yeah, I'm stress eating, but there is nothing I can do about the stress.
What, you know, there's nothing else I can do or, oh yeah, it sounds great. Take some time for myself, but that just isn't possible. If you had my life, you would. And again, I'm not making fun. I'm not judging our voices sound like this in our head. Right. We are perfectly justified in being stopped because, because it doesn't ma you know, yeah.
There's a reason I eat, but welcome to my party. Right. There's nothing else I can do. So I'm going to be stuck in this circle forever. It can also look like being really stern with yourself. So you noticed you have a trigger, like you're stress eating or you eat when you're overwhelmed or every afternoon after the some stressful zoom meeting that you have, you end up wandering into the kitchen, but instead of really well, I'll get to what we're, what the, uh, Winning strategy is, but it's blaming yourself for it.
So you recognize the trigger, but then you're like, okay, I'm just not going to do that anymore. No more eating when I'm overwhelmed no more. You know what? I know, I'm stress eating and I'm just going to knock that crap off. How's that working. If, if we could do that, it, it creates a loop. Do you see this? How, how we, we kind of pretend.
To ourselves, because this is what brains do that we're wise. And we understand, and we see what's going on, but then we don't really do anything about it. And then we get mad at ourselves cuz we haven't really done anything about it. And we're stuck in this vicious cycle. So how to get past this obstacle?
What does that look like? It looks like approaching the reasons that you're eating and what you know about what triggers you with compassion and curiosity. And interest again, it's more about noticing and being present with what's going on than it is about jumping into doing. I'm going to keep saying this over and over again.
Diet mentality is all about you should have started yesterday. You are behind, you would never have gained this weight. If you hadn't done this thing, you need to get moving you da da, da, da. It's like you can feel it in your body when you're in diet mentality, but approaching the reasons that you're overeating with curiosity and openness looks like wonder.
Finding out what these things are. I'd like to pay attention. I'd like to understand not so I can beat myself up because, but because I know that when I understand this stuff, it enhances my power. I am more powerful when I understand the reasons that I'm overeating, even if I don't know what to do about them.
Exploring giving yourself permission to not know everything. Okay. I don't know. I don't know everything about what I am needing when I eat. I don't know why I'm doing these things. I don't know what to do about the stress, but being open to the idea that eating is accomplishing something and being open to the possibility that you can figure it out, or you can get.
Figuring it out. One of the power questions that you can ask yourself, which is different from telling yourself, you don't know what to do is asking yourself what you know about what it is that you need. So the first part is approaching things with compassion and curiosity and, and interest. The second piece that I want to make sure you hear is deciding that success.
Lies in solving these real problems, the root cause it does not lie in changing your eating or holding onto that pipe to keep the water in the pipe. Right? Success lies in solving these real problems and they are important. Even if you believe they are unsolvable or you don't know how to solve them, don't dismiss them.
That's the real underlying piece of this second obstacle, knowing something is important is not the same as knowing how to fix. I know it's important to get the pipe, the gushing water fixed. And I can tell you, I don't have a clue about plumbing I would be wrapping the towel around the pipe, hoping, you know, until somebody could come.
But I also know it's important to fix the problem. And so giving yourself permission to value, fixing the big problem, even if you don't necessarily know, or you need somebody else's help in believing that that's possible. That is what is going to move you forward in the second stage. Third stage is the third obstacle.
Anyway, it's kind of related, it's buying into the explanations and the thoughts that lead you to deny what's going on in the first place. There's a lot of denial that goes on in diet mentality. And part of that has to do with trying to fit yourself like a pretzel into a plan that doesn't really fit you.
And if you don't really fit. Then there's either something wrong with you or there's something wrong with the plan, but diet mentality. Doesn't let you know, there's something wrong with the plan. So the third obstacle is really buying into that, that this can't be changed. This is impossible, Melissa, what you're talking about sounds really, really good.
And it may work for everybody else on the zoom thing, but if it doesn't work for me and that obstacle often comes from. A place that smart women get stuck in sometimes where, you know, we are so good at knowing how to fix problems, that when we don't know how to fix something, we get really uncomfortable.
And in some ways it's easier to feel competent in knowing that this problem isn't solvable than to be like, I, I don't know how to do this. I want you to take a minute and take a couple of deep breaths. Where do you tend to feel more comfortable in your body? Do you feel more comfortable in following a plan that seems logical and laid out and it says, okay, now you do this and now you do this and, oh, you did bad.
You have to start over. Or what is it like for you to, to sit with? I don't know. What is it like for you to be curious about something you really want to know the answer to that you don't know the answer to got one more obstacle for you. And this is a big one. I bet you, every single one of us can relate to this.
And it's the most, one of the biggest obstacles that people get into when they try to change their eating, it's having, what one word for it is a having a fantasy that if you do this thing differently, and if you get to your goal, everything will. If you can just be strict enough and hard enough on yourself, if you can just keep to the points, if you can just get to that magic number on the scale, or if your jeans fit again, everything will change.
It will be perfect. Once you eat a certain way, once you lose the weight, you're never going to have a bad day. You're never going to have a day where you eat all the m&ms. You're never going to have nothing to eat in your refrigerator. And so you eat the thing you said you would never eat again.
And when you get to that magic place, All of a sudden, you're going to feel confident and you're going to feel powerful. And I hear, I mean, I think that is a thought that I know this is a thought that a lot of people really believe is true. Well, when I lose the weight, I will feel confident. I will feel beautiful.
I will feel unstoppable, right. Everything will magically work. You'll know what to do in that tough situation with your boss. You'll know, you won't have those fights with your partner that like leave you in the kitchen anymore. And this may sound, this may sound completely relatable to you, or it may sound really silly, but I will tell you that there is perfectionist thinking in just about everybody's goal until you work to tease it out of there.
And what that does is it creates a huge roadblock because. It's not true and it's not possible. And B the path that you take to get to your goal is what the destination ends up feeling like. So if you get to the destination, hating on yourself, calling yourself names, being unrealistic with your expectations of yourself, you don't magically arrive at a place where now you have compassion and you care for yourself, and you talk nicely to yourself.
The destination feels like the path. Diet mentality teaches us to never feel satisfied. We don't ever get to that magic place. We don't ever feel good enough. We don't ever feel like we are enough or we're holding on for dear life and not really confident that we can do that, which we can't. This is a big one.
Here's the antidote. And it sounds simple, kind of, but you'll be surprised. And I want you to really ask yourself if you've done that because the antidote is being real with yourself, not from anger, not from judgment, but from a place of compassion, really being real with yourself about what you know about, why, what you've done in the past.
Hasn't worked. I didn't try hard enough. I was just lazy. I wasn't committed. I didn't like, no. What was wrong? Remember, diet mentality. Has you contorting yourself to fit somebody else's expectations? What didn't work for you? Because just like addressing the root cause. Is really important. If you are not clear and honest about why change hasn't happened for you, you who are somebody who is perfectly capable of making changes in lots of other areas.
I'm sure you've, I'm sure you've made hard changes, right? If you're not honest with yourself and open to looking at, okay, so what didn't work? What do I need to be different again? Even if you don't know how to do. Because remember investing in the reason, something, you know, it's just impossible to fix is a, is a huge block.
So if you can, if you can look at dead in the eye, these are the reasons that I wasn't successful last time. Do you see how that gives you some power to create something different for yourself? Moving forward? So those are the four blocks. I would love to take questions or if people have situations, they want to do some, some coaching on.
We can do that. I do want to tell you that part of the reason we're doing this popup series this week is because I run a program called your missing piece, which is a 16 week program, which is a combination of coaching and training to do kind of exactly what I've just been talking about. And it's a program that's open year round.
But one of the questions I get a lot from people is when does it start when can I start? When are all the other people starting? When can I start? And you can join this program year round, but there's an opportunity coming up for a group start. And so I thought this would be a really good opportunity to let, to be very clear and let people know that there are lots of moving parts in the program.
One of them is group coaching calls with me on zoom. The first module, by the way, is all about embracing your power and really stepping into that and starting. The process in a new way. So it's kind of like sharpening your sharpening, your ax, keep wanting to say sharpening your sh saw. So anyway, that is a possibility.
If you have a question type it in the chat or raise your hand, sorry. I'm I've never done this, so I'm not sure how to do this. You D you're great. Now we can hear you. Okay. Um, how do I know if the program's for me or not? How do you know if you're really overeating or you're just want a little more of that good food?
Is it a problem for you? I don't know why, what, what led you to sign up for this call? I'm eating more than I want to, and I feel miserable. Mm-hmm once in a while. Okay. Sometimes I can walk away from it. Sometimes I can't I'm don't struggle with overweight or anything, but I don't like being miserable when I do it.
I'm like, why did I just do that? One of the things that diet mentality and diet culture does is get us really focused on our outside appearance and on the. And on these arbitrary, like numbers, like the scale or clothing sizes. And what doesn't get talked about a lot is how we feel. How we feel about ourselves, the beliefs that we have about ourselves and, and also the inflow and outflow of our energy.
So for me, you, you have lived inside your body, your whole life only you can decide. I mean, there are certain things like, you know, deadly illnesses and things that someone diagnoses you and they tell you, okay, this is a problem. If you have heart disease, it’s a problem. You have to pay attention to it. But you get to decide if you are.
How you are feeling and where your energy is going and how you are treating yourself is, you know, how that feels for you. Overeating and emotional eating can be a weight problem. And it can also be an exhausting habit that nobody sees it on the outside. You look. Very comfortable with yourself and you act very comfortable with yourself, but you're exhausted from it.
Mm-hmm um, nobody knows the toll of overeating and emotional eating except the person who's doing it. Okay. Answered question. Thank you. Yeah. And the other, and that goes for what you weigh too, because I don't only, you know, if weight loss is a goal for you, you can want to feel more comfortable with your eating and not have any interest in losing weight, or you might want to lose weight, or you might.
Not be comfortable at all with how you are eating and be really exhausted with all the thinking that you were doing about food and not really know how you feel about your weight, because it's so tangled up with all the messages you get from other people. And you're just over it, which is another reason why this idea of getting clear on what your brain is doing and getting clear on how to own your own thoughts and your beliefs is so important so that you can decide what you want.
And what's important to you. Good question. So I think I have another, uh, do you want to unmute sure. Whatever works. Sure. Tell me your question. So I don't know how to like put it into a question, but I know what I struggle with. And it's like implementing the replacement of food with something else. Mm-hmm
And I just have no idea how to like, figure out what's going to be any sort of way comparable to eating food. Okay. So what doesn't work? Um, like. Activities. Like a lot of I've tried like coloring and like I've I play volleyball. So I've tried that. And like, I just always, it, it doesn't go away. The urge to eat.
Doesn't go away. Yeah. There's a whole module on this, in the missing piece program. I mean, there's a, we could go really deep with this. Because figuring out what to do instead of eating is a complex thing. And it, we don't always want the same thing. Most of the advice you get in magazines and things is about what I call distraction techniques.
Um, how can you keep your hands busy? Or how can you how can you, how can you, um, get away from it for five minutes? So you forget that you wanted to eat. So you forget that doesn't often work. There's something deeper. Which has to do with, it goes back to that first block that I was talking about, about the reason that you're eating, getting, getting clear on what those feelings are and finding.
And I'm going to talk in general. So I, I'm not going to be able to give you a, do this, do this, do this thing, but I hope it will give you some understanding. And then you can ask if it does, you know, let me know. When I look at my feeling, let's say my feelings are triggering eating. When I am able to look at my feelings with deep respect.
And instead of being mad at myself, that I am feeling this way and it's screwing up my eating. When I can look at my feelings with self respect and respect for the feeling and start to, then I can start to figure out how can I care for myself and these feelings in ways that are not food, which is different from how can I just not.
Did I, does that make sense? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, because if I can and, and sometimes we have feelings that we can, we can transform the feelings. Maybe we can figure out a way to deal with, um, anxiety or grief or, um, hopelessness. Sometimes we have feelings that we can't do anything about in the moment.
Grief is a, is a good one. You know, grief may pass. You may be able to, to work through your grief, but when you're grieving, you can't just snap your fingers and not be grieving anymore. You could cover it up. You could distract yourself from it, but the difference between covering it up and distracting yourself from a feeling and being with a feeling would be finding ways to comfort yourself or be with yourself while you have the feeling.
Think about a child that you care about or a somebody that you love, if they were having those feelings and there was nothing you could do to change the feeling, how would you be there for them? And is there a way you can be more of that for yourself? Is this helpful, or I tell me where you are with this.
Yeah, for sure. I, I think this is helpful. Um, how would you recommend. To find that. Should I just like ask myself and journal to find, how would you find to find, to find ways that would comfort myself? Uh, without eating journaling is awesome because journaling connects us to ourselves, sitting with a feeling.
If we pay attention to ourselves throughout a day, if there was a way to just tune in and not tune out, we spend so much of our time not feeling our feeling. And not paying attention to our feelings, so, or telling ourself, we shouldn't feel that way. We should be over it by now. We shouldn't make it such a big deal.
We shouldn't be upset by it. You know, I know that goes on inside me. I know that goes inside. A lot of my clients tell me if it goes on inside for, for you guys, there is something really powerful about simply allowing yourself to feel what you feel and not feeling a pressure to make it stop or make it go away.
I'm not talking about acting out or doing things with the feelings, but give me an example of a feeling that we might be talking about. Um, sadness and being like drained from the day. Oh yeah, those are true. Great ones. We are awful as a culture of smart women. We are awful at just being okay with being drained and tired.
Think about when you're drained and tired, how much your thoughts go to either that you shouldn't be, or you need to keep going. It's just, it sounds so simple, but permission to be tired is really powerful. And so is permission to be sad. If we don't block our feelings and let we let ourselves have the feelings, they, they move like a wave.
They move through us. They do not get stuck the way they do when we're trying not to feel them. Who else has a question? Hi, Melissa. I have a question if that's alright. Sure. Hi. Um, so part of me, when you were talking about, um, that when I'm thinner, I'm going to be happy. And all of that, um, was like, oh yeah, I know this.
But another part of me was like, oh, I don’t know if it's completely true. I don't fully believe it because when I've been able to lose a little bit of weight, I've had more energy and that's felt like it's had a knock on effect for, you know, um, Self respect and things like that. So, um, I'm wondering if you can just talk to that bit of myself, that's like, oh, I don't want to believe this.
You don't want to believe that you won't feel any different when you lose weight. Is that, mm. Yeah. Is that what you're saying? I just want to make sure. Yes. Yes. Yeah. I think it's less a dance of will. I feel different and will I be different? And I think a lot of people deprive themselves of what they could be right now.
Because this is a second kind of related piece. It's often people don't feel entitled until I lose the weight or this won't happen until I lose the weight. What you just said about energy is such a great point. There are, you know, there are a number of ways of eating that can either drain, drain your energy or bog you down and, you know, cause you to not cause you to feel tired or bloated or just not good.
And there are a number of ways of eating and they're different for everybody. There isn't one, right? Way of doing this, but, but it is possible to find the way of eating that maximizes your energy and your vitality. And you can do that right now, no matter what weight you are. And tell me if I'm getting this correctly, finding a way of eating that works for you.
Part of that may be, I want a way of eating. That makes me feel great. Where I feel, you know, I feel really fabulous. I feel really energized. I feel really vital working towards that is different from, I'm going to go on this starvation diet. I'm going to be hungry all the time, but it's going to be so worth it because when I'm done, when I'm done right.
When I finish the cleanse or when I finish the 30 days, or when I get to that number on the scale, then I'll be good. Yeah. That really resonates that I, I really like the idea of. Shifting the reason that I'm doing it and the way yeah. The way that I'm thinking about their food. So thank you so much.
Yeah. And I think for all of you, if there are benefits that you want, energy is a huge one. Start doing start doing what you can, everything you that you can do that is doable now to maximize energy. There is a lot of success that happens when we eat for. How does the program work? The program is a, it's a hybrid.
So we do three zoom calls a month. Those are on zoom. There is training that when you sign up, you'll get instant access to the training. There are four modules of training. There's a workbook for each module. It's a combination of videos. All of it's created by me. So it's it's videos. There are guided visualizations for each module, and the idea is to kind of hit everything in a way that speak.
It's not about a program and here's your checklist. And here are the things you need to track because successful change happens when you change your approach. And when you understand how your approach and your thoughts and your beliefs line up. To get you where you want to go, but also line up that, that last piece, about being honest about why stuff hasn't worked in the past.
I don't, I don't work with people who are getting, who are looking for something that will, will help them for six weeks. I work with people who are done doing that stuff and who are ready for something that is going to create the foundation. It's like sharpening the acts, right. Create the foundation so they can go out there and.
Get on with their life. And so that's, that is what the program is about. It's um, a lot of sharpening the saw taking your power back and if all your amazing energy has been aimed here and it's not working, then we need to look at what's going on. Do we need to aim it over here? Do we need to shift things up a little bit?
Do we, what are the kind of tweaks that we need to make to get you where you want to go? Any other questions before we end? You all thank you for coming today. Thank you for your questions. Go be curious and give yourself permission to look at what the reasons are. You are welcome, Stacy, and I will talk to you guys on Wednesday.
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Today, I'm inviting you inside a three part series that I taught all about how to use psychology to stop overeating. If you want to stop overeating or emotional eating, or if you want to change your weight, then your brain is your most valuable asset. If you're tired of worrying about food or your weight or what to eat, if you're motivated and ready to make a change, but you know that what you've been trying to do doesn't work and honestly, you don't know another way. Or if you've heard about how psychology, mindset, and your emotional relationship with food might be driving your overeating, but you don't know how to apply these things in a helpful way, then you're going to want to catch the next three podcast episodes. These are the three parts of the series that I am sharing with you, where I'll help you wrap your brain around what doing it differently, what that looks like.
You're about to hear part one of the series. So if you're ready, let's do this. I have been having a lot of conversations with people. I always have a lot of conversations with people about what it takes to stop overeating and why people get stuck and what to do about emotional eating. And one of the things that I do a lot in my programs and in my coaching with clients is focus on the pieces that get left out of what I think of the puzzle that needs to be solved. If you want to leave this stuff behind really solve it. And the biggest piece of that has to do with your brain and your thoughts and your beliefs about what is possible and your thoughts and your beliefs about food and your thoughts and beliefs about weight and the scale and a million other things.
Biggest source of power that people have when it comes to making changes, particularly with changes that have to do with habits that maybe you've had for a while or habits that you've struggled with. Your most powerful asset is your brain and understanding how to use psychology to make changes. So that is why I decided to do this popup series.
Most of you know me and are familiar with me. I noticed that there were some people who had signed up for the, or the, for the series that this was looked like their first introduction to me. So let me really briefly tell you who the heck I am. I'm Dr. Melissa McCreary. I'm a clinical psychologist. I have worked with food and women and overeating and eating and weight and every way you can probably tangle that up for my entire career. And I am passionate about helping women not have to work with that stuff anymore. Not, not just have mastery over it, or feel like you've found something that's working for now, but to really make changes that last, that you feel confident with, that feel comfortable for you so that you can leave the stuff behind and put your time and energy into things that are more fruitful for you, right?
Because people just get caught in these loops where this is what they're thinking about and focusing on. And I have so many clients tell me that if they could just wake up in the morning and not have this be their first thought or one of the first things they think about or judge themselves on, they would be so happy.
So that's what we're going to talk about today. I want to cover two things today. We're going to talk about peace with food and freedom from overeating. And I just want to really briefly talk about what that is, because it sounds like a lot of fancy words sometimes, or it just sounds, you know, it sounds good, but what does that really mean?
So whatthe difference is between peace with food and freedom from overeating and diet mentality. So we're going to talk about that. And then I want to give you the four, what I think of as the four main obstacles that get between smart women who are working really hard to make these changes get between them and their success.
I'm going to tell you what the obstacles are, and I'm going to tell you what it looks like to do it differently. If you follow me, you know, I talk a lot about peace with food and freedom from over eating. And those with actually peace and freedom are the words that I hear from people in the Missing Peace program, people that I coach privately, those are the two words that come up all the time. When I ask people what they want, peace and freedom. It's really important to pay attention to that if those words resonate in your body, if those are things that you want. Because part of what we're going to be talking about in this series is how traditional approaches most of which fall under the rubric of diet mentality, and getting you to think in a certain way.
They don't lead you anywhere toward peace with food and freedom from overeating. And knowing this difference is really important. It's really important when you choose your approach. And it's also going to be really important when you are wanting to stay motivated with whatever it is that you are trying to do to make changes.
Diet mentality, diet thinking, focusing on how you will change your food and how you will eat and how much to eat and how many points and what you need to do next to, you know, to play around with the food, to make it work for you. It doesn't create peace. It does not create peace with food. It does not create peace.
It creates a set of rules that come from outside of you. That if you're going to be successful, you have to maintain. It actually creates more pressure and expectation. It teaches you diet culture, and diet mentality, teach you to submit to a process. So what happens in the traditional world of weight loss and controlling your eating (and control is a big part of it) is that somebody tells you or you decide that you are going to adopt a way of eating that somebody said would work or that worked for somebody else, and then you're supposed to fit yourself into it. You're supposed to twist yourself up like a pretzel to, to make it work for you. And then if it doesn't work, it's your fault. You didn't twist enough. You weren't flexible enough. You couldn't, you couldn't fit into that. It is not empowering diet mentality.
Peace. Think about the words, peace and freedom, peace and freedom. Come from a place of empowerment. Peace and freedom come from a place of not having to hold on. Not having to stay in control, but having something that well, having something that frees you so that you're not connected to this struggle anymore.
So when you start with diet mentality, you start with a food plan. Usually you're going to eat a certain way or you're going to not eat a certain way, but it it's about the food. Right? You start with food plan. You're going to see this. When we get into these four obstacles today, a food plan does not solve the problem of over eating.
A food plan might control your eating for as long as you can stick with the food plan, but it does not solve the problem. So the, the example that came to mind and I'm sure there are better ones. And if you have one just type it into the chat. But the example that came to mind was my son had a plumbing problem recently.
And I was thinking about that. So I was like, so what's imagine you have a pipe that is leaking in your house. And you are not a plumber and you don't have a lot of tools, right? You have this pipe that is leaking and you do not want to get water everywhere. You want to contain the mess or you want to stop the mess, right?
So you can maybe get some rags or some duct tape or something, and you can wrap it around the pipe and hope that it lasts for a while. Or you can stick a bucket under the pipe to catch the water that's leaking. And in a way you have solved your problem. You, you don't have water gushing all over your house or ruining your wood floors or whatever it is that you're concerned about.
But you haven't solved your problem at all. You haven't fixed the problem until you fix the pipe. You are always going to have to be vigilant about the leak. You are always going to be having to check to see if the bucket is needs emptying or the rags have soaked through. Or if the duct tape is coming off or you are always going to have to have this thing front of mind, because it is a problem waiting to become a bigger problem.
That is what diet mentality is. Diet mentality gives you this way to manage a leak, a problem, something that really isn't working ideally for you, but as long as you're doing it that way, you have to keep managing it forever. Or what happens for most people is we think we can manage it forever. We can't because we're human beings.
And so you end up in this cycle of managing it and not managing it and managing and not managing it. And maybe sometimes you stop paying attention to the pipe and the leak gets worse. So now you have a bigger leak. You have a bigger problem, which is like, when you, you know, stop paying attention to your eating or you get overwhelmed, or you have a big binge because the plan didn't work.
And then, you know, you now weigh five pounds more than you did before you started. That is the trap and the path of diet mentality. Because you can never get it. Perfect peace with food and freedom from overeating. And we're going to talk about this more in the second session. You're not always worrying about the leaky pipe anymore because peace with food and freedom from overeating are only possible when you fix the leak.
right. Okay. So if there's a better metaphor, I can use that next time, but I hope that is that making sense to people. So that's the difference, the way that you start to fix the leak has it starts with shifting your whole perspective, because if you're stuck in diet mentality, you're thinking about, okay, what do I need to do?
What do I need to eat? What do I need to count? What do I need to cut back on? You're not really focused on fixing the, the leaky pipe, right? That's where starting to use your brain comes in. That's where starting to use psychology comes in because when you learn to see your overeating from a new perspective, it shifts everything and it can get bigger than that because we also have all sorts of beliefs and ideas and thoughts that we carry around about who we need to be to be able to change or what is possible for us.
If you, if you've ever thought for yourself to yourself, you know, food is always going to be an issue for me. I'm always going to struggle with this. Sugar is always going to be a problem for me. Those are thoughts, thoughts that keep you stuck in diet mentality, thoughts that keep you stuck in a battle with food.
So learning how to use psychology and learning how to think differently about the problem and about yourself gives you a source of power. That is impossible to even describe to you until you start to take that power. Back diet mentality keeps you disconnected from your power diet mentality is about telling you, try this, do this.
Why aren't you strong? Be strong. Right. Don't give in distress, eating, just be strong, be powerful. Um, but it's not empowering. You're trying to be that pretzel, trying to follow someone. Else's plan peace with food and freedom from overeating. Come when you find your power. The thing I love about freedom from overeating and peace with food is that it lets you move on.
You don't have to keep coming back to this. You don't have to keep coming, you know, starting over again or realizing, oh, I stopped paying attention and the scale, why not for my pants don't fit or what happened or, oh, I've been eating too much again, I know a lot of women who are really passionate and ready to make these changes with their eating.
They are really tired of struggling. They really like the idea of peace and freedom, and they are people who have done tremendous things in their life and know how to, they know how to get crap done. And they can't figure out why they're stuck in this one area. In fact, that's a sentence. I hear a lot from people who join your missing piece or people who work with me is like, why is it, why can I not do this one thing?
and they'll tell me all these other amazing things that they've done. And here's what I want to start this series by telling you why and how to, how to move into the other formula. Instead of the formula that isn't working, a quote that I was thinking of this morning, I was going over my notes and there's a quote by.
Abraham Lincoln that you're probably familiar with. He says, give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the acts. Let me say that again. Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the acts. That is what happens when you start being strategic with your brain when you start using psychology and when you start taking the time and it will feel, I'm going to tell you brains, do not like to change the way they think about things, but when you start investing the time to change your thinking and to change your approach.
To food and weight and overeating and binging and emotional eating and eating at night and stress eating and boredom, eating and comfort, eating and mindless eating and all that stuff. That's you sharpening your acts and making that shift out of diet mentality into a freedom mentality can feel, can feel uncomfortable and slow at first.
But I want you to remember it is because you are spending. Those important hours, sharpening your ax. And when your ax is sharp, you're going to cut down that tree faster than anybody else. So the four obstacles that get between smart women and their goal, when they're trying to change their eating, the first one is focusing on changing your eating with food.
Which sounds perfectly logical and reasonable. And it's the idea that changing your eating equals focusing on what to eat and what not to eat. I think we're all familiar with this obstacle because it doesn't seem like an obstacle. If you go into your closet and try on your spring clothes and you don't like the way that they fit, or you are frustrated because your knees are hurting.
Or you just are not happy with the amount of weight that you've gained or the way that you're eating. It's perfectly logical on one level to have our first stop be okay. I need to clean up my eating. I need to start eating differently. Right? I need to throw out the cookies or I need to, whatever it seems like it makes sense.
Part of what I've been describing to you though, is you, you're not sharpening your ax. And these four getting past these four roadblocks are going to be a lot about sharpening your ax. The block is focusing on food. The first step out of that block. The kind of success mindset that I want to teach you today is something that if you have attended anything I've taught, you've probably heard me say before, and that is changing your eating begins with knowing that there is a reason that you're eating.
There is always a reason that we eat. Sometimes it is hun. It is hunger. Sometimes it is because we are tired sometimes it's cuz we are bored. Sometimes it is because we have a situation. We don't know what else to do. Sometimes we're being polite or we think we're being polite. Right? So the difference between focusing on the food and the smart kind of leverage is to know that there's always a reason.
There is always a root cause for your eating. It's not. And notice it's not doing. Because part of diet mentality is always telling you, you have to do more, you have to be doing, what are you going to do? Do next, the smart move, the sharpening, your ax starts with noticing. There's a reason. There's always a reason that you're eating obstacle.
Number two is it's kind of like you get over hurdle number one, and you know, that there's a reason or a trigger. Lots of people are very comfortable saying, well, this is my trigger. Or I get triggered to overeat because of, because of stress or when I get angry, I'm triggered to overeat or I'm always, I get triggered in these meetings.
We, we love to use that word. Right. But the obstacle number two is when you treat the reason or the triggers with disdain or self judgment, or you just dismiss them. And then what happens when you do those things is you double down on focusing on how to eat and what to eat, right. So that would be things like saying, and we all do this by the way.
There's no self blame in this. First of all, it's name calling. Right. It doesn't. Yes, of course. Yeah. I was busy. Yeah. I was tired, but you know what? I'm really just lazy. If I was more disciplined, I wouldn't have done that or it, um, I'm so stupid. I did it again. I fell on that same trap again. So blaming yourself, which is a complete dead end when it comes to changing anything.
It's like psychological. Superpower advice. Number one, knock that off. Because it's not helping or figure out, get some help with somebody who can help you knock that off. So it can look like self blame. It can also look like thoughts that you are absolutely convinced are true. And nobody's going to argue out of them like, well, yeah, I'm stress eating, but there is nothing I can do about the stress.
What, you know, there's nothing else I can do or, oh yeah, it sounds great. Take some time for myself, but that just isn't possible. If you had my life, you would. And again, I'm not making fun. I'm not judging our voices sound like this in our head. Right. We are perfectly justified in being stopped because, because it doesn't ma you know, yeah.
There's a reason I eat, but welcome to my party. Right. There's nothing else I can do. So I'm going to be stuck in this circle forever. It can also look like being really stern with yourself. So you noticed you have a trigger, like you're stress eating or you eat when you're overwhelmed or every afternoon after the some stressful zoom meeting that you have, you end up wandering into the kitchen, but instead of really well, I'll get to what we're, what the, uh, Winning strategy is, but it's blaming yourself for it.
So you recognize the trigger, but then you're like, okay, I'm just not going to do that anymore. No more eating when I'm overwhelmed no more. You know what? I know, I'm stress eating and I'm just going to knock that crap off. How's that working. If, if we could do that, it, it creates a loop. Do you see this? How, how we, we kind of pretend.
To ourselves, because this is what brains do that we're wise. And we understand, and we see what's going on, but then we don't really do anything about it. And then we get mad at ourselves cuz we haven't really done anything about it. And we're stuck in this vicious cycle. So how to get past this obstacle?
What does that look like? It looks like approaching the reasons that you're eating and what you know about what triggers you with compassion and curiosity. And interest again, it's more about noticing and being present with what's going on than it is about jumping into doing. I'm going to keep saying this over and over again.
Diet mentality is all about you should have started yesterday. You are behind, you would never have gained this weight. If you hadn't done this thing, you need to get moving you da da, da, da. It's like you can feel it in your body when you're in diet mentality, but approaching the reasons that you're overeating with curiosity and openness looks like wonder.
Finding out what these things are. I'd like to pay attention. I'd like to understand not so I can beat myself up because, but because I know that when I understand this stuff, it enhances my power. I am more powerful when I understand the reasons that I'm overeating, even if I don't know what to do about them.
Exploring giving yourself permission to not know everything. Okay. I don't know. I don't know everything about what I am needing when I eat. I don't know why I'm doing these things. I don't know what to do about the stress, but being open to the idea that eating is accomplishing something and being open to the possibility that you can figure it out, or you can get.
Figuring it out. One of the power questions that you can ask yourself, which is different from telling yourself, you don't know what to do is asking yourself what you know about what it is that you need. So the first part is approaching things with compassion and curiosity and, and interest. The second piece that I want to make sure you hear is deciding that success.
Lies in solving these real problems, the root cause it does not lie in changing your eating or holding onto that pipe to keep the water in the pipe. Right? Success lies in solving these real problems and they are important. Even if you believe they are unsolvable or you don't know how to solve them, don't dismiss them.
That's the real underlying piece of this second obstacle, knowing something is important is not the same as knowing how to fix. I know it's important to get the pipe, the gushing water fixed. And I can tell you, I don't have a clue about plumbing I would be wrapping the towel around the pipe, hoping, you know, until somebody could come.
But I also know it's important to fix the problem. And so giving yourself permission to value, fixing the big problem, even if you don't necessarily know, or you need somebody else's help in believing that that's possible. That is what is going to move you forward in the second stage. Third stage is the third obstacle.
Anyway, it's kind of related, it's buying into the explanations and the thoughts that lead you to deny what's going on in the first place. There's a lot of denial that goes on in diet mentality. And part of that has to do with trying to fit yourself like a pretzel into a plan that doesn't really fit you.
And if you don't really fit. Then there's either something wrong with you or there's something wrong with the plan, but diet mentality. Doesn't let you know, there's something wrong with the plan. So the third obstacle is really buying into that, that this can't be changed. This is impossible, Melissa, what you're talking about sounds really, really good.
And it may work for everybody else on the zoom thing, but if it doesn't work for me and that obstacle often comes from. A place that smart women get stuck in sometimes where, you know, we are so good at knowing how to fix problems, that when we don't know how to fix something, we get really uncomfortable.
And in some ways it's easier to feel competent in knowing that this problem isn't solvable than to be like, I, I don't know how to do this. I want you to take a minute and take a couple of deep breaths. Where do you tend to feel more comfortable in your body? Do you feel more comfortable in following a plan that seems logical and laid out and it says, okay, now you do this and now you do this and, oh, you did bad.
You have to start over. Or what is it like for you to, to sit with? I don't know. What is it like for you to be curious about something you really want to know the answer to that you don't know the answer to got one more obstacle for you. And this is a big one. I bet you, every single one of us can relate to this.
And it's the most, one of the biggest obstacles that people get into when they try to change their eating, it's having, what one word for it is a having a fantasy that if you do this thing differently, and if you get to your goal, everything will. If you can just be strict enough and hard enough on yourself, if you can just keep to the points, if you can just get to that magic number on the scale, or if your jeans fit again, everything will change.
It will be perfect. Once you eat a certain way, once you lose the weight, you're never going to have a bad day. You're never going to have a day where you eat all the m&ms. You're never going to have nothing to eat in your refrigerator. And so you eat the thing you said you would never eat again.
And when you get to that magic place, All of a sudden, you're going to feel confident and you're going to feel powerful. And I hear, I mean, I think that is a thought that I know this is a thought that a lot of people really believe is true. Well, when I lose the weight, I will feel confident. I will feel beautiful.
I will feel unstoppable, right. Everything will magically work. You'll know what to do in that tough situation with your boss. You'll know, you won't have those fights with your partner that like leave you in the kitchen anymore. And this may sound, this may sound completely relatable to you, or it may sound really silly, but I will tell you that there is perfectionist thinking in just about everybody's goal until you work to tease it out of there.
And what that does is it creates a huge roadblock because. It's not true and it's not possible. And B the path that you take to get to your goal is what the destination ends up feeling like. So if you get to the destination, hating on yourself, calling yourself names, being unrealistic with your expectations of yourself, you don't magically arrive at a place where now you have compassion and you care for yourself, and you talk nicely to yourself.
The destination feels like the path. Diet mentality teaches us to never feel satisfied. We don't ever get to that magic place. We don't ever feel good enough. We don't ever feel like we are enough or we're holding on for dear life and not really confident that we can do that, which we can't. This is a big one.
Here's the antidote. And it sounds simple, kind of, but you'll be surprised. And I want you to really ask yourself if you've done that because the antidote is being real with yourself, not from anger, not from judgment, but from a place of compassion, really being real with yourself about what you know about, why, what you've done in the past.
Hasn't worked. I didn't try hard enough. I was just lazy. I wasn't committed. I didn't like, no. What was wrong? Remember, diet mentality. Has you contorting yourself to fit somebody else's expectations? What didn't work for you? Because just like addressing the root cause. Is really important. If you are not clear and honest about why change hasn't happened for you, you who are somebody who is perfectly capable of making changes in lots of other areas.
I'm sure you've, I'm sure you've made hard changes, right? If you're not honest with yourself and open to looking at, okay, so what didn't work? What do I need to be different again? Even if you don't know how to do. Because remember investing in the reason, something, you know, it's just impossible to fix is a, is a huge block.
So if you can, if you can look at dead in the eye, these are the reasons that I wasn't successful last time. Do you see how that gives you some power to create something different for yourself? Moving forward? So those are the four blocks. I would love to take questions or if people have situations, they want to do some, some coaching on.
We can do that. I do want to tell you that part of the reason we're doing this popup series this week is because I run a program called your missing piece, which is a 16 week program, which is a combination of coaching and training to do kind of exactly what I've just been talking about. And it's a program that's open year round.
But one of the questions I get a lot from people is when does it start when can I start? When are all the other people starting? When can I start? And you can join this program year round, but there's an opportunity coming up for a group start. And so I thought this would be a really good opportunity to let, to be very clear and let people know that there are lots of moving parts in the program.
One of them is group coaching calls with me on zoom. The first module, by the way, is all about embracing your power and really stepping into that and starting. The process in a new way. So it's kind of like sharpening your sharpening, your ax, keep wanting to say sharpening your sh saw. So anyway, that is a possibility.
If you have a question type it in the chat or raise your hand, sorry. I'm I've never done this, so I'm not sure how to do this. You D you're great. Now we can hear you. Okay. Um, how do I know if the program's for me or not? How do you know if you're really overeating or you're just want a little more of that good food?
Is it a problem for you? I don't know why, what, what led you to sign up for this call? I'm eating more than I want to, and I feel miserable. Mm-hmm once in a while. Okay. Sometimes I can walk away from it. Sometimes I can't I'm don't struggle with overweight or anything, but I don't like being miserable when I do it.
I'm like, why did I just do that? One of the things that diet mentality and diet culture does is get us really focused on our outside appearance and on the. And on these arbitrary, like numbers, like the scale or clothing sizes. And what doesn't get talked about a lot is how we feel. How we feel about ourselves, the beliefs that we have about ourselves and, and also the inflow and outflow of our energy.
So for me, you, you have lived inside your body, your whole life only you can decide. I mean, there are certain things like, you know, deadly illnesses and things that someone diagnoses you and they tell you, okay, this is a problem. If you have heart disease, it’s a problem. You have to pay attention to it. But you get to decide if you are.
How you are feeling and where your energy is going and how you are treating yourself is, you know, how that feels for you. Overeating and emotional eating can be a weight problem. And it can also be an exhausting habit that nobody sees it on the outside. You look. Very comfortable with yourself and you act very comfortable with yourself, but you're exhausted from it.
Mm-hmm um, nobody knows the toll of overeating and emotional eating except the person who's doing it. Okay. Answered question. Thank you. Yeah. And the other, and that goes for what you weigh too, because I don't only, you know, if weight loss is a goal for you, you can want to feel more comfortable with your eating and not have any interest in losing weight, or you might want to lose weight, or you might.
Not be comfortable at all with how you are eating and be really exhausted with all the thinking that you were doing about food and not really know how you feel about your weight, because it's so tangled up with all the messages you get from other people. And you're just over it, which is another reason why this idea of getting clear on what your brain is doing and getting clear on how to own your own thoughts and your beliefs is so important so that you can decide what you want.
And what's important to you. Good question. So I think I have another, uh, do you want to unmute sure. Whatever works. Sure. Tell me your question. So I don't know how to like put it into a question, but I know what I struggle with. And it's like implementing the replacement of food with something else. Mm-hmm
And I just have no idea how to like, figure out what's going to be any sort of way comparable to eating food. Okay. So what doesn't work? Um, like. Activities. Like a lot of I've tried like coloring and like I've I play volleyball. So I've tried that. And like, I just always, it, it doesn't go away. The urge to eat.
Doesn't go away. Yeah. There's a whole module on this, in the missing piece program. I mean, there's a, we could go really deep with this. Because figuring out what to do instead of eating is a complex thing. And it, we don't always want the same thing. Most of the advice you get in magazines and things is about what I call distraction techniques.
Um, how can you keep your hands busy? Or how can you how can you, how can you, um, get away from it for five minutes? So you forget that you wanted to eat. So you forget that doesn't often work. There's something deeper. Which has to do with, it goes back to that first block that I was talking about, about the reason that you're eating, getting, getting clear on what those feelings are and finding.
And I'm going to talk in general. So I, I'm not going to be able to give you a, do this, do this, do this thing, but I hope it will give you some understanding. And then you can ask if it does, you know, let me know. When I look at my feeling, let's say my feelings are triggering eating. When I am able to look at my feelings with deep respect.
And instead of being mad at myself, that I am feeling this way and it's screwing up my eating. When I can look at my feelings with self respect and respect for the feeling and start to, then I can start to figure out how can I care for myself and these feelings in ways that are not food, which is different from how can I just not.
Did I, does that make sense? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, because if I can and, and sometimes we have feelings that we can, we can transform the feelings. Maybe we can figure out a way to deal with, um, anxiety or grief or, um, hopelessness. Sometimes we have feelings that we can't do anything about in the moment.
Grief is a, is a good one. You know, grief may pass. You may be able to, to work through your grief, but when you're grieving, you can't just snap your fingers and not be grieving anymore. You could cover it up. You could distract yourself from it, but the difference between covering it up and distracting yourself from a feeling and being with a feeling would be finding ways to comfort yourself or be with yourself while you have the feeling.
Think about a child that you care about or a somebody that you love, if they were having those feelings and there was nothing you could do to change the feeling, how would you be there for them? And is there a way you can be more of that for yourself? Is this helpful, or I tell me where you are with this.
Yeah, for sure. I, I think this is helpful. Um, how would you recommend. To find that. Should I just like ask myself and journal to find, how would you find to find, to find ways that would comfort myself? Uh, without eating journaling is awesome because journaling connects us to ourselves, sitting with a feeling.
If we pay attention to ourselves throughout a day, if there was a way to just tune in and not tune out, we spend so much of our time not feeling our feeling. And not paying attention to our feelings, so, or telling ourself, we shouldn't feel that way. We should be over it by now. We shouldn't make it such a big deal.
We shouldn't be upset by it. You know, I know that goes on inside me. I know that goes inside. A lot of my clients tell me if it goes on inside for, for you guys, there is something really powerful about simply allowing yourself to feel what you feel and not feeling a pressure to make it stop or make it go away.
I'm not talking about acting out or doing things with the feelings, but give me an example of a feeling that we might be talking about. Um, sadness and being like drained from the day. Oh yeah, those are true. Great ones. We are awful as a culture of smart women. We are awful at just being okay with being drained and tired.
Think about when you're drained and tired, how much your thoughts go to either that you shouldn't be, or you need to keep going. It's just, it sounds so simple, but permission to be tired is really powerful. And so is permission to be sad. If we don't block our feelings and let we let ourselves have the feelings, they, they move like a wave.
They move through us. They do not get stuck the way they do when we're trying not to feel them. Who else has a question? Hi, Melissa. I have a question if that's alright. Sure. Hi. Um, so part of me, when you were talking about, um, that when I'm thinner, I'm going to be happy. And all of that, um, was like, oh yeah, I know this.
But another part of me was like, oh, I don’t know if it's completely true. I don't fully believe it because when I've been able to lose a little bit of weight, I've had more energy and that's felt like it's had a knock on effect for, you know, um, Self respect and things like that. So, um, I'm wondering if you can just talk to that bit of myself, that's like, oh, I don't want to believe this.
You don't want to believe that you won't feel any different when you lose weight. Is that, mm. Yeah. Is that what you're saying? I just want to make sure. Yes. Yes. Yeah. I think it's less a dance of will. I feel different and will I be different? And I think a lot of people deprive themselves of what they could be right now.
Because this is a second kind of related piece. It's often people don't feel entitled until I lose the weight or this won't happen until I lose the weight. What you just said about energy is such a great point. There are, you know, there are a number of ways of eating that can either drain, drain your energy or bog you down and, you know, cause you to not cause you to feel tired or bloated or just not good.
And there are a number of ways of eating and they're different for everybody. There isn't one, right? Way of doing this, but, but it is possible to find the way of eating that maximizes your energy and your vitality. And you can do that right now, no matter what weight you are. And tell me if I'm getting this correctly, finding a way of eating that works for you.
Part of that may be, I want a way of eating. That makes me feel great. Where I feel, you know, I feel really fabulous. I feel really energized. I feel really vital working towards that is different from, I'm going to go on this starvation diet. I'm going to be hungry all the time, but it's going to be so worth it because when I'm done, when I'm done right.
When I finish the cleanse or when I finish the 30 days, or when I get to that number on the scale, then I'll be good. Yeah. That really resonates that I, I really like the idea of. Shifting the reason that I'm doing it and the way yeah. The way that I'm thinking about their food. So thank you so much.
Yeah. And I think for all of you, if there are benefits that you want, energy is a huge one. Start doing start doing what you can, everything you that you can do that is doable now to maximize energy. There is a lot of success that happens when we eat for. How does the program work? The program is a, it's a hybrid.
So we do three zoom calls a month. Those are on zoom. There is training that when you sign up, you'll get instant access to the training. There are four modules of training. There's a workbook for each module. It's a combination of videos. All of it's created by me. So it's it's videos. There are guided visualizations for each module, and the idea is to kind of hit everything in a way that speak.
It's not about a program and here's your checklist. And here are the things you need to track because successful change happens when you change your approach. And when you understand how your approach and your thoughts and your beliefs line up. To get you where you want to go, but also line up that, that last piece, about being honest about why stuff hasn't worked in the past.
I don't, I don't work with people who are getting, who are looking for something that will, will help them for six weeks. I work with people who are done doing that stuff and who are ready for something that is going to create the foundation. It's like sharpening the acts, right. Create the foundation so they can go out there and.
Get on with their life. And so that's, that is what the program is about. It's um, a lot of sharpening the saw taking your power back and if all your amazing energy has been aimed here and it's not working, then we need to look at what's going on. Do we need to aim it over here? Do we need to shift things up a little bit?
Do we, what are the kind of tweaks that we need to make to get you where you want to go? Any other questions before we end? You all thank you for coming today. Thank you for your questions. Go be curious and give yourself permission to look at what the reasons are. You are welcome, Stacy, and I will talk to you guys on Wednesday.
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