Overwhelmed and Overeating: A Smarter Path That Honors Your Capacity | TMOHP Episode 201

Hey everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I am welcoming myself back from a little hiatus that I took at the end of the year and the beginning of this year, and I am excited to be back recording these new episodes. Today I want to talk about something that almost every woman that I work with struggles with.

Even if she doesn't use these words to describe it, it is an issue that comes up over and over and over again. I want to talk about limited capacity. Limited capacity. Running out of bandwidth. The limitations that we have in what we are able to do. This is not a lack of desire. Not a lack of knowledge. Not a lack of caring. But a very real sense that you're already carrying a lot, and the sense that the idea of doing more, even something that feels like it would be really, really helpful, even something that is for you, it just makes you feel heavy.

If you have been thinking, "I want things to change. I want to change my eating. I want to stop overeating. But I just don't have the space in my life for it right now," this episode is for you.

So let's kick things off by talking about this idea of limited capacity and what it really looks like. Limited capacity doesn't show up in this big dramatic way, and it's not something that we maybe even think about. We certainly don't walk around measuring our capacity, but all of us have a limited amount of bandwidth. Most often, limitations on your capacity look something like being fine during the day and then struggling with food and cravings and overeating in the evening. Limited capacity might look like knowing what would help, having some clarity about that, but not having the energy. And then sometimes even mistranslating not having the energy as, "Oh, I'm just not motivated enough." But limited capacity is often just not having the energy to do the thing that we think we want to do or we know would help us.

It might be feeling resistant to anything that sounds like effort. "I just don't want to. I just can't." It might be leaning into things that provide relief because you want relief without wanting another obligation. The last thing you want is another to-do. Or feeling frustrated that something simple, that in your mind, this thing that is so simple, still feels really hard. Limited capacity can look like gravitating toward numbing behaviors. Eating on autopilot. Scrolling instead of getting up and doing that other thing. Doing numbing things even though you know that doing something else would ultimately feel better.

And here is something that doesn't get talked about nearly enough. When capacity is limited, when you're running out of it, many women don't just notice or acknowledge it. Instead of noticing, "I'm running out of capacity" or "I am out of bandwidth," so many women judge themselves for it and they tell themselves things like, "If I would just try harder, I'd have more energy," or "I should be able to handle this," or "I'm just lazy. I must be lazy 'cause I'm not doing what I know I should be doing. I'm not doing enough. I'm just not doing enough. If I just did more."

Instead of recognizing tiredness and stress or overload as very real, very human realities, we tend to turn limited capacity into a personal flaw. That's the way we tend to think about it. And here's the kicker. That belief that our limited capacity means there's something wrong with us, that belief alone drains even more of our capacity.

Something that is really important to talk about as we talk about this idea of limited capacity is that there are times when doing nothing isn't laziness. This is such a critical point. So often, not being able to get started or feeling frozen or feeling stuck or feeling avoidant, so often we mislabel this as laziness or a lack of effort. But I don't think that's often the case. In my experience, that is rarely what is actually happening. More often, what looks like doing nothing is actually this way we have of protecting ourselves. It's a protective response. It's like the nervous system is saying, "I have been pushed past capacity too many times. I'm not falling for this again."

When you've spent years overriding your limits, pushing through exhaustion, expecting yourself to operate at full capacity regardless of what all is happening in your life, your system eventually—some of us take longer than others—but your system tries to take care of you by slowing down. And it's not because you don't care. It's not because you're lazy. It's because it's trying to prevent further depletion. You don't have anything more to give, or you're getting really close to that edge. Your system is trying to take care of you.

Take this in for a moment because it's important. When you see this issue of limited capacity through that lens, difficulty getting started is no longer a character issue or a character flaw. It's data that you can pay attention to. If you mislabel that data as laziness, what you end up doing is fighting yourself instead of listening and learning about what you really need to be successful with food, with overeating, with emotional eating, and with a number of other things.

There's another piece I want to tackle here. I think it needs to be called out, and it may be something that's going on behind the scenes that you probably haven't put into words. But so often there's a belief that trying harder should be the path to creating more capacity. Many smart, high-achieving women have this internal belief that your capacity is something that you should be able to generate through will or through effort.

So you have these thoughts about, "Oh, if only I were more disciplined. If only I could just get myself more organized. If I had a better planner. If I was more focused. If I had those things or did those things, somehow then I would have more bandwidth." And see how this loop works, because within this belief system, when your capacity is limited, the conclusion becomes, "Oh, it's my fault. I'm not doing enough."

But capacity isn't something that you manufacture by pushing harder. Your capacity is impacted by stress, by emotional load, by decision fatigue—oh, decision fatigue—by health, by your schedule, by life circumstances, by whether you're getting good sleep or not, by the capacity of your nervous system. Trying harder when you are already stretched thin does not expand your bandwidth. It usually just depletes it further.

Another place where we can get into trouble with this issue of limited capacity and figuring out how to be effective and how not to fall into patterns of overeating or numbing or autopilot emotional eating is this problem of how we see the short term and the long term. We overestimate the short term. And we undervalue the long term. This pattern keeps this cycle going, and it's not just your pattern. Humans are very bad at estimating what we can do. We as a species tend to overestimate what is possible in the short term.

We overload our to-do lists. We overload the expectations we have for ourselves. We think, "I should be able to fix this quickly. I can take care of these 10 things today. This is entirely reasonable. I will finish this project. I'll get it all together this week. I just need a reset." We have these quick start and quick finish ideas, and then when it doesn't happen, we blame ourselves.

The problem is we are really bad at estimating what we can do in the short term, and we tend to overestimate and then we blame ourselves. The other side of this is that at the same time, we tend to vastly underestimate what is possible over time, especially when over time we are moving forward with consistent, doable steps that in the short term feel too small because we think we can do so much. We could be doing more. But we underestimate what is possible, what kind of change we can build through consistent, doable steps that don't expect us to be exceeding our capacity all the time.

There's this major mindset trap that happens when instead of saying, "This is too much for me right now. I can't do all of this right now," we tell ourselves, "I didn't try hard enough. I just need to push harder." Those kind of stories keep us stuck in cycles of trying really hard and then having it all collapse and then blaming ourselves, and then of course pushing ourselves to start over and over and over again.

And I know you have seen this pattern with food, with overeating, with emotional eating, and that's why I'm talking about this because this matters so much. When we are talking about creating freedom from overeating and peace with food, this dynamic shows up so clearly with eating. Think about it.

Emotional eating and overeating are most likely to happen when you're tired or you're stressed or you've been managing a lot or your schedule goes sideways or you've been busy taking care of other people. So if your approach to food only works when your capacity is high, when you're feeling primed and fueled and motivated and eager—if your approach to food only works when all the roads are clear—it is not realistic, and it is not going to serve you for the long run. You don't need an approach that works on your best days. You need one that works through your hardest times, and that helps pull you back when you go sideways.

Waiting for more capacity, waiting for a better time, or expecting that you are going to push yourself and come up with more capacity is one of the traps that keeps so many smart women stuck. A really common belief that I hear all the time when I'm talking to women about deciding how to move forward and what to do and how to get started or what to do with all the things they know—a common theme that I hear a lot is along the lines of, "I need to wait until things calm down. I'll work on this when I have more bandwidth, when life gets easier, when break is over or when break happens, or on my vacation or after vacation." That belief makes sense, except that for most of us, that season doesn't arrive, or it arrives, but it is brief and then it disappears again.

Calm times with nothing happening are not the status quo of our lives. Change keeps getting postponed, not because you don't want change or you're avoiding change, but because the approach of "I will wait for a time when I have more capacity, and there will be a time or I can make it happen, I will create more capacity"—that approach and that mindset don't fit the reality of your life.

The truth is we all have limited capacity. We all have times of extremely limited capacity. And actually there is something really important about knowing how to start making changes with something that's not working for us—like overeating or emotional eating—with actual limited capacity. We can hold both those things: starting to make changes and having limited capacity.

Now listen, let's talk about what it doesn't mean. Starting change with limited capacity does not mean you have to give up. You have to sacrifice either the things that are important to you or the things that you want to change. You don't have to lower your standards, and you don't have to accept something that you don't want.

Starting change with limited capacity does mean choosing an approach that doesn't rely on willpower and choosing an approach that is—what's the word I want to use? I guess respectful of you and your life. Choosing an approach that doesn't just bulldoze through what your life really looks like, what your preferences are, what your schedule is.

Creating change with limited capacity—and remember, when I'm talking about limited capacity, I'm talking about being human. It's not like this is some special need that you have and so you are listening to this episode. We all have limited capacity. So if you want to create a successful, lasting approach with overeating or emotional eating, you need these things.

You need an approach that doesn't rely on willpower because that will run out. You need an approach that doesn't require you to just override yourself and who you are. And here's another one. You need an approach that does not punish imperfection. Because you're human, you're imperfect. Your life is imperfect, and your approach to any plan is going to unfold imperfectly.

And along with that, if you are going to be a human with limited capacity—spoiler alert, we are—then you need an approach that doesn't collapse when something goes off plan. This means respecting capacity and the reality of capacity and understanding that there are limits on our capacity instead of fighting that reality. And this is where the idea of compassion becomes really a practical tool. It's not indulgent, but being compassionate for the reality of who we are, how much we can do, and the fact that we are human, imperfect beings.

So here's a reframe that I want you to take from this episode. You don't need more bandwidth to start changing your relationship with food. You do not need more capacity to create freedom from overeating. What you need are tools that work inside a limited, human, realistic capacity. And by the way, this is not an approach that diet culture and the weight loss industry market to you.

But when change is built from small, consistent, doable steps within a framework that expects you to be human—and along with that, expects you to have limitations on your capacity and to do things imperfectly and sometimes not do them at all—when change is built from small, consistent, doable steps, especially if those steps fit into your real life, the long-term impact is so much greater than we imagine. Remember, we underestimate what can happen in the long run. We overly pack ourselves down with what we expect of ourselves in the short run. But progress does not come from dramatic, heroic efforts. It comes from repeatable, consistent actions that don't require you to push past yourself or to bulldoze over who you are.

Okay, so if you are listening and you're thinking, "Okay, but what does that actually look like? What do I do when I'm tired, when I'm out of capacity? How do I respond instead of wandering into the kitchen or opening the refrigerator or the bag of chips and defaulting to my old overeating patterns?" This is exactly what we're going to talk about next.

In the next episode, I will walk you through why emotional eating feels hard when capacity is low and the kind of tools that help you respond differently.

That's all coming up in next week's episode. So let's wrap things up here. And if nothing else, I want you to hear this: difficulty getting started or even getting motivated to get started—these things are not laziness. Limited capacity is not a failure. It is a human response to being stretched too thin for too long. And change is still possible. When the approach honors your capacity and builds over time.

Amazing change is actually possible.

Okay, let's leave things here. We'll pick it up in the next episode. I'll talk to you soon.