When perfectionism fuels overeating (and you don’t even realize it) | TMOHP Episode 188

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. You know that situation where you decide you are going to change your eating habits? You are going to stop the overeating. You're going to stop the eating at night. You are going to take charge of the stress eating that's happening every afternoon. And you craft a plan.

Maybe you clean out your cupboards. You start on a Monday or the first of the month, or your birthday, or the week before your birthday or whatever magical date you've decided that the stars are aligned. And you take your plan. And maybe you follow it for a day or a week, or sometimes a couple of weeks. And then it falls apart. And then you get discouraged. And then you feel like you failed. And then you decide this didn't work, or I need to start over. Or you blame yourself, or.

You've heard me talk about this dance before. And I'm guessing that there is something similar that has happened in your life. Some pattern like this that you can relate to.

Today I want to talk about something that I noticed in my own life that I think could be really helpful to you if what you want is to stop going through this cycle and going in circles and start creating consistent habits. And consistent freedom from overeating that feels like you, instead of a set of instructions that you are constantly trying really hard to implement. And that you are constantly implementing for a while, and then it's all falling apart.

Earlier this year, I was experiencing a really stressful set of events that were outside of my control. I was taking care of some family members who had some very serious health issues. It felt like my time and my schedule were not my own. And a lot of the things that helped me feel like me. A lot of the things that count as my self-care, a lot of the things that keep me anchored had fallen off my radar.

I was tired. I was stressed. I was not eating as well as I wanted to. I was not getting outside, which is something that is so important for me. I wasn't moving my body and I was feeling stiff and creaky and cranky, and I knew that this was not helping me with the stress that I was having to deal with.

So I decided to try something that normally I really don't like to do. I decided that I was going to come up with a list of habits that were non-negotiable for me. And I was going to track them. I was literally going to create a chart and make a little x when I did these habits every day. Again, this is normally not my style. But I decided I didn't have the brain space to hold this in my head.

I knew I wanted to get these things happening again. And it felt like, okay, this is something I could experiment with. So I went online and I found this habit tracker form that had 30 squares on it for the month, or 31 squares and lines to write all your habits in. And I wrote down my habits. And decided, okay, this is day one. We're going to do this for 30 days. I'm going to get an X in every square.

Spoiler alert. On day one, I did not put an X in every square. I put an X in some squares. On day two, I did not put an X in every square. I put an X in some squares. And it went on like that. And I started to get discouraged because every morning I would pull out my little habit tracker to put the Xs in from the previous day. And I wasn't seeing this chain of Xs.

And as I got discouraged, I started to feel like this wasn't working. And I started to remember that this isn't my style. I don't like to do these things. And I started to pay less attention to it. And I started to have even fewer Xs in the little squares. And then I stopped wanting to use the habit tracker.

And then I had my aha moment.

I had set myself up. I had completely set myself up with this perfectionistic fantasy. Here's what I had decided. I had correctly realized that there are these habits that are really good for me, that helped me, that helped me be more resilient, that helped me cope with stress, that helped me feel like myself. That helped me make good decisions.

And I had rightly decided that I needed to get back to doing these things. And I had thought probably accurately that having some kind of charting would be really helpful to me because this was not a time when I had the mental bandwidth and focus to remember all these habits. And to keep track of whether I was doing them or not.

So having this visual and having a process where I could just be reminded every day of what my habits were and check them off, that was probably a good thing. Here is where I went wrong.

I made this magical decision that somehow by simply creating a list, I was going to create the capacity to go from almost zero with some of these habits to perfect. And that it was going to happen instantly because I had created a chart.

I was going to decide that I was going to be the person who was going to get back to going outside every day and moving my body. And just like that, I was going to wake up and every single day I was going to do it. I was going to be the person who was going to decide that I was going to eat more healthy lunches every single day. And just like that, that was going to happen.

And actually just like that, what I had done is, I had created this massive to-do list of about 10 new habits or 10 old habits that had fallen by the wayside. That somehow, I was going to add to my already overloaded system and my already overloaded schedule. And just like that, I was going to be perfect at all of them.

Some of you, like me, have probably listened to the productivity podcasts and read the books on how to get more done in a day. And maybe you've heard the story. I don't know if it's true or not, about Jerry Seinfeld and how he decided to, I think it was practice his routines by creating a chart and putting an X every day that he worked on his comedy.

And just like that. He had an X every single day. And I think he said something like It's magic because once you see this chain of X's, you won't want to break it. And it works.

I don't know about you, but I'm not like that. I am not consistently perfect, just like that. A hundred percent of the time, every single day. And I'm also very aware that if I've decided. The goal is to have unbroken xs and I break the chain. It feels like it's broken. There's no more chain. And it becomes a lot harder to keep putting Xs in those little boxes.

You know what I mean?

Perfectionism is the enemy of freedom from overeating. Perfection is absolutely the enemy for ending emotional eating. Deciding that deciding to change a habit means it's already done. Is the enemy to a lot of us and the fuel that can ignite a lot of these cycles of feeling like you've blown it, feeling like it's all ruined.

Maybe doing a little binging or just finishing the food you started eating anyway because, since it's ruined, you're going to have to start all over again in the morning.

Habits and consistency build over time. Freedom from overeating is created step by step. Some of those steps are failures. Some of those steps are plans that go absolutely sideways. But freedom from overeating is created one step at a time. With learning that happens after each step.

I will tell you that one of the most valuable pieces of my group coaching program, Your Missing Peace, is having a container and by a container, I mean having a system and having a website full of resources and having coaching and having a community that helps you stay steady.

As you, like every single human being on the planet, as you don't put an X in every single box. One of the great strengths of this program is the fact that we expect imperfection. And we catch you and we hold you. When you do get it imperfectly, when you do fall off track and we help you keep going.

This sounds really simple. But our brains create a lot of havoc around this idea of needing to get it right or deciding I'm going to do something. And the fact that what's truly human is that that means we're going to do it inconsistently as we grow more consistent. And so having coaching around that. Having a place where you have a lot of help and resources to see the progress that you're making, even though you're not getting it perfect. This is incredibly valuable.

I think this is especially relevant in this area of overeating and emotional eating because there is so much messaging in diet culture around the need to get it perfect. Around the need to be strong. Around the need to have self-discipline. And also the idea that if you don't get it perfect somehow you failed. Instead of what's really true.

What's really true is not getting something perfect is a part of the process of change. Imperfection is a part of the process of change.

 So let me take you back to my habit tracking journey and tell you what I did after I noticed what I was doing with perfectionism. And how I was causing myself a whole bunch of overwhelm.

I took a step back. I got some perspective. And I realized my goal here was not to be perfect. My goal here was to get through this tough time as best I could. To feel as good as I could while I got through this tough time. And as a way of helping myself and taking care of myself. My goal was to be more consistent, as consistent as I could be with these habits. Which is so different from being perfect.

And if I was doing these things, if I was becoming more consistent with these habits. If I was paying more attention to these things that help me feel better and function better, and eat better, and sleep better, and be healthier, what I should be seeing on this habit Tracking chart isn't a solid block of Xs in every single square.

What I should be seeing was increasing Xs over the course of the month. My first step in taking care of myself was deciding, here are these things I need to do. My next step in the process was deciding what is something I can experiment with that will help me do more of these things, more of the time?

And that's when I went and found this habit tracker chart and decided, okay, this isn't my style, but desperate times call for desperate measures. And I'm going to try this. Printing out the chart, writing out my habits.

Deciding we want to do something doesn't mean we instantly know how to do it. I know that I teach that I coach people around that all the time, and yet it was so easy to fall into that belief myself, right?

What I needed, the next step of change for me wasn't perfection. It was building more of these habits back into my life. And then gradually, gradually, step by step, increasing things as I had the capacity, as they became more habitual. As the habits became easier to do, and were taking up less mental bandwidth or less efforting, right, to get myself to do them.

My brain had been lying to me. My brain had been telling me that success meant starting and being perfect. When really success meant starting this 30 day or 31-day experiment, and at the end of the 31 days seeing that I was getting more Xs than I had at the beginning.

 What does this have to do with overeating and emotional eating? So much. So much of the time, women will start to work with me. They'll join Your Missing Peace. And they will not realize that they have the expectation that, okay, I've done this thing, I've made this decision, and now I will be perfect.

And a few days into the program or a week into the program, they'll come to our first coaching Zoom and they'll be so upset with themselves. I'm not doing enough. I feel behind. Nothing has changed yet. I'm still overeating. Oh my goodness. What have I done? Have I wasted my money? Have I invested my hope in one more thing that isn't going to work?

If something was going to work instantly, you would've figured it out by now.

Creating freedom from overeating. It means changing your paradigm. It means stepping outside of deprivation thinking. It means letting go of years and years and years of enculturation and diet culture. It happens layer by layer. It happens step by step. You do not have to be perfect. You can't be perfect as you embark on this process.

 And in the imperfection, if you allow it, you can create amazing results. And guess what? You can create amazing results. You can create freedom from overeating and peace with food, and you can continue to be imperfect.

Nobody has a perfect relationship with food. Nobody is perfect a hundred percent of the time. And when you take the pressure off, well, when you take the pressure off, do you realize how much pressure that is that you get to take off?

Here's one more important thing that I want to make sure to mention, because our brains are tricky and our brains tell us all sorts of inaccurate things all the time. And so many of these inaccurate things keep us stuck. What I just said is true. You're not going to get it perfect.

If you start a 30-day project to create a new habit. You aren't likely to start on day one with a hundred percent accuracy and be a hundred percent for the next 30 days. I mean, if you could do that, doesn't that mean you already have the habit?

But the fact that you are going to be imperfect, the fact that you are not going to put an X in every box, does not mean that you have to wait 30 days to see results. This is the lie our brains like to tell us. When somebody tells us that something is going to take time. That it's going to take time to build the habit, that it is going to take time and practice, and failure to build consistency.

Our brain does that all or nothing thing again. Our brain so often sees, okay, nothing is going to happen for 30 days. I'm going to have to wait 30 days until I feel better. I'm going to have to wait 30 days until my eating changes.

No, this isn't true. One of the most consistent things I hear from members of Your Missing Peace is how changes snuck up on them. How it was the little things, the imperfect things that led to the changes. How they were surprised because in their brain they had this huge hurdle that they had decided they needed to cross somehow before they were going to see the results that they wanted.

And while they were busy doing these little things that their brain was saying, okay, this is just the pre-work, this doesn't really count. It was while they were doing these little things that sometimes they look up and they see, oh my gosh. I'm not binging anymore. Wow. I didn't even think about putting that in my grocery cart. When I went to the grocery store. I didn't have to say no; I just didn't want it.

You don't have to wait to get to the finish line to start feeling better, to start eating better, to start creating peace with food and freedom from overeating.

Starting to be able to make a few Xs in boxes where previously you have had no Xs. Makes a huge difference. And one of the things that I found with this habit tracking that I see all the time with members of my program who are making changes with overeating and emotional eating, one of the things that happened for both of us is that some of those Xs that were so important to fill in that were so hard to achieve at the beginning, over time, they became more and more consistent.

The habits, the not eating at night for members of my group. The getting outside for me, the eating a more healthy lunch so you're not starving at the end of the day. The habits started to become more and more and more automatic.

So that a few months later, they weren't even habits that needed to be on the list of things to track. They had become a part of me. They'd become a part of the members of the program.

Start from zero. Or start from a little bit of inconsistency. And aim for building more a little-by-little step by step.

I hope this is helpful.

I'll talk to you soon.