When your brain says “screw it”: How to break the cycle of stress eating | TMOHP Episode 186

Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. Today I am tackling another question from a listener, and I want to make it clear that I can tackle your questions, too. If you have a topic or a question that you would like to see addressed on the Too Much on Her Plate podcast, reach out to me on Instagram. The handle is Too Much on Her Plate. Or you can go to my website TooMuchonHerPlate.com. Reach out to us. Let us know what you are interested in hearing more about.

I choose questions that strike a chord. I choose questions that often follow a theme that I hear about over and over and over again. So with all of these episodes, if the particulars of a situation that a listener is describing don't exactly resonate with you, I would encourage you to listen to see if the theme of the question can be useful or the strategies that I'm talking about are something that you can apply in your life and in your particular challenging situations.

So here's today's listener question. After a tough meeting or after a stressful day at work, something in me just snaps. And I'll think, screw it, and I find myself heading to get takeout or to eat everything I can find at home. It's like I'm punishing myself or maybe I'm needing a break, but food always ends up being the answer. I want to understand what's really going on here.

Maybe you feel this way too. Maybe there is a moment in your day where something just snaps or maybe it is a slow burn. And then you get to this line, you cross this invisible line, right? And it's just, screw it. I'm done. Let's talk about what's going on there.

Take a moment and see if you know this moment where you've been holding it in all day. Maybe you've been going all week. It's felt like you are keeping all these spinning plates up in the air. You've answered all the emails; you've managed the expectations. You have smiled when you don't feel like smiling. You have done the hard thing and you've done what you've always do. You hold it together.

You're the one who holds it together. And then something tips you over the edge of the scale. A meeting goes sideways or there's a snarky comment that lands wrong. Or you worked really hard on something and somebody else takes the credit or doesn't acknowledge it or criticizes it. One more demand when you are already feeling like you've used up everything you have to give. And before you know it, there's that screw it moment.

It is like you've crossed this line. And now you're in the car. You're just heading to the drive through, or you're walking down the hall to the vending machine, or you are standing in the kitchen pulling all the things out of the refrigerator or the pantry. And it almost feels like you're on autopilot.

As so many women, not just this listener, but as so many women describe it, it is like there is a switch that got flipped. She calls it a snap. And at that moment you don't want to care anymore. Maybe you can list all the things that you should do. You don't care. You don't want to do them. You don't want to be mindful or intentional or disciplined.

You want relief. You want comfort. You want out. You want numbness.

And the thing that is so frustrating and also so gratifying in this moment for so many women is that food, it's there. It's fast, it's convenient, it's familiar, it works until it doesn't. And it doesn't get in anybody else's way. You don't have to say no to anybody else. You can keep going.

How have I done at describing this? Is this something that you can relate to? Because I sure can. And today I want to talk about what might really be going on in that moment. Because this screw it phenomenon, that moment, and then the regret and the frustration that comes afterward is something I hear about a lot.

Let's start at the very beginning, that screw it moment. It is not a failure. It is not proof that you lack discipline or that you don't have enough resolve or that you don't care enough. That screw it moment is a sign that you can pay attention to, that you can leverage, and that you can use. That screw it moment, that line that you cross, that's your nervous system needing attention.

That is your mind and your body saying, I am beyond capacity. Most of us have never been taught to recognize that that's a flag, right? It's a signal. It's an, it's a signal that sounds so gentle. It is a scream. Pay attention to me. We have been taught that you're supposed to power through that signal.

You're not supposed to acknowledge what your nervous system is saying. You are supposed to keep going. You are supposed to work harder. You are supposed to perform better. You are supposed to draw your focus in, put on your big girl pants, right? Stay in control at all costs.

Here's what I want you to hear. It can be different. Part of the difference is beginning to realize that that moment where you are beyond capacity, where your brain says, screw it, where you shut down, where you grab the food. That moment is not created by weakness. That moment is actual intelligence. It is data that you can use.

And it is a coping strategy. It's your body using the only strategy it knows in that moment, which happens to be food. Fortunately, and unfortunately, your body is using what it knows to cope, to try to find relief, to pause. To get a little space inside the overwhelm.

Whether you've taken the time to be aware of it or not, I am pretty sure that you're telling yourself or have told yourself a lot of stories about what happens in that moment or what you did wrong in that moment. Or why you weren't enough in that moment. So you just ended up in that screw it place and you ate all the things and now you're mad at yourself.

Let's reframe what is actually happening. In that moment where you have that, I don't care anymore experience, you are not giving up. Okay? This is not a moment of weakness of you giving up. You're maxed out. You are out of bandwidth. In that moment you are not choosing to sabotage yourself.

I hear so many women say, you know, I worked hard all day, and then at the end of the day, I just gave into self-sabotage. I just sabotaged myself. You're not sabotaging. You are seeking comfort. Or a way to ground yourself or a moment to breathe. You are not out of control. I need to stay in control. I need to be stronger. That's a story that we often berate ourselves with after a moment like this.

Let's reframe this. You are not out of control. You're actually trying to take control. Here you are out of bandwidth, overwhelmed. You just need the world to stop for a moment. And you're trying to take control with food. It's the only way that feels accessible in that moment. Or it's the only strategy your frazzled brain can come up with.

You're not out of control. You're not sabotaging and you're not giving up. This is really important.

And let's be honest, in those moments when you have nothing to give and you need a pause or you need to go numb or you need to not be there, food works. In a way that is frustrating and not permanent. I know it's not what you want, but in a way, food works. It does bring comfort for a few minutes or moments or maybe even an hour.

It brings comfort until it brings the next stuff. The regret or the guilt, or the shame or the frustration. And feeling like, okay, here we go again. I'm back in the cycle.

It is really important to do this reframing. It is really important to see what's going on here. Because this is how you begin to see your way out of these moments that can feel like a really vicious cycle.

Once you can see and respect the fact that this happens when you are, I was going to say at capacity, but it actually, it happens when you are beyond capacity. You've probably been functioning at that edge of capacity for a while, and you just get beyond it. You go over it and that's when your brain says, screw it.

Once you see that this is what's going on, you can approach these moments differently. And you can deal with these moments after they've happened differently. And you can do this in a way that doesn't involve perfection or superhuman willpower, or expectations of either of those things.

It's so important to make this point. This is really, really important. The way you deal with these moments is not all or nothing. It is not about I have to get it perfect or everything is ruined.

At any time in your day. At any time in your experience of getting fuller and fuller and fuller, and I'm getting to capacity and I can't handle it anymore, and I'm getting close to that screw it point. Or I'm at that screw it point. Or I've already gone over the edge and I said screw it, and I'm in the middle of my pantry with my hand in a bag of something.

At any moment it is not perfect or ruined. At any moment you can pause. You can take a breath. You can shift. At any moment, you can stop and evaluate.

I'm going to say that again because it's so important. At any moment, you can reevaluate. After the first bite. In the middle of the bag. After all the food is gone. You can make small micro adjustments and the small little things, the readjustments, the reevaluations, the seeing it as not all good and not all bad, and not completely ruined. These things matter.

So for the listener who asked this question, and for those of you who can resonate with the question, here are some concrete steps that you can begin to practice imperfectly, right? Imperfectly.

The first thing you can do is recognize that that moment of giving up, that screw it moment, the I'm headed to the vending machine moment is a signal. It is not a moral failure. It is a sign to pay attention to. And this is true, even if at the point you notice it, you are beyond the ability to respond to it. Just notice it, name it, start to recognize that this is happening. It will help you start to see it earlier.

Once you start to recognize the screw it moment as a sign of something, a symptom of something and not a failure of you, you not being strong enough, you not being good enough. Then you can start to use that to get clearer and clearer about how to respond to what is asking for attention. What your nervous system needs, what your body needs, what your brain needs in these moments and leading up to these moments.

So recognize the screw it moment. That's the first thing. Recognize it as a sign.

Number two, ask yourself, okay, what just happened here? What pushed me over the edge? Or what is leading me close to the edge? Or how did I not see myself getting to the edge? In other words, the second piece of this is to get curious. What's going on here?

You have probably heard me say this before, but it is so important to remember that it is really hard, if not impossible to be curious if we are knee deep or neck deep in self-judgment. If you are mad at yourself because you were just lazy and you failed and you sabotaged yourself and you didn't try hard enough, there really isn't room for curiosity. Because you have already decided what happened.

Get curious. Start collecting what you know about, what led up to this. Why today was difficult. Why you were doing fine this morning and you're not doing so great this afternoon. What were the circumstances? Was there something that pushed a button? Was there stuff that built up too much? Play with your thoughts.

Don't get stuck in having to figure it out. Just start collecting what it is that you know.

So the first thing is to recognize that moment and identify it as a sign of something. The second thing is to get curious. What's it a sign of? How did I get here? What made it too much? When did I go on autopilot? Ask whatever question you might be curious about and try to be more curious.

And then the third thing that you can practice doing is to start creating more pauses.

Autopilot happens so often when we're doing one thing after another, when we've gone all day with too much to do and overlapping tasks. So often I hear women say, and I bet you can relate to this. You know, I haven't had time to finish a thought all day, or I have no idea what I've been feeling all day. I haven't had time to think about it. I didn't even have time to eat lunch. I didn't have time.

Start practicing, creating pauses. Moments to check in with yourself. Moments to take inventory of how your nervous system is doing. How you are feeling, what your body needs.

There are so many reasons these pauses are helpful with overeating and with emotional eating and with a whole bunch of other things. The reason they are helpful in this particular instance, at least one reason, is that they help you start to identify whatever it is that is building up and building up and building up, leading to the snap that the listener talked about in her question. So start practicing a pause.

And then the fourth thing that you can practice is paying attention to how you're talking to yourself about this stuff. And it may sound silly, but this is important. You can start to practice saying and thinking things to yourself that are kinder than what is probably going through your head.

Simple things, simple thoughts like, of course I feel this way. Of course I'm exhausted. I am out of bandwidth. I am really at my wit's end. This has been a lot. No wonder I want to check out. I'm tired. I really showed up today.

I am not talking about trying to talk yourself out of the feeling of wanting to snap or wanting to eat everything in sight. I'm talking about beginning to practice being compassionate and understanding with yourself about the fact that there's a reason you've gotten to this place.

 Don't put pressure on yourself to stop the urge completely immediately. That's probably not going to happen. You don't have to fix it right away, and you don't have to fix it all right away. Which is the step that most high achieving women go to. What if instead of trying to fix all the things immediately, which is really just another way of saying, we'll clamp it all down with willpower.

What if you didn't meet yourself with that angry or frustrated or shameful judgment this time? What if instead you met yourself with niceness. Understanding. Huh? Maybe the way you might talk to a friend.

I mean, if you step back and think about it in those moments where you are about to snap or you have snapped and you're beyond capacity, that's exactly what these moments are really telling you. You need kindness, acknowledgement, gentleness. Not punishment or shame or yelling at yourself or another plan to somehow put more effort into doing better tomorrow?

I mean, think about it we tell ourselves that all the time. In a moment when we're stretched to capacity, we're overwhelmed. We can't think of anything better to do, or we can't drum up enough oomph to do anything better, even though we could come up with a long list of shoulds. In that moment, we tend to tell ourself all the hard things we're going to do more of the next time it happens. It doesn't make sense.

Here's what I want you to take away from this, those stress eating cycles, those comfort eating marathons, they are not about the food. At their foundation, they are a way of you trying to take care of or not feel some need, a need for rest. Maybe you're exhausted. A need for more emotional bandwidth because the tough situations keep coming at you and you are on empty.

This kind of overeating happens because your system is overloaded and you need a break. Or you need help. Or you need support, or you need understanding. Listen, we all live in the real world. You don't have to eliminate stress and you can't eliminate all the stress. You don't have to become someone who never reacts or never craves chocolate. That's not real life.

And you can begin to practice a different approach to this stuff. The next time that switch flips and you feel yourself heading towards a binge or a vicious cycle with food, or you find yourself coming out of one. Stop. Pause. Ask yourself, what do I know about what I'm really trying to soothe or to escape or to solve right now? What's going on underneath this battle with food?

Asking that question alone is so powerful. Even if you don't know the answer. Running that question through your brain gets your brain operating differently. And it also creates a little bit of space, A little pause. It creates some possibility to do something different, to think something different.

By creating a pause, you start to create the possibility, the opportunity to choose something different and to think about what different choices exist. Here is the thing. I'm going to keep saying it over and over. You're not weak. You are not failing. You are using the tools that you have.

And now you can be building new ones.

This is how change begins. By recognizing what's really going on. By escaping the cycles of self-blame that hold you down in a stuck place. By using curiosity and compassion. And by ditching perfectionism and choosing something kinder, something simple, one small step at a time.

I really hope this has been helpful for you.

I'll talk to you soon.