What to Do After an Overeat or Binge
Another overeat? Another binge? Feeling out of control around food, hopeless, or defeated? Ready to break free from these behaviors and create a healthier relationship with food?
Join me as I dive into specific steps to take after an overeat or binge. The truth is we don’t get to that elusive place of food freedom, where overeating or binging is non-existent…we don’t get there without overeating/binging being a part of the journey! So buckle up buttercup as we navigate challenging territory where getting it “right” and getting is “wrong” are both a part of the journey to true food freedom.
I dive into:
– The step-by-step what to do after an overeat/binge process to navigate and heal from these behaviors.
– #1 most important key to overcoming overeating and binge eating behaviors (we have to really get this one down first)
– How to reverse engineer the whole thing for deeper understanding and healing
– Powerful journaling prompts that turn a negative experience into an actual win!
Uncover the power of this “secret weapon”, and learn how it can transform your relationship with food forever. This process has healed overeating and binging patterns for myself and hundreds of clients. Listen in now and start your journey towards a healthier, happier relationship with food.
Resources and Links:
Take the FREE Path to Food & Body Freedom Challenge! https://hellobodyfreedom.com/5-day-path
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TIMESTAMPS:
00:04:53 Reflect on your behaviors non-judgmentally.
00:06:01. Getting it wrong is necessary.
00:11:23 Blaze a new trail.
00:17:21 Building consciousness around behavior.
00:25:58. Change your thoughts, change your behavior.
00:26:42 Kindness and curiosity are key.
00:31:39 Journaling helps bring consciousness and change.
00:38:30 Learning to exit old habits.
Full Episode Transcript:
Hello. Hello. Hello. Welcome. Welcome everybody. So excited to be here with you today. And I love doing these live as well because there’s an audience here and there’s communication and I love the feedback. I love hearing how this works for you. And a conversation that we’re talking about today right now is one that I’ve had multiple times with clients.
It is coming up again lately, which is why I thought, man, we gots to record ourselves a podcast on this, get this taken care of. And That’s what I want to dive into. I really want to dive into very specifics around the behaviors of overeating. Binge eating. Any time that you feel like you went overboard in some way with food so that might be Maybe you waited until you were physically hungry to eat, but then you kept eating over that.
That’s happened this week with a client. Maybe you had a like a full blown binge, what feels, and I guess we should put some definitions around this as well. So overeating is any amount that feels like you just over did it a little bit or a lot. Okay. It’s just, I took in more than I needed and I have a sense that I know that to be true.
So what we teach with our food freedom formula is we teach body cues. So maybe there’s a knowing and a knowledge or a sense of okay, this was but then you ate over enough. Maybe it was a bite over. Maybe it was. three servings over, maybe, right? Whatever it might’ve been, that can feel like what overeating is.
A binge usually feels fast. It can feel out of control. It also can feel like a large amount of food, a large quantity of food eaten at once. But I will say, I’ve had clients also describe binges feeling that same way, but what they perceive as a large amount of food is different than what somebody else would perceive as a large amount of food.
So for instance, I’ve heard clients talk about Oh, I binged the whole box of cookies. And then I’ll have a client talk about Oh, I was only going to have two cookies, but then I ate eight of them, half the sleeve or something like that. So for some of us who’ve knocked out a whole box of cookies, you’re like a half a sleeve.
I would die to quit there. So it’s not about the amount per se. It is about that it feels out of control that it feels. Fast, that it feels like unconscious, like there’s a part of you that goes to sleep a little bit. And and it’s, and it feels like a large amount given the situation. Okay. Hopefully that is helpful because that’s what we want to talk about today.
I want to talk about what do you do when this behavior shows up. What do we do in this situation? Because it’s a really important step by step process and I think that it’s gonna be helpful for anybody here listening to this It will also be helpful for clients. You can bookmark this as well. So this is some really good stuff.
And if you are watching the video on YouTube, you will see my lovely Yorkie poo Just steps behind me. He’s trying to figure out how to get up on that little step right. Oh, there he goes. What a little cutie. Oh, isn’t he so cute? If you are listening to the podcast, you’ll just have to check it out on YouTube as well because he is my five pound little soul dog.
His name is Karuna, K A R U N A, Karuna. It is Sanskrit for compassion. And he does, he brings that out in humans. And so right now he’s vigorously trying to dig something into the couch behind them, but because he is only five pounds, he doesn’t really cause much damage. Anyhow, I digress. Let’s get back.
Let’s knock this out of the park. Let’s have some fun today. All right. And why am I talking about having some fun in this situation? Because we all know this isn’t fun. We all know this work is challenging if you are saying yes to it. So the clients that come into Hello Buddy Freedom, they are flat out saying I’m ready to be finished with these particular types of behaviors.
They are ready to Ditch dieting completely and learn a non diety approach to a sustainable health and weight loss journey in a way That is habit stacking, habit building in a way that is learning a new relationship with food so that includes a new relationship with binging and overeating for almost all of us if we are struggling with our weight and Weight loss is a part of that health journey, Most certainly, that means that we have overeaten at some point of our lives, right?
And so we are saying yes to that. And I know that’s not always fun for sure, but what we do want to do is try to find the place where there can be some lightheartedness, where we can not take ourselves so seriously. And I think that might be a very first important lesson as we start to really untangle what we do after an overeat or a binge or something like that, because it can feel so, ah, so defeating, so hopeless. So like just all the things, and we’ll get into this for sure as we keep diving deeper into this episode. But I promise you when we can change that and go, Oh look at this behavior. I haven’t done that in a while.
Or, Oh, wow. I did that. Five times last month, but this is, the end of this month and this is only the second time I’ve done it. Okay I’m definitely moving in the right direction. Like that kind of thoughtfulness and consciousness and quite frankly, lightheartedness of looking at the glass as half full instead of the glasses half empty is a part of this process as well.
Okay. Let’s go ahead and dive into here we go. I just overate. I just binged I’m now on the other side of whatever that is. Okay What do I do now from a standpoint of really truly making the most out of that situation? So that way we can see it as a success instead of a failure And you’re already thinking, wait, how the hell do you see that as a success?
I clearly failed, I fucked up, right? So that’s the first piece we’ve got to kill. Not really kill, but really look at and investigate is probably a better way of saying that. And here’s why. And this is super important. This is the very first piece of this. The first step is you must absolutely realize that in order to heal over eating binge eating, right?
Whichever way that you’re using food in a way that doesn’t feel good for you. And you’re wanting to change and stop those behaviors. You have to understand it. You must realize this is at a cognitive high prefrontal cortex level, and you need to really get it. You need to understand it here emotionally.
I totally get it. We’re not going to understand it emotionally, but that’s okay. Eventually we will be able to work through that. But at the very beginning, you have to understand that part of you getting to the other side of this, getting to a place where you feel complete freedom with food getting to a place where it’s Easy to stop at enough where you’re not overeating or binge eating anymore You have to understand that in order to get there that part of getting there includes Getting it wrong.
It includes quote unquote messing up. Okay, it includes if you’re trying to end Binge eating it includes binge eating if you’re trying to stop over eating patterns emotional eating patterns stress eating patterns It includes doing those things in addition to getting it right. So on one aspect, you’re starting to learn how to get it right.
On the other side, you will also get it wrong. This is so important for you to understand. The only way out is through. This is why diets are just absolute bullshit. They don’t really address this underlying reason as to why we would be struggling with food and body and weight and overeating in the first place.
All they do is they slap a food plan on you. Just eat this many calories and count them or count these points and thought that that it’s like putting a bandaid on a gaping wound. You have a wound that is, it’s a psycho emotional wound. And we think that throwing somebody’s, highly restrictive, cut out all of this food plan is the answer, but it really isn’t the answer.
We’ve got to be able to go a little deeper. So step one, understanding that part of getting it right over the long haul is also getting it wrong. And I want you to understand this concept is that you have had. Binge eating or stress eating, overeating, emotional eating, comfort eating, all the ways or whatever, bored eating.
There’s so many ways that we use food in ways when that, that we’re not physically hungry that end up affecting us. Us in terms of our health and wanting to be on a weight loss journey. So there’s no shame of if you want to lose weight in my community you are allowed to want what you want.
And quite frankly, there are plenty of people out there that have been shamed because we should just like ourselves and like our bodies and do this. And then yes, we should like ourselves and yes, we should like our bodies. But at the end of the day, If you’re telling me that my client who’s 100 or 200 pounds overweight, who is struggling with diabetes, who can’t walk, whose knees hurt, and you’re telling them that they should just like themselves when they’re actually knowing that if I could figure out how to do this in a way without turning to some asshole diet that things would definitely start to change in their life.
And that is a tangent. I just went on a circle on a tangent that wasn’t anything to do with this, but in a way it is. Okay. So again, we’re starting with the first piece. You have to know that getting it right and getting it wrong is a part of it. And let me tell you a little bit of the science. I want you to think about the behaviors that you’ve had for a very long time that have gotten us stuck where we are with our body, with our health, with our weight, right?
I want you to think about those habits, those actual habits of overeating, stress eating, comfort eating, binge eating, whatever that habit is. I want you to think of that habit as a four lane highway inside of you, right? You, think of it like a mix master inside of a giant Metroplex, right? I live in the DFW area right now and there’s all these giant mix masters everywhere.
And there’s just cars going on them over and over. And I want you to think about those habit loops inside of your body like that mix master, like a four lane highway, like a 10 lane highway. It’s strong. You have been doing this particular habit for a very long time. And so that highway is just, you don’t even think about it.
You just know, you get on the highway and you go, you get on the highway. I live if anybody’s familiar with like highway 30 highway, highway 10, 20, 30 I don’t know if you are or not, but I spent a lot of time driving from Texas to California and always on either highway 30 or highway 20, all the way out to California.
And now I live a minute from Highway 30, I can pop on it, get to Dallas, get to Fort Worth, wherever I need to go. But it’s a giant highway, okay? What I want you to think of when you get the behavior right, let’s say in that moment that you don’t overeat and you don’t binge or you don’t comfort eat, right?
And this is the journey our clients are on. When you do that, it’s like you are blazing a new trail. It ain’t a highway. But it’s a trail. And I want you to imagine all the people in the 1800s who were… Living in the east part of the U. S. I know that I have a ton of clients in the U.K., but I’m specifically talking about the U.S. living on the east coast back in the eighteen hundreds. Nobody like in that world of the east coast, they were like, we need to go west. We need to travel west. And what did they do? Did they get on a four-lane highway? Of course not. They had a covered wagon with horses with wooden wheels and they’re like, let’s figure it out.
There were no roads. There were no trails. You were like that. You were like that expeditionist person who’s let’s head West and we’re going to figure it out. And it’s not easy. You are blazing a new trail. Okay. And that’s what you need to understand is that there’s a reason why you’re getting it wrong.
You have a four-lane highway, but what I want to promise you, this isn’t just because I’ve been doing this work for two and a half decades. This is like PhD, MD, doctor science research nerds that like in the world of transformation, the world of neuroscience, they show over and over again that four lane highway is there.
We cannot deny that there is a strong habit loop of doing the behavior that you want to not do anymore, but also that we all have the possibility of blazing that new trail using our consciousness working with what’s going on in the body, with the intensity in the body, with the emotions in the body, with the trauma in the body, working with all of this, but then doing the habit and each time we do that new habit and let’s say that new habit is stopping at enough or not reaching for food as the answer, right?
Or ending up thinking about the binge, but then going let me try some of my 15 other tools in my tool belt instead. When you start doing that and you get it right, blazing that new trail, the more that you do that, the more that you do that, the more that you do that, what happens is that means that you’re using that four-lane highway less.
It doesn’t mean that the four-lane highway just disappears. It means you are using it less and less. Okay. And the less you use it, the more you’re blazing that trail, the stronger that trail gets. And I want you to think about those pioneers that were heading West, going out to California, and then eventually it turned into a dirt road.
It turned into the very first makings of Highway 30 from a long ass time ago, right? Oh, let’s just go straight out. Oh, and then eventually maybe we’ll lay some concrete, right? We’ll turn it into a road and while that’s happening with that trail that you keep blazing that’s getting stronger and stronger That four lane highway.
Yes. It’s still there But probably there’s some potholes in it. Maybe there’s some weeds growing up in it because you’re just not using it as much. And that’s how transformation happens. That is it. It’s not sexy. It is pure neuroscience. And I promise you it works. But the journey to get there,
I want you to really understand that. I want you to think about your four lane highway is here, and that trail you’re blazing is down here, and the more you blaze that trail, it goes up, and that means the less you’re using that four lane highway. The more you blaze that trail and concrete it, then the less you’re using that four lane highway.
Now the four lane highway Potholes in it, all sorts of shit. And then look, now you’ve got this other behavior that’s yes, look at this. This is just my new normal, but look, you can still, if I know this is a podcast, so maybe you can’t see. So I, from the podcast perspective, the four lane highway was started up high and then it went lower and that blazing trail went up higher, right?
So that way now here we have two different habit loops and the habit loop that you want to have is stronger, but that doesn’t mean that four lane highway just disappears. Not for a long time, really. And I want you to also think about that because if you’re just flat out making it completely wrong to have gotten it wrong, like to binge eat or to overeat or to continue eating once you’re already satisfied, you just keep eating more and that’s not going to be helpful.
Like those are old effing behaviors, but I promise you. When you go on this journey, what will happen is you go from it being a regular part of your life to just happening maybe 50 50, and then it goes down even more, then it goes down even more, then it goes down even more. And the next thing for me, I remember it had been years.
It’s been years since I had a real overeating episode. And that overeating episode, I think it was, might’ve been 2019 or 2020, but it was like, it came out of nowhere. But here’s the difference. I didn’t think that I was wrong for it. I didn’t think, Oh, I must’ve effed up. What’s my problem?
No, I was like, Whoa. Because I’m going to, I was using the skills that I’m teaching you here today. Okay. And but one time, like that’s the thing, one binge out of a four, five, six year loop, right? That’s a win, right? And that’s what we’re doing. That’s how we’re doing it. That’s how we’re rolling.
Does that make sense? I just want to make sure that we really get this, that you have to understand that getting it right and getting it wrong is a part of the process. And this is literally how we create new neural pathways. All right. The second thing, so the first thing is to understand cognitively, we, when we can get this understanding and then we mess up and then we’re sitting on the other side of it, then you can use this information as a way to talk to yourself.
You can go, okay, gosh, darn it. This is what happened, but I know that I am blazing a trail and I’m trying to get rid of that four lane highway, right? It’s a way that you can learn how to cognitively get out of the pit hole that will very often happen. Okay. So the next part, number two is that we cannot change what we cannot see.
We cannot change what stays unconscious until we take what is unconscious and make it conscious. It will continue to rule our life and we’re just going to sit around and call it fate because we just don’t even see it. And so this part’s really important because we have to bring consciousness to the table and The scenario that we’re giving right now is that I overate, I binged ate or did something, hold on, and now I’m sitting on the other side of it. So maybe there was some consciousness while you were doing it. Maybe there was no consciousness until after it was over. All right. So what we’re talking about very specifically for this episode is that reverse engineering of it. So it happened. All right. So we can’t change what we can’t see.
All that we’re doing in this moment, now that it’s, present moment in that binge is now in the past. What we do is we reverse engineer it. Okay. What we’re doing is bringing some consciousness to it afterwards. Now, the more that you do this work, I want to be, Oh, I also want to give you another perspective of how this work happens.
Okay. And I give this, I do these steps, I show these steps inside of with our clients all the time. I hate the words, they’re science words I don’t like but they make a lot of sense. So the very first step of the habit that we don’t want to have at the very bottom level, this is called Unconscious incompetence.
So I want you to think about that. I hate the word incompetence. What it just means is I’m doing the behavior that I wish I wouldn’t do. I’m doing the behavior that I really want to change. I don’t want to do that anymore. So we don’t want to do it. We’re doing it. That’s called incompetence, but it’s unconscious.
We don’t realize it till after. So in this case, the way that we’re building consciousness around that behavior is we’re reverse engineering it after it happened. Okay. So that’s the first phase. The next phase up is almost more painful because it is conscious incompetence, right? It’s and how many of you know this?
How many of you have I know that I’ve had enough, but I’m still going to eat. I know that I’m about to binge. I know that I am binging, but there’s no stopping me. So it is the incompetence, it’s the behavior you don’t want to have, but there’s a whole lot of consciousness around it. And so again, back to number two, there is no changing behavior without consciousness.
So we have to have that consciousness. So whether it is unconscious incompetence, and then we bring the consciousness to it at the end, or whether it is conscious incompetence, right? Both are okay. I know that they don’t feel okay because they’re still the behaviors that you wish you didn’t have. But let me go ahead and finish this four part journey.
So I am totally unaware that I am overeating and binge eating. I don’t even realize it till after it’s over. Unconscious incompetence. I’m fully aware I’m doing the thing that I wish I wouldn’t do. Lots of pain and suffering. I get it. But guess what? The next level is conscious competence. What I’ll tell you inside of hello body freedom with our clients, especially the first three months or so that they come in, they spend a lot of time in between the two.
So conscious. I’m sorry, unconscious incompetence. So doing the thing without even realizing that it’s happening and then consciousness that they’re doing the thing. Our clients get out of the unconscious part really fast because they are specifically invested in a program that is helping them build consciousness around it, right?
So that unconscious incompetence goes away pretty fast. Now what happens is they start to do the behavior. That they don’t want to have and they’re very consciousness of it, conscious of it. And it’s frustrating. And then they also start doing the behavior that they want. Woo. Woo. I didn’t binge eat. I was able to stop it enough.
And I’m highly conscious of it. We’re conscious of both of these things. And I would say for the very first, I’d say from like month two to four ish. It’s a lot of back and forth, right? Because they’re still riding that four lane highway, but they’re also blazing that new trail as well.
So it’s like both and are happening, but I want you to realize that the goal is not conscious competence, right? The goal is unconscious competence, getting to a place where it’s such a strong habit loop of doing the thing that you want to do. Okay. Again, I’m showing you all of this for you to really Tangibly see that this is the path to freedom, even with relationship and behaviors around food.
Okay. All right. So the number one, we must realize that in order to heal, in order to get where we want to go, it includes the behaviors that we want to have, getting it right, and also the behaviors that we wish we didn’t have, but they are also going to happen. So we have to understand that cognitively.
Number two, we cannot change what we don’t see. So bringing consciousness to the table. And if there is no consciousness, then we always reverse engineer. And quite frankly, always reverse engineering is very important. You’re not trying to fix the binge in the, although there are tactics and strategies we can use even before a binge and during a binge.
The problem is that the binge is usually stress based and trauma based, which means you lose access to the prefrontal cortex. We’re like living in kind of this like emotional limbic system or unconscious behaviors in the moment that it’s happening. Even when we have some vague consciousness over it, sometimes it’s hard to implement those steps.
So what we’re talking about today very specifically is I did the binge. It all happened. And what do I do now? Okay. So bringing consciousness by reverse engineering. All right. So there is consciousness now, which is great. The instinctive thoughts and feelings that you are going to have, whether you’re have consciousness during or after are disgust, icky feeling, frustration, hopeless shame.
Most of us don’t feel good after overeating or binge eating, especially when it’s the behavior that we’re trying to change, right? It’s no bueno. Doesn’t feel good. Okay. So the first thing I want to talk about just in terms of consciousness, because that’s now that you’re conscious, we have to understand what’s happening at the body and emotional level as well.
Okay. And so the very first thing we have to understand is that we don’t want to deny feelings. We don’t want to shove them. We don’t want to make them wrong. We don’t want to shove them under the rug. We don’t want to throw them in the closet. But what we do want to understand is while we are feeling what we are feeling, disgust, hopeless shame, if we continue to stew in there, beating ourselves up, major negative self-talk, all of this stuff, it’s super unhelpful.
So in this moment, what I believe is the most important thing is to change the thoughts in your head to redirect. This is very cognitive behavioral therapy. What else could I be thinking instead right now in order to help me combat these icky feelings? Because the truth is that in order to reverse engineer this and get to the other side of it, we have to bring kindness, curiosity, and compassion to the table.
The shit doesn’t change if we just keep stewing and beating ourselves up and that inner bitch beat down And I’m never like that is a path to just flipping your fingers up again and going well fuck it I might as well just keep eating right? And so it really matters That we understand that the feelings of icky, hopeless, shame frustration, all of these things discussed that they, and these are strong emotions and feelings that they absolutely are likely there because you have strong habit loops, a four-lane highway for those emotions to happen every time after you overeat or binge.
But what we want to do is we want to clean it up with our thinking immediately. What else could I think instead? Okay. So I wrote some stuff down for us. So this is super important. We have to understand this. What else can I think instead? How do we do this? So here we go. Here are some thoughts that I wrote down before here.
Okay. I’m sitting in the shit of it. It just happened. I’m so frustrated. Okay. I’m learning a different way. I am learning a new path. I’m learning how to get to the other side of this. And I also now understand that it includes getting it right and getting it wrong. I just messed up this time. This isn’t the behavior I want to have, but I know that there is a path out and I’m on that trajectory.
Imagine if you said that to yourself, how different you would feel in that moment. We want to acknowledge that, yes, there’s feelings and sensations here. Okay. Yes, I’m, I can feel I’m disappointed in myself. I can feel the frustration. All of that is true. I’m not going to deny it. And simultaneously at the same time, it’s absolutely impossible for me to do this work.
If I stay stewing in that ickiness, so what else can I think instead? I can think, you know what? I am learning that if I stay stuck in these icky feelings, that doesn’t work. I’m learning that if I stay stuck in some idea that I have to be perfect, that also doesn’t work because it doesn’t exist.
That perfection is bullshit. It’s my brain playing tricks on me. If I really want to get to the other side, it’s going to require me to bring in some curiosity, some kindness and compassion, right? And quite frankly, I’m actually really proud of myself that I’m even learning how to say this to myself out loud.
I’m literally learning how to talk to myself in a way that is giving me hope. Wow. This is amazing. Okay. I am doing this work because part of doing this work is learning how to talk to myself this way. Getting myself out of that funk. All right. So listen to that on repeat over and over again until we can really understand this work.
All right. I’m recapping here. This is turning into a little bit longer than I thought, but that’s okay. Here we go. The very first thing at the end of an overeater binge, you must realize that In order to get to the other side, to truly get to that freedom you’re seeking, it includes getting it right and getting it wrong.
Both are a part of the jam. Over time, you will be getting it right more often and you will getting it quote unquote wrong less often. Okay. But even when you’re getting it wrong, there’s still the learning that can happen from that, which makes it not wrong. Do you see how I’m changing the way I’m talking, right?
I’m really doing this. So number one. Getting it right and getting it wrong are part of it. Number two, we cannot change what we don’t see. We have to bring consciousness to this, to the table. Okay. Number three, as we’re realizing reverse engineering, we know it just happened. The consciousness is there. We understand that there are very likely going to be icky emotions and feelings and sensations that are attached to that because those are strong neuronal patterns that we’ve had for a long time. Okay. We can’t expect it to feel like rainbows and unicorns right away. Oh, I binged. Okay. Let’s see what I could do. Now, after about three to six months, any of our clients who had an overeating or binge episode, like one of the biggest biggest testimonials that we hear across the board with our clients is quite quickly. I said two to six months. I think it’s more like one to four months, one to three months. There’s a real sense of their ability to let go of that inner bitch beat down and find that like Gentle sweetness that, okay, I got me, okay.
Like really learn that kindness, compassion, curiosity part really fast. And I’m telling you it is the golden nugget. Okay. So we’ve got, we getting it right and getting it wrong as a part of the process. We’ve got to bring consciousness to the table. Okay. And now that we bring the consciousness, we’re able to really redirect so we can get ourselves into a space of kindness, compassion, curiosity.
Okay. Okay. You guys with me, all of that is important because we can’t do what’s next without that level of curiosity, kindness. And if you stay stuck in the icky, it’s real hard to really access that part. So your brain, I want you to think of it like it’s really smart, but it really needs a manager. It needs a manager because if not, our brain automatically goes and seeks all the shit, all the bad, all the icky.
And I think that is very much evolutionary. I think that, back in the day it was very important that we remembered all the bad shit that happened to us so we didn’t do it again. It was very important that we’re always like so careful. We got to stay safe and alive, right? All the things. But if you give yourself better thoughts, if you give yourself better questions, your brain is, it will start working in that direction. Okay. So once you’re coming from this baseline of kindness, curiosity, compassion, then we can start to untangle and reverse engineer what happened. And the way that we do that is we do that by looking at it.
We go, huh. What happened before I ate? What time of the day was it? Was I at work? Did something happen? Did I get off the phone with somebody? Was I in the middle of a big work thing? Did I have a meeting I was getting ready for? Did my partner call me?
Like what happened just before? The actual thing has something been boiling up for a long time, right? So for us to understand that it can be a big thing, it could also be very subtle. It might be nothing. And whether you come up with something or not, isn’t the point. What you’re doing is you’re being curious.
You’re just being curious. Okay. So describe what was going on and then also describe thoughts and sensations in the body. So emotions and sensations are connected thoughts. What was I thinking? What was I feeling right? What was happening before I did that before I engaged in that behavior before I overate, what were the thoughts I was thinking?
What could I remember with the lens of kindness, curiosity, and compassion, what was going on? Okay. What was the scenario? Okay. And then, you just want to write about it. I think that journaling is a, an incredibly important tool, crazy important tool. And you can do this work. On your own.
We do it where we hold our coach, our clients hands and even better is when our clients actually take, agency and responsibility and they do this journaling themselves and then they bring what they’ve learned to the table, to a coaching call or something like that. Cause then we can even go deeper, right?
We can even go deeper there. And so here you are, you’re understanding a little bit more about what happened before. And then we want to look at what happened, the actual incident. We want to look at a couple of questions here. And the questions are, why do I think that I ate? What did I actually eat?
How did I eat? Did I eat standing up in front of the fridge? Did I eat in the car? Did I eat going back and forth to the cupboard? Did I eat sitting down at a table? Was I vegged out in front of the TV? We want to know like the behavior of the eating itself. And then how did I, how did I feel afterwards?
And again, from a lens of kindness, curiosity, and compassion. So now we’ve reversed engineered a little bit about what happened and what are we doing? I’m teaching you how to bring more consciousness to something that you want to change. The more that we bring the right kind of consciousness to it, not just, Oh, here I am again, guess I can’t fix this.
That’s not actually the kind of consciousness is going to help you. All right, so figuring out what the scenario is or was and that the before you had the overeat or the binge eat, then describing with using those four sentences the why, the what, the how did I, then how did I feel afterwards?
And then once you untangle that in a way that feels kind and generous, then asking yourself the question, and you might not have an answer, but asking yourself the question, what do I think I needed in that moment? If I wasn’t actually hungry, like what else besides food or booze or a coping strategy, what else Maybe could have helped me in that moment.
And then you try to come up with some ideas. If you discover you’re exhausted, probably sleep is pretty helpful, right? If you’re in the middle of a big stressful thing situation, like what could you have done to decrease that stress response in the body? Yeah. And then you start to imagine like, how could I give myself whatever that is, how could I give myself maybe what I need next time?
And so all that we’re doing is we’re just trying to come up with an idea here, figure it out, see it, see what could possibly happen. What else can I do instead? And the next question is very important. We use this question a lot in Hello Body Freedom. And it is, am I willing? To accept what happened because it happened the work of Byron Katie is immense.
It is powerful. It is strong. It really matters. It is literally just about coming into acceptance with what is very powerful work. Am I willing to accept the fact that this overeat or binge eat happened? Yes or no. Am I willing to be kind to myself, even though I did a behavior that I would I’m very eager to switch and change and to get to the other side.
Can I still be kind to myself? Can I come to this? Not because I love that I binge, that I love that I overate, but because that is just the truth and the reality of this moment. Can I have a level of acceptance and know that I’m going to be okay? I got me. It’s just a strong fricking four lane highway.
I’ll get to the other side of this. Okay. And then finally, in the moment that you’re journaling, what is my next best decision? What else could I do instead? What can I do instead of wave my middle fingers up and say, F it, I might as well just go ruin the rest of my day. I guess I’ll start on Monday.
What else could I do instead of using coping mechanisms? What else could I do that might help me? And quite frankly, in the world of overeating and binge eating, I think one of the best next decisions is, you know what? I’m just going to wait until I’m physically hungry to eat again, I’m not gonna go over exercise.
I’m not gonna skip a meal. I’m not gonna starve myself. I’m gonna nourish myself, maybe drink some water, take good care of myself, give myself some self-care that I need, and I’m just gonna chill until it’s time to eat again, and I will know it’s time to eat again because I will be physically hungry. I will have that sense.
And then from there, I can practice my skill sets of slowing down, paying attention. You know what I mean? Getting to that place where I can connect into my body to see what enough is for me. And that is powerful. And I hope this was helpful for you guys. This was super fun to do. I love, love, love this work and yes, just absolutely love it.
So let me see. I’m going to put my glasses on because I can’t see very well without them. Hold on y’all. Here we go. Let’s see what we have here. Let me see. It’s been very challenging. Yes. So I’m just going to put this up here. It’s been very challenging. Been working on habit stacking and my think, feel, do cycle.
Yeah. Getting more comfortable with that unfamiliar feeling of being satisfied without that fullness feeling. Yeah. It is challenging when we’re learning a new skill set, whenever we have learned to eat for every other reason besides physical hunger. And even then, let’s say we finally get the physical hunger thing down, but then we just mindlessly eat until we’re overstuffed.
A lot of us have been on so many effing diets and what do diets teach us? Diets teach us to be incredibly hungry. They teach us to ignore our hunger, ignore the body cues, our God given fricking body cues. Let me ignore them completely. Until I’m so hungry, the only thing I could do is massively overeat in the absolute opposite direction.
And so what happens over time is you get really like the only body cues you can really feel confident about is when you’re incredibly hungry or incredibly full. Okay. And this is a problem. This is a problem, right? Because in between incredibly hungry and incredibly full is a slew of other sensations.
And inside of those sensations are, is this idea of like enough satisfied just the right amount. And yeah, I just wanted to really just say that work it’s not, I’m sorry, but it does, it’s not just let’s just do this for 15 days and you’ll be set and good to go. You set a habit in 21 days and then you’re done.
And so I want you to just really know that’s how that works. Let me see here. The more we build and use. The more exit tools to get off that highway. I love that! The more we build and use, and the more exits, aka tools to get off that damn highway. That’s such a great, I love that analogy.
The easier and quicker it is to get off that four lane highway and back to your new trail and road. And it is so true. It is so true. This is it. This must be from from a client who has been in here for a while. And unfortunately it only shows Facebook users, so I can’t even see who you are. But yes, this is truth.
Truth. Truth. And I love that. I actually love that. How do you exit? Like the faster you exit, the faster you get off that highway. And we teach that as well, because at the end of the day, what do we usually do? We were walking along, we’re taking, we’re doing this thing. And then we hit a brick wall.
We over eat, we binge eat. Then we stay flat on our ass. We can’t get up. We feel hopeless. We’re too scared to try again. Cause every time we try, we fail. No. No, getting on the four lane highway is pretty normal and we just have to learn how to exit quicker, get back on that trail, get back on blazing that trail and eventually that trail does become a four lane highway.
So yay to that. Okay. That was a great great commentary here to everybody. Thank you so much for everybody that shared. This was so much fun. And if there are other questions you have inside of the food and body freedom challenge Facebook group. If you wanted to go in there at any time, and that’s where we’re streaming this live to in YouTube, but also here inside of the inside of the Facebook group here.
Let me go five day path. There it is right there. You can reach out to me. You can send me a Facebook message. You can DM me anytime. If there’s another topic that you want to go over and we want to do like a whole podcast where I can really break it down for you in a meaningful way, bring it, drop me a DM anytime.
And if you have not taken the food and body freedom challenge, you just go to hellobodyfreedom. com forward slash five. dash day dash path, five day path, hellobodyfreedom. com forward slash five day path. And or actually you could just go to hellobodyfreedom. com and then just click the button that says the challenge.
It’s the food and body freedom challenge and you are going to learn so much. We have a team that holds your hands. You get your very own challenge mentor. It is very powerful. And it is free and if you were at the beginning of this work and it does feel hopeless or you’re not so sure and how do I really get to the other side, we go into major depth inside of this challenge.
And so I hope to see you all there and yay. I’ll see you in the next episode. Bye everybody.
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