PROCRASTINATION - Realistic New Year Resolutions.

SPEAKER_00: Do you feel compelled to overeat but wish that you could stop? Or perhaps you know that your emotions drive your eating, but you don't really know what to do about it. I talk about the side of overeating that nobody really talks about. The emotional and the psychological side. There are reasons why you can't stop eating, and that's what we explore here. Here we'll support you on your journey of awareness to stopping binge eating altogether. I am your host, Shelley Treacher. Welcome. Today I'm talking about realistic New Year's resolutions for the emotional eater. I started my year on day one thinking this year I'm gonna work less and do other things that I enjoy more. How many of us start the year with something like this? And then by day five, I return to work and I completely failed to stop before nine o'clock in the evening. And how many of us fail pretty quickly with New Year's resolutions? They're just not realistic. That's they're very hopeful, but it's kind of a brainwashing. So today I'm going to talk to you about what you can actually realistically do this year to help you with the things that you really want to achieve. Traditionally, we take an inventory of our lives and decide in January to cut out what's harmful and to replace it with what's healthy. As you know, that rarely lasts, and the reasons for this are: well, the first is it took a lifetime to build and groove these kinds of habits or neural network pathways, so it's going to take some work to undo that old pattern, replace it with a new one, and practice it enough so that it sticks. And then B, you're still being influenced by all the reasons that you did those things in the first place. As I've talked about in one of my first podcasts, there are a lot of reasons why this happens. From biology, genetics, ancestry, to cultural attitudes, the psychological manipulation behind buying products, and the feelings that you have behind the harmful habits. So, unless you're paying very close attention to your unconscious, which, you know, most of us aren't, or your daily life has changed dramatically in the last month, which, you know, the only drama is that we're in lockdown again. Not at not all that unusual, really. And the feelings you have behind the harmful habits have completely changed. Unless all of this has changed, then you're kind of highly unlikely, especially in the situation we're in in the world right now, you're highly unlikely to quit the thing that you've done for years. So and so this year, of course, it you know, it's kind of special. Already this year there's been devastating news around the world. We've been thrown pretty quickly back into stress and hardship after the break of Christmas and the new start in January. Lots of people are having to work and look after the kids and homeschool at the same time. Some of the teachers are having to do that. I can't imagine how hard that must be. So my my kudos goes out to you if you're a teacher and a parent. But all of us are struggling, all of us are bored, all of us are doing the same thing every day, or are stressed out, working too hard, trying to get the money in, trying to make everybody happy, and then at the end of the day not really having a lot of pleasure or fun just for ourselves. So that's kind of what I'm basing my realistic New Year's resolutions around. But there are still things that you can realistically do to set yourself up for the best in 2021. Like you, all of us, I want a happy life with a fit body and good relationships. So today I thought I'd revisit some basics and make it clear what's going to help you gain control of eating in 2021. So that you have the best chance possible of success. The first thing on my list is to explore your why. Identify what really matters to you, even if it takes some effort, some time, and some research. You need to know and to be able to remember why you want to stop eating. This knowledge needs to be as deeply grooved in your brain as the habit of overeating itself, so it's going to take some practice. This is the thing that's going to make you choose to behave differently. Beyond why you want to stop eating, it's also going to be relevant and helpful to understand what you value in any area of your life. One reason you eat too much might be because you're filling your life with things that aren't actually that important to you. Are there things or people in your life that you could do without? And number two, reflect on when you binge. Start to keep a diary or common themes around your eating. This can include when you eat and what habits you have around the eating. Binge eating is a habit. Overeating is usually something that was learned very early on and has been practiced, perhaps interspersed with periods of dieting, for a long time. Lots of habits can form around it. So notice what kind of habits you have or what associations you have with eating junk food. When do you actually overeat? Is it when you finish work? Is it late at night? When you're on your own, or is it when you are around a certain person or in a certain situation? This is a common one. Another common one is associating celebrations with cake, lots of junk food, or do you go to the petrol station, always buy yourself a coffee or a chocolate bar? Or do you eat sweets or go to the cupboard or binge on biscuits after dinner while you're watching telly? And how long have you had these habits? If you want to drop in the comments when your habit is, what you do, I would love, love, love to hear about it. And I can guarantee that it will be relatable by somebody else who's gonna feel better because somebody else has the same thing. Number four is an old favourite, and this is one that you've really got to be doing. So start practicing asking what's happening just before you binge eat. What are you thinking and what are you feeling? In order to really start making changes to your habits, you need to understand why they're there in the first place and what purpose they serve for you. With overeating, you need to understand what's making you eat the way you do. A large part of this, of course, will be brainwashing and habit, but as we've been talking about for a few months now, it runs much deeper than that. There's often discomfort behind overeating, hence the term comfort eating. Usually overeating is a response to a feeling that you don't know what else to do with, or that you're afraid to feel. We aren't taught very well in this culture in England and in many other cultures how to respond to how we feel. You may not know how you feel because you overeat before you can even discover it. So trace it backwards. What were you feeling just before you ate? And just before that, and just before that? And trace it right back to when you felt okay. How did you get from feeling okay to binge eating? What thoughts, what feelings, what came into your head? How long have you felt that way? Are you tired and frustrated because you've done too many things? Does something trigger you off into upset that you squash because you feel stupid? Are you angry when your partner makes a snippy remark but you swallow it for fear of conflict? Or are you miserable because you haven't had any good contact with anyone lately? All of these are really normal everyday human experiences, especially right now. We're taking everything too sensitively right now because it's the only contact we've got. So just reflect on what is it that you're triggered by, how are you feeling. The fourth resolution, again, this is a really good one and quite a favourite if you're gonna give up the binge eating, is to note any self-criticism. This one can take a long time to build up a practice and a habit for to recognise when you're putting yourself down. But I can pretty much guarantee that if you just stop, stop yourself at any point in the day and reflect back on what you're thinking about yourself, there might be some self-criticism in there. So this is a good way to approach it if you have absolutely no idea whether you're criticizing yourself or not. But self-criticism will only make you want to eat more. And it would give you good reason to ditch the healthy habits, or you'd think you have good reason. So watch out for thoughts and behaviours like this. I'll be fat anyway, I don't care, I don't care about myself anyway. Why can't I stop eating? There must be something wrong with me. Or comparing yourself to others, or perceiving only negative things about yourself and feeling not good enough, feeling guilty, focusing on the negative, or punishing yourself. As I say, these are really very common behind comfort eating, so there's something that you need to get a handle on. I'd also really love to hear the critic that you've identified if you want to put that in the comments as well. Again, somebody else is gonna go, yep, that's me, I say that, and I guarantee there'll be a hundred more for where that one came from. Resolution four is about identifying your brainwashing. So really getting to know how you convince yourself that it's okay to eat. There's really a lot of brainwashing and self-sabotage that happens around emotional binge eating. Here's some examples. I'll let myself go now at Christmas, I can start again in January. Or I might as well eat now as it's here and then tomorrow I won't buy anymore. The diet can start tomorrow. Or if I don't give in to this urge, I'll just think about it all the time until I give in. Or I need this. Or it's too late for me. All of these are the ways that you tell yourself that it's okay to carry on comfort eating and staying in your comfort zone. Here's the real truth to those statements. You won't be able to be any different tomorrow or in January because you won't have addressed the cause of your eating and how to manage that, like I said at the beginning. And the effect on your health actually is a lot more of a waste than dumping any cake or junk food And how long have you tried denying a binge for? Without being on a diet or starving yourself? If the desire to eat does stay with you, so what? What are you dealing with there? What's the worst that could actually happen? How could you be viewing this as an opportunity to understand that it's discomfort that causes you to eat? As a starting point for discovery. As soon as you have certain foods like sugar and fat, you'll immediately crave more. They're addictive in their chemistry. The people who make them know that. But the physical craving actually subsides pretty quickly. It's the emotional and psychological craving that's way more deeply rooted and complicated. So you really need to start getting to know that. The emotion, but also how you're kidding yourself that it's not emotion and that you just like it. You actually really don't need this addictive, dangerous substance. You're choosing to eat it because you don't know how else to soothe how you feel, or you aren't taking the time to allow any other solution. The food doesn't actually help you in the end. It won't take away the feeling you have behind it for long or fix the real problem. And that's not to say that I'm asking you to stop eating, to stop junk food. I'm not here to say that. In fact, in any of my programs, wherever I work with people, that is not on my agenda. But I do think that if you start to think about things differently and alter how you're feeling and what's going on for you and how you address your emotions, then things are going to start changing anyway. And that's the idea to begin like this and end 2021 with a different habit. So that brings us to number six, responding to your needs, to your feelings and the problem differently. In this podcast, I've talked about three different ways to do that. You can use self-soothing techniques like meditation, mindfulness, and visualization. All of these help you get into a different state of mind. With the mania of craving food and with the feelings behind the desire to eat, this is often what's needed. It's easy to find these kinds of techniques for free online. If you're not sure where to start, a favourite of mine is Kristen Neff on self-compassion. What these techniques do is they get you into a certain part of your brain that is rational, rational, reasonable, compassionate, and adult. It's literally a different part of your brain to the feeling or instinctual part. It's the part of you that can look after you, stand up for you, and make good choices for your well-being. Self-soothing also calms your physiological system down, which is something that you might also want to notice. Your physiological system is probably in a quite of a stressed state or a certain kind of state when you eat. And the second technique I've talked about is self-nurture. The comfort eater is often eating in response to an inner critic. The words that we mentioned before, I'm so fat, I don't matter anyway, I never get it right, I'm not good enough, nobody listens to me, shut up, you stupid cow. So you need to develop an inner nurturer who really, really loves you. What about trying to understand the reasons that you feel or act the way you do? Just like you would with somebody that you love. So continue to ask yourself what you feel, to understand your feelings and what you really need. And here's a little way that you can do that. So treat yourself as if you were somebody that you feel really affectionate towards and just ask yourself how you're feeling. So, sweetheart, how are you feeling? And then respond from that person's point of view and say, I'm feeling sad, or whatever it is that you're feeling. And then when you've done that, reflect back that you've heard that feeling. Oh, sweetheart, I hear that you're feeling sad. And then carry that conversation on with as many feelings as you've got, as many as you can come up with, and then ask what you need in the same way. This is a really nice way to practice this if you're not used to asking yourself how you feel. And it might sound strange at first, speaking in third person, but it's really effective. And sometimes you do just need to go deeper to find out how you're feeling and what you need. It takes time to learn how to trust your feelings, particularly as is often the case, some kind of trauma caused you to block them off in the first place. This is something you may need professional help with. Identifying and managing feelings can be really challenging for the emotional eater, so it is important that you acknowledge that this grows and develops gradually. So now I just want to say a little bit about procrastination. In my groups, I often ask what people want me to write or talk about, and I was asked to talk about procrastination. So I thought this would be a good thing to mention in January. My first response to the request is to ask whether even asking the question involves self-judgment or self-criticism. Just like binge eating, procrastination is often a way to manage overwhelm, anxiety, or depression. It could be a natural unhealthy response to burnout. So the real question and exploration is what is the procrastination for you? Then the way to deal with procrastination becomes a very different thing to using willpower. Just like with binge eating, learning to rest and manage stress becomes the real solution. I also want to mention dissociation. It's a big subject, so I'm not going to go into massive detail in it, but just to say what's so great about being busy all the time anyway. Keeping busy can be a way of dissociating from pain and challenge, just like binge eating. We naturally chase pleasure or reward at any time, but being deprived of our usual outlets for this at the moment and with the challenges that we face with COVID-19, it's not easy to be doing anything else right now. Dissociation is often caused by avoiding the pain or challenge of difficulty or trauma. It can show up as distance from your own feelings and thoughts, numbness, coldness, or blankness, which then can develop into a habit or an addiction in itself. You can see how other addictions jump on board here to support dissociation. Binge eating in itself can make you numb or feel pleasure. So what's the way out? In this podcast, what I've suggested is that you explore your values, your discomfort, your automatic thoughts, and find other ways to manage your habits and discomfort. Just as a starting block in not being asked to give up any of the things that help you to feel better in the day, but just to start exploring something different. Stopping emotional eating is a constant journey of awareness. There isn't a quick fix or cure because there is none for the discomfort of being human. Revisiting engagement is where you'll find relief and change. The more often you come back to what's important to you, engaging with what you're doing, how you feel, and what you need, the more you're likely to choose what's really best for you. So that's what I have to say today. I would really welcome your comments, especially if you found anything useful. Let me know what you found helpful, but also let me know what you'd like me to talk about. You can comment here, or you can find my Facebook support group, Comfort Eating Recovery Support Group. Or if you want to go a lot further, look at my details at bristolcounselling.co.uk. At the moment I'm gathering participants for the next group at the end of January, beginning of February. There are a couple of places left, so please get in touch. Thank you for listening. Happy New Year.