Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Ready to lose 40 plus pounds without giving up happy hours, weekend brunches, or date nights. Then it's time to uncover the hidden link between binge eating and toxic relationships. And finally break free from both. Welcome to the Hungry for Love podcast with Jillian Scott. Y' all ready? Let's go.
[00:00:24] Hey. Hey. Welcome back. You likely have downloaded this emotional eating tool, and this is an emotions wheel, or what I call a feelings wheel, and I'm going to walk you through how to use it. So if you are listening to the podcast without getting your download, I want you to check the description and follow the link to actually be able to download and print it off. So it gives you two pages, and we're going to start with the first page. This one's going to be a little bit more detailed. And so the intention here is that this is going to help you understand and to decode your cravings, your food urges, and that desire to eat, especially when you are not hungry.
[00:01:01] This does not mean that you are now going to forever say no to food when you're not hungry. This doesn't mean that you will never, ever have a food craving or a food urge. It just is going to give you an ability to start to understand the message that is underneath the craving, the message that is underneath this desire for food. Because so often we are looking for food as a way to distract, avoid, or numb out different emotions, often negative ones, but sometimes there's positive ones. Sometimes it's, we're eating to celebrate. We're eating because we had a successful week. We're eating because we survived. We're eating in order to relax and unwind at the end of the night. And so this is going to walk you through and help you to understand what are you feeling and why.
[00:01:47] So the first step, anytime you are feeling a craving, an urge for food, you're feeling that binginess may be coming on that bingy feeling.
[00:01:55] I want you to pause. That is always going to be the first step, is, can we pause for just a moment? Anytime we have a craving, the intensity of it is going to last only two minutes. The reason why we feel like we're playing this game of tug of war or we feel like food is calling our name is because we have not fully decided, yes, I'm going to eat or no, I'm not going to. It's like we leave ourselves up for this indecision and. And it's this back and forth of, oh, I really want it. It sounds really good, but no, I shouldn't, but, oh, everybody else is eating. But really I want to follow my plan. Oh, but no, look at all of these reasons, right? We go back and forth in our mind about am I going to eat it or not. And a lot of times this is when we're using willpower. So rather than making a confident decision as to yes, I want to eat or no, I don't want to, rather than really stepping into this empowered decision making space, are just trying to rely on willpower of like just say no. And a lot of times what we're doing is we're saying no from a place of self punishment or self loathing. So it's the number on the scale is too high, the size of your pants is too large, therefore you don't get to say yes to this food. And in order to numb out and distract ourselves from any of the guilt or shame that we might feel by eating now, a quote, bad food is we're just going to shut all of those voices down and we are going to completely numb out. So not only are we trying to numb out any guilt or shame that comes from eating whatever it is that's in front of you or whatever the option is, but we're also trying to shut down and numb out from the emotions of the day and often the undercurrent and this pattern of emotions that we don't want to feel as a whole. So it might be thinking that you're not enough, you're not thin enough, pretty enough, doing enough, that you're not smart enough. We have all of these thoughts and these beliefs that have been conditioned into us that often nar people have given us and now it has become our own thought, our own belief. And so not only are we eating to distract ourselves from things happening that day or that week and just what's going on moment to moment, but now we're eating to distract ourselves from this feeling of I should be further along, I should have figured this out by now, I shouldn't still be struggling with this. I thought this was going to be easier, right? From all of the shoulds, all of the missed expectations.
[00:04:16] So we take it back to this wheel, right? The wheel is going to give us a foundation for the emotions. A foundation for what am I feeling? Because so often when we've been in narcissistic relationships, when we've grown up with narcissistic parents or places, people, situations where emotions were not safe, we don't even know what it is that we're feeling. We are so resistant to certain emotions and we have essentially been taught that certain emotions were bad. So certain emotions were not allowed, that you had to show up in a certain way in order to keep the peace, in order to keep other people happy, in order to not have negative repercussions. And so really starting to even understand and identify what is it that I'm even feeling is huge.
[00:04:59] Okay, so in the center of this download, you're going to see this, the center white, and it says pause, right? Like we want to pause and breathe. Going to add in this breathe aspect. If you can just pause and breathe for two minutes and just practice that.
[00:05:18] Breathe in. Deep breath in through your nose, little hold, and then a deep breath out. And as you're breathing in, I want you to do a body scan. You're going to start to notice, like, what's happening throughout your body.
[00:05:31] What are the physical sensations that you're experiencing? Because there's the emotions of what's happening, but there's also the physical, physical sensations. There's the vibrations in our body of that emotion. And so often we are afraid of both. And we want to create safety in our body to feel just like we want to create emotional and mental safety around different emotions and it being okay to feel that way.
[00:05:57] So you're going to pause, you're going to breathe, and then you're going to start to notice, okay, what is it that I'm feeling? And so as you start in the center of the wheel, it's going to give you some kind of core but also surface layer emotions that you then get to go out from. So you might notice, oh, I'm feeling sad.
[00:06:16] I'm also feeling maybe it's a little angry.
[00:06:19] And then you might notice like, oh, I'm feeling, actually I'm feeling a little embarrassed. I'm feeling rejected. You start noticing some of the common patterns, the common themes of maybe what's coming up. And a lot of times it is this like, chemical cocktail of emotions. There's a lot of things that we're experiencing. And so especially when we are post divorce, post breakup, we can be feeling bad grief, anger, guilt, resentment, frustration, longing, desire, right, this longing or desire for a relationship that we haven't yet had or we don't have, this loss of the hope for the future that we thought we were going to have with somebody and now we're not.
[00:06:57] And so just starting to tune in and notice what are all the emotions.
[00:07:03] So as you are breathing, as you are pausing, this here is going to give you a starting place for the emotions. And then the other thing you can do is you can go to word hippo.com or really look at any type of thesaurus, any thesaurus online, if you've got a hard copy one. Right. Like you. I don't know if anybody here grew up with encyclopedias with the real actual books. My family used to have a set. I don't know if they. They still do. Somewhere I remember going, and we want to look up words, but we want to look up, okay, maybe it's a version of sad. And then start to see, oh, actually there's. Maybe it's like powerless or grief or.
[00:07:40] Yeah, or embarrassed. Maybe there's a version of sad where as you go out and you expand out on the wheel, you start to see what are some other flavors of this emotion. And now maybe you're noticing, like, oh, I feel sad. I also feel embarrassed, but that's maybe not quite the right word. This is where thesaurus comes in, where you can really start to see, like, what does this remind you of? What does this feel like to you? What can you put it to? And then now you can get some other synonyms for what else might be similar to this. And so maybe then from there you start to notice, ah, it is this. It's. It's sadness, it's rejection, it's embarrassment. Here is this compilation of what you're feeling right now. And just that alone is so helpful because we want to better understand what are the emotions that we typically eat over, both the negative ones and the positive ones. But we want to be looking for these patterns. We want to know, like, I tend to eat when I feel blank. Right. The more that we can better understand that, the more we are aware of it. We don't have to be afraid of the emotions. We don't have to try to shut it down. We don't have to try to avoid it. We actually want to create space and really this allowance to feel that emotion. So to feel what it feels like to feel rejected in your body, to feel embarrassed in your body, it doesn't typically feel great.
[00:09:03] But when you remind yourself that this is not going to hurt me, this is not going to kill me, this is just a vibration in my body, we now are starting to create safety for these emotions. And this is something that only you can do. And we are now going to do it in our 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and beyond. Because often we weren't taught how. We weren't taught how to do this as kids. We weren't taught how to do this as a young adult or in a marriage. We were were taught to shut down with our body, to tune it out, to really just focus on how do we please and make other people happy.
[00:09:38] And so this is all about getting back into your body. The more that we can from an emotional standpoint, as well as now starting to notice the physical sensations. And this is going to help you as you start to notice and look for what are your physical hunger cues? How do you know that you're actually satisfied? What are those satiety cues of? I've had enough.
[00:09:58] Okay, so if we go back to this wheel, it's going to give you the starting place for what, what am I feeling with these emotions?
[00:10:05] And then you can start to get curious about why am I feeling this?
[00:10:10] And now as we start to look at why am I reaching for food? And I'm not truly hungry, especially if I'm not hungry. These questions are going to walk you through how to decode this, how to better understand what's happening and what's going on.
[00:10:25] This doesn't mean that you won't have cravings or urges. Right? It doesn't make the desire for food magically go away, but it creates more awareness so that we can see the pattern and we can see the habit. And now we can start to break it. And so there's a little start here with an arrow and we, we start with this first question of what or who triggered you to feel this? And so this is helpful if you want to write it down, if you want to journal on it, if you want some. For some people, it's helpful to talk through it and to talk it out.
[00:10:55] With all of my clients, I give them a bonus option of voxer coaching with me. That way they can go through and actually talk through this with me if they want to talk through it. Otherwise, write it down. You can keep this in your head, but it's really helpful if you have multiple pages of this, if you've got a month's worth of these, of these evaluations and understanding what's happening. Because now we're going to see the patterns. Now we're going to see what are the common circumstance triggers, what are the common people triggers, what are the common emotional triggers. That's what this is all about. Ending emotional eating is really all about understanding patterns. It's about being able to see the habit and then identifying where and how to break it. And that's exactly what I'm going to help you do. So you're going to go through all of these questions. So then it's what story Are you telling yourself? So we want to look at, like, the facts. If we go to the second page, it's going to walk you through the model of circumstances, thoughts that then drive your emotions, that drive your actions, and then the results, right? That's essentially what these questions are walking you through.
[00:11:56] We have circumstances in our life that we have decided or like, created stories about and what we, what that means, right? So it's like the fact is blank. But now what do you make that mean?
[00:12:10] Then that is going to create an emotion. And sometimes then that emotion becomes, now I eat to feel better. I eat to avoid. I eat to distract myself.
[00:12:20] And so this is what we want to do is understand, like, how this plays out. So this is like your overarching framework. And then to get into more of the, like, nitty gritty, we're going to go to this first page and we're going to start looking at these questions. So from there, it's what emotions are you experiencing because of this story? And so this is where you can either go back through and look at what are some of the emotions coming up. Specifically here, you can also think back on, okay, what was I feeling just a minute or two ago as I noticed I was breathing.
[00:12:53] What's coming up for you? And all we're going to do is we're just going to go through, we're going to answer all of these questions. And this now gives you more awareness. This is what's going to help you decode so that you can break this pattern. Because emotional eating is just a habit. It's a habit that you learned, which means it's a habit you can unlearn. And I'm going to show you how. So this becomes your first step. This is the first piece to really understanding what's happening. Now, after you do this, you have permission to eat. I always tell every everybody who comes and works with me, you always have permission to eat. Even if you're not hungry, you can eat. But we are going to eat eyes wide open.
[00:13:34] We are no longer going to hide. We are no longer going to lie to ourselves. We are no longer going to sit in denial. We are going to tell ourselves this is what's going on. I see the pattern. I see what's happening here. I realize I'm eating because I'm feeling this, because I'm maybe I'm feeling irritated about my coworker who's just not doing their job. And I'm really frustrated and angry, and I feel like things aren't fair and I really Just want a snack. I really want something sweet. I really want something to eat, because that is going to help me feel better.
[00:14:02] And even if you choose to eat and you are not hungry, this is still really powerful work because there will come moments when you will notice this. You're going to go through this again and again. And there will be a time, I promise, when you are going to notice that urge, notice that desire to eat, and you're going to tell yourself no, but it's going to be without the shame, without the judgment, without the here you go again, doing the same thing over and over again.
[00:14:30] This is for us to learn from. And just because we have some awareness, just because we have this new tool, doesn't take away that desire to eat to feel better. That's just how we've been trained. And so to offset that, we also need to look at, how else can I feel better? How else do I handle the irritation, the frustration, the anger, the emotions that I'm experiencing?
[00:14:54] And so when we learn how to allow and process emotions, and when we learn how to change and regulate our emotional state and change how we're thinking and the stories that we're telling ourselves, it becomes a lot easier to say no from a place of self, love, from a place of I'm not actually hungry, and I recognize that I'm angry and really irritated right now, and I don't want to eat a snack from this place. So if I'm hungry in 30 minutes, I can come back and eat it. But right now, my answer is no. And here's what I'm going to do instead.
[00:15:24] And this is the type of work that I help you do, is really understanding some of these deeper levels and give you ideas as to what do you do instead. How can you, in a healthy way, distract yourself without needing willpower? And also, if you are going to say no, you say no without needing willpower. That way it feels sustainable. That way, it's something that you can replicate, you can duplicate, you can do over and over again consistently for the rest of your life without hating your life. And this also means that we plan and eat food intentionally. We eat it when we're hungry, we stop when our satis when we're satisfied, and we still allow ourselves to eat food that we love, that we enjoy. So for me, having things like protein bars and chocolate and ice cream, I don't want to eat a ton of it. That's not all that I'm eating all day, but I want to be able to eat some of that every single day.
[00:16:16] And that's what helps to decrease our diet trauma. It's what helps us to heal. And that is ultimately what we are doing when we are breaking free and we're ending emotional eating. What we're often doing alongside of that is we are breaking free and healing from the diet trauma just as much as we are breaking free and healing from relationship trauma. And I'm going to help you do both of these things together.
[00:16:38] So this is your starting point, this is the foundation. And now you get to try it, right? So now the work is to put this someplace where you're going to see it, you're going to remember it. It's by, maybe it's by your office, maybe it's by your computer, maybe it's in the refrigerator, on the refrigerator. Maybe it's taped up to the pantry. Put this somewhere where you are going to see it, you are going to recognize it. You will be able to go to it and have it available when that urge, when that craving strikes and it's going to help you to tune in. And there might be times when you see it and you're like, I don't care about that. I'm not doing that right now. You can still do it afterwards. There might be a moment when you just forget when you are, you're just not in the habit of doing this yet. You're not in the habit of pausing. Maybe you're mid bite eating something. You can still pause and do this. It is never too late. You have not ruined anything. Okay?
[00:17:31] So questions, comments, fears, regrets, Send me a message. You can reply to any of the emails that you receive from me. So anything with this download you can reply to any of those emails. If you are watching the video video here on YouTube, feel free to add a comment or ask a question here below. But this is all designed to help you and the best way to to learn how to do this is by practice. So I want you to get some reps in practice and test it out and see how is this working? How can you now take it and maybe even tweak it and make it your own? What feels even better and even more useful? All right y', all, hope you have a fabulous day. Here's to creating the life and body you crave.
[00:18:15] If this episode resonated with you, it's time to break free from destructive cycles around food, alcohol and toxic relationships. Your next step, book your free break the cycle call where you'll finally see why your binge eating and relationship patterns are so deeply connected and how to break free from both for good.
[00:18:35] You'll walk away with fierce clarity and a game plan to step into a life full of fun, adventure and self love. Grab your spot now at www.bodyyoucrave.com VTC.
[00:18:50] It's time to break the cycle. I'll show you how.
