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.
[00:00:26] Quick note here that there is a little bit of cussing in this podcast. So if you have little ones and you are mindful about what they hear or how loud you're playing it, just be aware there are a couple F bombs and the S word because I know some of you listen to this and may have kids around. I just want to be mindful and tell you right now, this is going to be a headphones earmuffs podcast. All right, let's dive in.
[00:00:53] So as I was out on a walk a couple weeks ago, I started thinking about some of the different obstacles and objections and the things that people will wrestle with the most. One of the common themes that I noticed was that all of these challenges fall under what I would call self sabotage. And what I see are some of the biggest ways in which we sabotage. And. And there's clear reason for that. So on this first episode, because this is gonna turn into some sort of a series, I don't know how many total at this point, but I wanna talk about what self sabotage is, how it comes up, how we experience it. Because so often we can feel really frustrated with ourselves because what we're doing doesn't align and match what we want or what we say we want. And there's often a very clear reason for this, especially when you've grown up with childhood trauma and you have experienced trauma in another relationship, in another often romantic relationship. But it could also be with a sibling, a boss, a work environment.
[00:01:58] So many of the men and women that I work with experience this level of trauma and abuse in a marriage or in a long term relationship. So there are ways that our brain has been rewired in order to survive. And our brain now is seeking safety, it's seeking security, it's seeking what's familiar over success, especially success of something new.
[00:02:23] Because something new often feels dangerous, new often feels scary.
[00:02:29] And so part of this is understanding the role that food plays in helping us to re regulate our nervous system.
[00:02:37] So let me back up here for just a sec. Because self sabotage is self protection. The more that we can understand this, the better. This is something that I heard years ago when I was first starting my coaching journey from my OG coach.
[00:02:52] And she told me this And I was like, oh my gosh. What I saw as sabotage, and it was almost like me fighting against myself was really a younger form of me trying to protect myself, trying to keep me safe.
[00:03:06] So this will show up in all different areas of life. But I see this so often in the weight loss space when you are struggling to get started, you're struggling to maintain results or not to fall back into old habits. Like often we call self sabotage. When we're on a roll, we're losing weight and then we fall off track. Maybe you're doing good for a couple of weeks, maybe even a couple of months, and then it falls to the wayside. You might lose 30 pounds and then gain 10 or 20 back. So this is really, it's a form of self protection and what your brain sees as safe. And this is where logically it doesn't make sense, right? Logically, cognitively we're like, no, I want to lose weight, I want to stop emotionally eating. I want to feel better in my body, I want to be a smaller size, I want to feel good in a bathing suit. I want, I want all of these things cognitively.
[00:03:56] But at a deep root, emotional foundational level, like within the storings of our body and our nervous system, there is something unsafe about that. And the more that we can understand what's not safe, the more that we can work on creating safety. I've often talked about food as a coping mechanism. It's a coping mechanism to feel better, to feel, to forget about your day, to unwind, to relax, to feel good. But it's not just a coping mechanism about feeling better in the moment.
[00:04:26] Now we have to recognize when food has become a way that you've learned to regulate your nervous system.
[00:04:33] So anytime you feel agitated, anytime you feel anxious, worried, stressed, depressed, anytime your body and the way that you experience sensations in your body feels unsafe or unmanageable, your brain has made the connection that food makes me feel better.
[00:04:51] It's not just the temporary, the short term, little quick hit of dopamine. It's not just the momentary, like, oh, quick, I feel better. It is a deep, I feel safe, I feel secure, and the food is helping me to do this.
[00:05:06] Most diets are going to tell you to take away the food, right? So anytime we want to, quote, take away the food, we're not just taking away food, we are taking away joy and pleasure and then we're taking away that hit a dopamine. But we're also, quote, taking away how your body has learned to cope with unsafety in the world.
[00:05:26] It's how your little self has learned to cope. It's how you've learned to relax. It's how you've learned to self soothe on a very deep level. It's no longer this surface level. Like I just want to feel a little bit better. I just want this little quick hit. It's a very deep level. Anytime we are going to take that away, we are taking away the one way your brain has learned to not just feel better in the moment, not just feel joy and happiness or some kind of quick hit of something. It's taking away potentially the one and only way your body knows how to feel safe. Your body knows how to regulate your nervous system, to regulate your emotions.
[00:06:09] And this is really important because even when we know I don't have to take away the food, I can eat the foods that I want. But now I'm going to stop at satisfied. Now it's oh, if I take away this food now I'm going to have less joy, I'm going to have less happiness because I'm not emotionally eating for just pleasure and joy. But now I'm also taking away my safety mechanism. I'm taking away this life raft and a giant storm. I want you to imagine that. Imagine you are in this giant storm in the middle of the sea and instead of being in a lifeboat with a life preserver on, I'm telling you to just tread water.
[00:06:48] That's what it feels like when we think that we have to take away the food or we're going to stop emotionally eating. We can know we want to stop eating, but there is this level of it doesn't feel safe. And this is why we can't just take it away.
[00:07:03] We have to understand what is driving this root desire, what is driving the binging, what is driving the emotional eating? Because there is feeling safe in the moment and then there's helping the little you, the mini you to feel safe, to feel secure, to feel okay processing all the sensations in your body that you were told from a very young age weren't safe, weren't allowed.
[00:07:28] This is some deep shit, y'. All. This has fuck all to do with the food. This is not about the food. It's not even about, am I overeating? This goes so much deeper to how we experience the life. And when we have a narc trained brain from how we grew up, from how we experienced years, maybe decades, multiple decades of being married to somebody where we're walking on eggshells, we're afraid of how they're going to respond. We have to show up in a certain way so that we don't get the backlash so that they can stay happy. We have to manage their emotions. We are over functioning. Then we wonder why we're so stressed and anxious or depressed half the time. This is why. And it's not just, oh, I need to not care what anybody thinks. Oh, I just need to learn how to set better boundaries. Yes, those are all good and great and they are things that we absolutely need to work on. But there is a deep level of emotional safety and security that we need to learn how to create for ourselves. We need to stop looking for somebody else to create and really learn how to insource that at a healthy, functioning way.
[00:08:34] We can't just let go of the food, even letting go of the habit, because it is there to give you a message. So if you have been wrestling with emotional eating, binge eating, chronic dieting, struggling to lose weight for years and years, maybe even decades, this is why. Because you keep trying to solve the problem with food, you keep trying to solve the problem with new habits. You keep trying to solve it in these little quick mini hit ways instead of understanding the root issue underneath and learning how to create safety in your body, in your nervous system.
[00:09:08] Part of it is going to be learning how to talk differently to yourself. Because like I said in the previous episode, not only do we have to tell ourselves that small things are good enough, we have to start small. We have to start with the small 1% habits, 1% improvements. And then we have to tell ourselves that this is enough to create the results. And it's also not too much, right? It's small enough that we can do it and get into the habit, make it easy to do. And yet also it's impactful enough to create the results that we want. And that's a fine line to be trying to balance.
[00:09:40] This is where we really have to take ownership of our thoughts and what we are allowing ourselves to believe.
[00:09:46] There are gonna be times when we may need some extra help and support.
[00:09:50] Sometimes we recognize, like when I have to fight for my thoughts, I have to fight to think better.
[00:09:56] Going to fight for this dream, fight for this vision, fight for what I know to be true, and also recognize when that fighting feels harder and harder to be able to do.
[00:10:05] And knowing when we need to get help, when we need to get support and making sure that support is truly going to help you in the right ways. And then it's not just another list of eat this. Not that it is really at a core level helping you to create that safety and security, not no matter what.
[00:10:24] And finding this peace and this efficiency, finding how to manage and regulate your emotional state is huge. And this is often where the people pleasing comes in. It's where the perfectionism comes in. Because that's how we learn to regulate our emotions. And somebody else's was, I have to give in, I have to make sure that they are safe. I have to do what they want so that they can be regulated, so that when they are regulated, I am regulated.
[00:10:50] Now when we stop people pleasing, we maybe work on our perfectionism habit. We stop trying to please or be perfect for this other person. Maybe we stop trying to manage their emotions. We still don't know how to manage ours because we used them to regulate our emotions. We used a very dysfunctional person to try to regulate our emotions. And when we're kids, of course as a kid you are going to use your parent to try to regulate yourself.
[00:11:16] And our parents were emotional children who did not know how to regulate their emotions. So of course they couldn't help us regulate ours. I want you to have so much love and compassion for yourself and we can have so much love and compassion for our parents who did the best that they could with what they had. But we're emotional children trying to raise children.
[00:11:36] And it doesn't create a healthy environment, healthy relationship habits.
[00:11:41] And because we don't know how to regulate our emotions on our own, we keep looking for other things to regulate our emotions. So it could be food, it could be alcohol, it could be sex.
[00:11:53] Now it might look like social media, it could look like binge watching something, right? We fall into these functional phrases or functional depressive states versus being intentional. And this is where it's not so much about what you're doing, it's not what you're eating. I want to know why are you eating it? I want to know why are you turning to this? And so it's so much more of understanding the pattern and what's happening underneath the habit. The what is important. The what gives us context. The what is helpful. But we have to start looking at why.
[00:12:28] When we are struggling with weight loss and emotional eating and binge eating. Anytime we are trying to regulate our nervous system and it feels like it is outside of our ability to be able to cope with that emotion, we will turn to some form of coping mechanism.
[00:12:42] We look to something else to make us feel better. This is why we can white knuckle for a little bit. We can take away the Food, we can take away the alcohol. We can diet for a little bit of time. We can say no, but it's white knuckling. And sometimes it might feel easier than others, but we're never ever getting to the root of it. It's like we have an empty glass. We don't learn how to deal with stress, anxiety, fear, worries. And so in the past, maybe you used food, alcohol, sex. You used some way to cope, and now we're starting to take it away. Or maybe even a dating app. Like, for me, it wasn't necessarily sex, it was a dating app. And it was a hit of dopamine from somebody else showing me interest, a man validating me, saying, I am good enough, I am pretty, I am chosen, I am special.
[00:13:27] And when I have that validation, I feel better. It was helping me to regulate my nervous system for all kinds of things. It helped create a sense of safety and security.
[00:13:36] Having a man there to provide, to protect. It was a sense of safety that I didn't experience as a kid. Of course I'm looking to it in a man. Of course I'm looking for somebody else to do that. And my work is learning how to do that for myself, not just with a new coping mechanism, but truly understanding how my nervous system is regulated and the tools that are going to work best for me. But if you think about it, for some people, the challenge is there's no success. We struggle to get started because there are ways in which it is not safe to lose the weight. It is not safe to let go of this habit. It is not safe because if I let go of the food, how else am I going to experience joy? Of course I'm not going to want to. How else am I going to have fun at a party if I'm not drinking? That sounds terrible. It was like my thought at first when I was not going to date this year, I was like, that sounds dreadful. I don't want that.
[00:14:29] And really, it's learning not to just insource fun and joy and pleasure, but at a deep level safety and security, to really insource these core, deep emotional needs that stem from core wounds.
[00:14:44] And it goes back to how we're raised. Whether you had a mom or a dad who is in the picture, we can still feel abandoned by them. Even if they were physically there, they might have emotionally abandoned you. There's all kinds of ways in which we can experience this. But I just use this as an example. So if we look at, okay, I have this empty glass, let's say I'M feeling good. I have an empty glass and I'm pouring water into the glass. I'm pouring in stress, anxiety, fear, and I'm no longer coping. I'm no longer using my coping mechanisms. So this is when often one will jump to the other. So we'll jump from one thing to the next.
[00:15:20] And so it's okay. I'm starting to be aware of my coping mechanisms. I'm no longer jumping from food to alcohol, to men to apps, to all these things. But my glass is still full. My glass is still filling up. So it's filling, filling, filling. And then as it gets to the top, it doesn't take much. Then one day randomly for it to overflow and it feels like it's out of the blue. It feels like, well, I don't know what necessarily triggered this, or it could be there was a fight, there was an argument. Maybe your past trauma was triggered. Maybe it was a trauma versary. There could have been any kind of seemingly small trigger. It doesn't matter how big or how small. It doesn't take much for your cup now to overflow. And we go right back to those habits. If you're used to emotionally eating or binge eating, we can stop. We can be on this diet for a while and we're doing really good. But when we don't have that healthy outlet to release the stress, release the anxiety, calm your nervous system, create that sense of peace, self control and self trust. One day, seemingly randomly, out of the blue, we get triggered. And now we are overflowing. Now we are binge eating, now we are binge drinking. We want to say this is self sabotage. I was doing so good and then I messed it up. I was doing so good and then I got triggered or I don't know why, but just for some reason, I just couldn't control it anymore. I couldn't keep starving myself anymore.
[00:16:45] And it's not sabotage, it is self protection. You go back to those coping mechanisms as a way to regulate your nervous system because it just got too much.
[00:16:56] And the challenge here is now how we think and talk to ourselves after that first binge, after that first overdoing it.
[00:17:03] Because so often then we binge a second or a third time as punishment for the first binge. We sometimes want to try to take the edge off, make us feel better, so we drink again the next day, even though we feel like shit.
[00:17:17] And then sometimes we might also feel like, I've already screwed up, I've already blown it. We're at the 21st of the month. So I'll just start over on the 1st. We're already most of the way through the month. I've blown it already. The scale's already gone up two pounds. Who cares? Why bother? I'll just start over later. And we say eff it to the rest of the week, maybe even the rest of the month. We fall back into these old habits because we are just trying to feel better. That's it. That is all our body is trying to do. That's all our brain and our nervous system is trying to do is feel better.
[00:17:50] And the more we can understand these deeper layers as to what is feeling unsafe, not just around food, not just around weight loss, but where in your life it feels unsafe. And this is why, for me, it was so important to recognize, like, it's not just about money or career or a business that makes me feel safe. Part of my safety in the past has been so dependent on a man. And when I didn't have that man growing up, now it gets put on a boyfriend or a husband, and it makes it really hard to walk away from that man when he mistreats you because he is part of your sense of safety and security and his approval and him. Feeling good is part of how you regulate your nervous system. It's part of how you feel good enough.
[00:18:35] It goes so much deeper than the food, y'. All.
[00:18:39] We need to understand this concept of self sabotage, because I haven't even gotten into the three.
[00:18:45] Three parts or like the three ways in which I see it showing up the most. But I want to take this first episode just to dive into this one piece of understanding. We are often so wired to fear failure. Just like I talked about on the last podcast of we have to learn how to reframe failure, think about it differently, how to see it differently, how to understand how it triggers shame, how failure often triggers insecurity, how it doesn't create a place of safety. And now we are wired to either try to take a bunch of action in order to get the thing. We try to restrict more, eat less, exercise harder. We try to do all kinds of things in order to get out of what we're afraid that failure is going to mean about us.
[00:19:30] This fear of failure is huge. And it's not just fear of failing. It's fear that I'm gonna do all this work and then not create the result I want. It's fear I'm gonna lose the weight. Maybe I'm gonna lose 40 or 50 pounds just to gain it back again. There's all kinds of different levels and aspects, like different flavors of the fear of failure and how it shows up. And then we can also have a fear of success.
[00:19:53] This is often what is driving our self sabotage, because it's not safe. And logically, it does make sense logically in my brain, I should feel safe and secure in my body, even if I'm a smaller size. But this is what we have to understand and really recognize what feels unsafe. And we want to look at. What's the downside? What is the downside of losing weight? What is the downside of not emotionally eating? What is the downside of not binge eating? And this is going to break your brain a little bit, because there is a downside, and we need to give airtime to it. We need to understand what is truly happening, what is really going on, so that we can create that safety, so that we learn how to regulate our emotions, we can regulate our body, the physical sensations, and we learn to think and talk to ourselves differently. But it can't just be in the brain. It can't just be in the head. We can think better thoughts, and we can have a different way of thinking and looking at it, but we also have to learn how to regulate our bodies and that nervous system without the food, without the alcohol, without the other person.
[00:20:58] This is gonna be a deep dive and an exploration into it. This is why we have to look at trauma. This is why there's healing that has to be done after a toxic relationship in order to create the success that you want in any area of life.
[00:21:12] You have to work on these pieces.
[00:21:14] This is why it's not just about the habits.
[00:21:18] If all it was was eat less and exercise more, y', all, we would all be skinny on the beach in bikinis.
[00:21:24] But we have to address some of these other aspects. The emotional eating, the binge eating, the core levels of safety, security, where you find safety and security.
[00:21:35] And it makes a lot of sense that I would have a lot of fear and a lot of safety and security is dependent on money and another person. Because I grew up without my biological dad, A very narcissistic stepdad, A mom who tried really hard, but sometimes was working multiple jobs and wasn't there. She was also really young, right? Like, emotionally. She just wasn't always there for us. And they really struggled. My mom and my stepdad really struggled with money up until the time I was probably 10, 11 years old. I have that deeply ingrained in my body of, like, fear around money and safety. And then this attachment and wanting somebody, wanting another person, feeling dependent on somebody else. And then there's also this kind of like hyper vigilant side of me that's like I don't need anybody. I'm gonna do it all on my own. I can figure it out and it can be a lot. Cause it's no. But I need somebody. I'm not safe. I can't do this on my own. This is why we sometimes feel like we revert back to childlike behaviors and we can feel like a child.
[00:22:37] It was wild how sometimes getting into arguments and issues with my ex, it was like I was 12 again. Not even just being back with my parents and an issue with them coming up and feeling like I was 12. But it was like being in my marriage as a 30 year old woman feeling like I was 10, 12. I had this sense of this isn't right, this is wrong. And yet feeling so powerless, so helpless.
[00:23:02] And I have to be aware not to get into other toxic relationships. Just trying to meet a short term need, just trying to self soothe, just trying to feel better, just trying to get that hit of dopamine and beyond just that hit, a dopamine of like my sense of worthiness and value. To not make it dependent on another person, on another thing, on the size of my body, on the size of my bank account, on the title in my bio.
[00:23:29] That's been hard because I have nearly four decades of doing life a certain way with a certain thought process, with certain beliefs my brain has subconsciously been finding more and more evidence for. This is your opportunity to break free. Not just from the food, but from these patterns, from these habits that have held you hostage for decades.
[00:23:51] This is the work.
[00:23:52] It's real, deep, emotional, psychological. Mind, body, soul healing.
[00:23:59] And yes, you will lose weight, but the weight loss comes when we do this deeper work to understand what is truly blocking us, what is really getting in the way. Where it doesn't feel safe. Learning how to create that emotional, mental and physical safety in our bodies, not with external circumstances. But I feel safe, just me here today.
[00:24:23] And I hold space and can honor all of the emotions that come up. I don't have to sugarcoat everything. I don't have to avoid anything negative. I can sit and I can allow and I can process through all the emotions.
[00:24:36] I can notice when my nervous system feels activated, when I feel anxious, when I feel heartbroken, when I feel this deep loss, when I feel that aching loneliness and I can hold space for it and I can allow it to be there and I don't have to be so quick to think better to get out of it. I can allow these emotions, give them time to breathe, give my body time to process it and then tell a new story, find ways to calm and self soothe without all these external things.
[00:25:07] This is our work and this is why it's so important that we address and we look at weight loss and emotional eating after a traumatic relationship, we look at it in a different way, we heal it and we address it in a different way.
[00:25:19] Because there's this deep level of safety that we have to create for ourselves. And it's gonna take a little practice, but you can do this.
[00:25:27] And if this is something that you want help with, then I would love to help guide you on this journey of creating all the levels of safety and security that you need to thrive, not just to survive. We have spent so many years in survival, even being divorced, even being out of relationships, even being out of maybe your parents home. We still are stuck in survival and it's time to break free. It's time to break out of that. We are no longer going to be satisfied and just put up with good enough. I'll take what I can get. We are no longer just going to survive and get by and make it to another day. We are going to thrive and we are going to succeed. And sometimes we have to break down. We have to break apart the bridges that have been built in unhealthy ways of coping and rebuild the new bridges.
[00:26:16] So if you want to do this work, if you are ready to truly heal from toxic relationships, heal from that narcissistic person in your life, heal your relationship with food and body and self trust and self love. If you're ready to let go of the emotional eating and the food and the chronic exercising, the chronic dieting, the fear around not being able to keep the weight off, then I would love to help you. This is the work that I do with clients and I can help you do this too. The best place to explore and see if this is the right fit for you is to schedule a free consultation.
[00:26:49] Find my calendar at www.bodyyoucrave.com schedule. You'll see dates and times that I'm available.
[00:26:57] Pick a day, pick a time. We're going to meet for about an hour and really explore these aspects, not just food and exercise and habits and stress levels. Yes, those are important and we need to address them.
[00:27:10] But we gotta look at the trauma that's happening and how this is showing up in these different forms of self sabotage, of perfectionism. And people pleasing and procrastination, the big three Ps. It has more to do with creating safety and less to do with not being committed or not wanting it. I know I've told this story before, but I remember there was a guy who was like, oh, I decided I was gonna lose weight and I just decided. I just committed y'. All. Sometimes it has fuck all to do with the decision and the commitment level. You continuing to listen, you continuing to work on this, continuing to try, shows your commitment. It shows your dedication. It shows that you want this, but you keep trying to do it in a way that is not effective, in a way that doesn't account for the trauma you've experienced.
[00:27:56] But I promise, when you bring this in, when you recognize this layer, this is the secret. This is the hidden key. This is the missing piece to your weight loss and emotional eating journey. And I'd love to help. And if you are listening to this in real time, Saturday, September 27th, I am hosting a free workshop around the three myths of holiday weight loss. And we are going to dive into what actually holds us back. Because this is often a time where we can feel like it's even harder to lose weight, even harder to end emotional eating. And I want to show you how this could be the best time, even the easiest time. But we do have to break a couple of beliefs that we have been brainwashed to believe. So that's what we are going to dive into is not just the myths, but how do we make it easy, how do we make it simple? How do we streamline it when there are such good food and drinks and festivities and there's extra cookies and parties and events. And I want to help you to truly enjoy the season, all of it, the food, the drink, the events, the traditions.
[00:28:58] But we want to be mindful, right? And so it's not this free for all when it comes to food, but it also doesn't have to be really restrictive and extreme and kind of laced with a lot of diet culture and diet thinking. So I want to help you to leave that all behind and create a new, simple, easy way that's fun and enjoyable and lights you up and has you £10 down instead of £10 up. Y' all ready? You can register with the link in the description and I will see you there on Saturday afternoon. And don't worry if you can't make it live. A replay will go out to everyone who registers. All right, here's to creating the life and body you crave.
[00:29:43] 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.
[00:30:03] 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 BTC.
[00:30:17] It's time to break the cycle. I'll show you.
