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] I want to start today's episode off by asking a question.
[00:00:32] What if you loved yourself just as much, if not more so, when you were failing as when you were succeeding?
[00:00:41] And this concept will likely feel very counterintuitive, but this is truly where the magic happens. When you learn to love yourself just as much through the mistakes, through the missteps, through the failure, through the missed expectations, and when you can show up and love yourself in those moments, in those tough moments instead of beating yourself up and you love yourself just as much as if you were succeeding and maybe even you love yourself more in those moments.
[00:01:11] This feels hard because so often we think that we have to beat ourselves up and internally punish ourselves in some ways in order to make up for the mistake or in order to teach us a lesson.
[00:01:23] Like, how many of you have this thought, maybe subconsciously running through your brain, of, no, there has to be a punishment. I have to learn from this, and I can only learn if there is a stick. If there is some kind of bad thing that happens, like I have to punish myself for the bad that I did, that is a toxic pattern when you think about your internal narrative and is it that of a drill instructor? Are you just yelling and screaming and criticizing and saying you should be doing better and you suck and you fail? Because so often we have this approach and we think, if I'm hard enough on myself, then I'll actually learn the lesson, then I will get it together, then I will follow through, then I will do it right, then I will do it consistently.
[00:02:08] And we fall into this habit of self loathing and self judgment and just a lot of self criticism that now it's like, you can leave the toxic workplace, you can leave the toxic ex, but that nar voice is still inside your own head.
[00:02:23] And that's what we need to divorce. That's what we need to break free from.
[00:02:28] So I just finished my third just for fun book. I read a lot of self help and personal development types of books and I've been challenging myself more recently to try to read more books just for fun.
[00:02:40] So last year I read 1:1 in all of 2024. This year I have now finished 3. So I'm feeling very proud of myself. I'm on to book number four. I will likely have read five this year, so that's a huge improvement up from zero. Okay, so anyways, I just finished my third book, and it's called the Housemaid. This one was so good. And one of the key concepts of the book was around this toxic dynamic where if there was a mistake, there had to be a very harsh punishment so that somebody would learn their lesson. Now, there's a really amazing plot twist in this, so I'm not going to spoil it for anybody because it's awesome. You should totally read it. But in this book and the way that it was playing out, the pattern played out as an adult because it was learned as a child.
[00:03:28] And while this book is fiction, it 100% follows how trauma works and how trauma gets passed down from one generation to the next.
[00:03:38] And we see it clearer when, one, it's not in ourselves, and two, when it's this extreme divergence from the norm. And so I think it's really easy to see it in this book as, oh, my gosh, that's terrible. And yet we do the exact same thing.
[00:03:53] Sometimes we do it to people around us, but a lot of times we do it to ourselves because we think, I made a mistake, I messed up, I did something wrong. And so now that wrong either needs to be righted. I either need to right the wrong before I can forgive myself somehow. There needs to be some kind of punishment, or there needs to be some kind of making up for it. And I think sometimes for myself, when I look back on periods of binging, the punishment was exercise. It was like, ugh, you ate too much.
[00:04:23] Now you need to run an extra two miles. Now you need to work out harder. You need to run faster. And so it was like using exercise as punishment rather than looking at, okay, what do I truly need? What does my body need in this moment?
[00:04:36] And so there's punishment and this really punitive conversation that we have around exercise. But also, we often will see it with taking away food.
[00:04:46] So now it's also, you don't get to eat these things. So I would try not to eat as much food. Then it would be. I'd wake up and I'd be like, okay, now, today, for real, no sugar, no carbs, right? And the punishment is now taking away food groups, taking away how much you're eating, limiting what you're allowed to eat. It's all from this distorted, toxic lens of, maybe you'll learn your lesson. If I'm hard enough on you, maybe you'll learn it and you'll figure it out.
[00:05:13] And we get it backwards. Especially when we have been through trauma, when we have had trauma in our childhood, when we've had traumatic marriages, when we've had traumatic and dysfunctional workplaces, when we have been stuck in survival mode. This is often our go to and yet it is the exact opposite of what we truly need. That is where I'm coming from with this episode and with this question.
[00:05:39] What would it look like to love yourself more now through this setback?
[00:05:46] Because this has the power to change your entire life.
[00:05:50] Because it's not just about food or weight loss or emotional eating or binge eating. This is about how we do life as a whole.
[00:05:57] What would it look like to love yourself more through the failures, through the missed expectations?
[00:06:04] How would I be thinking and talking to myself if I had the thought I'm succeeding? This is all working for me. This is moving me in the right direction. This is getting me closer to my goals.
[00:06:16] Now can I show up with that much love and encouragement and self belief, even if my circumstances might indicate otherwise?
[00:06:23] The key is that you also learn how to evaluate the failures. You evaluate the mistakes, you learn from them. But in order to do that, we have to drop the shame and judgment. We have to get to a place of curiosity and compassion. We have to be willing to look at and see, okay, what is working? What is going well?
[00:06:42] Where am I getting stuck? Where do I keep repeating the same pattern and the same habit over and over again.
[00:06:48] And then what's the one domino? What's the one thing that might knock over other dominoes? What's the one linchpin? What's the linchpin habit? Where it's if I can just get this, the rest of the day is going to feel easier.
[00:07:01] What's the one thing I want to do differently?
[00:07:04] This is how we look about it and we think about it differently. Otherwise we just stay in that toxic cycle of restrict, binge, regret. It could be restrict, binge, punish.
[00:07:16] Start over is like what happens and we have to break it. The place that we break it is in the restriction. We stop restricting.
[00:07:25] We can also break it when we stop the punishment. Those two things go hand in hand.
[00:07:31] I had a client where her weight stayed the same for about three weeks.
[00:07:36] Even though she was following all the same things. She wasn't significantly overeating or emotionally eating. We worked through a couple of little aspects and little things that were coming up throughout the week. There really wasn't a lot of overeating, emotional eating There weren't any binges.
[00:07:51] And so she was confused, scared, frustrated that she had been able to lose weight pretty easily the first two months. And then things seemed to kind of plateau for a little bit.
[00:08:02] And through the coaching, she stayed with it. And on week four, the scale dropped six pounds.
[00:08:09] Now, in those weeks where the scale wasn't moving, one of the things that we looked at and that we were tracking were her habits. And what was she doing? Was it actually in line? Was she doing and following through as much as she thought she was? Because we actually need data. We need to be able to track this to know otherwise, our brains just want to say, I'm doing all the things and it's not working.
[00:08:29] But unless you have actual data, where you have been looking at, have I been overeating at any of these meals? Have I ever, throughout the day, been eating when I'm not hungry? And the way that you track that, the one of the best gauges is to ask yourself, would I be willing to bet $10,000 on this if there was a gauge in your stomach? And if I were to ask you yesterday, did you overeat? And if you were wrong, you owed me ten grand, right? If there's a big amount of money on the line, if there is a big potential that you would have to pay that money if you were wrong, Right. It's. Oh, let me tune in, let me get a little bit clearer. But usually what happens is we just kind of have thoughts of like, I'm doing all the things now, it's not working, something's gone wrong. And sometimes nothing has gone wrong. Our bodies are just in a place of stabilizing, of creating safety to keep releasing more weight. But what was happening was her body composition was changing and she was fitting into smaller clothes and she was losing dress sizes even though the scale was staying the same.
[00:09:31] Because the scale is only one benchmark.
[00:09:34] And this is why it's so important that we are also tracking non scale victories that you are tracking successfully, not overeating, successful urges, where you're saying no from a place of self love, where you're tracking the times when you start to overeat and then you catch yourself and you say no.
[00:09:51] When you have three bites of that ice cream and then you put the rest in the freezer and save for later.
[00:09:56] We want to be tracking all of the positive, all of the wins, all of the progress, all of the success, and not make it hinge so much on the scale.
[00:10:06] This is the power of tracking and evaluating. We are not Tracking to beat ourselves up. I think that's the other thing is like, I was so resistant to tracking, to planning and then tracking and writing down what I ate because so often in my brain it was always too much. I could never stick with that 1200 calorie diet that I was given and exercise one or two times a day. And it felt like even though I was trying to eat healthy and make healthy choices, I just felt like I was constantly overeating, but I was also hungry. So I was like, I'm screwed. What do I do? And this is why I don't have you track calories. It's why I don't have you track macros. Because we are going to listen to your body and what your body needs.
[00:10:45] And I'm gonna help give you tools to tune into that to make that easier.
[00:10:50] But we have to be able to look at it. We have to be able to see it, to track it and to recognize this. And I will also share. When I first started this, I would plan 100% of the time. Like, I was really good at planning. And then the first month I think I was on plan, I actually followed my plan 40% of the time.
[00:11:08] That was it, 40%. I followed it, I had the plan. But either I wasn't looking at it, I forgot about it, or I just plain out didn't want to is really what it came down to.
[00:11:19] And that's okay. That was the starting point. From there, the goal becomes, can I get to 50% on plan? How can I plan better to make it more realistic and more accurate for what I'm actually going to be eating? It's twofold. It's not just how do I stick better to this plan. It's is my plan.
[00:11:36] Does it feel good and fun and realistic and doable for where I'm at? We gotta address both.
[00:11:42] And one of the things that I always will remind clients is just signing up to work with me doesn't mean that you magically stop overeating or you stop binging, you stop emotionally eating.
[00:11:52] One of the things that I work really hard to do is I am gonna share and be vulnerable first. I'm gonna go first and lead the way and create a space where it's now safe for you to share.
[00:12:02] Where there is no shame, there is no judgment. You can tell me about the binge the other week, you can tell me about the overeat last night, because I'm going to walk with you and I'm going to teach you what it looks like to love Yourself through it, to evaluate, to learn from it, to figure out what to do differently next time.
[00:12:21] We have to create safety to lose weight. There's a physical safety aspect just as much as a mental and emotional safety aspect from physical safety. It means that you are no longer punishing yourself with extra exercise or different exercise harder exercise or by taking away food.
[00:12:42] We are no longer just going to exercise more and eat less, exercise more and keto harder. We've got to stop trying that. That does not work. You've got a lot of evidence as to how it does not work for you. We've got to listen to it. By no longer punishing yourself, that's going to create some physical safety that's part of self love. I am not going to punish myself in this way anymore.
[00:13:05] And then you also can create the mental and emotional safety with how you think and talk to yourself.
[00:13:12] The mental and emotional side of loving yourself. Even when you're showing up imperfectly, even when the scale's not moving as fast as you want it to, it's being able to get back on track faster.
[00:13:24] It's not beating yourself up, it's learning from that overeat or emotional eat. And this is the value of a coach and having a coach and a community and someone that can guide you and direct you. As you are learning to do this, as you're navigating different challenges, as you're learning how to evaluate, as you're learning to decode and do something different, as you're learning how to break out a survival mode, as you're learning how to really understand the message underneath the emotional eating and to shift out of that habit brain default response of food and alcohol will make me feel better. And to tune into what it is that you truly desire to really create new long term habits that last, that don't just fall by the wayside when the holidays come around, or when life gets busy or hectic, or when one thing goes wrong in your day and you say screw it, I'll try harder tomorrow. But it's only 9am right? Like we've all been there and I'm going to teach you a different way.
[00:14:27] This is what I do with private coaching clients and it's also what I can help you do in the Body youy Crave Accelerator. In this small group program designed for 12 women to help you truly break free from emotional eating, binge eating and the narcy voices inside your own head.
[00:14:46] We are not just divorcing a person. We are not just leaving a toxic work environment. I'm going to help you leave and divorce the toxic patterns that have kept you stuck and held you back for decades. And it's going to set you up for so much success because again, this is what we do in so many areas of life.
[00:15:04] So what would it look like for you to love yourself more even when you're failing? What does that look like? What would it look like for you to love yourself more through a setback, through a missed expectation?
[00:15:19] What are you doing? How are you thinking? What are you thinking about yourself? How are you feeling? And this doesn't mean that we have to not feel disappointed or we have to avoid feeling frustrated. Notice what's coming up and we can allow it. We can allow the negative emotions, but we are now very strongly not turning that inward. We don't let that anger go inward, the frustration go inward. We stop it there. We notice. Okay, I'm feeling frustrated.
[00:15:46] Here's what's really going on.
[00:15:47] Because typically what happens is we have a fear. We have a fear that maybe I'm not gonna hit my goal.
[00:15:53] Maybe this is as much weight as I could possibly lose. Maybe I'm just bigger boned or have a bigger body. Maybe I'll never be the size or weight that I want. Maybe it's just not in the cards. It taps into that self doubt which is one of the core narcissistic wounds that we have to heal.
[00:16:09] But this is what I'm gonna help you do, is to heal those core wounds, to heal that childhood trauma, because it is impacting every single area of your life.
[00:16:19] So your next best step, you've got a couple options. Number one, schedule a free consultation and let's chat. Let's talk about what it would look like to work together and to have me in your corner coaching you and helping you to lose weight, to end emotional eating, to stop binge eating forever, to never ever, once again, binge eat. Imagine that. Imagine how freeing and life changing that result would be for you.
[00:16:43] What it would be like to actually date healthy men or healthy women. What it would look like if you had all healthy relationships. That feels mind blowing sometimes.
[00:16:54] And this is possible for you. So schedule your free call. Don't forget about our listener challenge that's happening right now. What was the aha moment? What can you take and implement? Show me on Instagram or on Facebook. Take a picture or write out a couple notes. Tell me, what would that look like? Maybe it's a video of yourself. But answer this question. What does it look like for you to love yourself? More when you fail to love yourself more when you don't meet your own expectations.
[00:17:22] Share that. Let's talk about that. Let's build a community of men and women around this concept who are willing to love ourselves more when we don't get it right instead of throwing ourselves under the bus, punishing ourselves by taking away food and adding on extra exercise. And let's start to do it differently.
[00:17:41] Let's start a movement.
[00:17:43] Let's break the diet industry wide open and start to challenge all of the rules that we thought we needed to do and start to do it our own way. Come and join me on Instagram or Facebook. Share your wins, your ahas, your successes with me. I would love to see that. I would love to hear.
[00:18:01] Because this is what it's all about. It's about creating a life that you absolutely love.
[00:18:06] A life where you feel so free and so lit up and on fire.
[00:18:10] And it's possible for you too.
[00:18:12] All right, y' all have a great weekend. I will see you next week.
[00:18:17] Here's to creating the life and body you crave.
[00:18:25] If this episode resonated with you, it's time to break free. Free from destructive cycles around food, alcohol and toxic relationships. Your next step?
[00:18:34] 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.
[00:18:45] 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.
[00:18:59] It's time to break the cycle. I'll show you how.
