Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: 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.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: Y' all ready?
[00:00:19] Speaker A: Let's go.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: Hey. Hey. Welcome back to the Hungry for Love podcast. Today we are going to dive into cravings, urges and willpower. Oh, my.
So this is one of the topics that often comes up for our prospective clients with general people that I meet at the gym or at the grocery store as well as with clients, is how do I actually handle the cravings, the urges, the desire to eat when I'm not hungry or when I told myself I was going to stop at satisfied, or it's after lunch or it's after dinner, and I just always find myself gravitating towards something sweet whether I'm hungry or not. It might be that you have told yourself you're not going to drink that night, and then here you are pouring yourself a second glass of wine. This is not a moral failing. It's not about willpower. It's not about just try harder. It's not that something's wrong with you. This really is. It's a pattern. It's a cycle. And I want to help you understand that because when we can truly see that this is a pattern, this is a cycle. And it is a cycle that we learned. It's a habit that we learned, which means it's a habit we can unlearn, but we need to solve it appropriately. And we keep trying to solve these issues with food. We keep trying to just take away the food, take away the alcohol, just say no, just have it in maybe pre portions or prepackaged boxes or containers. And while that can be helpful, that is a strategy after you have learned to really decode and untangle the craving and the urge as a whole. It works, but not in the beginning. You first have to understand what the message is that it's trying to tell you. Because just like with emotional eating or binge eating as a whole, cravings and urges are going to give you information. It's going to tell you something that you don't already know. It's trying to communicate with you. And so it's like the check engine light of your car. The light is not the problem. It's indicating that something under the hood is off or something with the tire pressure is off. It's there to tell you that something gone wrong. That is what a craving or an Urge is. It's there to show you. It's there to indicate that something is off with you emotionally or sometimes psychologically. Like, sometimes our mental and emotional capacity or ability to be there is just we don't have it. And so this is what we really want to understand is what is this cycle? Because so often we feel like it's just this stain on our humanity. We feel like it's a character flaw. It's a problem with me. I'm the issue. And it has us feeling really powerless in the moment. And it can be really frustrating, too, because it's like we go through the same cycles, whether it's a daily thing or a weekly thing. I know for me, I noticed that I was overeating every day at lunch. And then I would snack all throughout the day. So it was like, not only was I overeating, but then I would eat something sweet, or I would want dessert, or I would want to keep going and keep eating something else, even after I already recognized I'm not hungry. And I could only realize it looking backwards. I don't think I ever caught myself in the moment of it, but it almost felt like this insatiable urge, this pull. It wasn't something that I felt like I could control, that I could easily say no to. And trying to say no really felt like it would take a lot of willpower, a lot of resistance, and it would just suck. It would be very dreadful. It'd be terrible. And in the grand scheme of things, right, like, not having dessert after lunch is not that big of a deal. But in the moment, I had to look at what was the dessert doing for me? How was it distracting me? How was it helping me to numb out or avoid or what was it there to do for me? When we can really understand that, that's when we have power over it. That's when we can better understand what's happening. And so awareness is important. Awareness is a necessary step of this. But we need awareness for the pattern and the cycle and why it's coming up. We need awareness as to what is the message that it's trying to communicate. We don't just need awareness that it's happening. We already have that. We already recognize I'm overeating, I'm emotionally eating, or I'm binge eating. I'm already eating against my will. I'm already drinking when I said I wasn't going to. There's awareness, but it's not typically in the moment, and we don't know how to stop it. And we don't know why it's there. There's so many missing pieces and missing links and that's what we want. So awareness is a big part of this. But the piece of what are we gaining awareness around? That is often what we're struggling with. That's what we're lacking. It really comes down to having a way to regulate your emotions, regulate your nervous system and understand the difference between both. Because the craving cycle is not just, oh, I see food and now I want it. Usually there is some kind of trigger that has us wanting it, but it is not just a conscious thought. Often it is an unconscious thought. What happens is often, often our nervous system gets activated in some manner, whether it's an email, you hit traffic, the kids are screaming, the dog's puked on the carpet. There's something that now has triggered and activated your nervous system that now has taken your brain out of the prefrontal cortex and feeling in control, and it is now flipped it back to your habit brain.
So now we are operating on autopilot. Out of habit, out of what feels good, it wants to seek pleasure, avoid pain, path of least resistance. That's where we've gone and we've gone to what's the easiest, what's familiar, what do we know, what feels safest, even when that doesn't help you to meet your goals, even when that goes against you meeting your goals. And so this is often the problem is we keep trying to tell ourselves we'll do something new in the moment. However, our thinking brain is now offline. It has been completely hijacked by the habit brain. What we need to do is create strategies and have a system to regulate and to soothe your nervous system so that its heightened fight or flight sense can decrease and it can come down and it allows you a chance to activate and get back into the thinking brain where things are not just happening on autopilot, they're not just happening on default. It's not a problem that your nervous system gets hijacked when your ex sends you a rude email or text, right? That's going to happen at times or when your in laws or your mother or your father or whatever it is. The issue is not that it's knowing how do we combat that and how do we recognize how that leads us to eating. And this idea of, oh, my nervous system can be hijacked and I can be in this fight or flight state and I just, I'll tell myself not to eat, I'll tell myself not to turn to food, but that's how your brain knows how to feel better.
Food and sometimes alcohol creates that rapid, reliable, effective sense of relief. So even when we don't need the food physically, even when it wasn't on our radar whatsoever, it's like in the moment. That's how your brain knows how to feel better. Great example of this was the other night. Told myself wasn't going to drink and then I was over by the fridge and I don't remember if I was putting food away or what I was doing but there was just this little thought of you should pour a drink, right? Oh, you should have a glass of wine. Oh, wine will make this better. You should have something that tastes good. But it's like a little subtle nudge of this will make you feel better. This will help this moment. And sometimes I think it's we're bored, sometimes we're looking for distraction, sometimes we're procrastinating. But sometimes it's that we are so used to being in, in this high dopamine state that anytime we're not in this high cortisol, high dopamine point, our brain is looking for that. And coming out of abusive and traumatic relationships and dynamics, our nervous system is used to that. It's used to being overrun, it's used to being hijacked, it's used to being at this very high level. And it's fascinating now when you get out of those dynamics and you can consciously choose not to be in them, whether you've left the marriage, you've left a family member or somebody who is particularly dysregulating for you, when you can go no contact or very low contact, now you create some of those boundaries. It's amazing to see how our nervous system can re regulate and how it can easily get triggered back there or how even like a show can trigger it. And I remember watching a show a few weeks ago and thinking this is completely dysregulating. This is very drama filled. I feel like I can't control the situation. I don't like it.
Like I don't want it. I don't. It was very interesting to notice how I have come a long way in terms of not just not reaching for food, but how to also self soothe to regulate my emotions and to learn how to meet my own emotional needs. Because at the end of the day this is just a codependent relationship with food or with alcohol. We are looking for something to meet our emotional needs and that's what we did in toxic relationships and in these dysfunctional dynamics. We are looking for someone else to meet our emotional needs. That is the core of codependency. I'll talk about that more in a future episode. But that's what we want to understand is a lot of times the craving, the urge, the in the moment, the eating and drinking against our will, that is actually at the core, it's like we want to feel better. And that is how your brain has learned to solve that problem. Our habit brain. Anyways, this is why it is important that we understand it as a cycle, as a habit, as a pattern, not just a one off thing or a lack of willpower or you need to try harder. It's learned, it's protective.
And really what we want to do is interrupt it. So we need to be able to see it, we need to understand it, and we want to learn how to interrupt the pattern and interrupt it sooner. This is where we want to bring our conscious brain back online faster and faster. And that's the goal. So anytime I'm working with a client and I'm walking them through this process, I always tell them it's not a problem if you still continue to emotionally eat. Overeat, binge, eat, that's not the issue. Our goal right now is to learn to catch it so sooner and sooner in the process so that it's not just the next day that you're thinking about it. We catch it right after it's ended. Right after that maybe the binge has ended, then we're going to start to catch it in the midst of the binge, maybe it's even towards the end, but you have caught it before going all the way through. Then you'll start to catch it as you start to eat. Maybe you've ordered food and you're not really hungry, or you've gone through the drive through, or you've hit up a convenience store, or you notice like you start to eat, you take a bite or two and then you realize, oh, I'm not hungry, I'm emotionally eating, or I can feel this bingy feeling, come on. We bring in that conscious awareness and it's through doing this process and by working through it over and over again and that repetitive way, this is how we learn from it. We drop the shame, we drop the resistance, we drop all of the self loathing, self judgment and we really tap into curiosity. So this is when we get to be the detective, we get to be curious about what is actually happening, what is really going on. We don't need to be upset by the information or the Data that we find.
We simply want to look for what's happening. And we're going to start by taking guesses. Sometimes in the moments, we're not going to have all of the information, all of the details. But I promise you, the more that you do this, the more accurate information you're going to have, the more accurate thoughts and emotions you're going to be able to tap into. And what's also really cool is that just by asking yourself a new question or a different question, it allows your subconscious brain to start working. So even if you don't have an answer in the moment, you will have it the next day or a couple days later. And I have so many examples of clients who have messaged me or called me or texted or said something of, oh, my gosh, it just hit me. You asked me a question three days ago, and I realized as I was driving home from work, this is the answer. This is actually what's going on.
Sometimes our brain just needs a little bit of time in a relaxed state where it feels safe to actually come up with the answer.
And that's part of what I'm here to do, is help you to find that. Sometimes it's giving you space and giving your brain space to process. Sometimes it's simply me asking you better questions, productive questions, helping you to get to the root of what's really going on.
So the process of understanding a craving cycle and to help you really work through it and to be able to conquer that, we have to decode the urge, untangle the pattern, so that you can respond differently. We're going to start by decoding. We want to understand what is the urge doing for you?
What is that craving doing for you? Number two, we untangle. So now we want to separate the present from future fear or anxiety, and also from past patterns, past habits, what's happened in the past. We want to get really clear on whose voice is actually speaking, because we have a lot of thoughts that run under the surface, and sometimes they started as somebody else's thoughts, and now we have adopted it, we have picked it up. So now we can bring some awareness and some consciousness habit to that, because we have. I've heard anywhere from 50,000 to 60,000 thoughts a day. Most of those are not conscious, right? Most of them we are completely oblivious to. So we want to make the subconscious conscious. Until we do that, the unconscious thoughts will keep directing your life and you'll call it fate. That's how it works. We're just going to feel stuck and helpless and like, this is just what it is, but this is so that you can respond differently. But you can't respond differently until we have an understanding of what's happening and why it's there. Until we can really decode and unwind and untangle everything that's happening. Because it is thoughts and it's emotions and it's trauma responses. It's a variety of things. A lot of times it's what's happening in the moment that day. It's also, though, what's happening that month, what's happening that year, where you are in your healing and awakening journey. There are so many different aspects that come into play here. And this can become a big ball of yarn that's all knotted and tied up.
And we start by gently pulling, gently exploring what comes through.
That's what we want.
No shame, no judgment, just curiosity and compassion and an openness to try something different.
This is what I've done for myself. It's what I do for clients all the time on all of our calls. That's exactly what coaching is here for, is to help you understand where you can get in your own way, how to handle the cravings, the urges, the emotional eating, the bingy feeling that comes up. How do we do it differently?
Because it's not about just going cold turkey and like, oh, I hired Jillian and never will I ever binge again. It's about learning how to binge better until you get to the point where you do stop binging. But it's likely not going to be overnight and we don't need to make that a problem.
It's letting that be okay, so I'm offering free one on one calls to conquer the craving cycle, where I'm going to help you do exactly that, to decode the urge, untangle the pattern so that you can respond differently. We're going to focus on one specific urge or craving. So you'll come to the call with one thing, one aspect that we're going to work on. And together I'm going to help you decode it and explore how to respond differently. And if there are multiple pieces, I'm going to tell you, here are the first one to two steps so that you don't feel overwhelmed, so that our brain isn't spinning and like, oh, I have all of this work to do. It's a very practical, here's how I soothe, here's how I regulate, here's how I better understand what's happening and what my brain is really reaching for or what my nervous system really wants. How do I meet my own emotional needs now? Instead of turning to food, that's a huge part of this, this call is for you. If you are highly aware, but you still feel stuck about certain moments you recognize. I keep overeating, I keep over drinking. I tell myself I'm not gonna eat or I'm not gonna drink or no dessert. And yet I find myself doing it anyways. So there's awareness about the problem and a specific situation. And if you're tired of cycling through the I know better, I should know this by now, why did I do that? Again, if you find yourself trying to just do better or just say no and you find that's not working, this is great because that tells me that there's more to it than you realize. There's more to it than most people out there realize, than most dietitians and nutritionists and weight loss gurus or whoever we're getting advice from. Right? There's more out there to it. So if you want to stop feeling powerless around food and alcohol and you're curious about how to create more self love, more compassion, and really an effective approach to this, this is what you're going to get. We don't have to change everything. This isn't about overhauling your entire life. This is really about addressing one moment, one specific thing, and you're going to walk away with clarity about why that specific urge shows up. You're going to have language to make sense of it. Instead of just blaming yourself and feeling like a loser, you're going to have one to two concrete steps to take to do differently next time.
And you are going to walk away with so much more self trust because you have awareness and understanding for now, the whole cycle and the bigger picture as to what is truly happening and how to change these patterns for good. I've opened up my calendar for February in particular. There's a couple of days each week where I've got some call times set aside where you can book a free call with me. And that's what we're going to dive into, is how to make this real, how to make this tangible, how to really address and see what is actually happening. Because nothing is going to change overnight. But continuing to keep doing the same thing over and over again, keep trying to fight and willpower and resist and just say no, like that's not working. And I want to show you that there's a better way. And one of the things that I believe is seeing is believing. A lot of times it's hard for us to truly trust when we can't see it for ourselves or we have so much evidence as to how we can't do something or how we struggle with it. Aspect we just can get hopeless and helpless and I want to help you to take that power back, to really feel empowered that you can not only create a healthy relationship with food, but that you can truly transform your entire life. And it's going to start one step at a time. We build that self trust one piece at a time. The link to Book A Call is going to be in the description of this video or this podcast, wherever you're listening, slash watching it. And you can find a day and time on my calendar that works for you. And then we'll meet on Zoom and we'll walk through it. I'm going to ask you a variety of questions and I guarantee I'm going to ask you some things that you have never thought of and I'm going to put together pieces and some things that you likely have not put together just yet. It'll be well worth your time and you are going to really feel so encouraged to go again. And I think that's the power of this. And really any proper useful evaluation is that you're excited to go again. You are excited for the urge to come up. You're excited for the craving to come up because you know you have something different. You know how to learn from it. You have a deeper sense of what's actually happening and how to solve it. If it is loneliness, for example, and loneliness or the fear of loneliness is triggering you to eat at night. Now not only are we going to address how do I say no to the food in the moment from a place of self love, but it's also how do I allow myself the capacity to feel loneliness? What does it actually feel like in my body? Have I made it safe to feel any emotion as long as it takes? Because a lot of times it's coming back to some of these simple basic steps. That's what creates the foundation and when we can solve this, when you're no longer eating against your will, when you're no longer pouring that second glass of wine when you said you weren't going to drink, when two cookies can just be two cookies instead of turning into six or eight. This is when weight loss becomes easy. This is when you can lose weight while eating the food you love, drinking the things you love while not stressing about vacation or travel or holidays or date nights or nights out with the girls. You don't have to worry about these things in life. You can truly live your life and live the life that you crave without sacrificing the body, without feeling like a total loser, without feeling all the shame or being completely obsessed in your thoughts about what you can and can't eat and how hard you're going to have to work out the next day and just shame and judge yourself to no end. Because I've been there and it sucks. I was at war with food and my body for so long and it was a miserable place to be. It was so exhausting, so overwhelming and. And there's so much peace, there is so much freedom on the other end. But this is where it's like we've left the toxic relationships. We've left the dysfunctional and abusive people in our life and now we have to look at where am I being abusive to myself? Where is the toxic relationship with food or my body? What is that pattern that is now within me and am I willing to change it? Am I ready to change it? Readiness is a decision. I'm talking about that in another episode because we are not always going to feel ready, but we're going to choose to go anyways because this will likely be out of your comfort zone simply because it's new, because you haven't done it before. We're not going to make that a problem. This is how we build self trust. This is how we bring it into the comfort zone. It's how we make it a new habit is by starting and deciding to be ready now and to go for it. All right, that's it for now. I hope you'll have a fabulous weekend and I will talk to you next time. Here's to creating the life and body you crave.
[00:20:40] Speaker A: 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.
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.bodyucrave.com BTC.
It's time to break the cycle. I'll show you how.
