218. Why Can't I Control Myself Around Food at 8pm?

[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. And welcome to this next episode where we dive into. Welcome. One of the common problems that I see and I help clients solve, which is why can't I control myself around food at 8 o' clock at night? Because this is a common theme and I would say there could be a variety of answers, but I'm going to walk you through a process of how to start to decode and understand what's actually happening under the surface, how I approach this, and then give you one example of what this might look like for you. And just some things to think about and to play with because there's actually a lot of nuance that can go into this. Even with this one example. It's like here's the starting point and then here are four or five different other aspects that play into it. [00:01:10] So I'm going to walk you through part of what I taught at the conference a couple weeks ago. And the first thing that we need to start with and understand is how the coaching model works, which is that there are circumstances in life and we have thoughts that drive our emotions, that drive our actions, and then actions that drive our results. [00:01:28] And so circumstances are always just, they're fact, they're neutral, but we have stories about them. So we have thoughts about that circumstance that triggers this domino effect. And so this is why a lot of times, if we want to create a certain result, we're often looking at just tell me what to do, tell me what to put in the action line, tell me what foods to eat and how to exercise and how much water to drink. And right. We get really good at focusing on what am I supposed to do? [00:01:54] And we aren't always as in tune and even aware of what are the thoughts and the emotions driving that action. Whether it's an action that you want to be taking and it's intentional or really decoding and understanding the thoughts and the emotions driving the action that you don't want to be taking. [00:02:12] So if we look at 8pm eating, I am going to just assume that you are not hungry, you've already had dinner, you're not physically hungry, There might be emotional hunger, there might be other emotional cravings, emotional desire. Right. And that's usually what we're looking for. The food to do. And so when we understand this is how it's working, I think of it as a domino. We can also think about it as a cycle. And so I drew out the emotional eating cycle, which I know I've done in various other videos before. But essentially what's happening is you're going about your day and then typically there's a trigger. And that trigger is either going to trigger an emotion or it's going to trigger your nervous system. [00:02:53] And then as a way to reregulate or to avoid a negative emotion, we can turn to food or alcohol. And it's a way to escape or avoid or numb out. Right. But essentially we're looking to distract ourselves. We're looking to either avoid that negative emotion or sometimes it's just re regulate so that we can feel better. [00:03:14] We do this often enough where we turn to food or return to alcohol. We've associated food with now I feel better. And now it becomes food makes me feel better, Food makes me feel relaxed, Wine helps me to unwind, Alcohol helps me to feel more relaxed in social situations. It's just this habit and this cycle that we've developed where it's like we've made this mean something else. And essentially what we're trying to do is we're just trying to either create a positive emotion like feeling relief, relaxed, feeling calm, feeling safe, feeling secure. Sometimes we might even try be trying to avoid boredom or escape boredom. So it's almost like just a little hit of dopamine. It doesn't have to be this big negative thing that we're trying to avoid. There can be these deeper patterns and deeper wounds that are getting triggered. Things like, I'm not enough, I should be further along. What am I doing with my life? Why isn't my husband nicer to me? Some of these themes can be like driving our nighttime eating habit. Well, it can also be as simple as I'm looking to food to be the highlight of my day. Food is creating my joy and my pleasure. And that was a big thing. That was a big question that I wrote on the board was is food the highlight of your day? Because if you are telling yourself no all throughout the day and now food is something you can finally say yes to, or alcohol is something you can finally say yes to. It's something you can finally give yourself, now it's going to be really hard to take that away because we're taking away a primary source of joy, comfort, pleasure, relief, relaxation. [00:04:48] We're taking away a coping mechanism and maybe the key way or the primary way that we know how to feel better, we're taking away the key way that we know how to relax. [00:04:59] And so we can do this on purpose. We can take away the food, we can take away the alcohol. We can do that on purpose to trigger these cycles so that we can get clearer on them, so that we understand and we know this is why this is what's happening. [00:05:14] Let's say you wanted to take a break from sugar for a week, right? Look at what is the urge, what's the desire, what's the craving telling you, right? We can activate it and really intentionally use this to trigger this so that we can get clear on what's happening. But in the long run, we can't just take away a coping mechanism and expect ourselves to just be fine and to keep going about our day without replacing that coping mechanism or finding better ways to cope without actually handling the root thoughts, beliefs, emotions, nervous system patterns underneath it. [00:05:48] And so what we want to do is get really clear on the pattern of what is actually happening before, during and after you're reaching for food. That way we can start to decode the pattern so we can look at what or how were you feeling when you were reaching for food, Were you hungry? [00:06:04] If you were avoiding an emotion, what might it have been? Or if you were seeking to create a positive emotion, what might it have been? Right? And just get curious. Just start brainstorming. There's no wrong answer. There's no one set right answer. This is not about being perfect. This isn't about getting it right on the first try. This is about letting yourself explore and get curious. [00:06:25] But we have to be able to look at it. I'd say that's the biggest thing here with any type of 8pm overeating, emotional eating, binge eating that's happening. [00:06:32] We have to come at it with so much love and so much compassion and we're just getting curious as to what's happening. No shame, not throwing yourself under the bus, not beating yourself up, because that's so often why we have a hard time doing this. This is why we struggle to evaluate. It's why we struggle to learn from these patterns. And we tell ourselves, I'm just gonna try harder. And we fall back into this restrict binge regret cycle. But that's all we know how to do because we aren't actually evaluating and learning from it. [00:07:00] But the only way we can learn is if we decide, no shame, no judgment, no matter how long you've been doing this. It's things can change now. Things are going to start changing now. And it doesn't mean that automatically you stop eating, you stop the desire, you stop the craving. It means that you are going to be more intentional with what's happening and evaluating it. Because a lot of times our emotional eating or overeating, the that's done on autopilot. And so typically what happens is we're doing this work after we've already eaten. That's okay. That's actually really still a really great sign. It's not that we need to prevent the emotional eating altogether. It's not that we stop automatically. It's that we learn how to evaluate it, we learn from it, and then we get better and better at catching it and changing the habit sooner. But that's usually over the course of weeks and if not months, that we're learning how to do this. [00:07:56] And I'm actually doing a TikTok series on confessions of dating a sociopath. And it has been really fun. And one of the things I'm talking about is love bombing. And that is such a great example of again, it's not that we are never love bombed or that we notice it right away on the first time it happens. The goal is that we just get better at catching it sooner. [00:08:20] That when we have this little inkling of, oh, I think this might be love bombing, we actually listen to it. Because people who are not love bombed are not questioning, is this love bombing? Right. Just like people who are not depressed are wondering, I, am I depressed? There are these patterns and these habits where it's like, if you're asking the question, it's likely true. [00:08:42] And again, we don't have to make that the problem. But with love bombing, you can notice it and you can recognize it, but it feels so good, it's meeting this need. So just like you can be eating food and you can be recognizing, I'm not hungry, I'm seeking a sense of relief and pleasure. And I'm seeking that primarily from food because I don't love this life that I've created for myself, or I'm feeling bored, or I'm feeling anxious, or I'm feeling burnt out, or I'm feeling whatever it is, right? And now we're using food to feel better. [00:09:11] That becomes the issue. And so rather than take away the food, we have to figure out, how do I create a life that I don't need an escape from? How do I create the life that I crave without abandoning myself in order to create it? [00:09:25] That becomes the deeper work. [00:09:27] So I had a participant at the conference and we walked through what was actually happening, what were some of the thoughts. And I call these excuses and justifications or permission giving thoughts to eat. Right. And so one of the key things that came out for her was I deserve it, and this is how I feel better. And that the I deserve it piece, that one I thought was really interesting because it's very common. And so her nighttime eating was driven by this view of I deserve it because look how busy I am, look how hard I'm working, look at all that I'm doing, look how I'm showing up. And she actually pulled out her planner. She showed me she had something going on nearly every single day of the month. Month. I think there were. There was one, maybe there were two days out of the whole month where there was nothing written on that day, but there was something going on every single day. And I think we can all relate to that. Of life is busy. We have aging parents and kids and exes and potentially dating and jobs or businesses, or we have all of these different holes and strains on our life and our time and our attention. [00:10:37] And so, yes, we are. We typically are very busy. [00:10:40] But she was using her busyness to then justify using food at the end of the day of I deserve it. And now she is justified in having a treat. She deserves her treat because of how busy she's been, how hard she's been working. Right. And so this isn't just a conversation around using food as a reward, because there's definitely a piece here. Yes, we can use food as a treat, food as a reward, Food as a thing that you earn somehow with what you do or how well behaved you are. Right. [00:11:13] And I lovingly told her, you are not a dog. You do not have to work for or earn your treats. You get to plan them and eat them intentionally. And because they are planned and because you're going to eat them intentionally, you're also probably going to eat a little bit less at dinner because, ooh, I got dessert coming. [00:11:31] So I'm going to make sure that I still have a little bit of room so that way I'm not overeating. And now I'm eating Eyes Wide open with permission. [00:11:41] Permission because the food is not bad or off limits. Permission because I don't have to feel guilty and moralize the food and then moralize myself based on what I'm eating. [00:11:50] And I don't have to treat myself like an animal that has to do tricks and do this dog and pony show in order to Earn her food in order to earn things that taste good. [00:12:02] So we can look at the very small inner picture of using food as a reward. And then we can also zoom out and really look at the bigger picture. Because food wasn't even the most interesting part of this whole conversation. We started looking at what it meant for her to stay so busy. Because for many of us, we learn somewhere along the way that we could create our safety, worth and belonging with performing. [00:12:29] If I perform right, if I do the right thing, now I'm safe, now I'm lovable, Now I stay a part of the clan, the tribe. I'm accepted. [00:12:38] Now I am worthy. And it's this level of being enough. [00:12:42] I am enough when I'm doing these things. And so sometimes it's now I can be like, I strive to be thin enough, pretty enough, smart enough, productive enough, doing enough. Right. I think there's like an overarching aspect here of just being enough. [00:13:00] But then we can fine tune it into some of these different aspects of how we're enough and what we have to do to earn our enoughness. [00:13:10] And what ends up happening is we end up wearing our busyness like a badge of honor. [00:13:16] Look at how productive I was. Look at all the things that I got done. Look at how amazing I am now. I am enough. [00:13:24] And now I have earned this treat. And I think this is where things, some programs like weight watchers can also have good intentions. But the, the impact is that it's like we, we learn if I work out, if I'm exercising now, I can earn more food, I can earn more points, I can earn my treats. And it keeps us striving and working and trying to basically outrun our nutrition. We try to outrun our emotional eating. And what ends up happening is if we didn't prep for it, it's. If I didn't earn it that day, now I end up punishing myself the next day. Now the next day I have to make up for it somehow. So I'm either restricting harder, I'm exercising more, I'm, I'm doing more. But it's also now to the extreme. [00:14:09] Yes, we can work on changing the way that we think about food and breaking how we use food as a reward or how often we get to have certain food moralizing food being good or bad. And there because typically with a quote, reward, right. It's something that we're not genuinely or generally going to accept and give ourselves every day. There's some scarcity to it. There's some restriction to it. But if we stop there, we're missing the bigger picture. Because sometimes the behaviors we're trying to change are actually coping mechanisms, and they've kept us safe for a very long time. A lot of times these are survival mechanisms, and they're what we learned as either young kids or young adults. And often what happens is we learn them as a young kid, and then we continue to build evidence as to how that's true and to how we stay safe. We stay lovable, we stay accepted, we stay a part of the community. [00:15:00] When we do these things, when we follow this manual, when we follow this set of invisible rules, and the question then becomes, are they working for you? [00:15:12] Are these rules actually working for you? Do you want to keep following them or do you want to create new rules? [00:15:18] We really have to look at and question like, yes, this made sense at one point. Thank goodness we had this as a survival mechanism. Thank goodness this was there to help us get through a tough time or a tough childhood or a difficult marriage. Thankfully, we had this and it served its purpose. But these may not be serving you anymore. These patterns, these beliefs, these habits may not be serving you now. And that's what we get to reevaluate again with a lot of love, compassion, and curiosity, not with shame. [00:15:50] And so if we look a little deeper here, we can look even further into this concept of time and busyness. Because I also think that sometimes we fill up our days so that we can avoid certain thoughts and emotions. [00:16:02] So if I can stay busy enough, I don't have time to feel. [00:16:06] And typically it's like I don't have time to feel lonely or anxious or afraid or uncertain, especially of the future. [00:16:16] Right? And so now it's like, now busyness isn't just a badge of honor, maybe it's that too. [00:16:22] And it can be a form of protection. [00:16:25] It's a way where we, our brain has learned, if I stay busy enough, if I keep her doing all the things, she doesn't have time to sit and think, she doesn't have time to feel. And I think that can often happen at that 8 o' clock hour where work is done, your day is done, dinner is done, maybe the cleaning, dishes, things are done, you're ready to relax and unwind, and now what are you left with? [00:16:49] Thoughts, emotions, Right? And so our brains do a really good job of distracting ourselves with other actions throughout the day. [00:17:01] But then come 8 o' clock at night, it can feel like an avalanche. And maybe it's not quite an avalanche. Maybe for some of you it does. Maybe it feels really big and all consuming, and maybe for some of you, it's just discomfort. [00:17:15] It's not actually that big. It's just you have learned that this emotion or this thought or these recurring repeating themes just feel so uncomfortable. Uncomfortable with your body and your nervous system and how it's responding, and uncomfortable with the emotion because of how you learn to behave, how you were trained around emotions, which if you grew up with an emotionally neglectful, unavailable, toxic, dysfunctional, abusive parent, if they fit any one of those buckets, then you likely grew up learning that you had to be on your best behavior. You could only have certain emotions at certain times. [00:17:51] You were not allowed to feel upset or stressed or angry unless they gave you permission or they told you you were allowed. It was like they got to dictate your emotions because they had to try to control your emotions and your responses to those emotions, how you expressed them, because their nervous system couldn't handle it otherwise. [00:18:12] Your emotions were triggering to them. [00:18:14] They didn't have the emotional capacity to do the work on themselves, so they had to try to control you. [00:18:21] So you learned it's not safe to feel this. [00:18:24] So even if it's something like disappointment, it may not even be like that high on the spectrum of negative emotions or like how bad they are, but we have this strong aversion to some of them. And it's like, nope, can't go there. Don't want to go there. [00:18:40] Instead of recognizing what, let's just say what one of those emotions was. So let's say it is disappointment, because that was one of mine. That I realized in my business early on was a very big stopping block for me. And it was very interesting to see how I would hold myself back for fear of being disappointed, but I would end up perpetuating the problem. I would only prove my negative thoughts and fears true. But I was like, wow, disappointed doesn't even seem like that bad of a thing. And really what I had to do was practice allowing myself to feel it, which meant that I needed to notice. Where was it showing up in my body? What was it doing to my nervous system? What were the sensations? What were the vibrations in my body? What was happening? Where was it located? Was it moving? Was it steady? And could I just allow myself to feel it for 30 seconds, for two minutes, maybe for five minutes, and notice what happens? What happens when I just allow myself to sit with that emotion? [00:19:41] This is how we start to peel back the layers. This is how we find the blind spots. Because this level of Self protection goes deep and it goes into a lot of habits. And when we can really start to understand what's underneath this, when we really start peeling back those layers, we can really look at what's underneath the behavior and ask, what is this pattern actually protecting me from? [00:20:05] Now we get into the really amazing, deep, profound work of coaching. We get into the heart of the matter. Do you see how we got there? How it's not just using food as a reward and we don't need to reward ourselves with food, but we have some deeper roots that are holding onto this pattern for a variety of other reasons and in many ways to protect ourselves. [00:20:29] There are other layers here too, right? We could look at productivity as currency and why do I feel like I have to produce or contribute or earn in order to prove that I deserve rest or support, love, care. [00:20:44] Why are we using productivity as currency and permission now to enjoy foods that you like and that you enjoy? [00:20:52] What if you stopped believing that you had to earn your keep because this is much bigger than just productivity and finishing your to do list? [00:21:00] What if you didn't need to justify your place in the family or in life through your labor and what you're doing for other people or what you're doing to contribute to the household? And I think another piece that comes in here is expecting ourselves to be a robot, especially when we look at things like time and productivity and how much we're doing. [00:21:21] Are you. Are you setting the standard of a robot? Are you comparing your capacity to somebody else's output? I do not have unlimited capacity. I cannot compare what I'm doing and how much I'm doing to somebody else. Because we have very different styles, different energy, different trauma, different triggers. We're in different stages of life, right? And we can run around and run through life wondering, like, what's wrong with me? [00:21:47] And it's really a matter of capacity versus your expectation and no longer holding yourself and comparing yourself with other people and feeling like you should be able to do this or your body should be responding the way that theirs is. [00:22:04] There's a lot of nuance that we can start to pull out and we can pick through. And I think there's also another level of suffering when we think of, I have to work hard, I have to grind it out, I have to be productive enough and be doing enough. There's also this level of I have to suffer enough to prove that I have earned something, to prove that I'm deserving of something. And sometimes it's suffering with a diet, sometimes I Think our views of dieting and weight loss often mean I'm gonna have to suffer. And I think that's why we can be so hesitant and averse to pursuing this as a goal at times. Sometimes it's just a season of life, but we're just like, ugh, I just wanna enjoy my life. I don't want to be worried about weight loss. I don't want to be having to say no to all my favorite foods and events and happy hours and traditions and holidays. We're like, no, I don't want to have to suffer. I want to enjoy my life. And that becomes the play, that becomes the nuances. Learning how to enjoy your life as you're in pursuit of a goal. What if you could have fun and achieve your goal? But it's interesting how so many of us learned somewhere along the way, most likely pretty early on, that effort or hard work was evidence of deserving. [00:23:21] We had to prove ourselves. We had to earn our worthiness. We had to justify ourselves. It was like we had to justify our existence. We didn't even ask to be born. And yet that's often what we had to do with a parent, a caregiver, within your family of origin. A lot of times that's where it starts. And the hard truth is that we recreate that then in romantic relationships, especially with marriage, we recreate this where we feel like we have to justify our existence, we have to earn our keep. We have to prove that somehow we are good enough and worthy of just existing and breathing the air. And so we're working hard, we're hustling, we're sacrificing, we're exhausted, we're producing, we're pushing through. [00:24:04] And then if you do all these things when now you're allowed to succeed. Now you're allowed to have somebody care for you, now you are allowed to receive love. [00:24:12] Now you are allowed for these things. But if you're laughing, traveling, doing a new hobby, reading a book at 2pm on a Tuesday, you're enjoying the pool, socializing, making new friends, there's a part of you that's like, excuse me, you are not working hard enough. [00:24:29] You do not earn the right to achieve your goal. Having fun like this. [00:24:34] Who do you think you are? [00:24:36] And sometimes these voices come from somebody else originally, right? I'd be very curious, as you're listening to me talk and share some of these thoughts and these beliefs and views, does this make you think of anybody in your life? Because we can look at where we learned these from, but it's no longer their voice in your head, now it's your voice. And now you get to decide, do I like this thought? Do I like this belief? Is this something I want to continue? [00:25:04] And so again, the goal is not about making these voices or these thoughts or these beliefs go away. Because for a lot of us, it is just the default mechanism. [00:25:13] It's recognizing when it comes in and we don't indulge it. It's noticing when it comes in and we redirect our brain on purpose. It's learning how to catch those thoughts, the common ones, and really start to argue against them and argue for yourself, argue for your goals, argue for why you can do something, argue for how you are so resilient. [00:25:34] It is really easy to get sucked into a negative thought and belief spiral. It's really easy to feel like nothing is working. I'm a failure. I'm a loser. I'm never gonna figure this out. And trust me, I can relate because there have been times where I have worked for years towards a goal. It's taken me years and years to create a goal. It can feel exhausting. And when we find ourselves in these places where we're struggling, this is where we have to recognize we may need a little pause and really a focus on what would feel fun, what would feel enjoyable. Right now. [00:26:12] That's not food, right? We're not going to make food responsible for our emotions anymore. We're not going to make food the highlight of our day, which means we actually have to go create some fun, adventure and pleasure in our life as a whole. These are the blind spots. This is what I'm talking about when I talk about blind spots, the layers where we start with food as a reward. We start with some of these surface layer topics or issues and things, and we start peeling them back and we see what's underneath and we can get to some deep stuff, deep patterns, deep views, deep beliefs. [00:26:48] And we always want to look at it and remind ourselves that your brain is always trying to protect you. [00:26:53] And so that was a common. I actually think that's how this whole conversation started was it came off of the question of how do you identify what is the pattern protecting you from? [00:27:04] And that is where having a coach, a counselor, a therapist, somebody outside of you who is trained can be so important and so helpful because not only can they help you to see what you can't see just because they're on the outside, but when you find a good coach and somebody that you really resonate with, they're going to be able to ask you those questions that you wouldn't have even thought to ask. [00:27:27] They're going to show you the perspectives that didn't even enter your mind. They're going to help you to shift your belief and show you that optimal angle of what is working and what is going right and all the progress that you're making, even if you haven't hit your end goal yet. And this is why I believe so much in coaching. It's why I have a coach myself. It's why I believe so much in these free blind spot coaching calls that I'm doing with people as well. Because I think so often we just need to be in the magic of the epiphany. We need to be living and experiencing the magic of coaching and having that aha moment, having that awareness and the epiphany and that breakthrough. That's ultimately what it is, finding the blind spots. Those are your breakthrough moments. [00:28:12] And you start putting those together piece by piece. You start to change the habits, you change the way you show up, you change these survival mechanisms, and you start to create lasting, healthy habits instead. [00:28:25] Because it's not just about consistency with your exercise or your food, we really need healthier emotional regulation and emotional management tools and understanding our nervous system and how that works. [00:28:37] Yes, let's start with habits and let's make sure that the habits are dialed in. But once they are, because I know I've talked with a lot of women who are already pretty solid with a lot of the habits, but they're still wrestling with some things. And typically there's just a couple of blind spots. [00:28:53] And when we can start to wiggle those loose, we can shift it. And we shift our perspective just 1% at a time. We trust that is good enough. That actually takes us in a completely different direction than where we were headed. [00:29:07] So if you would like some help in exploring your own blind spot and what that might look like for you, then I would love to chat. I'm going to put a link in the description if you'd like to book your very free blind spot coaching call. And we are going to spend 30 minutes together. So bring me one problem, one challenge, one thing, and we're going to dissect it. I'm going to help you to see the thing under the thing, right? The pattern that you can't always see because it feels so normal. It's just the default how you've learned to cope, how you've learned to survive, how your brain has learned to keep you safe, which means it's keeping you alive. [00:29:43] A lot of these patterns are so deeply ingrained. It doesn't mean that we'll never break them. It means it's just a part of who we are. It feels so natural. Of course we're not going to recognize it, but that's exactly the type of thing that we look at and that we address on these calls. And that's why we're going to pick one. [00:30:02] That's why we just start with one, so that we can get really deep in understanding all of the nuance of that one particular issue. [00:30:09] It's not just how do I stop doing this? How do I stop eating at 8pm? It's why am I needing the food at 8pm? [00:30:17] What emotional needs is this food meeting for me? That's where we can start. And from there you take it back and go back further. So if you'd like some help and you want somebody to walk you through so that you can experience a guided process of this, schedule a call. I'd love to chat. And in the next episode, we're going to talk about why one glass of wine isn't enough and how so often we can have the best of intentions at 8 o' clock of either I'm not going to drink or only one glass of wine and then one turns into three and what actually is happening. So stay tuned. We're going to keep this conversation around blind spots going all right y', all, here's to creating the life and body you crave. [00:31:03] 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. [00:31:23] 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 VTC. [00:31:38] It's time to break the cycle. I'll show you how.