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. All right, this week we are diving into what do you do when you know what to do, but you're just not doing it? And this is a very common problem. And so that's why I'm titling it knowing versus Doing. Because so often we can know what to do. We have the best of intentions, but there is a deeper reason as to why you struggle to get started. And it's really important that we take a look at this, because so often we beat ourselves up and we add so much shame on top of all of the other times where we haven't lost weight, where we regained the weight, where we're not following through, we're not eating the right foods. We just keep piling more shame and more judgment. And then we get so frustrated with ourselves. And I see this come out in two key areas.
[00:01:14] So the first is this thought of, I know what to do, but I'm not doing it. And I would consider this to be like a functional freeze. So when we think about trauma responses and our nervous system, typically what happens is when our nervous system gets activated and it remembers feeling this way in the past and something bad happens, there's a trauma response, and so our body responds. So maybe you feel a tightening in your stomach, your heart rate increases, your breathing speeds up, maybe your chest tightens. You have these different physical sensations based on what your nervous system is doing because it's trying to alert you to danger. So this is a very active part of our brain and body, and it's wired like this in a really healthy way. Right? Because if there is real, true danger, then we want to be able to run away, to be able to avoid it. And one of the challenges is really being able to identify what's a real danger versus what is the threat or the perception of danger. And a lot of times it's now our conscious brain, our thinking brain, trying to talk with the unconscious brain. And if you remember, I think this was a couple weeks ago, I talked about the two parts of our brain, and I was like, it's like they are speaking two different languages. One part is speaking Chinese, one part is speaking English. And it is really hard to get these two to sync and line up like they. They cannot have A conversation. They cannot communicate together. So when your trauma response is activated, it's now the subconscious, it's your habit brain, and it is designed to keep you safe and alive. That's it.
[00:02:51] And so I call this a functional freeze. Because it's okay, I have this idea, I know what I want to do, but I'm not doing it. We are basically frozen. And we might still be functioning. We might still be going to work, we might still be, you know, getting food. We will still be taking care of ourselves to some extent. We might be doing some things, some little things, but we're really stuck in actually truly getting started and building that momentum.
[00:03:16] So there's a freeze happening. Now, another aspect that is very similar to this is I tell myself I'm starting and I have this plan or this commitment to start, let's say, tomorrow. But then when I, quote, start my program, I start my diet, I eat even worse than before, right? And so this I think of as like a flight response of you're running the opposite way of your diet. You have all these good intentions, these thoughts of what we're going to do, and then the next day comes and now you're eating worse than when you were, quote, not on a diet, right? So again, we want to understand how our body and brain are responding and perceiving what is happening. Because in both of these situations, there is something unsafe about losing weight. And this is not going to make a lot of sense to your conscious brain because logically, consciously, we're like, I don't know, but I do want to lose weight. No, I do want to be a smaller size. I do want to weigh this much. I do want to have healthier habits. I do want to have better health conditions. I do want to get my A1C levels lower, right? It's like, logically, we do want to lose the weight, but there is something unsafe. And this is where we get to really dive in and understand what is truly at play. Because. And this is what no other diet is going to tell you. They're going to tell you to eat this, not that. And then anytime you can't do it and you can't stick with the diet or the program, all you feel is shame, self loathing, and judgment.
[00:04:45] And it's really hard to move forward from that. This is what we need to identify. And there are often, like, there's some common patterns here and even some clients who come to me. This is what we have to work on and work through. Not just once, but multiple times. We might spend One month or two months, just working on creating the safety where it's allowed to lose weight. Otherwise they won't start or they will keep self sabotaging. And again, self sabotage is self protection. And so we have to look at what is the downside of losing weight. And a common theme of losing weight is unwanted attention. Either unwanted or extra attention.
[00:05:26] And there can be a fear that especially if you're in a relationship and you now start getting extra attention from men outside of your marriage, now there's this threat or this fear of maybe I would like it, maybe it would feel really good, maybe I would be tempted to cheat, maybe I would want to leave my spouse who doesn't treat me well. And it's not just about the weight, right? Because when we start talking about marriage as well, marriage or divorce or affairs, now we're starting to get into some territory around physical safety, security, around emotional safety security, around your physical being of do you have a house and a vehicle? Do you have a job? Can you get where you need to go? There are key foundational aspects of living. There's like fundamental needs that we have and threats to marriage, the threat of divorce.
[00:06:25] Those will now shake often what's already a wobbly situation.
[00:06:31] And I worked with a client several years ago and this is exactly what she was going through. And as we were starting to talk through this and dig a little bit deeper as to why, why she felt like she like really understanding the patterns of emotional eating and self sabotage and what truly felt unsafe. Why was it not safe to be at a certain weight and to stay at that weight.
[00:06:55] And in her brain she remembered when she was thinner and thinner and when she was this quote, where she wants to be now, like the where she wanted to be was who she was previously.
[00:07:07] And she did get attention from outside men and she did like it, she did enjoy it. And at one point she did have an affair. And she also recognized that was not who she wanted to be. But because her marriage was in such disarray and it was so emotionally draining and depleting and quite frankly abusive, it was really hard for her to not want to give in to that side of things. It was like she was terrified of it and yet also craved it, wanted it.
[00:07:39] And so typically with this aspect of something is unsafe about losing weight, usually there's either someone or something will be harmed or there's the threat that someone or something could be harmed. And so it wasn't that like her marriage would end just because she lost weight. It was, and it was A double edged sword. This was really tricky because she also was thinking, I need to lose weight so that my husband finds me more attractive. I need to lose weight so that hopefully my spouse doesn't leave me or cheat on me. I need to lose weight to keep my marriage together. And yet also if I lose weight and I get, I will get attention from other men and I will likely enjoy it. And that is also now a threat. And you are damned if you do, damned if you don't. And it is a really tough place to be. And I've been in a, not the exact situation, but in some similar situations where it's like, it feels like it is a lose, there is no winning. And it is, it's a really, it's really difficult. And we are trying to reconcile the conscious brain with the unconscious.
[00:08:43] Okay, so for everybody, this is gonna look a little bit different. But I want to use this episode to give you a starting point and to really encourage you to really be mindful of the shame. Because we have so much shame and so much judgment and we feel like it seems simple enough, it seems easy enough, I should be able to do it. And we just keep heaping more and more shame and self doubt on top of ourselves. And we don't fully understand why we're not doing the things, why we're not showing up for ourselves, why we keep emotionally eating, why it really is not safe to lose the weight.
[00:09:21] And it's not gonna make sense. And this can be hard, right? Like thinking brain is not, it's not gonna make sense because this part that's trying to keep you alive, it's your habit brain. And it wants to keep you feeling good, safe, alive, steady. It wants to maintain the status quo at all costs, even if that means it goes against what your conscious goals are.
[00:09:47] So we want to really understand what is the downside of losing weight. And so for some people, it's, it is that attention piece, it's unwanted attention, it's extra attention.
[00:09:58] It's also then what that would lead to. So it might be when I lose the weight, when I'm a smaller size or shape. That's when like maybe in the past when you dated or married really toxic people and you find this pattern of when I was this size, then I attracted this terrible guy, when. And so we've created this in our brains. It's like our brain has made sense and put it together. My body meant I attracted this type of person. And while the body might have been part of it, the reality is it was who, your characteristics, it was your traits, it was your perfectionism, your people pleasing the way that they could likely gaslight you, make you feel shame and self judgment. It was the way that you would come in and fix things quickly.
[00:10:46] It was who you were as a person that kept them there. Your looks might have brought them in, but if you had the looks, if you had the body, but you had really strong boundaries and you didn't put up with any of their crap, they would have been gone. They would have been gone very quickly or you would have been gone and you would have left, you would have kicked them out.
[00:11:05] But it was who you were in this relationship and that's where we want to detach. Thinking that it was the body, the weight, your size or shape that brought in this toxic person. It wasn't that. It's who you were being on the inside. It's how you were trained and conditioned often as a kid.
[00:11:25] And that's how you showed up in this relationship. And so especially if you've had multiple relationships and multiple really toxic or bad ones or multiple that ended in divorce or in a really bad breakup, it makes a lot of sense now that your brain is like, we can't ever do that again, we can't ever go back there. And now it's going to take extra precautions. It's not going to trust you around dating, it's not going to trust you around men, it's not going to trust you around food, around your body and if there's any emotional eating habit to self soothe also maybe because you're not getting emotional needs met from a man and you're used to that now it becomes real easy to turn to food or alcohol to meet those needs. Because if we aren't meeting them for ourselves, if we don't know how, if we haven't learned, if we haven't practiced this, we will all be looking outside of ourselves to do that. And I don't say that to shame you. I say that because I have been there. Recognizing that, walking through the path of noticing like oh, I'm emotionally eating, working to heal that, then I'm emotionally, I think there's a little emotional drinking happening. Worked on that. Then also recognizing the emotional dating and like opening a dating app in order to get that hit of dopamine, in order to feel better about myself, in order for a man to tell me that I was pretty, that I was special, that I was wanted or desired. And there is deeper level work that we have to do to understand what emotional needs men meet for us. And we have to go to work at dismantling that and learning how to meet that for yourself. You have to de associate those emotional needs getting met by a man the same way we have to de associate you attracting that man and keeping him because of your body.
[00:13:08] It's not just the body. Body might have been part of it, like it may have been, but it was. But what really brought him in, what really kept him in long term were the traits that had you sacrificing yourself, constantly pleasing, constantly fixing, constantly going out of your way, who is easily shamed and gaslit.
[00:13:31] And these are the habits that we want to break. And this is why there is such an overlap for so many women around emotional eating and toxic relationships. This is why these two things are commingled together.
[00:13:47] And it's really easy to think that we just need to be like Sally, who can start Weight watchers and lose 20 pounds in two months and crush it. That's why we think we can be like Becky and we can get out there and we're doing paleo and keto and we're just, yeah, we're doing awesome. Or we can be like anybody, right? We can be like our neighbor, our sister, our friend, somebody, right? And usually we all have that one person they might be triggering and they can do it and they've got all the willpower in the world.
[00:14:19] But it also kind of makes you feel like crap about yourself and you're a little judgy towards them and you're really judgy towards yourself.
[00:14:28] And this is why knowing is different than doing. This is why I can give you information, but the implementation is what it's all about. I can't implement for you. And to be quite honest, you don't get any value out of me following you around and smacking cookies out of your hand. You get value out of me helping you identify why you want to pick up the cookie. You get value out of me encouraging you to understand and see the cycles. And then you being in control of whether you eat it or whether you don't, whether you put it back down.
[00:15:04] This is where you want to bring back your sense power and control. Not in a super negative way, but just in feeling in control around your habits, around your food, around following through on the promises that you make to yourself.
[00:15:20] And a lot of this is building your self trust.
[00:15:24] Part of building our self trust around food is. Is also parallel with building our self trust around men, around other people.
[00:15:34] I think it was really fascinating. I was doing a little processing and A little work, thinking through some different aspects of relationships and dating for me. And what like, what came out, what I realized was, oh, they're like, I don't trust men. There is a level of me and an aspect of me that's like, I don't trust, I don't trust him. And it's not that all men are bad or all men are to be shamed or that all masculinity is toxic and bad and evil. It's not. But I, I recognize like there is a part of me that feels like I have been deceived by many people.
[00:16:09] And there's a level of, oh, I don't trust you. And it's twofold, right? Because trust should also be earned. There's going to be a baseline of like moderate trust for somebody just as a stranger. But I'm not going to leave my purse open in the middle of, in a shopping cart in the middle of Target. Let's say like strangers there don't deserve that level of trust. With my credit cards and my banking info, my phone, my id, right. We still want to protect and be mindful about things and let people earn our trust.
[00:16:44] And if we want to be able to truly trust others, we also have to trust ourselves and trust that we can see the red flags, that we can listen to the gentle whispers, the gentle nudges just as much as we can listen to the big waving red flags.
[00:17:01] That we can make decisions for ourselves, that we can handle anything that comes our way because of that decision.
[00:17:08] And we can trust ourselves no matter what, whatever comes our way, that we will figure it out.
[00:17:15] And a lot of times our self trust has really been eroded from the various diets that we've done, the diets regaining weight, past relationships.
[00:17:26] Sometimes our self confidence and self belief and self trust is minuscule. It's itty bitty tiny.
[00:17:35] And we've really got to work on rebuilding that muscle, rebuilding that habit.
[00:17:40] And so part of this, if there's a relationships component here, which many times there has been with everyone that I have spoken with about this topic in particular, there has been a relationship component. So it may not be for you, but just my sample size is not massive. Right. But everyone who has worked with me who has had this problem, it's stemmed from a relationship aspect and a relationship dynamic, which is why we can't lose weight, we can't end emotional eating in a vacuum and we can't just focus on food and exercise and certain habits. Yes, there are actions that we're going to want to Take more of things we want to do more of things we want to do less of.
[00:18:25] But we have to really get to the root of what's going on.
[00:18:29] And this is the deeper work that I do with clients. This is my superpower because I can see things that you can't. I can see them because I'm a coach. I can see them because I'm on the outside. I can see them because this is just a gift. This is my God given gift, is that I can see things that other people can't. And that gets confirmed and sometimes in ways that I don't necessarily love because I can have inklings about people and then they prove themselves true, they show me their real colors and it's not always fun to be on the receiving end of that.
[00:19:02] But I can see things, I can spot things.
[00:19:05] And especially when it comes to relationship trauma and food and often there can be food or diet trauma, there is this seemingly invisible string that connects the two.
[00:19:17] And so we've got to work to address what's going on. We need to really identify and address the relationship side of things and detach the relationship and getting into it and staying into it, got to detach that from your body size, shape, weight. And it's not just going to come in five minutes of having this awareness. Right. Just saying it one time isn't enough to do it isn't enough to. It's not like flipping on a light switch. This often is deeply ingrained, it's deeply programmed. It has become a protective mechanism for, for years, maybe even decades.
[00:19:53] And this is what we have to work to change. But there's a process for it. And that's what I do with private clients. Either one on one in private coaching or in the body. You crave accelerator in the monthly membership where you can come in and work on things like this. Where women are working through weight loss and emotional eating and many of them are also working through toxic relationships and healing after them. So whether that last relationship ended a year ago or a month ago or 10 years ago or longer, you have a safe place in this situation. Because even when I was talking with a prospective client a few probably about a year ago, and she really, she really struggled with the same thing of trying to do a very restrictive diet. Just couldn't stick with it. There were the plan and the program was too restrictive, so that was one piece as to why she wasn't able to follow through and do it. There was no desire to actually follow that rigid of a plan. She just thought that's what she had to do or what she was supposed to do. But she also had been in a really toxic marriage about 20 years prior for it was like four or five years. It was like a significant amount of time. She was very young, married this guy and thankfully has been out and in a very new or in a new healthy loving relationship. Not really new. She's been married for over a decade now, so it's not super new. But she was able to get out and build this new life with this amazing man. But even she still wrestled with this aspect of how do I follow through and keep going and do the thing. And this makes it really hard for us to keep trying new things. It makes us, it makes it really hard for us to say, okay, that didn't work, but let me try something else. Because so much of it gets internalized and we're so afraid that if we keep going and we keep trying more things that nothing is ever going to work and we're finally going to come to the conclusion that we are just broken and we are destined to live in a body we hate for the rest of our lives.
[00:21:56] It's like that's what we are afraid that we are going to prove true. That's the real fear underneath it all. And so sometimes it's easier to not start because then we don't have to prove that thought true. We don't gather more evidence as to how it's true.
[00:22:11] It's easier to keep trying those restrictive diets rather than looking at the real habits, rather than solving the real emotional eating and binge eating habit of how we're trying to get our needs met in the moment.
[00:22:24] And it's going to require us to feel and it's going to require us to sit when we've been activated and our nervous system has been triggered and we're in that fight or flight and our heart is racing and our stomach's churning chest is tight and it's like squeezing.
[00:22:43] It's in these moments where we sometimes train ourselves to go for food and we have to rewire it and sometimes we train ourselves to not go for food so then maybe we don't eat. I sometimes when my stomach is in knots, I don't eat. But then I get really hungry the next day or a couple days later. I'm ravenous and it just keeps you on this swing, on this roller coaster, all or nothing, all or nothing, back and forth and we've got to break it.
[00:23:18] So there are a lot of aspects that go into this concept of I know what to do, but I'm just not doing.
[00:23:27] Could be with the program you think you need to follow the diet rules you're trying to follow. There are so many nuances. If you would like some help in uncovering and truly understanding what it is for you that has you in this cycle, do you feel like you do know what to do but you're just not doing it? Or if you feel like you have the best of intentions to start on Monday, but then Monday rolls around and you're like eating everything and the pantry and you're going completely off the rails. You're eating worse than you were the previous week when you weren't trying to be on a diet.
[00:23:57] I can help you. And the first place to start is with a free consultation so you can schedule your free Break the Cycle call. I'll put the link in the description of the podcast, but I'll if this is something that you struggle with, this is what I can help you with. I can help you decode and understand what is underneath this and give yourself some space. Because I promise, when we do this inner work, when you really understand and you take away and remove the obstacles keeping you from starting, when you remove the obstacles of emotional eating and binge eating, it becomes so much easier to lose the weight.
[00:24:32] But we have to do this work right. It's like sharpening your axe before you cut down the tree.
[00:24:39] So often we keep trying to cut down the tree with a plastic axe. We don't even have anything to sharpen. We don't even have anything of substance here.
[00:24:47] Or sometimes we're using the wrong part of the axe to. We're holding onto the metal part and we're trying to swing the handle at it and then we wonder why it's not coming down.
[00:24:57] I also love the analogy of if you are on a bicycle and you're pedaling and you're trying to get from, I don't know, let's say New York to D.C. you're like, all right, I'm on my bike. And then a friend pulls up beside you and she's, hey, get in, I'll take you. I'm going to D.C. too. Like, pop in. And you're like, no, I can't stop pedaling. I gotta go, I gotta go.
[00:25:16] And you don't want to slow down to put your bike in the car and to get into her car in order to speed up. That's what that means. You are going to slow down. It's going to feel like a slowdown. Short term in order to speed up in the long term because I guarantee this is going to keep holding you back. No matter what you do, what you try, all it's going to do is reinforce the same, the same shame and judgment and self loathing.
[00:25:42] And we've got to learn to let that go. And that's exactly what I'm going to help you do, whether we work together one on one or in private coaching. But I can help you radically transform your life from the inside out when you work with me. This is, this all makes so much sense. It all becomes so clear as to what is truly going on. And now we can really address the real problem, the root problem. We stop trying to address all the symptoms and we actually get to the root of it and solve it.
[00:26:16] This is what I want to help you do. This is what I'm on a mission to help hundreds of thousands of women do. Because I know there are so many of us struggling with this.
[00:26:28] So your next best step is to schedule that call. You can go to www.bodyucrave.com BTC and I will show you how to break the cycle once and for all.
[00:26:42] I would love to hear your comments, thoughts, questions, things about this episode. Come find me on Instagram Jillian Amadea all right, have a great week y'all. Here's to creating the life and body you crave.
[00:26:58] 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.
[00:27:33] It's time to break the cycle. I'll show.
