This Is How A Professional STOPS BINGE-EATING - Part 1

At least 12 techniques I use to overcome the desire to eat comfort food. Today's podcast charts the beginning of my journey through taking refined sugar out of my diet for a month.  These are some skills you can learn to understand and overcome the emotional side of comfort eating. I show you how I do it, in real-time, through what works for me.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Hi, this is Shelley Treacher from the Binge and Overeating Recovery Podcast. Today the podcast is going to be a little bit different. This is going to be a mix of my experience of giving up sugar for the first week. And so this week I'm telling you all the different skills and techniques that it took for me to not eat chocolate this week and to not eat refined sugar. I hope you enjoy it. This is day one where I talk about making the start of giving up a comfort food as easy as possible. I firstly want to caveat this all by saying that I am not promoting restriction, I'm not into dieting, I don't think it works. So if that's what you think you're here for, that's not what I'm talking about. What I'm really aiming to do is to give you just drop in some hints and tips on how to cope emotionally with giving up comfort eating. And along the way, I'm sure I'll be using all the skills at my disposal, so I'm just going to tell you them as they come up each day, as hopefully a palatable way of learning these ways of learning how to cope with how you feel when you try to restrict yourself from eating what you might be eating at the moment. My trying to give up sugar is uh day one today. Um, and I actually made it really easy for myself, and this is probably the first tips that I would give you. I had a very different day today, so I didn't do what I normally do on a Monday. I was away for the night last night, somewhere really beautiful, and this morning I woke up somewhere lovely and didn't have the chocolate that I would normally have, the dark chocolate in the morning that has crept back into my diet quite sneakily. Um I just I didn't have it, I was in a hot pod. There's no way I was gonna have chocolate in that pod, and I didn't even think about it to be honest, until, and this is just so useful because I didn't think about it until I became anxious about something, and and and I did have a relational difficulty with someone this morning, and my immediate thought, and I was really surprised by this, was to think about that chocolate that I'd been missing that morning, which didn't even know I was missing, and I really wanted it in those moments. I thought instinctively, how can I go to some kind of shop close by and get some chocolate right now without even thinking about it properly? But I caught myself and uh thought that that's that's not actually gonna solve the relational difficulty that I'm having, and I need to solve that relational difficulty. Yes, it might numb me out for a while and make me feel better for a little while, but I'm gonna be with this person all day, so I really need to get through it. So I found other ways to get through it, and I'm thinking off the top of my head, the way that I found was I've been working on this for a while with this person, with this relational dynamic that we have, and I have been working on becoming less reactionary and less triggered and less upset with what this person does, and I've been working on observing instead, and there are several ways that I've been working on that. One is to be doing that more often in my life, like any muscle, it needs to be practiced to be less reactionary, and I think it paid off because today I didn't get upset, I didn't get angry, and I learned to see this person from a different angle, and I just kept coming back to that calm rather than the chocolate. I think it probably helped, as I was saying, having a big change in my life because I was out on the beach, there's no way I was gonna have chocolate out on the beach. Um, and one change leads to another quite often, I believe. So, so there's two things, and probably three things. So, if you're gonna try and give up something that you know you're gonna find difficult, do things differently, make it as different as you possibly can and as pleasant for yourself as you possibly can. So, did that, that worked. Um, and you know, coming to the emotional side of what was actually going on for me and noticing that that's when I needed the sugar and addressing it in a different way. This is day two where I talk about staying with the physical experience of a craving. I've got to be honest, it wasn't too bad a day. I think maybe the heat is helping me out here because it makes me not want to eat. Um I've probably eaten too little actually, to be honest, today. Um, this morning I didn't think about the chocolate until mid-morning, but I then I did think about it, and once I thought about it, it was very hard to keep it off my mind. Um, it kept coming back, it kept coming back. I know you know this experience, and it really every single time I had to use two different skills, so that's kind of what I want to tell you about today. And the first one, I'm doing a podcast at the moment on how to break a habit, and it's been really informative for me actually, and so it's got me up to speed with oh, this is just a habit, this is just something that I do all the time, and I'm automatically programmed to do this because I've been doing it for such a long time, so it just keeps coming up. My body keeps going, oh, it's chocolate time now, and I'm like, Oh well, no, we've made a decision not to do that, so down it goes again. Um, so it hasn't been that bad. I know cravings can be a lot worse than that. But the second skill, so again I had um a difficulty and an anxiety in a relationship again, just a really brief one, a different one, and I noticed it come up again. Then it's like I'd forgotten all about the chocolate, then I had this little emotional difficulty, and then there was the chocolate. Like, come on now, it's time for chocolate. This will fix everything. Um, so the skill I had to use then, the habit thing wasn't working then, so the skill I had to use was staying with the craving in my body, and I did that for literally a few seconds. I'm just like thinking, okay, where is it in my body? How does my body tell me that it wants chocolate? And I get this kind of rush that comes up from from like my the middle of my torso, maybe from my stomach, that that goes up my esophagus or my lungs, or you know, that whole area and goes to my throat, and in my throat there's a real craving, there's like a feeling of I've just got to have this, and I know you know that feeling, people tell me about this all the time. But so I just stayed with it, I just stayed with that experience, and I'm like, that's interesting, I'm gonna be really kind and curious about this. And so I just watched this strong sensation, and the more I watched it, it just kind of died and faded away like it waved through my body, and then I moved on to doing something else. I think I was probably doing some work, and so I forgot all about it, and now I'm not feeling it. Chocolate is an earlier in the day thing for me. Um my evening cravings are usually something savory after dinner, weirdly. I always want something savory after dinner and eat dinner, which I haven't eaten yet, so it's yet to come. Maybe I'll tell you about that tomorrow. Um but it's not for sweet, so I'm pretty lucky there, probably. I can overeat after dinner, which is a whole other story. I'm not restricting that right now. Um that's it for today. I hope that's helpful in some way, because I know I talk about staying with your body and staying with your feelings all the time, and I hope it's just interesting for you to hear that it does pass if you can just be aware of those experiences in your body. Uh, obviously, you might have to do that several times. It doesn't often happen just once that you listen to it once, and that's fine. Uh, sometimes that will be the case. In fact, often that will be the case, but sometimes you might have to listen over and over again. That's it. Thank you for watching. I'll see you tomorrow. This is day three, where I talk about dealing with the emotional side of comfort eating. So, welcome. This is day three. I've been giving up sugar. It's only been three days so far. I've got to be honest, it hasn't been too bad. But what I'm doing here is giving you another couple of techniques that I've been using today. Strangely enough, this is just working out naturally that I've needed another couple of different techniques today. So, my vice is eating dark chocolate in the morning. It's uh something I gave up last year and did a video on that and how that was for me. And this year I'm doing it again because it snuck right back into my diet, along with a few other things that I probably could do without. Um in this whole lockdown period. Trust me, I'm not giving myself a hard time for that, and I would encourage you not to as well. It's been a really tough time, and it's tough anyway, in normal circumstances. So give yourself a break. What else have we got, frankly? And it's still going on, but I'm not gonna go on the about the pandemic, you know how bad it is. I am just gonna tell you how I've done with not eating chocolate today. So, again, like yesterday, it came in thick and fast in the morning. I wanted the chocolate as soon as I got up, to be honest. And I so my first technique is to start asking emotionally what is behind me wanting something that I need to comfort myself with. And that's what I talk about in not a lot of in a lot of detail in all of the things that I do, but so far haven't mentioned it much in these days, these three days of giving up sugar. Today I needed to think about it because I've kind of broken one of my toes, and today I felt really miserable about it. It's really annoying to have to hobble everywhere, to not be able to leave my house and go for a walk, and to have to look after this toe. Um, so I needed empathy this morning and quickly realized that that's partly why I wanted the chocolate so desperately. So I was really kind to myself. I had a little bit of a whimper, to be honest. I allowed myself to just think, oh, you poor thing, you have got this extra thing that you're dealing with. And so you need a little bit of kindness. I think when we when something goes wrong, when we hurt ourselves, when we have some kind of illness, the childiness comes out and says, look after me. I feel a bit fragile and sensitive. And so I allowed myself to just go through that and to look after myself and be sensitive, and that worked to some extent. It allowed me to move on to the next skill, which is mindful eating. I've just published a podcast on mindful eating, so check that out on the Binged Over Eating Recovery podcast. I thought it's been really nice timing because this morning, with the heat and uh with not being able to have the chocolate, I decided to turn my attention to going really slowly with my food and paying attention to everything that I was eating. I thought, put it into practice, Shelly. You're preaching this stuff, why not try it? And I've got to say, it really worked for me this morning. It actually really worked. I often have a cassette breakfast, which I've had for a really long time, years, I think, and I've been changing it recently to have juicier, more interesting things. Today I had a juice, I also had some fruit with coconut yogurt, and one piece of toast with mushroom pate on it, and every single bite of that honestly made me feel glad to be eating, glad to be alive, glad with the sunny weather and having something juicy and rehydrating to eat and cool. Um, and I just really enjoyed all the flavors, and I really honestly, by the end of doing that, did not want any carbs. I didn't even want to finish the toast, I left half of it for later, which is amazing because usually I just want lots of toast in the morning. Um what I usually do is have a shake, and I often don't want the shake, I like to get through the shake quickly so that I can eat the toast. But this morning I didn't even finish one piece of toast because I didn't want it. Um I suppose I'd had enough carbohydrate, but it was tasty and it was felt really good. It felt like I was filling in all the parts of me that might need a healthy injection. Um, it was just it was lovely and it really worked, and it got me over that the the needing of the chocolate. Uh the chocolate craving did come back a couple of times in the day, but not so strongly because I was just busy with other things. Um, and I did notice, I keep saying this, but I did notice every single time it was because I had some little insecurity, some little thing where I thought, oh, can I do this? Am I any good at this? What do I do here? And the chocolate just comes up straight away. It's like, have chocolate, that will make you feel better. Um but I'm really onto this now for the last three days. I know it's not gonna make me feel better, especially it won't make me feel how that fruit and yogurt made me feel. Um, so that's it for today. So that's that's how I've got through the day. I still feel pretty good, and I'm uh gonna go and join the sunshine now. To sum up, these are the tools I used to help me stop eating sugar in the first few days. Creating a different and pleasant circumstance to what you usually do for day one. Understanding the mechanics of a habit, you can see my last podcast for that. And knowing that this was just a habit to eat sugar, so creating a new habit with a satisfying reward. Giving up one substance or food group at a time, rather than dieting restriction of everything, making it as simple as possible, noticing what emotion and circumstance triggers the craving, finding an alternative way to address that, knowing that the comfort food won't help the situation, observing yourself being reactionary, staying with the physical experience of a craving in the body with curiosity until it passes. Not being hard on yourself for comfort eating. It just means you needed comfort. Being kind to the part of you that needs comfort, and slowing down and enjoying your food, making it as pleasurable as possible without refined sugar or whatever it is that you're giving up. And you can see my mindful eating podcast for some of this. That's it for today. Thank you so much for listening. If you want to see me do this in real time, you need to join my Facebook group, which is Comfort Eating Recovery Support Group. Next week, I'll be giving you a follow-up on my progress. If you have any questions or comments though, please do get in touch. Now more than ever, I'm interested to hear what you have to say. And know that everything you tell me will always be kept confidential. And if you want to go further, I have a programme opening up at the end of August. I'd be very happy for you to join us. Thanks again, I'll see you next Wednesday.