3 steps to get past an overeat

Today Coach Dr.Matthea talks about 3 steps to get past an overeat.

For full show notes, please go to www.TheWLCC.com/93

Transcript

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Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. It's Coach Dr. Matthea with you today. How's everybody doing? I am feeling like we're in the middle of. Festivities and that time of year when lots of celebrations are happening happening. So I thought that this would be the perfect time for us to do another episode about the aftermath of overeating. And today I really wanna talk about three steps to get past and overeat, and it applies to this time of year. It also, if you're listening to it, right when it comes out, this also applies if you. Are catching his podcast later and you're sort of listening through multiple episodes, you can still apply the same process. But what I see particularly around holiday times, but this also applies to maybe in your family, there's a time of year when there's a lot of celebrations back to back. Like sometimes I'll hear from people, I'll give you an example. We have a community member that has a lot of birthdays in December and I remember them kind of saying how they're kind of like back to back and it's like, this is a challenge cuz they almost know, it's almost like they feel like it's a setup for. and what I wanna talk about today is when overeats happen, which they're a hundred percent gonna happen as part of your weight loss, and I say wellness or health journey, it's a hundred percent guaranteed it's gonna happen. Learning how to handle things afterward is much more of an important skill than almost even. Working on the overeat at that moment, if that makes sense. And I'm gonna explain more today because this is actually something that's, that's really good learning here. So let's talk about what even is overeating, just to kind of, so we're all on the same page. Overeating is really when you notice you're not physically hungry anymore, you're not getting any signals from your body, that it needs more fuel, more nourishment. And you keep eating. We're all aware when this is happening. Most of the time, especially if you've been listening to our podcast or you're within our program, you start to get really aware of, oh my gosh, I'm not hungry anymore. Or, it just tastes good and I wanna keep going. But it's sometimes hard to stop that. And there can be, there can be so many different reasons, and again, we dig into this much more within our program, but just noticing that, okay, an overeat either is happening or has occurred. And again, it's usually it's. Usually very subtle thoughts that are running the show. Like, it tastes good, it doesn't matter. I'm just gonna do this today. It's things like that. But here's the real problem that happens. It's afterward. A lot of the time, it's the shame that we put on ourselves because of that having occurred and it's not who we are and it's just something that we've done. But shame does not let you see that. So with shame, you're thinking, why can't I be a person that can just do this? Why do I keep doing these things? And you start to, again, you start to do all the negative evidence hunting for all the ways in which you're not gonna be successful with this. And it's not really who you are, and you really can't do it. And you make it, you. You make this mountain into this mole hill, into a mountain That's what I meant to say. You make this little thing into a really big thing. Now it's a skill to turn that around, to turn around that narrative in your mind and to start to look at this differently. So let's talk through today how, what are three steps that you could do for that? And one of the things I really, even before we talk about that, I just wanna normalize that our brain's reward systems are really not set up for modern day food. And what I mean by that, Our brain is actually very programmed If something tastes great and it's very pleasurable to keep going, to want more. And so some of us have more of this predisposition and, and sort of the thing of choice is food or maybe it's alcohol for you, whatever it might be, and sort of that lever to be able to stop when we've had enough. It's a little bit harder now today I'm actually not talking about right in that moment how to stop the overeat. I'm talking about three. Afterward of how you can get back on track and if you're interested more in the moment to be able to do that. I will reference in the show notes an episode where we talk more about that cuz there's different parts to work on to be able to. It gets stronger at, uh, not overeating, both in the moment beforehand, after. There's all these different stages. Today we're talking about after. Okay, so you notice that an overeat has occurred and you notice yourself, you're going into that same sort of, you know, why do I do this? All that kind of thing. And here's what I want you to implement. We're gonna implement step one. And here's what I'm calling step one. It's the five second funeral. Okay. It's the five second funeral. And moving on. So this is the part of the process where you really normalize it. Okay, got it. And overeat happened, it occurred. Noted. Witnessed and now I'm gonna move on. So it's not, again, it's not the overeat that's the problem 99% of the time. That one meal, that one day, maybe a week of having been on vacation. But it's the bloody aftermath that for weeks and months afterward, because you're stuck in that all or nothing thinking. You know, now it's all over and then you just go do all the things all the time. That's really the problem. So one of the skills of this five second funeral and moving on, it's really realizing, okay, God, it yes, I am disappointed that it happened. Okay, God, it, I do feel shame. All of these things, we're acknowledging what is, but we're also gonna allow ourselves to move on. The other aspect I always bring up here is when it's been years of us living in a certain pattern and maybe not paying attention or not having the skills that we need to do this, the fact that we think that in two to three or four weeks that somehow we're gonna have mastered it. It's not realistic necessarily. And so one of the questions I always ask clients is, how long are you willing to work on this? You know, if you are frustrated afterward because of an overeat, I often ask, okay, are you for four months willing to work on this frustration and willing to work on ways to do it differently and willing to really tune in? And you'll see step two, we'll have some action items here. but it's how long are you willing to actually work on this? So part of the five second funeral and moving on, it's starting to bring awareness to the fact that this isn't gonna be solved overnight. And I'm not gonna ask that of myself anymore. I'm gonna allow myself to when these overeats happen, to very quickly process and move on from them and not stay in a place of pain from them. So that's part of it. So yes, this happened. Period. End stop. End of story. And this is really, you've brought some awareness to it. You can bring some compassion. Yes. I'm, I'm disappointed that that happened. That's okay. I can feel sad, I can feel frustration. I can feel whatever is necessary there, but I'm gonna have lots of kindness toward myself and I'm not gonna keep holding it against myself going forward. So that is step number one, five second funeral, and moving on step number two. Then we get to look at moving forward, we're gonna get future focused, and I always say, what is reasonable and manageable? What do I want to try for this next week? I really want to encourage you to make what are called smart goals. So it's really. It's measurable, it's, you could actually reach it. It's realistic, it's timed. So you pick one way in which you're gonna work on overeating this next week going forward. So I'm gonna give like the classic example that we see all the time. Usually either dinner is a challenge for people or nighttime snacking. Like those are two, like at the top of the leaderboard that I see all the time. Instead, Every single time beating yourself up after these things are happening, you've done the five second funeral, you've realized, okay, I'm not excited that this happened. Got it. But I'm gonna move on from this. Step two here is future focused. What's one way I'm gonna work on it? So I'll give an example for dinner. You might say, all right, what I'm gonna do this week, every time after I have a bite, I'm gonna put the fork down. And that is the one way that you're gonna be laser focused, that you're gonna help support yourself and your hypothesis. Like the thing you're gonna see that week is, does this move the needle? If I put the fork down, in between every single bite, does it help slow me down? Does it help bring awareness to the sensations in my body if I'm full or not during that time? But that's the one thing I'm gonna try. Or you might. The one thing I'm gonna try is I'm not gonna have distractions going on during dinner, I'm not even gonna worry about the portions or any of this kind of stuff, but the one thing I'm gonna do, I'm not gonna have the TV playing, I'm not gonna have a podcast playing, whatever it is. That's your dynamic during dinner. A lot of us are highly distracted during meal times. We don't practice very often what we call monk meals, which is where there's no distraction, no one's talking. Maybe you're by yourself, you're eating in silence. You're really focused on your body. It's a very idealistic world where we can get super mindful with our food, but that's not realistic most of the time. And so that. Action. What are you gonna take this next week to be able to work on this? And you allow it to be small enough. You hear me say this so often, please, if you hear me say nothing else, you allow the action to be small enough that you can really execute on it. And so putting your fork down between, It's something you can do, right? I'm not asking you to give up all the foods. I'm not asking you to cook different meals to suddenly half the portion, all this kind of stuff. But you're putting the fork down. You know what? You're gonna actually have to work on that. Cause you're gonna have to remember tonight at dinner we're gonna do that. So even though it's one action, you're taking part of this future focus and what is reasonable and manageable and what you're willing to do, the smart goal you're gonna set. It's like I might need to set a reminder on my phone at 4:00 PM to remind me, Hey, today at dinner we're putting down our fork between bites. That's the level at which we need to get. And so again, we're gonna pick one thing to work on to break these patterns, to change this. And then here's step three, and this is my favorite part. When you wanna keep coming back to the past and reminding yourself, oh look, we overate, because your brain is gonna loop and cycle, and here is what you do. You have to remind yourself of step number two. So it's like your brain is gonna wanna keep coming back to number one. It's gonna wanna be beating yourself up and like looking at the past and all the things we did wrong. And you have to remind yourself. We've done the five second funeral and we're moving on, and here's what we are now doing. So step three its repetition again and again and again. And that's called training your brain. Training your brain to think in a new way. It's really going to take a different approach. So we're gonna keep it simple. We're gonna have less choices, right? This is the one thing I'm working on, and your brain wants to say, we need to do 50. There's all these other things we need to do, and you're gonna say, I'm focused and I've narrowed it down and I'm not getting decision fatigue. This is the one thing I'm working on. And then you go practice this again and again and again because I wanna tell you that if you get really good at being amazing to yourself after an overeat and really constraining down, this is the one thing we're working on and this is how we're gonna. And it's okay that every time it's not perfect. And if you, let's say every single week, every single evening that week, you kept overeating, but you were, but you got really strong at okay, the fork. That habit's really getting in there. And I'm noticing that it's actually slowing down the overeating. And I'm noticing this and I'm noticing that that's gonna get you so much further than thinking everything needs to change at. So, and the other thing I really wanna encourage you is, I talked with step number two there, how, if you're really focusing in, and again, I keep talking about the fork example and I talked about, you know, maybe you need to set a reminder. I really think that this type of stuff needs to be written out somewhere for you to come back and review. So I'm a really big fan of using the note section on my phone. And you might need to write out these steps to remind yourself after an overeat. Here's what coach Dr. Matthea recommended. I'm gonna just write this out and maybe I need to come back to this and maybe you write out whatever your customized plan is based on what you just listened to here. So number one, you write down five second funeral and moving on, and you write there. I'm gonna let myself. be unhappy of how it went down, that's fine. But then I'm also gonna move on to step number two very quickly and look at, well, what am I actually focused on and what's the one thing I'm working on? And then number three, keep reminding myself of this when my brain wants to keep coming back to the negative. And so write this plan out somewhere. You listen to an episode like this, you hear ideas and you need to go implement it. I had a really fun moment before recording this because sometimes I look through some of my old journals or notes to kind of get inspiration and to pull all these concepts together, and I looked at how much work I've done with journaling and listening to different things and taking notes and really internalizing it. And I'm here to tell you it's work. It is work to decide to be a new version of yourself. It doesn't happen overnight. We don't stumble into new habits that stick around when we've done things in a different way for decades leading up to it. So if you are wanting this relationship where you can stop after having had enough, even if it's a food that tastes good, all of these kind of things, Everything is available to you, but it's going to take intention and to really work on. So write out some of those plans. If you wanna do it on paper, fine. If you wanna do it on your phone, fine. Set some reminders. Say, this is the one thing I'm gonna work on this week. Really narrow down the focus. Remember when things are really focused, usually massive progress happens in that area. So people always think this fallacy of, I have to do everything. Everything usually ends up fizzling out after a week or two. If you really focus in on things. Like, I'm gonna put the fork down, or I'm gonna get more water in, or I'm gonna walk five minutes each day. What ends up happening is that gets really solid. What gets your focus gets your attention, and it really grows. And so give yourself that gift. Okay? So I want you to all go implement this and see, practice this. See, does this work in my world? If not, how do you wanna tweak it? Give us that feedback. I love to hear. When you hear this type of stuff, what is the gem that you get out of it? It's so interesting to me. Always. We put these podcast episodes out and then we'll get either within the community people saying things or people that are not members that email us. And the insight and the inspiration and then what people go do with it. It's always so different, and that's the beautiful thing. You're gonna go customize this. All right. If you've been listening, and again, you're listening to this kind of the few weeks after it's come out, You wanna get some more help to implement things like this, I would really encourage you to join our six week reset. It starts the beginning of January, 2023, and this is gonna be a six week guided experience where we take you through how to implement a lot of these things. And what's fun about this program is that it's Carrie and me. We're in a Voxer group together with you. It's really small group, so it's gonna likely be less than 10 women. What we're doing is when these type of things come up in real time, we're gonna coach you and it's not gonna be a scenario where you sit there and struggle for a week and then you're all, you're all down on yourself. These type of strategies where we help show you your brain, what's the. Thought that's tripping you up. Maybe there's a way in which a food combination that you're eating that really isn't supporting you, but you keep thinking it's a motivation problem, and we look at your food logs and we're like, no, it's protein, it's fat. We can pick these things out quicker for you. So, and, and the other aspect that's really cool about this program is that it's very inspirational typically, and motivating, to have the increased accountability to really be around a lot of women where everyone's really participating. Like this isn't like a kind of join it and it's like running in the back. This is really, you are doing the work actively. So if that sounds like something that you're interested in, if you wanna register for the six week reset, we have the information in the show notes and I will talk to you guys soon.