Quitting Ahead of Time

This week's episode is inspired by my current goal of qualifying for the Boston Marathon. When you have a big goal, something that you really want for yourself - one of the most important questions is whether or not you believe it is possible.

Do you believe it is possible for you to stop binge eating?

Do you believe it's possible for you to become a calm, connected and peaceful eater? If not, why?

If you don't believe in yourself you just might find yourself quitting ahead of time.

Tune in to discover how to hold belief for something you've never been able to accomplish before.

Don't give up on your dream because you can absolutely find peace and ease with food - no matter how long you've been struggling.

Other podcast episodes referenced:

When Things Don't Go According to Plan

How to Respond to "I Can't Handle This"

Your Identity as an Eater

Want to know why you struggle with food and what to do next? Start watching The Food Freedom Mini Series today. 

Transcript

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Welcome to Binge Breakthrough, a podcast designed to help you finally break through the barriers that keep you stuck, feeling out of control around food. I'm Master Certified Coach Jane Kilker, and I want you to know that no matter how long you've been struggling or what you've tried, food freedom is possible. And I'm here to show you how. After years of therapy, eating disorder treatment, restrictive diet, and reading all the books, I was still stuck in the onic and offigen cycle of restricting thinking and how I was able to see it all from a new perspective that changed everything. Each week I will share the strategies, tools, and mindset that allowed me to overcome my decades-long battle with binge eating. Your journey to body trust starts now. Let's dive in. Hello, trusted listener. Welcome to Binge Breakthrough. I consider you a trusted listener because I trust that you are listening to this podcast for a reason. I trust that you are going to hear something today that is insightful and impactful on your journey with food. And maybe just your journey with life overall. So today we're going to talk about the topic of quitting ahead of time. The inspiration for this podcast episode came from my own personal training experience. I've mentioned on the podcast before. I am currently training for a marathon. I am training for the Eugene Marathon. It's coming up here at the end of April. And this was going to be my third ever open marathon. I ran my first marathon in 2012, the Big Zur Marathon. And then I ran this same marathon, the Eugene Marathon, back in April of 2018. Now I've run a handful of other marathons within the concept or within the course of an Iron Man triathlon, which ends with a marathon, which is 26.2 miles, if uh you don't know the distance. But uh, this is actually only the third time that I am running a full marathon. My goal for this marathon is to qualify for the Boston Marathon in 2025. Uh, the running the Boston Marathon has always been kind of a dream of mine. It's been like this bucket list item, like, oh, I would love to run Boston. And for a long time, I have thought I would love to do that, but I could never do that. I could never be fast enough to run the Boston Marathon. Now, my thoughts on this have changed, but it still feels like running and qualifying for the Boston Marathon is at the edge of my ability. This will not be easy. I do think it's possible. It might be possible, but it's not. I've gone from I could never do that, that would never be possible, to it might be possible and it would be so amazing. So as I've gone through this journey and I'm literally in the middle of this process of attempting to qualify for the Boston Marathon, if you don't know how it works, essentially only certain people, you have to run a certain time in order to even have the possibility to sign up. There's there's a couple of other layers of whether you get in or not, but it starts with running a under a specific time based on your gender and your age. So that time frame is kind of the very first parameter, the first obstacle, if you will, to qualifying for this race. So this is coming up in a few weeks. And as you can imagine, it's something that has been taking a lot of my uh time and energy, both my physical energy in the training, my mental energy in kind of some of the thoughts and the challenges that come up around it. And so the next two podcast episodes are going to be inspired by this goal. Now, I also always want to bring back what I'm talking about with. If I'm talking about something in the realm of athletics, I always want to bring it back to food and how this can relate specifically with challenges with food and kind of like some of the believing, specifically what we're gonna talk about today, is believing what is or is not possible for you as it relates to your future goals that you might have for yourself as an eater. It's the type of eater that you want to become. So we're gonna be talking about both the lens of what's coming up for me through what I'm what I'm seeing in my own journey with attempting to qualify for this marathon, and then how that relates to food. All right. So where I am now. So I had an injury. Uh, I'll I'll link back to a previous podcast episode where I talked about this ankle injury that I had competing in the Iron Man World Championships in Kona back in October. And it's been a pretty long and extensive process for me to recover from this injury. That recovery is going pretty amazing. I have a great team with me. I'm pretty dedicated to uh some of my exercises in doing that. But and I'm probably, I don't know, maybe 90, 90 to 95% healed from that. But I've had some challenges in the training as we always do. You know, I got sick a few weeks ago. And through some of this, some of the ankle pain, some of the uh, you know, being pretty much zero training for two weeks, I've been having some doubts about whether I can reach my goals for um primarily my goals for this race, this Eugene marathon, the time that I can run this race in. Can I qualify for the Boston Marathon? And when I first signed up for this race back, gosh, I signed up for this race quite some time ago. Uh, it was before my injury. I had a time in mind of what I thought I could do. And then I didn't run for a few months because of the injury. And so all of these other things have kind of happened. I got sick. Uh, there was a key race that I missed while I was sick. Um, I have a friend who has offered to come and pace the race with me in Eugene, which is amazing. He reached out to me and he was like, Hey, I know things haven't quite been going the way you've wanted with the training. Do you still want me to come? If you want me to come, I'm there. But if not, if you think this kind of isn't possible, I think I might skip the race. And I'm like, oh gosh. So here I am at this place. I don't know. Am I gonna go for it? Am I going to go for this goal of trying to achieve a specific time at the Eugene Marathon? Or am I not? In my brain, I want the certainty of what's possible. Will I be able to do it? Will I be able to run in this time? Does it make sense for me to bring this friend out who will take his weekend and his time to come and race with me? If I don't know if I can do it. Now, for any race or any event, or quite honestly, any goal that any of us are ever looking to achieve, none of us have certainty for what is possible. But here's the decision that I have to make right now. It's this it's do I run, I'm at a place right now, I will absolutely run a marathon. Yes. I can run at a pace that I think is doable for me. And that pace, probably, if I kind of like go the more, I'm not going to call it comfortable. Nobody would ever call running any sort of marathon at any pace comfortable. But if I run at a pace that is doable for me, it probably would not get me into the Boston marathon. So I could do that and I could decide, yeah, you know what? I ran this pace, it's what I was capable of. It was, I did this so that I could run a consistent kind of time and effort. And hey, that's pretty great since I haven't even run an open marathon in almost six years now. Or do I go for it? Do I push myself beyond what might be my current capability and see what's possible? These are my choices. Or, I mean, I could just not go at all. I could just decide, nah, I can't do what I thought I was gonna do initially. So I'm just not even gonna go. I'm gonna give up entirely. Well, to me, that's not an option. I am not giving up. I am running this marathon. So that's a decision I've already made. So to me, my current decision is do I run at a pace that I think is likely and that I think is possible, or do I push myself beyond what might be my current current capability and see what might be possible? So here's the goal. The goal is Boston. The goal is qualifying for the Boston Marathon and running it next year. So I turn 50 at the end of 2025, and I have a lot of things on my mind that I want to do in the year 2025. Things that some of which I never thought were possible, some of which I just always wanted to do. I have this amazing list of things I'm kind of dreaming about. One of them is running the Boston Marathon in the year I turn 50. So here's what I've decided. I am going to go for it. I am going to see what is possible. Now, there's no right or wrong choice here. I absolutely could decide. You know what? I'm gonna go. I'm just my goal is to be really consistent. My goal is to run at something that I think is capable for me based on what I've been doing and based on my training. But as I started reflecting on this, I was like, oh, you know what I'm seeing here? I'm seeing the temptation to quit ahead of time. So, what does that mean to quit ahead of time? It means quitting on my goal because I'm not sure I can do it. It's backing off in advance of doing something like to do something. It's backing off in advance to do something that feels more possible. But here's the question: how am I going to even know what is possible if I don't go for it? Quite honestly, I don't know what's possible. I'm guessing what might be possible based on what I've done so far, but that doesn't mean I won't be able to do something in the future. I really don't know what's possible. But I for sure won't ever know what's possible if I decide right now that it isn't. Okay, so with that whole long story, now let's talk about, let's bring this back to food. How does this relate to eating challenges? How does this relate to binge eating specifically? Or becoming a normal eater, if that's the way you want to think about it. Like I really just want to be a normal eater. Or what kind of eater do you want to be? I've talked about in previous episodes your identity as an eater. So, how does this relate to your ability to become a different type of eater, a peaceful eater, a normal eater, a calm and connected eater? Whatever it is for you, that identity as an eater. I'll reference in the show notes, a link to that podcast episode if you want to go check it out. So here's the first question to ask yourself. Do you think it's possible for you to become a new type of eater? Do you think it's possible for you to stop binge eating? Do you think it's possible for you to stop turning to food in times of challenge, in times of stress, in times where you're looking to get away or you're looking for comfort or you're looking for relief? Do you think it's possible? If the answer that comes to you is no, then it's very likely that you are doing things to prove yourself right. Things like repeating the same patterns and choices day after day. You might be telling yourself, I'm always going to be like this. This is always going to be me. I am going to be like this. I am going to eat in this way until the day I die. So why bother? Why bother trying to do anything different? So if this is you, if you're like, oh yeah, I'm totally doing that. I don't even think it's possible. Then here's the next question that we're going to ask ourselves. So the first question is, do you think it's possible for you to stop eating in this way? The next question is this, why? Why? If the answer is no, I don't think it's possible. Then the next question is why? Why don't you think it's possible for you to stop? You might be, you might answer because I've been doing this my entire life. I've been doing this as long as I can imagine, as I can remember. Because I've tried so many things and nothing has worked. Because I have not stopped yet. I'm still doing it after all of these years. Or maybe something else, maybe it's another reason that came into your mind. That answer of why, why you think it's not possible for you. Now, there's no right or wrong answer here, but it's really important to know, to find this answer. Why? Why do you think it's not possible for you? Because I can promise you, if you don't think it's possible, you won't do the things that are necessary to change. Now imagine this. If I didn't think it was possible for me to qualify for the Boston Marathon, I wouldn't take the steps to make it happen. This was me years and years ago, back in 2012, when I did my very first marathon. I was dreaming about it and thinking, oh, that would be so amazing. I would love to run Boston. And then I would think, but I could never do that. I could never run that fast. And at the time, I couldn't. And so the only way for me that over time I developed, huh? Maybe I could, maybe it would be possible, is I started setting other goals, smaller goals, rather than just going straight for Boston. I was like, well, what can I do now? What can I do to get a little bit faster, to become a little bit better as a runner? How can I set myself up? So I started doing those things. And then over time, I was like, oh, maybe it could be possible. Then I started creating other development, other evidence. So we want to ask the question. Now, when we ask the question, we get the answer, then we know your reason why you think it's not possible. So the next thing we do is we look for evidence that this just might be possible for you. We look for people who have overcome a lifetime or decades of binge eating. We look for people who used to be emotional overeaters, who used to not be able to cope with the challenges of life without turning to food. And then we find them. We find people who have overcome their food challenges. We find people who actually are experiencing freedom around food in a way that they never thought was possible. We find people who feel calm and peaceful and relaxed around food who never used to feel that way. We look for it. We look for this evidence. And there is so much evidence out there. It is 100% possible to overcome binge eating, no matter how long you have been doing it, and no matter how many things you've tried. I have seen it happen too many times to believe otherwise. I have experienced it for myself. I never thought it was possible until I slowly started to think, huh? Maybe this is possible. I will tell you this, it's not quick. It is not a quick fix. It is not always easy. Because the binging is often showing us that there's something else going on. There's something under the hood. Our behaviors and our patterns with food, it's not about the food itself. It's about what's happening underneath. And it's about the patterns that we have created over time. But it is absolutely to shift and to change all of it. It is possible. And if you believe that it might be possible or whatever, even just maybe someday it might be possible or whatever, then you are going to be much more willing to endure the discomfort of doing something different in the moments when you have that drive or that desire to eat. But if you believe that you're always going to be this way, you will always do this. You might make a different choice for a day or two. Or maybe you'll sit with that urge or that desire to eat a lot of food for a few minutes. But you will inevitably go back to your old patterns because you believe this will always be what you do with food. If I believed I could not qualify for Boston, I would not be very motivated to go through the discomfort of getting faster and being able to run longer distances at higher paces. The brain sends up lots of signals to quit when things get uncomfortable. Whether it's the discomfort of physical exercise, the discomfort of figuring out a work project, or the discomfort of sitting with the desire, the urge to eat a lot of food. Now, if we think we'll never get faster, we'll never figure this work project out, we'll never be able to trust ourselves around certain foods, we will create that for ourselves. We quit ahead of time without even giving ourselves a chance to find out what's possible. So back to this running example. As you probably know, if you've been listening for a while, I love listening to podcasts and audiobooks. Even the things that I watch on TV, I'm always looking for inspiration. I'm looking for examples of what's possible, things that I can learn and apply to my own life. Now, you probably do this too, not only with your food struggles, but probably in other areas of life. And that is very likely why you are listening to this podcast. So I'm listening to a book right now. It's an audiobook, and it's by Matt Fitzgerald. It's called How Bad Do You Want It? And what he's sharing is what he's calling the psychobiological model of endurance training. And basically, this concept is that the body and the brain both work together to create the possibility of creating peak performance in endurance sports. So it's not just what the body's doing, and it's not just the brain, they have to work together. So in this book, he provides a lot of examples of different athletes overcoming obstacles and performing at a very high level through a variety of tools and methods and resources that he shares in this book. So the question comes down to this in this book. When it comes to the time when things feel really hard and you just want to quit, how bad do you want it? What is your reason? What is driving you to keep going when everything in your body is screaming at you to quit? So in endurance exercise, quitting would be slowing down or stopping or just deciding I can't do it. But when we're talking about eating, to quit would be to give up on your ability to make a different choice. To go back to your autopilot ways and to not explore other options and other alternatives when you have that drive to eat. Or quitting might also look like this. Oh, well, once I start, I just can't stop. And if you believe that, when you start, you're just gonna quit. You're gonna be like, oh, it's I'm always going to just, as soon as I start, I can't stop. So it would be quitting on even the possibility that you can stop, even once you've already started. If I slow down, back to running. If I slow down because I'm afraid I can't hang on, do I really know that I can't hang on, that I can't keep this pace up? Or did I just decide that I couldn't without the actual evidence? Or did I literally go so hard my body slowed down? Or I actually could not go any further. Was it my mind making the decision or my body? More often than not, it's the mind with food. If you're eating because you're afraid of feeling an underlying emotion of sadness, you think you don't want to feel it, you can't handle it. And if you allow yourself to start crying, you'll never stop. You really aren't learning whether or not you actually can handle it. You are deciding ahead of time you can't. And if you want a little bit more on this topic, you can check out the podcast uh episode that I did on I Can't Handle This and how we address that. It's this same concept. Now, a lot of this is happening in the subconscious. It's not like I'm consciously choosing, I'm quitting, I can't do this. So it's not, there are a lot of components to this. This is not exactly always simple, but it's such an important concept to really just become aware of. So what does it take to be willing to find out what your limits are? To see what is really possible. What it takes is the willingness to fail. In the case of this marathon, I might not be able to do it. I might blow up. I might fail and not reach my goal. But the only way I'm gonna know if it's possible for me is to go for it and to be willing to embrace the discomfort that is going to come with me to this endeavor. If I don't make it and I'm not able to hold the pace, it's going to be from a place that is a physical limitation, not my mind thinking I can't do it. Now you might be wondering, how do I know? Is it my body or my mind deciding that I can't do it? Remember, awareness is always the first step to change. So the next time you give in the desire to give in to the desire to seek short-term comfort, ask yourself, what was going through your mind before you did? Was it coming from your mind? I can't handle this. I just want this feeling to end. Or was it coming from your body? If you aren't eating enough food throughout the day, sometimes it truly is a primal urge and a drive to get enough calories into your body. When this is the case and it's coming from your body, no amount of just thinking something differently, thinking, oh, you can do it, whatever you're thinking, no amount of that is going to get you, is going to have you not eating. That's that primal is coming from your body. It's like no amount of just encouraging myself to run faster is going to get my body to run faster if it physically can't. And it's not always easy to tell, especially when you first start asking this question. But this is where you can get support to help you discern the difference. But for now, ask yourself: do I believe that it is possible for me to stop these behaviors around food? If I don't, why? I believe it is possible for you. I encourage you to look for others who have stopped, who have become, who have switched their identity as an eater, who used to feel out of control and now feel in control, who used to feel like they can't trust themselves and now they do, who now feel peaceful around food. If what you have been doing and what you've been trying hasn't worked, look for something else. Just because it hasn't worked for you yet doesn't mean it isn't possible. It just means you have not yet found what works for you. Now, if you want to learn more about the surprisingly simple keys to ending binge eating, I invite you to watch the replay. I have a two-day workshop. It's coming up as I'm recording, it's coming up soon. But by the time this airs, it will have already taken place. But you can catch the replay. It's called the ABCs of ending binge eating. Surprisingly simple keys to ending binge eating that you may not have even thought about. I will tell you they're there the keys are kind of sprinkled into what I talk about, but I'm distilling it all to a very simple ABC. So you can watch this re this workshop, the replay of the workshop on your own time by becoming a paid subscriber to the Peaceful Eater on Substack, where you will find all kinds of helpful support and resources for your journey. All right, I mentioned earlier this is gonna be a two-part series. So quitting ahead of time was this the very first thing to become aware of. Next week, we're gonna dive into how do we approach the discomfort that comes for the ride? When we decide, okay, I'm not gonna quit ahead of time, there's gonna be discomfort. This discomfort comes for the ride when we go after something that feels on the edge of possibility. So be sure to stay tuned to next week so we can learn a little bit about that. All right, that's what I have for you today. You can, absolutely can stop binge eating. You can stop feeling out of control around food. You can become a peaceful eater no matter how long it has been, and no matter what you've tried. It is possible, and I would love to show you how. I'll see you next week. If you like what you're hearing on the podcast, you will want to be sure to follow me on Substack. There you'll find additional articles, discussion, and the library of all of the podcast episodes to help you on your journey with food. You can also access deep dive workshops and get behind the scenes audio and video that will help you understand and overcome your food struggles. Find me under the peaceful leader at janepoker.substack.com. I'll see you there.