All About Restriction

Many people understand that food restriction is one of the primary causes of the binge-restrict cycle, but they don't understand all of the ways it shows up and how it impacts the body, both physically and mentally.

Tune in as I explore restriction – physical, mental, and unintentional. Discover the effects of food deprivation and restriction on the brain, as well as how you can become aware of the restriction in your life so you can stop restricting food.

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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 Hoker, 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 on-again-on-igen cycle of restricting imaging until 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 that is insightful and impactful on your journey with food. So today's episode is inspired by a recent call that we had inside my group coaching program, which is called Cultivate. And on that call, we dove into the topic of restriction. We had such a great conversation in there, and it was so eye-opening to so many of the folks inside Cultivate. I thought, you know, I want to record a podcast episode about this because here's what I know. So many people understand the idea and the concept that restriction is a primary cause of binge eating and a primary cause of feeling out of control around food sometimes. But here's what happens is they understand this logically. It's like, oh yeah, that makes sense. Restriction is a primary cause. So in order to make sure that I'm not restricting, then what I need to do is every time I have any inkling to eat, I need to just eat and I need to uh just allow myself to eat because otherwise I would be restricting. So then what they do is they fill their house with cookies and they eat cookies every time. Cookies sound good. They get an inkling, you know, let's have some cookies. And so they do. I gotta make sure I'm not restricting. And then, oh, well, let's just keep eating some more cookies. They keep eating more cookies. But here's what happens they they eat all the cookies, they get a lot of um more kind of desire for cookies, and they keep eating the cookies because they want to make sure that they're not restricting. But then what happens is then they just feel gross because they're eating a lot of cookies and they're not sleeping well, and all they want to do is just keep eating more cookies. And they think, you know, I supposedly at some point I'm just gonna like keep eating the cookies, and someday these cookies are not gonna sound good to me anymore. But in the meantime, in the service of not restricting, I'm just gonna keep eating all the cookies. And because they keep deciding cookies sound really good and they keep eating cookies, then they decide, oh, that didn't work for me. So the only option now is to go back to restriction. Because now I've proven to myself I can't control myself around cookies. So I only have two options. I either eat all the cookies I can eat, or I just don't eat them at all because I can't control myself. So these are the two options that that people give themselves. Neither one of these options is a great option. So, but this isn't, these aren't the only two options. This is what a lot of people get into. This is why we need to have more conversations around restriction and really understanding what is restriction, what isn't restriction, and how does restriction play out in this as we as we look at this. So, what is restriction? Restriction is any time that we are deciding not to eat something, but we're doing it from a place of fear, from a place of you can't have that. I can't control myself around it. I don't trust myself. If I eat that, bad things will happen. We're trying to control ourselves. There is a lack of trust, there is a lack of safety. It feels sometimes we can tell uh restriction more by how it feels. It's like we're not allowing ourselves. And we're not allowing ourselves to eat something because either we think this food is bad, maybe it will make us fat, maybe we don't want to eat too much, maybe we don't uh trust ourselves around it. The key though is how does it feel? A lot of times it feels constricting. There's a sense of fear around that food. So, how is restriction? How is this different from deciding not to eat something? Truly making the choice. I'm just not going to eat that. And and I I might make that choice for a lot of different reasons. So, how is it different? This is how it's different. Restriction sends the message to the body that supplies are limited. So it's like, nope, we can't have that. We are not going to eat that. That food is not permitted, that food is not allowed. That's generally the message around restriction. It's a it's a sense that that food is either not allowed, it's not permitted to be eaten, or it is only permitted to be eaten in very small quantities, or on very certain occasions, either on certain occasions, in small quantities, certain times of day. There's some sort of like rules or parameters around it. Something about it is limited. So restricti sends this message to the body that supplies are limited. Now, the example I always love to use because we can all relate to it, is the example of toilet paper in March of 2020. We all know what happened. Supplies were limited. We all understood toilet paper may is in limited supply. So what did we do? We went out and we either bought as much as we could find, which led to the shelves being entirely empty, or we would buy a very poor quality toilet paper that we would never consider buying otherwise because we thought, well, this is all I can get. I remember so clearly buying this single ply, awful toilet paper in March of 2020 because it was the only thing on the shelf. And I was like, well, this is all I can get. And then going home and just thinking, oh my gosh, this is crazy. It's such bad quality. But we did this because of this idea that supplies were limited. Now, here's another analogy that is a very powerful analogy. We talked about this in our cultivate group coaching call. So let's, here's the analogy. You are going to swim in a pool from one end to the other, and you're going to swim underwater all the way to the other side. So when you get to the other side, after you have swum all the way across underwater with oxygen being limited because you're under the water, you're holding your breath. What's the first thing you're going to do when you get to the other end of the pool? You're going to take a really big gulp of air. Supplies, oxygen, the supply of oxygen has been limited as you've been underwater. So when you get to the other end, there's likely going to be a very big inhale as your body strives to get as much oxygen as possible. Now, once your body realizes, oh, okay, we're good. Oxygen is in plentiful supply. We're not going right back under the water. I'm okay. Now I can settle in and start breathing this oxygen in on a more regular, kind of natural basis. So this is great. We can really understand. All right, oxygen was limited. Once the oxygen came back, we did have kind of a big inhalation. And then we were okay. This very same thing can happen to us with food. Sometimes, if we limit our food, let's say we haven't had uh sweets in a while, and all of a sudden we're like, there's sweets, sweets are available. Oh my gosh, I haven't had them. These have been forbidden to me. I might want to eat a lot because I haven't had them. It's kind of like the oxygen, the big gulp of oxygen. But then if sweets are allowed for me on a regular basis, I'm gonna go back to kind of like breathing like normal, like the oxygen, similar with the sweets. Now, if I have this idea, oxygen is going to go away sometime soon. My response to that, same with the sweets. Well, they're here now, but they might go away sometime soon. My response to the sweets is going to be very different. Now, here's something that's important for us to understand. If I am a person who swims underwater across the pool from one side to the other, and I've never really had to, I've never had like a negative experience with water, with holding my breath, my experience of swimming from one end of the pool to the other is going to be very different from someone who has, let's say, had a near-drowning experience in water. If I'm a person who sometime in my past had a near-drowning experience in water, then when I ask myself to swim from one side of the pool to the other without taking a breath, there is a chance that my brain might remember that near-death experience before when I was underwater and unable to take a breath. It might be much harder for me if I've had a near-death experience with water, with drowning, to swim from one side to the other. I might not make it all the way to the other side. I might only make it a little bit of the way. Now, I have a couple of options. I could just avoid water for the rest of my life and just decide, you know what? When I get in water, I get kind of freaked out. I don't like it. And so I just don't get in the water. And so because of that, maybe I don't go swimming. Maybe I don't go to the beach, maybe I don't get in the water with my family. Maybe I just don't do these things. And that is the decision that I make. That is available to me. Now, if I want to be somebody who gets in the water with my family and goes into the beach and is able to swim across the pool underwater, then there is going to be a process for me to learn how to get underwater from one end of the pool to the other without my brain really freaking out, thinking, oh my gosh, this might happen again. Now, the reason I tell this story is because something very similar happens to our brains when we limit certain foods, when we restrict, particularly if we have been on, as most of us have, have been on many restrictive diets in the past. Your brain does not know the difference between a diet, a restrictive diet that is restricting you of a significant amount of calories. Your brain doesn't know the difference between that and starvation. So it may sound like kind of an intense comparison to be comparing going on an uh one or multiple restrictive diets, comparing that to a near-death drowning experience. But to your brain, it may not be that different. Your brain is like, uh-uh, my number one job is to survive. And in the past, when you've gone on those crazy diets, that has been near starvation. That is going against everything. My job is to keep you alive. And if you starve me, we are not going to be able to stay alive. This is why you may not be able when you try to go on a diet, when you try to eat less, if your body responds right away, even with the idea that you're going to eat less food, if you find yourself binging or overeating or eating a lot of food just at the mere thought of, I need to eat less, I need to lose weight, whatever that is. This is kind of like your brain remembering, oh yeah, remember that time? We almost starved to death. We are never going to do that again. So it's similar to if I try to get in a pool and go across the water underwater without taking a breath from one into the other, my brain might be like, oh yeah, remember that time? We almost drowned. I'm not doing that again. Now again, we have a choice here. We absolutely have a choice. If we want to be somebody who can eat these foods on a regular basis, if we want to be somebody who is comfortable in the water, if we want to be somebody who can be underwater, who can swim underwater from one side to the other, we can create that for ourselves. But we don't create it by just avoiding the water entirely. We also don't create it by just jumping into the deep end and telling ourselves we're going to be okay. That probably will freak us out. It's kind of like we don't also just take care of it by filling our house with all of the cookies and all of the things that we have denied ourselves of in the past. It's kind of like jumping in the deep end. There is a process to creating safety with food. There's a process to creating safety with yourself being in the water. So sometimes seeing this and kind of using an analogy in a different way that's aside from food can help us see it a little bit better. So when we talk about restriction, one of the things we have to be really careful of is what message are we sending to our bodies? Again, your brain doesn't know the difference between a restrictive diet and starvation. If I am not eating regularly and consistently, what message am I sending to my body? If I, we talked about on the call, we talked about unintentional restriction. Unintentional restriction is just like it sounds. It's when we unintentionally restrict. We talked about a lot of different different examples that show up for many people. This might show up for you in you have a really busy day at work. And maybe for whatever reason, you just don't eat lunch because you have meeting after meeting after meeting. Maybe you just skip your afternoon snack because you have all of these other things going on. What happens for me sometimes is on the weekends, based on my workout schedule, I often end up skipping a meal entirely. And then because I've got this increased effort, increased exercise, and there is an entire meal that's not being eaten just because the timing of my workouts and everything else, I have to be very intentional to make sure to get in enough calories in the day. But again, the brain does not know what's going on here. So we even when we unintentionally restrict, or when we do intentionally restrict, it's like, what message are we sending to the body? Here's what the body hears, the body interprets resources are scarce. Famine is coming. Remember all those times in the past where famine came, where we were on that diet and we did not have enough food? That near starvation time that we are going to do everything we can to avoid, that's coming again. So we need to just be aware like, what message am I sending to my body? Okay, so here's then the question. So what isn't restriction? I'm pretty clear now. I understand what restriction is. I understand kind of how it feels in the body. It's generally going to be based on fear, um, lack of permission, lack of trust. But then how do I know if I'm not, if I'm not going to just eat every time I just think about food, because I know that's not really gonna help me feel my best. How do I know what isn't restriction? So here's some examples of what is not restriction. Let's say you decide not to eat something because you know it just won't make you feel good. So, for example, for me, fried food does not feel good in my body. My stomach does not feel good when I eat fried food. So if I go out to eat and I'm with some friends and there's appetizers ordered and there's some cheese sticks on the table, if I'm like, you know what, I am not gonna eat those because I just, if I do, I probably won't feel good. That's not restriction. That is a choice to not eat something. It's not restricting. I'm not thinking it's bad, I can't eat it, I can't control myself. It's just a choice. Here's another thing that's not restriction. Let's say I'm at lunch and I'm out at a restaurant and I look at the menu, and I look at the menu and I'm like, oh wow, burger and fries. Like that looks good. Like that just sounds good. Ooh, the way they describe it, I bet, you know, I bet that's really tasty. And then I think to myself, you know, this afternoon, I've got three hours of focus work that I need to do. I've got uh these things I want to do. I want to be really focused. And I could eat that burger, but here's what I know. If I ate that burger and fries, I probably would get really tired within an hour of eating lunch. And I may have a pretty significant dip in my energy. I just don't think I'm gonna eat that right now. Maybe later I'm gonna choose another time that having a burger and fries would just be maybe fit better with overall what I want for my body, my energy, whatever it is. So, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna just, I'm gonna have a salad with some nice protein, with some nice whatever it is. That's what I'm gonna have because I know uh how that's gonna impact the rest of my day and my energy, the way I'm able to focus. So just because I decide not to have a burger, it's that's not restriction. It's choice. Here's another thing that's not restriction. Let's say um I have dinner and then I'm kind of like, oh, you know, it would be really great to like have another snack or to have something else. And then I think to myself, yeah, you know, I could, but here's what I know about myself. If the closer I eat to going to bed, the less quality sleep I get. So I'm not going to eat something. Yes, I could. It actually sounds really good. I'm having a craving for it. But what's really more important to me right now is the quality of my sleep. So I'm not going to have that thing because I really want to focus on my sleep. And I know that the closer I eat to sleeping, the less quality my sleep is. That is not restriction. We don't have to eat every single time we have an inkling to eat. It's kind of like, um, I mean, every if you here's an example. You're watching Netflix and it's the end of the night. Well, it's it's anytime at night, but it's nighttime. You're watching Netflix and the episode ends, and you know what comes. Here comes the like coming up next. And they give you the button. Do you want to watch the next episode? Which they'll automatically play for you, and you decide it's time to go to bed instead of watching the next episode, even though you really want to know what happened. Is that restricting Netflix? No, that's not restricting Netflix. I could absolutely stay up all night and watch because of the way they design the shows to create this open loop in my brain to cause me to want to press play next so I can find out what happens. Yes, I absolutely could stay up all night. Do I need to use my prefrontal cortex to decide when I'm gonna sleep or remind myself why I'm only gonna watch one show instead of four hours of shows? Yes, I do need to use my prefrontal cortex in that moment. But here's the thing: I'm not afraid that I can't control myself around Netflix. Resources also aren't scarce. There are so many shows on Netflix, I could never watch them all. But have you ever noticed what happens for you when Netflix tells you a show is only going to be available until the end of the month? Then all of a sudden, that resource is in scarce supply and it becomes much more important to get it in while you can. So here's the key. It always goes back to awareness. It's understanding, becoming aware where is restriction at play for you. Whether it's physical restriction, limiting foods, limiting quantities, limiting what you eat, limiting when you eat, whether it's mental restriction, kind of saying like, don't eat that, don't eat too much, or unintentional restriction. And just start to notice for yourself, is there any correlation between increased restriction and increased episodes of eating more food than you might prefer? Most diets are based in restriction. So it makes sense that our brains would want to go there. We have so much practice and experience with restriction. It literally comes naturally. So, in order to change this, we have to become aware of it. This is always the first step to change. So I hope that this episode has just given you a few more little areas where you can increase your awareness around restriction and just ask yourself this question: where is restriction showing up for me? The more we can become aware of something, then we can go in and start the process of change. That's what I have for you today. I'll see you next week. Thank you for listening to Binge Breakthrough. You can find the show notes and any resources mentioned at bingebreakthrough.com. If you like this episode, subscribe to have future episodes delivered to you each Wednesday. And remember, your five star rating and review will help others discover these life changing concepts. See you next week.