Unintentional Restriction

You may have heard that restriction is one of the causes of binge eating. Did you know that there are different types of restriction?

Today on the podcast we will explore physical and mental restriction, as well as a concept that many people have never heard of but fall into often – unintentional restriction.

Explore the concept of unintentional food restriction and its impact on your relationship with food and the binge-restrict cycle. Discover what unintentional restriction is, why it happens, and how to stop restricting food, unintentionally or otherwise. Understanding this concept could change everything for you. 

Check out the episodes referred to in this podcast:

Episode 2 – Why Do I Binge?

Episode 3 – How Do I Stop Binge Eating?

Episode 5 – Remove Restrictions

Episode 9 – Develop Two-Way Trust

On the road to unwinding your binge eating, you will still binge sometimes. What happens next is everything. If you don't have a PLAN and a PROCESS for your journey, get mine here at janepilger.com/after.

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Join me live October 5th - Save your spot.

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, the podcast design to help you finally break through the barriers that keep you stuck, feeling out of control about food. I'm Master Certified Coach James 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. I'm here to do it. I will still stop in the audience of the cycle of restricting thinking of how I was able to see it all from a new perspective that change 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 will give you insight, support, or guidance on your own journey with food. So this week, we're going to talk about unintentional restriction. I'm going to help you understand what it is, how and why it happens, and how you can prevent it. Now, if you're new to me or to this podcast, I personally believe that there are eight reasons why people binge or feel out of control around food. And if you want a summary of these eight reasons, I outline them in episode two of this podcast. So you can go back and check that out. And each of these eight reasons has its own underlying solution. And these solutions are outlined in episode three of this podcast. So if you want to check those out, you can go back, you can do a deep dive. Well, not even a deep dive. You can just understand what are those eight reasons and what are the solutions to the eight reasons. So those are in episode two and three of this podcast. And then I go on in the following eight episodes to do a deeper dive into each of those reasons. Now, the second reason is restriction. And episode five of this podcast dives deep into the topic of restriction and also identifies the two types of restriction. So we have physical restriction and mental restriction. So physical restriction is simply not eating enough calories for your body's needs. If you want to hear more about this, you can really dive deep in episode five. But for our basic purposes, physical restriction. It's just not eating enough for what your body needs. Now, mental restriction is when we bring in the thinking patterns that are restrictive. So it's when we're thinking we shouldn't be eating certain things. Or we see certain foods as bad. Now, physical restriction can set up the body to believe that it is going into starvation mode, a situation that it will fight hard against, especially if it's been on restrictive diets in the past. So when the body has been on restrictive diets in the past, it literally has been starved. We have to remember the brain's number one job is to keep you alive. So if in the past it has been starved through a restrictive diet and it thinks that might happen again, then the brain is automatically going to fight against that. Now, mental restriction, it can set you up for rebellion eating. It can also lead to scarcity thinking, where the brain thinks certain foods are going to be limited or in scarce supply in the future. So it better get as much as it can now while it has the opportunity. So this is when we have this idea of like, oh, these foods are bad. I shouldn't eat these types of foods. Maybe if I haven't even physically restricted them, but I am classifying foods as good and bad, or I'm trying to say, don't eat too much. I'm trying to do things like that. That's going to set me up for mental restriction. And my brain's going to think these things are in scarce supply. Think about this for yourself. How did you respond to the toilet paper situation in 2020? I know for me, I was, I was like, oh my gosh, we might not be able to get toilet paper. There's not toilet paper on the shelves. We have to do whatever we can to get toilet paper. I remember so clearly buying single ply toilet paper at the grocery store because it was all I could find and thinking, this is fine. It's because it was in scarce supply, I was very willing to lower my standards about the type of toilet paper that I would use. I have a neighbor who bought so much toilet paper because he, when he finally could, because he was afraid it was going to run out again. He had a garage full of toilet paper. I mean, I'm talking probably at least 10 of the Costco size big packages of toilet paper in his garage. Because of that scarcity thinking, I may not be able to get this again while I can get it. This is what happens with our brain. With both physical and mental restriction, the brain perceives scarcity. And if the brain's number one job is to keep you alive, especially when we're talking about physical restriction and it's sensing that starvation might be coming again, it is not going to let that happen to you again. Once it knows you're alive, the job of the survival brain is to seek pleasure, avoid pain, and use as little energy as possible. Now, if the brain senses a threat, all of its resources are going to go to protect you from that threat, which means the survival brain is the only part of your brain that's going to be on board. Our logical brain can come in and our logical brain can have the conversation and can really let us know: you know what, there's going to be plenty of toilet paper. We probably are okay to not buy 15 of these things from Costco or go back. I'm guessing, you know, there were limits at Costco. He had to go back multiple times, separate trips to get as much toilet paper as he had in his garage. But his logical brain likely wasn't on board at that time because he was sensing a threat. He was sensing this threat of the potential loss of toilet paper. So the survival brain is the only part of the brain that is there on board, working to make sure that we're okay. A potential lack of resources is going to be considered a threat by the brain. And physical starvation is absolutely a threat to the brain. So we know for sure physical starvation, the brain is going to sense that as this is going against my number one job, which is to keep me alive. If I starve, I am not going to be alive. Now, this is why people who are on diets are so often consumed with thoughts about food. When they will eat, what they will eat, how much they will eat. It has all become very important to the brain from a pure survival level. It's really important to understand the impacts of physical restriction and mental restriction on our eating behaviors and to be able to identify where restriction might be present when evaluating a binge or an out-of-control eating moment. Okay, so this brings me to today's topic: unintentional restriction. So what is that? It's actually exactly as it sounds. It's restriction that takes place in an unintentional way. So you might not be thinking, I can't eat that. I shouldn't eat that. Don't eat too much. That food is bad. Or you might not be trying to override your physical sensations of hunger to control your weight or your body size. But here's what it might look like: it might look like skipping a meal because of the timing of your schedule or just the overall opportunity or availability to eat. It might look like eating less at a meal because you simply didn't like the food available. Or maybe your body was working through some other physical challenges and you simply weren't that hungry. So, what this might look like for, let's say for me, what this might look like, this actually happened to me just a couple of days ago. I went, my my stomach was not feeling very good. It was more like my digestive system, like my lower intestines were feeling just kind of a little blocked. I think I was probably dehydrated. Um, I'm guessing I probably had eaten something uh where for whatever reason my my digestive system wasn't working all that smoothly. And because of this, when I was eating, I was pretty early getting signals from my body of like, I think we're good here. Like, we don't really want any more food right now. Like I'm I'm good, I've had enough. But overall, the amount of food I ate in that day was a lot less than usual. So I was honoring my body. I was honoring my body's signals, but overall, there was some unintentional, likely some unintentional restriction at play in that the amount of food I ate that day was less than usual. Now, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's not necessarily a problem, but it's something to be aware of. So restriction is happening, but it's not intentional. It doesn't come from trying to ignore your body signals, trying to control your body. So another place where this happens for me is as an athlete. There are times where I may not eat as much food as I need in a given day. This area of unintentional restriction is absolutely something where I still, for me, I don't really get so much into physical restriction or mental restriction. I feel like those are areas I've really um I've really worked on and really developed a lot of skill in that area. It's the unintentional part where for me, sometimes this still pops up. And it's not, so for me as an athlete, I I may not eat as much food as I need on a given day. And it's not because I'm trying to lose weight or I'm trying to ignore what my body's saying. It's simply because of my training schedule. Or maybe I just have this a full afternoon of calls and of meetings, or something else happens and I just don't get my planned snack in that day. Or sometimes during the weekend, let's say I'm training for a race and have a really long ride. I might only eat two meals in a given day. Now, I do my best to listen to my body and get in what I can, but sometimes I find myself after those days feeling much hungrier than usual, or that it takes more food than I would anticipate to reach my point of satisfaction. Now, again, this isn't a problem, but this is where the two-way trust comes in that I talk about in episode nine of this podcast. I have to trust that my body will tell me when it needs food and how much to eat. So here's what happens. Often, if unintentional restriction has taken place on a given day, it might be that the next day, the brain and the body will start to send off signals that it needs more food. The brain might be thinking, oh, great, here we go again. Another starvation diet is coming. And it will do anything to avoid that at all costs. So it sends up increased food chatter. You might be much more aware of your urges to eat. You might have more intense cravings and likely more physical signals from your body as well, more intense hunger signals. Now, when you do start eating, your brain and body want to make sure that it gets enough. It thinks starvation or famine might be coming because of what happened the day before. So it's going to try to get in as much food as it can now, just in case supplies get scarce again. So not only will the brain and body be intensely asking for food and for larger quantities, you also do have a deficit, or you might have a deficit from the day before. So in the event that you start eating and your hunger signals are intense, and you notice you're really enjoying your food and you want to keep eating. Here's what often happens people shift into mental restriction. So then they're thinking, don't eat too much, or they're thinking while they're eating, if I keep eating, then I'm gonna ruin my progress or I'm going to gain weight. So now we have this combination of the unintentional physical restriction and the mental restriction, where we're telling ourselves, don't eat too much, don't ruin your progress. Here we go again, whatever it is that you're telling yourself. So sometimes if we have had increased activity or if we haven't eaten as much the day before, we might naturally eat more the next day to balance things out. This makes a lot of sense. When it comes to trusting your body, many people are only willing to trust the body when its hunger signals are lower. So a lot of people, especially if, if this is a person who has been on the diet train for a long time and they see that eating less is good or equals success, they often, these people often like it. They like the times when their body isn't sending a lot of hunger signals. They think, oh, okay, that's great. I'm not very hungry today. I'm gonna eat less. This might mean success. So, for example, for me the other day, when my digestive system was kind of off, and I very much was listening to my body when it was like, I'm good, I'm done. Then I could think, oh, wow, I ate less today. Maybe I'm gonna lose weight because I ate less. But here's what happened. The next day, I was much more hungry. But what often happens is that people, the same people who were willing to trust and listen when their body was having a, I'm not really so hungry day. I don't really want so much food today. These same people are not willing to trust and to listen when the body is having a particularly hungry day, or it's signaling it simply needs more food on a given day. So the fact is, we do not have an exact set amount of calories that we need every single day. There are so many different factors involved. Some days your body will want or will need less food, and some days it will want and need more food for so many different reasons. Your body will tell you what it needs when you learn how to connect with it, how to honor it, and how to respond to it. But here's an important factor when we're talking about unintentional restriction. Let's say unintentional restriction happens. What's really important is then what you do afterwards when you notice, oh, okay, maybe there was unintentional restriction involved. When you notice, if you are having a day where there's a lot more food chatter involved, you can ask yourself the question: was there any potential unintentional restriction? You can always ask yourself, was there any restriction involved at all? Intentionally, unintentionally, was there mental restriction? How can I really get curious about this? If there was unintentional restriction, if you look back and you think, oh, you know what? I probably didn't eat quite enough for my body yesterday. Now that I really just kind of reflect and I think about maybe what I was doing overall, or I reflect what I actually ate, then it might make sense that today I am more hungry. And I really want to trust and I want to honor what my body's telling me. And if I go into the eating experience, honoring it and saying, okay, yeah, it makes sense that I'm hungry today. I can still trust my body to tell me when it's had enough. I also might know and I might understand, oh, you know what? My brain might be thinking we're going back on a diet. It might be sending up some kind of like scared, oh my gosh, is famine coming? I might need to reassure myself that that's not happening. I might choose to kind of slow down a little bit to make sure my body has enough time to catch up. I know for me, sometimes when I get really hungry, sometimes it takes my body a little while, some time to catch up with the fact that I have gotten enough food. So if I can really see and understand all this is happening, I can slow it down. It's not coming from scarcity. I'm not thinking, oh my gosh, I'm never gonna get this food again. I can give myself some time and some space. I can say, oh, okay, maybe it makes sense that I would want more food today. I am gonna give myself more food and I'm also going to make sure that I give myself enough time to really check in and make sure that overall my kind of like survival brain, as well as overall my physical signals, they all just have a little bit of time to relax and check in. Okay, so now, now that you know what unintentional restriction is, think for yourself: is this something that you can relate to? Do you have periods of time where either your food chatter increases, or maybe your binging or your overeating moments increase following times where you've skipped a meal, or you've been overly active, or you've eaten less for whatever reason? So I love asking this question. If you notice your binging is increasing, you're having an out-of-control moment with food, ask yourself, where was the restriction? Where was I trying to eat less? Where was I telling myself I was gonna go on a diet, or I need to start getting serious, or I need to cut out sugar? Did something happen that I didn't even realize? Did I end up accidentally or unintentionally eating less than my body needs? Was I bringing in restriction while I was eating, telling myself to stop, not to eat too much, or trying to disregard or bypass my body's signals? This is another place where awareness is key. You can't change what you aren't aware of. Now you are aware of the concept of unintentional restriction. You can get curious about it. So when you evaluate what happened, this can be part of the conversation. Was there unintentional restriction? Was there any sort of physical or mental restriction? Signs of restriction are increased food chatter and a seeming inability to connect with your body's physical signals. Now, there are several other reasons that could be involved in a binge or out of control eating moment, including shame and judgment, the attempt to control, a lack of emotional capacity, nervous system dysregulation, disconnection from the body, pure habits, and negative self talk. These are the other seven. Reasons. And understanding the reasons behind our out of control eating moments is the most important part. In the process of unwinding your binging and creating peace with food, you will still binge sometimes. So knowing exactly what to do after a binge and gaining the wisdom and insights available to you is a key part of creating a healthier relationship with food. If you can learn to recognize when unintentional restriction happens, then you can come up with some strategies to overcome it. So, for example, for me, it's most likely to happen on long training days or if I skip a meal for some reason. So my overall strategy is to not skip meals. My brain and body don't love it when I skip a meal based on my disordered eating history. Now, this doesn't mean that I'm automatically set up for a struggle when I do, but it does mean that I prefer to set myself up to not skip a meal if it's possible. But if it's not possible, let's say while I'm in Iron Man training, then I prioritize fueling as soon as I get home. I make sure that I get in as many nutrients as possible during the rest of the day. I become much more intentional with my eating during those times to prevent the unintentional restriction. Just you hear it in the word. It's unintentional. We're not doing this on purpose. So knowing the times when you struggle the most is such great data for you. You can get curious about what you can change, how you can set yourself up for success, how you can let your brain and your body know that you aren't going on another starvation diet, that you aren't taking things away, and that you are truly committed to eating in a way that is nurturing, supportive, and sustainable for you and your body. Reinforcing your commitment to developing two-way trust and to enhancing the communication between you and your body. I would love to hear your thoughts on unintentional restriction. Is this a new concept to you? How will this new awareness impact your approach as you cultivate a new relationship with yourself and with food? All right, that's what I have for you. Here's the other thing that I have for you. If you don't have a process, if you don't have a plan for evaluating what happened after a binge, after an out-of-control moment with food, you need a process, a plan, so that you don't just stay stuck in the cycle, so that you don't let one binge turn into weeks or months of binging. I hear from so many people, I binge once, then I'm just off the rails for weeks or for months. It does not have to be that way. If you have a plan and a process for what to do after a binge, if you don't have one, I would love to give you my plan and my process. You can download that for free at janepilger.com forward slash after. Get the plan and a process for what to do after any out-of-control eating moment with food. This will change everything for you. All right, I'll see you next week. On your journey to creating peace and ease with food, you will have moments when you feel out of control. But remember, what you do next can make all the difference. That's why I've created a powerful plan and process to help you turn these moments into stepping stones rather than die. Start seeing your relationship with food in a whole new light. If you don't have a plan for what to do after a binge, download mine now at janepoker.com forward slash after.