How to Feel Connected to Your Body

This week we continue the deep dive into solution #4 for how to stop binge eating.

In Episode 1 I talked about my history and what I mean when I talk about bingeing.

In Episode 2 I discussed the 8 reasons why people binge.

In Episode 3 I covered the 8 solutions - one answer for each reason why you binge.

The 4th reason why many people binge is disconnection from the body. In this week's episode I talk about why connecting with your body is so important and I give you practical tips and strategies you can implement today.

This topic is also very closely tied to Episode 6 where I discussed the very crucial component of understanding your nervous system.

The more you are able to connect with your body, the less you will be looking to disconnect through a binge.

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

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Binge Breakthrough, a podcast designed to help you finally break through the barriers that keep you stuck, feeling out of control about food. I'm Master Certified Coach Jane Hilker, 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 disorders treatment, restrictive diet, and reading all the books, I would still stop in the on-again, off-again cycle of restricting impinging 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 episode seven of binge breakthrough. I call you a trusted listener because I trust that you are listening to this podcast and to this very specific episode at the right time for you in your journey. That this episode might either be the starting point of your breakthrough, or maybe it's just going to plant some seeds for the breakthrough that you will have in the future on your journey towards food freedom and body trust. So today we're actually in the middle of a deep dive into the eight solutions to unwinding binge eating. So to give you a little bit of a recap, if you haven't been with me from the beginning, in episode number one, I shared my story and what I mean when I talk about binging. And then in episode two, I went over the eight reasons that I see that most people stay stuck in the cycle of binging. And then in episode three, I outlined the solutions for each one of those eight reasons, the how to stop. And now we're diving deep into each one of those eight solutions, those eight ways to stop the cycle of binging. So last week we talked about the nervous system. And this week we're talking about connection with your body. So the reason that you might still be binging is disconnection from your body, staying disconnected, using food to disconnect from your body in some way and for some reason. So the answer, the solution then to disconnection from the body is learning how to connect with your body. This is really very intertwined with what we talked about last week with the nervous system. So if you haven't listened to that episode about the nervous system, learning to work with the nervous system and how really that was the missing piece for me with my journey. Because last week's episode, this week's episode, and next week's episode, they really all go hand in hand. Okay, so let's talk about connection with your body. Why is this important? It's important because most of us approach food, our decisions around food, how to eat, when to eat, how much to eat, what to eat. We approach this with our minds, not our bodies. We have taught ourselves to ignore our bodies. We've paid so much more attention to diets, calories, macros, or eating windows than we have to our own body signals of hunger, thirst, fatigue, and the host of other signals that our bodies give us at any given moment. I want you to hear this. The body is always communicating with you. The problem is that we usually aren't listening. Now, this isn't your fault, so you don't need to judge yourself for this. The goal here and the goal with this episode is awareness to become aware of how often we are not listening to our bodies. So think about this for yourself. How often have you ignored your body signals? Maybe you've suppressed your hunger, trying to drink more water, or maybe just wait another hour to eat, maybe have some gum or some coffee or some tea so you can hold off on eating, only to likely end up eating a lot more food later. And it's not just our body's signals for food that we ignore. How about the signal to go to the bathroom? Uh, there have been so many times that I have ignored my body's signals to pee just because it seems inconvenient. I don't want to stop what I'm doing and get up. So I hold it. I might even hold it in the middle of the night because I'm so cozy in my bed and I just don't want to get out. But what kind of message do you suppose this sends to my body when it very clearly tells me it's time to urinate and I ignore it and I hold it? That the message that it's getting is it may or may not get to pee when it really needs to. People who hold their urine for extended periods of time can absolutely end up with issues with their bladder, with their kidneys, and people who suppress their hunger, who are not listening to their signals. I don't need to tell you all of the physical ramifications that can come from what us trying to ignore our very natural signals. If you are listening to this podcast, you likely know what many of those physical ramifications are. So the same thing happens with food. The body hears it may or may not get to eat when it really wants to. When we have this pattern and this history of getting of being hungry and doing what we can to suppress our hunger. Oh, I'll just wait, I'll just drink some water, I'll just have some coffee. Let me see if I can, you know, just hold out. The body then doesn't know if it's going to get to eat when it's hungry or not. So what happens is when the opportunity is there, the body's gonna force the food because it doesn't know if or when it's going to get it again. So this is why it happens so often that when you push your hunger or you try to go on another diet, especially after years or decades of past failed diets, that the body just rebels right away because it doesn't want to go through that uncertainty or the lack of food that it's been through before. And I talked about this a bit further in uh the episode number five, where we talked about restrictions. So you can go back and kind of revisit that if if uh if you need to. Now, hunger, thirst, and urination aren't the only ways that our bodies communicate with us. There are so many other ways that we can connect with and tune into our bodies. We can tune in through our emotions, our physical sensations, fatigue, even pain or injury. Our body, it might communicate to us if we've been still for too long, sitting on the couch, lying in bed, or even sitting in front of a computer. I am sure you have had the experience where you have this monster, maybe it's this monster work session where you sit there, you've been there for maybe two hours straight. You have not gone to the bathroom, you have not had a drink, you've just been work, work, work, working on a project. And all of a sudden you get up and it's like, oh man, you kind of realize, wow, my body's really talking to me. Now, chances are your body was actually talking to you that entire time. And it probably started saying things to you very quietly in the beginning. And then, but we don't, we've we've just taught ourselves to tune out. So we don't even hear it until the signal is so loud, or until we're truly actually injured, or our bladder is so full we're gonna burst, or we're so hungry, we might just go end up eating everything in the pantry. Because we haven't tuned in went to those moments when the body started the communication. The communication actually starts very quietly, it's very gentle, it's very subtle, and it's only when we ignore, when we disconnect, when we suppress from what's going on that those sensations increase and they magnify. So another book that is really great, that I think really highlights what happens in the body, is it's a book called The Body Keeps the Score, and it's by Bessel Vanderkolk. And it really talks about how the effects of trauma live on in our emotions in the body, in our brain circuitry, and also in our physical bodies. So it really highlights how our bodies hold on to so much of what we encounter, both physically and emotionally. This is a very good indication as to why we can't we can't separate. We need to connect with our bodies, to tune in, to connect with our bodies in order to unwind this cycle. So in last week's episode, we talked about the nervous system. And I gave you some practical tips that you can use to start recognizing the state of your nervous system and how to work with it. And checking in with your nervous system, getting aware of it, it's one very powerful way of connecting with your body. So many of these binge eating solutions are intertwined. Checking in, learning how to work with your nervous system, connecting with your body, expanding your emotional capacity. These solutions are all intertwined. None of these solutions exist on their own, which is why it's so important to look at all of them. And that's why we're doing this deep dive into all eight reasons and all eight solutions. Some of them build on each other and some of them, but none of them stand alone. They really are all intertwined. All right. So we've kind of established now connecting with your body, it's very important. We've discussed why, why it's important. And now let's get into the how. How do we start developing connection with our bodies, particularly if we have been disconnecting for so long? So the very first place we always start is we want to start with intention and we want to start with awareness. So starting with intention basically is as simple as it sounds, we set an intention to tune in to our bodies and to connect, to just get curious about the ways that our body is constantly communicating with us. And this intention and this curiosity will lead to awareness. It will lead us to noticing the little ways our body might be trying to communicate with us. It will lead us to noticing when those ways and that language gets even louder and we might be ignoring or suppressing what our body is telling us. Another great example, another thing that we often do, suppressing what our body is telling us, is we can be really fatigued and really tired. But instead of honoring what our body is saying, which is just, oh, you need sleep. We might watch one more show. We might read one more chapter, we might eat one more thing. In that way, we're not connecting with what's happening in our body and really paying attention to what our body is telling us. We're ignoring the body saying, hey, we need to sleep. We're we're ignoring it, we're suppressing it. So here's a great strategy that you can do to check in. You can set an alarm on your phone to go off several times a day. This alarm can be your reminder to check in. And when that alarm goes off, you can say, Oh, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. That that's my this is my reminder. This is my alarm. I'm gonna check in with my body. So you can just tune in. You don't have to go anywhere or do anything. You just take your focus inward and ask yourself, what do I notice about my body right now? What do I notice? You can do a quick body scan. You can start down at the bottom of your feet and kind of scan all the way up. You could just go in in general and see if there's anything that kind of comes up for you right away. If something comes up right away, that can be the first place you go. Or if you kind of tune in and you get nothing, then you can start that scan. You can say, okay, well, where do I notice my body right now? When I check in right now, the very first thing that I notice is I notice my bottom in the seat of the chair that I'm sitting in right now. I can feel that connection, that groundedness of the chair kind of holding me here. I can feel a little tension in the back of my neck. So I can kind of get curious about, huh? I wonder what that might be trying to tell me. So this, you can set that alarm. The alarm will remind you. It can, it sometimes it's nice to have a reminder, particularly if this is something you are not used to doing. It is not likely you will remember on your own. The other thing you can do is you can try to pair it with something else. So you can pair it with uh, say brushing your teeth. You could pair it with going to bed at night. You could pair it with waking up in the morning. Um, if you want to do it with waking up in the morning and going to bed at night, I would also maybe do at least one other time during the day. So you can kind of get a different sense of how your body communicates with you differently, how your body feels differently at different times of the day. So you can ask some questions, even that we talked about last week. Am I aware of my nervous system? What would I say is the state of my nervous system right now? What sort of physical sensations am I noticing right now? So I talked about a body scan, and you can do a body scan just very quickly by um just going inward, starting at the bottom of your feet and kind of making your way up your body. The other thing you can do is if you want a little bit more of an extended practice, there are many body scan meditations available uh out there. So you there are a couple of amazing um apps, meditation apps, uh, Insight Timer and Headspace are a couple of uh very popular ones with a lot of free content. So then there will be many different body scan uh meditations within those apps. You can experiment. I highly recommend that you experiment with different ones. You might find a particular voice, uh, you might find a particular, maybe some background uh music. Maybe you like background music, maybe you don't like background music. Maybe you prefer a body scan that is five minutes long, maybe you prefer a body scan that's 10 minutes long. There are a lot of different options out there so you can experiment and see what feels really good to your body, to your nervous system. And you can also even search, for example, on YouTube. Uh, just do a search on the internet for body scans, and you will have plenty of options. I really encourage you to experiment and see what feels right, see what allows you to actually make some connection with your body. Now, an actual guided body scan might be too much for you, particularly if you are just starting out and if you have been very disconnected from your body. So if you're not used to checking in at all, I recommend that you start with just putting your attention inward for 30 seconds. 30 seconds is enough. Just close your eyes if that feels safe to you. Put your intention inward and see what comes up, see what you notice. Now, I want to give you a note here specifically on safety. If you try to go inside, if you try to close your eyes and have an invitation to connect with your body, this may not feel okay to you. This may not feel safe. You may notice in your nervous system that this feels activating, that it doesn't feel like something that you want to do, or that even is, it just may feel like a firm no. Now, if that happens, that is okay. You never want to force yourself to be somewhere that doesn't feel safe. So if this is the case for you and you notice that when you try to connect or when you try to close your eyes to go inwards, that it feels you feel very much a closing down or um it feels very constrictive, this is a sign that you want to reach out to a professional. And I also want to tell you that it makes sense that you would want to be using food to leave your body, to use it as a method to disconnect from your body. If your body is not a safe place to be, it makes sense that you would come up with ways and come up with methods to leave that place. So this is where working with a professional can be very, very powerful. Now, if you are like, you know, I might be able to go into my body, but I don't know if I can go all the way in. Like, nope, I no way am I doing a full body scan. But it also isn't a hard no. It's kind of like a I'm not sure. Uh, you know, maybe I'm I'm a little hesitant, but I'm also intrigued. I kind of want to go maybe dip my toe in the water and kind of see what the water temperature is. I'm not just gonna decide right away that I can't swim and I'm afraid of the water, but I'm not ready to just go jump in either. So if that's you, what I recommend that you do is you start with your extremities. So when you're checking in with your body, a lot of times um it even if we are not able to make connection with some of um more of the the kind of center part of our body, sometimes we are able to make connection with our extremities. So for example, you could connect with your hands. What do I notice right now about my hands? So for me right now, I notice my hands and my feet are actually, they're kind of cold. So that's I notice that. Is there anything else? Do you notice something about your hands? Can you feel your feet on the ground? This is a powerful one to do because when you feel your feet on the ground, you are also grounding yourself. So we talked last week about the nervous system. One of the things when we have too much energy in our nervous system and we're activated, we need things that can bring the energy down, that can drain the energy. Any way we can ground ourselves, whether it's to ourselves, to the earth, to nature, to other people, that is an amazing way that you can ground yourself and your energy while also staying connected with yourself and your body. So you can, okay, can I feel my feet on the ground? Yes. If you can feel your feet on the ground, that might create even. Just a little bit of safety for you to maybe you can also feel maybe you can feel the chair underneath you. If you're lying down in the bed, maybe you can feel the bed holding you. Again, that's another way that's kind of grounding where you are kind of noticing where you are being held by either the chair you're sitting in or the um the bed that you might be on, or even if you're on the floor on a mat, you can make that connection between your body and something else. So that can be very powerful as well. So when you are working and inviting this connection in with yourself, make sure that there is a level of safety there. Now, if you're checking in and you notice something in your body that you don't like, or maybe you would just rather get away from it, use this as an opportunity to invite yourself to stay with it for just a little bit longer. Now, if this feels very activating and very much like a hard no from your body, take that and honor your body's no. But if it's more of just like the, ooh, like I don't really like this. I'm kind of a little squirmy, but I know I'm still okay. I'd rather not be here, and I'd rather this sensation not be here, but I know that at the end of the day I am okay. That is the perfect time to invite yourself in to stay with it for just a little bit longer, 1% more than you want to. Or maybe it's 30 seconds longer. Something it feels challenging, but also doable. This is a way that we can invite that connection, that we can kind of expand that ability to be with sensations that we may not want to be with. We have that ability to just invite that in. So many of us have the all-or-nothing thinking, the black and white, like, okay, I either feel this or I don't feel this. And we can do that with our urges, right? When we have these urges to eat and to eat all the food, sometimes those urges can feel so tremendous, so urgent. It can feel like I often describe it as like feeling like you just want to come out of your skin. And we think like, I can't handle it. I can't handle any of it at all. Like it's the all or nothing. I can't handle this. I have to go eat all of the food. And so what I invite you to do is even if you are checking in with yourself, you're checking in with your body, you're connecting with your body, and you notice some of that kind of antsy feeling. Oh, can I stay with this? Can I stay with this even for 1% longer? What else am I noticing? What do I notice about my physical body? What is my body trying to tell me through all of this? So, what you want to do is just set an intention to check in more with your body. Whether that's setting an alarm, whether that is pairing it with certain times of day, maybe it is uh after lunch, maybe it is during an afternoon break, maybe it is brushing your teeth. Decide right now when you want to start checking in with your body. And then just notice when you tend to disconnect and gently invite yourself back to yourself. So, for example, you might um, you might just be going along and be like, wow, for the last hour, I have no clue. There was zero connection at all between me and my body. It's like, oh, that's interesting. Okay, well, but I can notice now. Good for me for noticing and becoming aware. I just spent an hour with zero clue how my body feels physically. So you just gently bring yourself back in and see what comes up. See what comes up when you start inviting this connection. See if you can start to notice what your body might be trying to tell you. And if you are able to respond to its requests. This is your work for this week. Now, next week, we are gonna dive even deeper into this topic because we are gonna get into the number five reason for why you binge. And that reason is a coping mechanism. So we're gonna talk about the solution, which is expanding your emotional capacity. And I'm gonna give you guys a spoiler alert. You can't expand your emotional capacity if you're disconnected from your body. So this week, just work on that connection. Invite the connection in and tune in next week where we're gonna dive deep into the topic of emotions. I'll see you then. Thank you for listening to Binge Breakthrough. If you would like to download the eight reasons why you binge and what to do about it, visit binge breakthrough.com forward slash why. That's binge breakthrough.com forward slash WHY. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast so that you don't miss any future episodes that will dive deeper into how to create lasting food freedom. I'll see you there.