You're Further Along Than You Think - Your Weekly Boost

If you’ve ever felt like you’re not doing enough… this episode is your permission slip to pause and realise how far you’ve actually come.

In this episode of It Was Never About The Food, Rob flips the script and delivers a much-needed reminder:
👉 You’re not behind.
👉 You’re not stuck.
👉 You’re not a failure.
You’ve just been doing the emotional work for so long, you stopped recognising what healing actually looks like.

Inside:

• Why growth often feels boring, quiet, or “not enough”
• How to spot the emotional wins you’re not giving yourself credit for
• Why your old patterns feel weaker now (even if they’re still present)
• How to celebrate your progress without feeling cringe or self-indulgent
• What emotional maturity really looks like in real life (not on Instagram)

This episode will hit deep if you’re healing emotional eating, people-pleasing, or just learning how to stop abandoning yourself.

📲 If this one lands, DM Rob on Instagram with the word PODCAST.
You’ve earned it — even if you can’t see it yet.

Transcript

0:00

You know what? I don't think you get enough credit for the fact that you are still here. I want to use this week's episode to, uh, go astray a little bit because I think last week's episode was me calling you out on your shit. Now I want to celebrate you a little bit. Poet. Didn't know it. Um. But seriously, you're still trying, you're still showing up. Uh, you'll still be doing some of the work, like you're listening to this episode for God's sake. So even if it's messy, even if it's slow, and probably even if you don't think that you've done enough this week, like you're still here.'cause let me tell you the version of you from two years ago. She'd lose her mind if she saw how you handle things. Now, is it perfect? No. But how many times do I have to tell you that this journey is not about perfection? It's about showing up. It's about consistency. It's about being a little bit better than yesterday. Overall. Overall, and you don't even realize any of that. Because the shit thing about growth is that it never feels like, um, you never notice it. It doesn't feel like fireworks. It's one of those things that you look back on and then you, you compare yourself now to then to previously and you go, oh yeah, I do do that better. And that doesn't feel sexy. It doesn't give you that big dopamine rush, really. Um. So it really feels like, why the fuck is this still so hard? It feels like crying in the car, but still going to your therapy session anyway. It feels like spiraling at nighttime, but showing up for yourself tomorrow. Anyway, that's it. That's the end goal. And that's the part that I think might be holding you back more than anything. Welcome to, it was Never about the food, the podcast where we go deeper than diets discipline or self-help fluff. I'm Rob, and I'm not here to tell you what to eat. I am here to help you understand why you became who you became while you were trying to survive. Because underneath every binge, every spiral, every breakdown is a story, and I want to help you rewrite it because the truth is, it was never about the food. None of us celebrate survival when we're still in it. Um. You know what the problem is that you are, you are so used to being in it that you don't even realize how far you've come. You are so wrapped up in the past. Not deliberately, not pointing fingers. It's just, it's a natural consequence of your trauma. You are still kind of fighting for survival, um, and being able to step out of yourself to objectively look at the progress you've made, completely contradicts what that survival mode. Is trying to do like that survival mode is keeping you focused on what's wrong and not what, what isn't working. So it doesn't allow you to stop to think like, damn, I used to numb out for days. Now it's just a couple of hours. Or I used to break down every Sunday night. Now I break down. One Sunday night per month, it's progress. Instead, you just keep looking at what's still broken in your words. That is what's still not fixed, what still needs work. The sneaky thing about self-development is it can become another diet. So you buy book after book, after book, after book. And um, what I saw a meme the other day. It was bloody brilliant. It reminded me of myself, and it said something along the lines of, I put so much pressure on myself to put less pressure on myself. How true is that? Like I'm guilty of that. Like, I'm so determined to be peaceful. I'm unpeaceful. Um, so we just need to pause for a bloody second and say you are already the woman you used to wish that you could be. Like you will be. You're already doing the thing your past self didn't think was possible just by listening to this. Like you are by being here. You are searching for a different route. That's something that a version of you a few years ago wouldn't be doing. You'd still be, um, you'd still be selling your kidney to be able to afford a fucking diet pill. Do you know? So. Yeah, growth feels boring. That's how you know it's working. We all love to think that transformation is big and, uh, audacious and dramatic, Instagram worthy, but it's actually quite boring, um, sex cells and the new sex is weight loss. Growth doesn't sell, not real growth. So you've gotta look out for spiritual bypasses, as we call them, people who use self-development and spirituality, um, in a toxically positive manner, completely bypassing the work that actually needs to be done. Think of your, just say you love yourself three times a day whilst you are, uh, doing the Zumba naked in the mirror every day, and then suddenly you'll fall in love with yourself. It doesn't work that way. Like it's boring, it's raw, it's slow, it's mundane. Anything worth having is anything. Self-development is just the. I, I is, is just kind of like the underpinning of, of any of the stuff that you're trying to succeed through. It's the baseline of how you can show up in everything else in life. So it really looks like not sending the text that you used to send or. Saying No and not explaining yourself. That's hard, isn't it? My body just should it. Eating what your body needs, not what your shame demands. So it's small, it's quiet, it's unsexy. You can't post about it, it wouldn't get likes, uh, and that's why you miss it. That's why you miss it. You think because you are not floating on a cloud through your day feeling like a self healed goddess that you must not be doing enough. That's bullshit. Like you in it right now, you're doing it, so therefore you are doing better than you think. So. What does emotional maturity actually look like? It's, I'll, I'll start off with what it isn't. It's not being perfectly regulated all the time, is not journaling for an hour every morning. It's not. Replacing all your coping mechanisms with kale and yoga. It's knowing when you are dysregulated and not completely abandoning yourself for it, it's still feeling the shame and then still choosing to nourish yourself, like give yourself what you need regardless of what that be. It's having an awareness, identifying that you want to binge, you wanna scroll, you wanna shut down and showing up anyway. And that's showing up can be anything, even if that's showing up, is just brushing your teeth and texting your mate instead. Like, that shit counts. And this can be really hard to buy into because if you are like who we work with, you've probably grown up and been around an environment where you're only worth something. When you are just going, you're switched on, you are driving, you are always progressing, you're always doing more. You're always doing the best that you can. You're trying to be perfect. So this is all gonna feel very counterintuitive. Real maturity is not perfection. Real maturity is just not disappearing from yourself anymore. I think there's a big difference. Uh, you don't have to be the one that everyone comes to all the time, actually, if you are the one that everyone comes to all the time. Chances are you're wearing a completely different mask for every single one of those people that's coming to you. So if you're wearing a different mask, by default, you are disappearing from yourself.'cause they're all masks. So here's a little tough love because I love you. Um, quick side note, if you ever speak to me, like, let's say if we have a call, this is just the way I am. It's just, I, I, I've, I've, I've put the mask on myself, um, over the years and I let that, uh, I left that behind quite a while ago. So it's one of those love me or hate me kind of things. Um, I know you don't like celebrating yourself, especially if you're British. Like we're, we're shit at that we're so bad. It's like the, especially if you're in the uk, the further north you get, um, the more cringe it feels. Um, it feels self-indulgent. Like you might even feel guilty listening to this. Like maybe this even feels like something that you'd feel a bit ashamed telling your friends that you were listening to. But that's bullshit. You've been through a lot. You've probably been through an awful lot, and chances are you're still surviving. Chances are, that's exactly what food is. Maybe as a. A person of success, perhaps you've always considered yourself driven. You're not. It's just being driven is the natural byproduct of running away from feeling naughty enough. You're not running towards something. You're running away from feeling naughty enough, like you dare go back to that. So you are still moving through shit that would've flattened most people, and maybe no one saw it, but we both know that that's the truth. You don't need a fucking confetti cannon. You just need to clock it. If you don't acknowledge these wins, your brain just keeps chasing the next thing to fix. That's its go-to Your brain will always follow the path of least resistance. So if your automation is, I'm not enough, therefore I need to be fixing problem solving, doing tasks. That's, that's where you'll always end up. That's where you have always ended up right and healing then becomes another to-do list. We can't do that anymore, mate. Like you can't do that anymore. There's only so many podcast episodes you can listen to before you realize that things aren't changing in the way that you want them to be. There was a point in my own healing. Where I realized I used to stop here. This is where I used to, like, I could never come back from this part here. You know, I'd, I'd have a bad day and I didn't spiral, didn't self-destruct. Didn't go missing in my own life. And you know what, that part's really hard. I think of that part as like a, um, that's like your Ron moment, as I like to say. You know, when I used this, I used this analogy once in, uh, in a future southco with somebody. Um, and I'll continue to use it because it's a great analogy. For the Harry Potter fans out there, you know that episode, uh, episode that, that, uh, the second to last film, so the Deathly Hallows, but part one where Ron has the opportunity to, um, use the sword to kill the haw crooks, but what does the Haw Crooks do as it's about to be. Uh, obliterated. It throws up one last attempt to, to, to keep, to keep itself there. It throws all of this stuff up in Ron's face. Like his worst nightmares, his worst fears. Harry and Hermione getting it on. Um. Voices saying, you know, you are the, you'll never be enough. You know, Harry's always the one that everyone loved. You are just a useless fool or some shit like that. That's what that day can be like when you are kind of progressing and you're not doing amazingly well. But as we've identified, that's the process. But then that part of you comes in to say, why aren't you doing more? And that's when it's very easy to self-destruct. It's super subtle, yet that's the part that you need to celebrate most. And those voices are always gonna be different for everyone. For me. It's always, again, another example of how this is a constant journey. Like this morning for myself, I feel like I haven't been like really showing up. I still don't know if that's true or not. Um, I still, yeah, I still don't know if that's true or not. I haven't worked that part out. And this is the time where I would even before any substance use would start. There's always like a starter course of self-loathing first, almost like a way to justify why you deserve to treat yourself like shit later. Um. And not listening to that is really hard. So this morning, for example, when that started happening with me, what I used to do, you know, according to all the self-development experts out there is I would journal about it. It wouldn't really help. I. Um, so when you are Chris, uh, Williamson said it very well, when you are stuck in your own head, trying to think your way outta that is like trying to snort your way out of a cocaine addiction. You've gotta, you've gotta take yourself outta the environment. You gotta move, you've gotta. Take the blood flow away from the amygdala, from the emotional part of your brain and get the blood flow into the limbs, and that's what exercise is for. So it takes all of the blood flow away from that emotional side of the brain so you don't live there anymore. And that's the part that's telling you all of these stories. So I go straight to the gym this morning, and you know what? I feel better do I feel? Like I've won the lottery. No, but I just don't feel like I felt this morning. That's the win. So it doesn't have to be a big deal. Just like, yeah, like I handled that well, I handled that differently, and you've gotta trust that that will then feed into something else. And that's when I knew when I first started doing that, that the work was working. That's when I knew it's not that I was doing anything super special. It is that I, it's that I was able to notice it. Your issue is not that you can't do the work. You are not lazy. Look at what else you do in life. Look at what you do for other people, laziness is not the problem. The problem is that you can't identify when you're doing good stuff. So I want you to look for those moments in your life because they are there. They are real, and they fucking matter. So let me ask you straight, where are you waiting? To feel healed before you give yourself credit. That's a question, isn't it? When's it gonna be enough? Also, ask yourself, what's one thing I did this week that the old me wouldn't have done? What have you stopped measuring progress by how. Easy things feel and started measuring it by how differently you respond. A big problem in this is probably how you personally, internally measure success and failure. If you're able to measure progress success by how differently you respond. As opposed to this arbitrary definition of what an end goal, a healed version of you is supposed to look like, well, the happy you'll be isn't that, isn't that the goal? To feel a bit content and like, okay, happy. That's the stuff that proves you're evolving. Not the highlight reel, not the milestone, just the way that you carry yourself now. So this episode is your reminder that you are not behind, you are not failing, you are not stuck. You're actually doing way better than your, your shame that little devil on your shoulder gives you credit for. And if this landed for you, if it gave you even like a flicker of softness towards yourself, message me on Instagram with the word podcast. And we can just have a chat, just that one word just to mark the fact that you are still here, you're still showing up, you are choosing yourself even when it's messy as fuck. Like you're allowed to be proud of that. Okay. This is, it was never about the food, and this episode wasn't about telling you to try harder. It was about reminding you that you already have. Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is not burn it all down when it gets hard, so if you're still standing, you are already winning. See you next time.