Why can't I stop thinking about and craving food?

In this episode I unpack the WHY behind your food headnoise, obsessiveness and constant worry, alongside some tangible HOW steps to helping you break free from this cycle, both mentally and physically. 

Please share this to someone you know is struggling with this, or implement these tips for yourself. 

For performance coaching - dm me on instagram!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Beyond the Bar podcast. I'm so happy to be here. Let's fingers crossed that my dog Mac does not bark because he is sitting right next to me with a squeaky toy, and if he starts squeaking on that and starts barking, we're gonna have issues. I just got this new microphone and it's like it's hectic. Like I can't deal with it. It's so crisp and so loud, and I can hear myself and it's freaking me out. So it will pick up on him even just like licking this toy. So wish me luck. But today's episode is going to be all about obsession with food and head noise with food as a dancer, because so many clients come to me with this issue that they feel like they're constantly focused on food, they're constantly thinking about food, and they are constantly worrying about food. And it is something that a lot of dancers experience, whether they speak about it or not, and whether they're aware of it or not, I think it's a really hidden thing and it's hard to pick up on. Sometimes we think it's normal, we think it's normal the amount we are thinking about food, and especially with social media, which pushes so much about food and focusing on macros and focusing on different types of diets and focusing on cutting this out and putting this into your diet and all these things, it can become almost normal to be thinking about food all the time. But to think about food all the time is not normal and it is not healthy. It becomes an obsession and it becomes almost like a hyperfixation that you now can't stop thinking about food all the time, and it is part of your life, and that is really debilitating because it means you don't have enough focus for the other things you have to do. You're always gonna be hungry, you're always gonna have cravings, you're always going to be fixated on what you're putting in your mouth, what your body looks like, what you're going to like for a restaurant or whatever it might be, and what calories you're eating and all this stuff, and that is so counter to your physique goals, I can't even explain. So I'm gonna break it down into a couple components. First thing is like why this happens and why we can start to fixate on food as a dancer, and then the second part is going to be how to start to reduce it. So, first part, why? Okay. A lot of the time dancers have had, let's say, comments around their body, or people are starting to get a little bit more aware of their body, more aware of their physique, more aware of their shape. And maybe there's been a comment from a teacher that's telling you that your body needs to look a certain way, or that there's something problematic with your physique, or your peers are starting to focus on their bodies and everyone's starting to get a little bit fixated fixated around their body and dieting and things like this. It can start to make the noise in your head around food, body, training, all that sort of stuff a lot louder. Why? Because it's now something in your conscious awareness. It's now something that you're considering, it's something that you're starting to observe more, it's something you're starting to probably consume more content around, it's something you're starting to research more, it's something you're starting to become more curious of. And it's sort of like that analogy of like, um, when you want to buy a new truck, like, okay, not a truck, that's me. When you want to buy a new car, it's all you can see around. Like all you can constantly see is that car everywhere. It's the same with food. When you start to fixate on like the way you want to eat and the way you want to look and making that a thing for yourself, you will start to see food everywhere. You'll start to become very conscious of calories, very conscious of macros, very conscious of foods that you are deeming good and bad. You'll become very conscious of other people's eating habits and it's super debilitating and it's actually super unfun for everyone around you as well, not gonna lie. But another reason why this starts to happen is because typically when dancers go down the path of dieting and calorie restriction, they tend to go too hard in this. This is such a dancer thing because so many dancers are perfectionists and they are overachievers. So what do they do? They go, Okay, I'm gonna lose weight, or I'm going to try and get toned. And they start to cut out as much food as they can. Starts with a little bit one day, then they go, Cool, I didn't need that today. Tomorrow I don't need that either. And they start to bring down the food groups as well. They start to go, okay, maybe I don't need as many carbs, or maybe I should just focus on only eating protein. And they start to cut out what we would call like quote unquote junk food, which is actually just different food to what you eat 80% of the time, right? Those more flexible free foods, maybe they'll start to restrict and not go out to eat and just be very much like on their plan and on what they've set for themselves. And for the most part, dancers, when they go about trying to change their body, they dramatically calorie restrict. They go, okay, cool, 1200, 1400 calories, cool, sweet, that's perfect for me. That couldn't be further from the truth. And you wonder why you've got head noise around food, it's because you're starving. Like, simple answer, right? But when the body is given less than it needs, it is going to push you to get it, right? Just like when you are thirsty and you're like, oh, I should have some water. Your mouth gets a little parched, you're dehydrated, your cravings of water, and you go and drink water, you stop thinking about being thirsty. The problem with food, however, is that we think, oh, I'm hungry. We think, oh, but I'm in a calorie deficit, I shouldn't eat that thing. Or like, you know, I'm trying to stick to these certain foods, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We don't go and meet the requirement, right? We don't go and eat the food, and then we wonder why we're still thinking about food. Very obvious, very simple answer. Go and eat the food, right? There is a reality in which dancers do have to be lean and they have to have lean, strong physiques. That is what I do with my dancers every day, right? That does not mean unnecessary cutting out of food groups, ridiculously cutting down your calories, and being a dick around food. That is not what that means, okay? And I want you to be really mindful of that because so many dancers get stuck in this trap and they go cutting down of this food, and then they wonder why food has now become something in their life. And not just something, it's become a big thing, it's become a hyper focus, it's become something they can't stop thinking about. And that is super debilitating. I truly think that you should not be spending hours in the day thinking, planning, mapping out, just considering food in general. If you were satiated, if you were eating enough food, and if you didn't have limits around your diet, i.e., you didn't have foods that you deem as good and bad, you didn't have certain rules of when you can eat, what time you can eat, all this sort of stuff, and you just followed an actual macro-based, calorie-based plan that is fit to your goals and actually is enough food to sustain you, has balance within it, so you're not craving certain things and actually eat at the same times every day, you would probably find that that head noise around food would go away. But a lot of you won't do that. Why? Because you want the quick fix. You are desperate for the quick fix to get the body you want. You think, well, if I just eat less and less and less now, I'll get the body sooner, and then I can have those foods. No, because what happens you eat less and less, you probably throw yourself into a binge or you throw yourself into a period of very low energy, burnout, injury, potential eating disorder. Okay, so that wasn't super productive, was it? Right? I say this with love because I did it for way too long, and this is like the first trap that I take dancers out of is this unnecessary calorie restriction that is too far down. Calorie restriction has to exist, yes, as a dancer, if you are looking to get a very, very lean toned physique. But it must be done within the limits that are healthy, sustainable, and safe, and that actually allow you to have enough calories to one, not store body fat and actually have the energy to do your training, but two, to have enough calories to actually burn what your body wants to burn and sustain you through your entire day so you don't get injured, sick, burnt out, tired, and you can dance and exercise, right? Anyway, so as we're talking about with this food head noise, food obsession, food obsessiveness, whatever it might be. If you are going about one calorie restriction, cutting out your calories, cutting down your calories, two elimination of foods from your diet, unless this is for an elimination gut-healing diet. That is something I also do with my clients frequently. Unless you were doing it for that reason, you cannot expect that you're not gonna be thinking about food all the time because you've now made it a fixation. So thinking about food all the time can look a couple different ways. It can be like constantly searching up food on your Instagram. Like, I remember when I was in the thick of problems with food, I was constantly looking up food. I was always curious what other people were eating. I was like, hey, what are you eating for lunch? Even though I was eating like piss all, right? I was constantly searching up different recipes, searching up food on Instagram, looking at low calorie recipes, also looking at the food that I really craved, looking at different restaurants. Like I would follow restaurants. That's not normal, guys. Why are we following restaurants unless it's like a super cool bougie place that you want to go to and get some pics at? Like, that is not normal, okay? That obsession with new recipes and cooking all the time and this sort of thing, that obsessiveness with food tells me that you are spending way too much time considering food because one, you're underfed, two, you're restricting yourself too much, and three, you are trying to push your body to do something it is not working at doing, right? It can also look like just being super fixated on like tracking your calories and trying to be really diligent with your calories, like putting in like oils and stuff like that, and just being like crazy obsessive with it. It could also look like just always wanting the food that you're not allowing yourself. So when you look at like chocolate for some reason, let's say chocolate's such a common one, craving chocolate, thinking about chocolate, wanting chocolate, but you're like, I'm never gonna let myself have it. So then you just crave it two times, you crave it three times, you crave it four times because you put a block on yourself. The way I'd like to explain it to my clients sometimes is like your head noise and obsessiveness around like the foods that you want and those cravings is often like a teenager rebelling from their parents, right? You know, when you're a teenager, look, I was actually like a perfect child, might I say. So I never rebelled from my parents. My parents like my best friends, like I wouldn't dare. But let's take like, oh, I said a couple things in my teen years that were probably questionable. Like that's not what this podcast is about. We'll make another podcast about that, okay. But it's like a team where the mum or dad has said, like, all right, kind of you, you you know, you've got to be home by 10 p.m. I don't know, is that what parents do? Mine, mine were very good. They didn't need to put rules on me because I was very um timid, let's say. I was just sewing point juice, right? Anyway, whatever. Putting that block on your child to be like, okay, you've got to be home by 10 pm. All a kid wants to do is go, like, alright, 10.01, 1001, screw you. Like, I'm pushing the boats out, I'm gonna push the boats out and see what I can get away with, right? It is the exact same with the food that you restrict from yourself. You say to yourself, no chocolate, that there's a part of your brain that's going, get the chocolate, mm-mm, eat the chocolate, do anything to get the chocolate. We're gonna think about the chocolate all the time. Let's do it, let's rebel, let's go against ourselves. Why? Because the rule you put on yourself was too harsh. The rule you put on yourself was unrealistic. The rule that you put on yourself was made to be broken, right? If it's too hard, if it's something that you're not going to be able to sustain for the rest of your life, you're gonna break it because it's gonna be broken anyway. You need to break it, right? Now that we have a really good understanding of like what this obsessiveness is with food, I want you to sit and be like, okay, cool, is this me? Do I think about food more than I should be? Am I spending time in the day considering food, right? I used to spend hours in the day thinking, what's my next meal? I would be eating my lunch thinking, what are we having for dinner? Better text mum, what are we having for dinner, right? Ugh, wrong, right? This is why the power of planning and the power of just like following something is so amazing, but we'll get into that. If this is you, I want you to listen hard to the next section because we're gonna start to put in some really tangible tools that you can start to use. Now, this is like tip of the iceberg with what I would do with one of my one-to-one clients. And if you are struggling with this, like please reach out because it's something that needs to be tackled, it is something that gets in so many dancers' ways, and the obsession obsessiveness and obsession with food actually a lot of the time stops you from getting that physique you want because you're blocked in getting it, because you're so focused on the food, not on the process, not on the boxes you've got to tick, but on the unrealistic standards you've set that you are breaking every single freaking day or every single weekend, right? So, in terms of tangible tips, things that we can do to reduce your head noise and obsessiveness around food, first thing I would say is be really mindful of your consumption. And when I say consumption, I mean your consumption of what is going on around you, whether this is online, whether this is in your conversations, whether this is just like whatever it is, whatever's going on around you, I want you to be really mindful. Is this adding to your head noise around food? Are you following restaurants? Are you following foodie people? Are you watching what I eat in a day videos? That is my biggest red flag. I'm waving the red flag. You can't see this, but I'm waving a full fucking red flag, okay? If you are constantly watching what I eat in a day videos, we've got to talk. Stop watching people eat, right? Are you having conversations with your friends all the time? Oh my god, did you just hear my ankle crack? Are you having conversations with your friends all the time about food and like, oh, what are you eating and like what's it okay? If you are doing all of this, I want you to make a really huge conscious effort to cut it all out and see how loud the noise still is. Remove yourself from any source of food obsession, right? Unfollow the pages, watch something else instead of the what I in a day's go and watch like a day vlog or some shit like that. I don't know, I don't watch YouTube. Go and listen to an educational podcast that's not about food, okay? That's also a big one, right? Cut out any noise around food, right? The second thing is you need to have a plan. When you have a plan that you can put trust in, that you feel safe in, that you know is going to work, you can achieve things with your body and with food. But a lot of the time there is one big problem that I see with dances. And often that problem is that when we don't have a plan around food, we are constantly planning around food. If you have a set plan, a structure, this is what I eat in the day. I have variety on my weekends, or I have variety for 20% of my day, and 80% of my day is on this plan. I can choose my snacks, but my main meals are the same. You know you're getting your protein in, you're getting your carbs, and you're getting your fats, and you're getting your fiber in. You know that you're eating to the calories that you need to achieve your physique goals. There is no space to think about food because you know what's coming. So you can use that brain power to think about something else, something more productive, while the food works for you. With those meals, they have to be satiating in order for this plan to work. If you just make a plan for yourself and you're like, okay, my 1200 calorie plan, uh, that's not gonna work. That's not gonna work. Maxie is laughing. But of course it's not gonna work because at the end of the day, that plan was never good. That plan was never gonna help. That plan was actually hindering you. That plan will make you think about food more, right? So you need to be following a plan that is actually set for your goals, for your needs, for your requirements, and for sustainability. Okay, a plan around food, if it's not sustainable, will never work. And that is tricky because obviously, in a calorie deficit, you have a limited amount of calories that you're working with. You might have 1600 calories, you might have 2,000 calories, whatever it might be. You have a more limited amount of calories that you're working with because the point of the deficit is to be burning more than you are consuming, right? Which some dancers need to go through this period of time doing to get that physique they want. There's always going to be hunger, there's always gonna be a little bit of um well, just hunger and craving really for food and thinking about food because your body's driving you to eat more food. So that level you have to be able to just accept and go as long as my meals are planned to the absolute best ability they can, as long as they are as optimal as possible, then I'm sweet. If they're not sustaining you at all, then you've got a problem with the balance of your meals, right? The next thing that I would suggest you do after you find the plan that worked for you, and look, probably if you haven't found it yet, you maybe are not going to find it, and you need to go to someone like a dance performance nutritionist to make a plan for you, right? This, like honestly, immediately eradicates my client's head noise around food. Why? Because they don't have to think about food anymore because I'm thinking about it for them, right? So they just trust the process and they get results and they're like, yeah, this is great, okay? The next thing I would include is meal times, making sure that you're eating around the same time every single day. If you're doing this thing of like, oh, I'm not gonna have breakfast today, or like, oh, I don't need dinner today, like whatever the shit is that you might be doing, stop doing that and start actually planning out your day to make sure that you are having appropriate meal times. When your body and your brain actually know that they are going to get fed at a certain time, they can start to produce the hunger hormones that are gonna allow you to feel hungry and then to feel satiated and full. Mac, get down. My goodness. So you can feel hungry and full, right? Without those set meal times, your brain and body don't know when the heck you're gonna give it food. They're like, girl, girl, are we getting fed today? Girl, please, please, right? So you need to create structure around your day if you want to stop thinking about freaking food all the time. Why? Because you will not think about food all the time if you are satiated. You cannot be satiated if you're not eating regularly. And my last piece of advice is adding in something balanced either to your day or your week. I follow with my clients dependent on the client, right? Dependent on the client, an 80-20 rule, a 70-30 rule, or a 90-10 rule. For the sake of this podcast and like Gen Pop, like Gen Pop is in, like you guys, if you're not my one-to-one client, I would say to follow the t the 80-20 rule, which can look across over the course of a week or a day. Mac, stop it. The course of a week or course of the day. I wish you guys could see this. He's being funny, but he's trying to eat my gun. Watch. Um, across the course of a day, it looks like eating 80% whole nutrient-dense foods, making sure that they are really nourishing, high in protein, all of the things. And then 20% of the day is where you get your variety and your fun foods in, so that you're not thinking about those fun foods all the time and restricting them and never having them, but they become part of your balanced day. If you were someone that prefers to like go out for a couple meals on the weekend or something like that, I would take that 80-20 approach to your week and be super on, bang on for the week, and then you've got that 20% where you can let loose on the weekend. That's probably personally the approach that I take. I eat like on meal plan five days a week, and then when the weekend comes, I go out to dinner for sure. I go out for drinks, love a good little app roll or something on the weekend. I'll get some dumplings, I'll do a yoch, you know, a yochie, something like that, to get that balance in, to get that balance and that flexibility in my diet, right? And that works for me. Doing that balance every day doesn't really work for me because I've got performance goals that I need to tick off, right? So that would be my last tip for reducing your head noise around food. And then I guess actually, one more because I'm feeling generous. Write down a list of the foods that you have deemed as bad and wrong, and the list of foods that you think about all the time. What are the foods that you're constantly craving and thinking about, right? If we can get really clear on what these are, we can actually start to understand why this head noise is there because of the restrictions you've put on yourself with food, and we can start to challenge these foods. And this is something that I would do with my clients in a one-to-one setting is challenging different foods, right? I'll give you an example. A client came to me the other day and she was like, I just cannot genuinely stop thinking about chocolate. Like, good God, it is all I can think about. And I was like, okay, cool. So you're eating chocolate every day. And she was like, Are you serious? I can't eat chocolate every day. And I was like, girl, it's in your breakfast now. It's in your breakfast. Not at the end of the day where we're gonna overeat on it because our morals are lower at the end of the day, our standards at least. But at the start of the day where we're feeling like, all right, I'm locked in, I'm on, it's the start of the day. Yeah, and you're gonna eat chocolate to show yourself this isn't a bad food, it's just a freaking fat sauce that tastes pretty good, right? So these are the sort of tools we would use in a one-to-one setting. I hope you guys took something away from this podcast. I hope that if you felt like, oh my gosh, I feel so seen and heard right now, that you can see that there is a way out of this and it's not forever. But the most important thing that you recognize in that is it's not normal. Okay, it's not normal. You shouldn't be thinking about food all the time. And so you need to change something in your life to get out of that cycle because it sucks. You should you should be using your brain for other important shit, right? So to get out of that cycle, start with these four tips. If you've got no idea where to start and you're like, girl, this cycle, I I feel I feel cooked. Okay, DM me. Let's talk. Be on the bar on Instagram, okay? Yes, the one with 400 followers my accounts got hacked after six years. So, yes, the one with 400 followers now tell you the ego death that I experienced going from like 10,000 followers across my accounts to 400. Woeful. Anyway, whatever, not about me. I hope you guys enjoyed this episode, okay? Reach out, share, share this episode. If you got a friend, if you're like, girl, you are constantly talking about food, share this to them. Let's normalize this for the sake of healing it. Normalize it in these conversations for the sake of healing it, okay? Alright. Mac, it's time to stop chewing up the garment. I'm gonna love you and leave you dancers, ex dancers, dance parents, dance teachers, whoever is listening to this. You guys actually love the podcast, and I need to get I need to get on my podcast grind because I'm on uni break now for five weeks, which you know is always when the podcast comes back. So expect plenty more. Okay, love you. Bye.