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Welcome back to Train Like a Girl. Today's Thursday episode is still happening on the Thursday, is another episode of just like a method or a I've brought these podcasts in recently and they're kind of things that I use with clients on the reg. And today's episode is one that I think could honestly change someone's life. And I don't say that lightly. If you have ever found yourself standing in front of the cupboard thinking, why am I even eating this? Or you've like finished a family share size bar of chocolate and thought, why the hell did I do that? Or kind of driven to McDonald's on impulse without really consciously making a proper decision to do so. Or you've gotten really stressed out and then you find yourself knee deep in five bags of um Doritos, whatever, that kind of thing, if you're kind of leaning on food for stress, emotion, like impulsively eating, then this episode is for you. Now, obviously, before we dive in, I do want to make something really clear. It's just important that I preface this. I am not a therapist, I'm not a psychologist, I'm not a doctor, and emotional eating is incredibly complex. There are so many reasons why someone might lean on food, like trauma, childhood, stress, restriction, loneliness, ADHD, mental health, hormones. There are bucket loads of reasons, and they're all incredibly individual. So today's episode is, of course, not about diagnosing sort of why you might overeat or lean on food as your kind of support. That is a much bigger conversation, I think. Instead, I just want to give you one practical tool, and it's not something that I've invented, it's a behavioral strategy that is used in various forms by coaches, psychologists, um, therapists, and it's used in addiction therapy, addiction treatment, and habit change. And I have taken this and adapted it to my coaching because honestly, it's probably the most powerful thing I teach clients who struggle with overeating. And it is called the pause. Let's start with something that I think is incredibly important to understand. If you have been overeating for years or even just months, your brain isn't actually trying to do wrong by you. It's not trying to sabotage you, it's actually probably being very, very clever and trying to help you, which I know sounds super strange, but bear with me. Our brains are so clever and very efficient, and their job is to automate things for us that sort of solve problems. Like if you think about this with driving a car, the first time you drove a car, you probably had to think about absolutely everything. I actually don't drive, so if I got in a car today, I'd be thinking about the mirrors and the clutch and the indicators and the where my seat is and the gear stick and the speed and all of those things. But somebody that's experienced at driving now would probably arrive somewhere and barely even remember the journey, because your brain has very cleverly automated it for you. And lots of things work in this same way, otherwise, we wouldn't get through a day, right? Because if we if we can't be on autopilot with like walking, if we had to think about every single step constantly, like maybe a toddler would have to do, then our we wouldn't have enough brain capacity for going to work. And you know, so our brain is very clever, it automates things, and food habits work in exactly the same way. So let's just take a situation, an example. If you've had a stressful day, for example, some years ago, perhaps, you may have ate chocolate. For a few minutes, you felt better. And your brain, after doing this a number of a handful of times, kind of said, Oh, interesting. Stress equals chocolate equals relief. So it happened again and again and again until eventually that pathway in your brain became automatic. Stress, food, lonely, food, bored, food, watching Netflix, food, finished work, food. It's sort of like the cues become a little bit like brushing your teeth. When you see your toothbrush in the evening, you go, Oh, I need to brush my teeth. Or it doesn't even need that, does it, to be honest? It doesn't even need a ph physical cue. And that's the same with food. The when we do something enough times, we end up building uh a plethora of cues, uh, triggers, some people might call it, and before you've even sort of consciously really thought about it, you're halfway to the cupboard, your hand is in the biscuit, tin, whatever. But this is not like a lack of willpower, it's not anything to do with weakness, because your brain has become incredibly efficient at solving discomfort in the way that you have not even purposely but taught it to. And honestly, I'm hopeful that even that will remove some of the shame around this because I I've worked with people that won't even tell me they've overeaten because there's shame attached to it. But I don't think there's place for shame in this because I think so many people tell themselves that it's their fault or whatever, but it's not, it's not their fault. It's just you've just got a really well-practised habit. And the great news is habits can be changed. So, coming back to this method, where does the pause come in? Here's the thing: most people think that the urge to eat is the problem, and it could be, but I would argue that maybe it isn't. The urge is actually just a thought, and it's actually what happens next that matters. Because right now, for many people, the gap between I want food and actually eating the food is basically zero. It's become pretty automatic. There's no decision, there's no like awareness, there's no choice around it. It's almost like somebody else has taken over. Like I'm talking about the people that struggle with this issue with overeating. You you you barely hear, you know, the more practiced this neural pathway has become, so if you've been experiencing overeating for years, for example, this that pathway is now so strong and so efficient that you kind of maybe don't even realize before you have eaten half the packet of biscuits. And some people report this to feel like it's almost like someone else has taken over their body. So rather than trying to stop the urge, which honestly that could be that could definitely be worked on, but what we can work on in the interim is increasing the space between the thought and the action. And that is basically in a nutshell what the pause is. It's just creating space between the trigger in the brain that goes, I need food, and actually eating the food. So here's how it works. The moment you notice the urge, and I appreciate I appreciate this kind of side note, I appreciate that even noticing it is a skill in itself. We could probably do an entire podcast on just like the awareness around that, but let's assume you've started to notice it. Like you know now, okay, when I sit down to put the TV on after dinner, the urge comes up to go grab the Twix from the cupboard, whatever. Noticing it is the first step, but let's assume you've noticed it, because this is where the pores can then be really actionable. You've noticed it, you don't tell yourself you can never have the food ever again, because that is a problem, because that could again tangent, that could take us into a loop of binge restricting on these kind of foods. So you don't tell yourself you can never have that food again. That's really important because the second, the second we say that, our brain often wants it even more. So instead, you simply say, not yet. And then, so you've got the urge, you say not yet, out loud or in your head, and then you set a timer. This is this is how I use the pause anyway with my clients and with myself. 10-minute timer. That is it. And for the next 10 minutes, you make one commitment. You're allowed to do absolutely anything except go to the food. So you can go outside, you could fold wash in, you could phone a friend, you could sit in silence, you could have a shower. A shower is a really good one, actually, because it brings us back to the present moment. You could, you know, go for a walk, um, stroke the dog, put some music on, whatever it is, doesn't really matter. The activity itself isn't the important bit. The important bit is that you're interrupting a habit loop. Because right now your brain expects the cue, the food, the relief. Like the trigger, the food, the relief. So it goes trigger, food, relief, trigger, food, relief. So what you're doing is going trigger, pause, and then choice. And that can be so incredibly powerful. Now, let's be honest, those 10 minutes can feel horrendous. I'm not gonna sugarcoat it. Sometimes they feel incredibly uncomfortable, you might feel agitated, you might feel restless, your bait, your brain might be negotiating, like, oh, I'll just start tomorrow. It's only one biscuit, you've already ruined today anyway, or you might feel better if you eat it. Honestly, your brain is incredibly persuasive, but here's what I would love for you to remember: the goal isn't to feel comfortable in that 10 minutes. We can't expect that of ourselves. The goal is to prove to yourself that urges can exist without immediately acting on them. Because something we often forget is urges behave a little bit like waves. They build, they build, they build, they peak, and eventually they come back down again. And if we immediately eat every single time the urge appears, we never actually discover that. We never discover that wave. Um, we never give ourselves a chance to ride the wave. You might have heard of surf the urge before, ride the wave. Now, what happens after the 10 minutes? Okay, so let's say the urge has come in and you've gone, nope, not yet. I'm gonna pause, 10-minute pause. What then happens is this you choose again. Notice I didn't say you mustn't eat, because that is not what this is. Maybe after 10 minutes, the urge has reduced, and you're like, oh, I don't actually really need that right now. I don't actually really want that food right now. I'm actually quite full. Amazing. Best case scenario. Maybe it's completely gone. Absolutely brilliant. And maybe, maybe it's exactly the same. That is also okay. If the urge is still really strong, I would, if possible, suggest you set another 10-minute timer. And it's not because you want to put yourself through torture, but because every minute you create between the urge and the behavior, you're strengthening that pathway in your brain, you're strengthening that different new pathway in your brain that's teaching you that you don't have to react immediately. So even if, let's say you've now done two 10-minute timers, so 20 minutes, even if you still chose to overeat after that 20 minutes or even after the first 10 minutes, that isn't a failure. And this is so important because if we try this and think we failed, then we are not casting a vote for this method, right? And we need to practice this method, and it's never gonna be right every single time. So you need to understand that even if you do choose to eat after 10 minutes, that's not a failure. And I really mean that because look at these two situations. Scenario one, the urge comes, and within three seconds or 10 seconds, you're eating or running to the shop. Scenario two, the urge comes, you pause, you sit with it, you tolerate that discomfort, you create, create 10, 15, 20 minutes of space, and then you decide to eat. Can you see the difference? The outcome might look the same from the outside, but actually behaviorally, they are miles apart because you've practiced this new skill of interrupting that sort of autopilot response. So you've you've sort of cast a vote for the, you know, you've proved to yourself that there is space between thought and action. And it is in that space where change can happen, where we can change this habit. So it is so powerful. And of course, the more you practice the pause, the stronger and stronger and stronger it becomes. And eventually, I promise it is possible to have the overeating, you know, you can't expect you to never overeat ever again in your whole life. We all have moments of overeating, but it will become so much easier and feel like less of a daily thing, less of a weekly thing. It will become distant. I also want to say something else really important. Just to reiterate, I kind of just said it already, but just to have this own its own section in the podcast, it won't work every single time. It won't. There will be days where you forget and you just don't even realize, like you're just on full autopilot. There'll be days where you feel like it's just too much and the the the food wins, the argument in your head wins. That is so human and you don't need to turn this into another thing to beat yourself up about. Because if you struggle with stress eating, impulsive eating, emotional eating, my guess is that you've already, you're already pretty good at criticizing yourself. You don't need more of that, you need less of that, you need compassion, you need curiosity, and ultimately you need repetition. You need to come back to the pause, you need to keep practicing it. It's like a skill. So remember that it's not about being perfect. We're trying to practice. Every pause is another rep. Just like, just like every squat makes your legs that little bit stronger. Every pause makes that behavioral pathway a little bit stronger. And it's not gonna happen overnight, but over weeks, over months, and eventually, the more you lean into that, the pause starts becoming automatic instead of the eating becoming automatic. And that is where things really start to change. And I've seen this happen with clients. I'm literally welling up as I say this. So if you're listening to this today and thinking, oh my god, this is me, just let this podcast alone be proof that you're not alone. Like this is there are so many people that go through these problems and these, you know, tough times, and I know what it's like to feel completely out of control around food. I have lived it. Oh my god, I'm gonna cry. And whilst I am not a counsellor or a psychologist, I do work with women every single week who are trying to lose weight whilst navigating all of these things: comfort eating, overeating, emotional eating. And honestly, the pause is one of the most powerful tools that I use. And it's it's not magic, but it gives you, you know, like I said, if you implement it, it's not gonna be like, oh, and I'm fixed. You don't need fixing, you know what I mean. But because it gives you something that so many people think that they just don't that they've kind of not got, and that is choice. And once your brain realizes, oh my god, I've got a choice, then things start to change. And that that the power of that work can seep into so many fantastic areas in life, not just with food. I'll let you ponder on that yourself. But if this episode resonated with you and you'd like support building those kind of skills alongside whether it's your fat loss or food relationship or whatever, I will pop all the details of my coaching in the show notes below. Thank you so much for listening. I know this can be quite an emotional episode, but remember the next time the urge comes, you don't have to say no, never eating that food ever again. Just try saying not yet and putting on that timer. It is incredibly powerful, more powerful than it sounds. Hope that was helpful, and I will speak to you again next week.