Ever found yourself reaching for a snack when you’re not really hungry, or felt your mood plummet after an impromptu junk food feast? You're not alone, and my conversation with Jodi from the Shift membership program is here to shed light on that complex dance between our emotions and eating habits. With Jodi's candid sharing of her journey, we delve into the heart of why we often use food as a balm for our emotions and how it becomes entwined with our self-identity. We lay bare the strategies to strengthen our nervous system's resilience and discuss the importance of confronting the deeper reasons behind our food choices for long-term health and balance.
interested in SHIFT? Want a free call with EMYLEE? Grab a spot for a free call here
Find more information and Free resources HERE:
https://hernextstep.limitlessfemalecoaching.com/landing-page-her-next-step
Have a question about the program or something you want answered on the podcast? Come chat with me on instagram!
@Limitlessfemale
Ever found yourself reaching for a snack when you’re not really hungry, or felt your mood plummet after an impromptu junk food feast? You're not alone, and my conversation with Jodi from the Shift membership program is here to shed light on that complex dance between our emotions and eating habits. With Jodi's candid sharing of her journey, we delve into the heart of why we often use food as a balm for our emotions and how it becomes entwined with our self-identity. We lay bare the strategies to strengthen our nervous system's resilience and discuss the importance of confronting the deeper reasons behind our food choices for long-term health and balance.
interested in SHIFT? Want a free call with EMYLEE? Grab a spot for a free call here
Find more information and Free resources HERE:
https://hernextstep.limitlessfemalecoaching.com/landing-page-her-next-step
Have a question about the program or something you want answered on the podcast? Come chat with me on instagram!
@Limitlessfemale
Hi, I'm Emily with the Limitless Female podcast. You were listening to episode 130,. Emily coaches Jodi on regaining her power over food. Woman, welcome. If you're a mama who is feeling all the feels of motherhood the ups and downs of hormones and maybe even depression then you are in the right place. Limitless Female is your confident inner voice, helping you master your mood and create the epic life that calls you. My goal is to show you just how enough you are, so you can show up limitless in your own life. Let's get started. Good morning everybody. I hope you're having a fabulous Saturday morning.
Speaker 1:I am so glad that one of my shift members, jodi, has offered to share part of her coaching session with you guys. So if you're not familiar with shift, it is my coaching membership and we start off with 12 months and then after that it's a really low, low, low monthly fee so that you can just have ongoing help whenever you need it, without paying like the really large costs that sometimes comes along with ongoing therapy or counseling. So it's built to be a well-rounded, global approach to mental health. So we attack areas such as regulating your nervous system, rewiring your brain and also some physiological things that affect the body that then in turn affect the mind. Nutrition. You know your nutrigenomics or epigenetics, how you're created and what you're predisposed to, what kinds of chemical and external things will affect your mood. So all of those things are just in the program for you, with the main focus being regulating your nervous system and rewiring your brain. So it's an excellent program. And Jodi is one of my newer members and she came on to get coached and I think it's a topic that a lot of us want help around.
Speaker 1:Food in general is something we can't just get rid of right. When we have addictions or even just compulsions to do things. Some of those things we can avoid. We can change the circumstance, we can. You know, if we're in alcohol, we can not go into a bar. We can not hang around our old friends maybe who drink, but food is everywhere. You can't just stop eating. If you are a compulsive chocolate eater, you can't just stop eating or being around food. Just food is something you use instead of feeling your feelings if you use it as a coping mechanism and not when you're hungry. And a lot of us end up turning towards dieting methods or things that are short term right. We restrict really heavily or we work out really hard, we do things that are not something we can maintain for life, and everything we do here in you know, limitless female in my shift membership is to treat the root cause, which is the opposite of diet culture. It's something that will give you long term results. That will literally, like I said, rewire your brain and help you regulate your nervous system so that not only do you no longer think about the chocolate all the time, but also your nervous system is regulated to a point where you don't need to cope so often Because when things come at you that are challenging, you have a much wider range of that, that middle zone of your nervous system, that zone where you can handle those things and you don't need to pull out the coping mechanisms because your body can handle these ups and downs of life. So I'm really excited for you guys to hear this. I think you're going to love it.
Speaker 1:She asked such a great question in the beginning, basically saying all right, I figured out how I feel. I know what I do when I go fog eat or like eat without thinking about it. Sometimes I call that like a booty call eat right, it's, there's no good relationship with food. You're just going to go show up in the pantry at midnight and down a couple handfuls of chocolate chips without even thinking about it and then wake up feeling super guilty. You know what I'm saying For somebody who's never had a booty call. That's what I imagine a booty call would be like. So I certainly had a booty call with chocolate chips.
Speaker 1:So she's kind of gotten that first step. She's gained awareness of what emotions she's trying to avoid or that feel like they're driving her to eat. So we kind of take it the next step and instead of diving into the thought work part of it, I just ask her, because of the previous thoughts she has what has her identity come around food? What's the story she tells herself about what she's capable of? And then we also just stay in the emotional part getting better at sitting with boredom, which will widen that range I was talking about in the nervous system. Give her more space to be more comfortable with uncomfortable feelings like worry and overwhelm, so that she doesn't have to go cope with chocolate chips or a bagel late at night.
Speaker 1:All right, you guys, I hope you enjoy it. If you want more help or want to learn more about shift, you can go down in the show notes below and you can click on the link for shift and you will get to a kind of a little mini course, a few videos that are going to take you through everything that I do, show you the membership in depth and even give you access to text me and ask me questions about it. I hope you guys have an amazing day. Here is the session, hi. How?
Speaker 2:are you? I'm good.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's so good to see your face.
Speaker 2:I know I'm sitting in Starbucks because this is the morning that all of a sudden, we're getting better better internet and of course the guy changes the appointment and he has to be at the house, so I'm in Starbucks. So it's perfect. A little bit noisy, but I'm well. So I had. Did you want to know what I wanted to talk about today?
Speaker 1:Yes, go right. Yeah, you just dive right into it, you do it, you had it down.
Speaker 2:So, when we first, when we first, when you and I first chatted, we were talking about weight loss and everything which is, but you also told me to read more than a body that book, that's the best book I've ever read.
Speaker 1:Oh, good right.
Speaker 2:And my older daughter actually works with. Her focus is she's getting her PhD. She works with people with eating disorders and my younger daughter has a needing disorder and the only reason I'm bringing all this up is just I want to give you a little background. So I'm changing. I want to be healthier. I may or may not lose weight in doing that, so I hope I lose some weight, but I'm coming to the realization that that really is not what's most important for me, Although I do want to do that. So I'm not conflicted about it. But I'm trying to make some peace with the fact that I may not be that may not be the outcome at the level that I had hoped that that would be, Because I really believe and I'm a nurse and I know that it really truly is more important to be it'll fade them, to be thin, and that doesn't mean I'm not gonna, I mean I'm going, I exercise the whole thing.
Speaker 2:But my question was so I'm trying to figure out because I do a lot of eating when I don't know why I'm eating, and I've gone through the model and my problem seems to be that, right when I'm getting to do, I do a lot of I don't really call it binge eating, I think it's more the fog eating thing. Okay, and I'm not quite sure how to identify. Sometimes I can identify my thought. I'm not quite sure what to do with that. Okay, you know, like say I'm bored, or say I'm worried. I'm not quite sure then, when I'm at that point, what my next step is to after identifying that, how to make that not happen again, or how to stop myself then, or whatever. That's my big question. Right, I need some insight from you.
Speaker 1:Okay, perfect. So is that, when you notice that you kind of like unconsciously, just grab food, is when you're worried or bored? What do you think it is the most? Or can you give me a specific situation where one of those was the driving emotion?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think mainly it's when I'm bored or worried.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Either way, and lots of times it's later at night, because when you get to be old, like me, lots of times you don't sleep well, and so then I'm worried about not sleeping, and so then I go downstairs and I just start eating the chocolate chips or whatever. So it's, and the thing is is that I don't know how to pull myself up right then and say, hey, this is what's happening.
Speaker 1:Is it most often late at night.
Speaker 2:No, lots of times. Yeah, most often it's late at night because usually during the day I keep myself pretty busy, right, Right, right. So sometimes it can be in the afternoon when I'm kind of tired, I'm kind of just hanging out and there are things I know I either need to do or whatever. I don't really want to do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, it's really convenient to just do something else, and that may be just go and start snacking. And I mean, I know, if I didn't do those things and let's get the whole weight thing out of it, it would be much healthier for me, because of course I'm not snacking on. You know, I'm not snacking on carrots. I mean I love sweets, I'll be the first to admit it.
Speaker 1:So Me too, right there with you, girl yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, and you know what? Yeah, it is Okay.
Speaker 1:so I have some good questions and strategies, right, but that's jumping right to the action line, which is always a short-term you know thing, right, if our brain comes with us and keeps offering us the same thoughts, so Right. One of the things that you probably haven't like identified is also your story around you with food, because you're paying attention, you're getting some awareness of your habits. You probably created like a title to your story. Like you know, I struggle with sleep, so I often eat at nighttime, which could be a circumstance, right. It's pretty factual, although it's not like last night I ate this. That's a little more factual.
Speaker 1:So it kind of tends to become a title of our story like I'm late night eater, right, or like I kind of binge eat, or when I'm bored, I eat. So it tends to kind of hold us back a little bit because it becomes sort of an identity thing, like I'm just not good at not eating at night. I don't know if you ever have those thoughts about being less of what you do but more of who you are. That's one place that I would start. It's like what is the title of? What do you think about you when you think about you in regards to food?
Speaker 2:Well, I had this thought and I've had this thought over on and off, but I think I first started having those behaviors when my parents were at work and I would come home from school and I mean, my grandmother was always there until we were old enough to be by ourselves, right but, and she was wonderful, and the thing was she always faced and always rewarded or didn't reward us, but when we came home and what we ate was something really yummy and sweet, but that one she was no longer there and I was lonely. I think I was lonely or I was bored. I think that's when I started those behaviors and they've just followed me my whole life and there've been times when I've been much more in control of them, but then I was also in a restricted pattern and I don't I'm trying not to do those kinds of things anymore because those are very, they're never successful and they're not healthy on so many levels. So I guess, so my, my thing, I think with food started it. It was a comfort for me right, I'm so many levels.
Speaker 1:What do you think about your past? What do you think about you with food? Do you think you're good with food? Do you think food has always been a challenge for you?
Speaker 2:Like food has always been a challenge.
Speaker 1:Okay, always, always been a challenge for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, always. So I just want you and there are times when I'm better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, go ahead. I'm sorry, go ahead. I just want you to question that title of your story, because when you believe that, it's not that it's wrong or right, it's just that it's optional if you, if you want it to be Okay, because when you believe food has always been a challenge, right, it feels like it's like food is a deficit in your life Food and food's never going anywhere, right, that's one of the circumstances we can't get rid of. Right, we can get rid of some of the hard ones, but that one's not going away.
Speaker 1:So if food is a challenge. If that's a thought that we have, that food has always been a challenge for me right, then any positive thought or any you know new emotion we try to create is kind of just like it's like. It's like not it's the word I'm looking for despite or in spite, I don't know. It's kind of like saying, like that, the circumstances, food, but then the thought is food is a challenge. But I got this right.
Speaker 1:It's not, that's not really. We think we're thinking a positive thought about this neutral circumstance, but we're actually trying to think a positive thought about what we consider a negative circumstance, which is food is challenging, right? Yes, we haven't really neutralized that circumstance, right, correct?
Speaker 2:There's a value judgment on it and it's negative for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what if food wasn't always a challenge? What if food just has always been in your life just like everybody else? It's always been something that we all think about. It's just that we have a lot of cues and people telling us that if we think about food a lot, right, or that if we choose one food over a different food, that we struggle with food, or if we have more weight on us than someone else, that we struggle with food, but we might be eating the same amount as that person next to us.
Speaker 1:Maybe food is not the problem, right, and maybe you're not the problem Right. Okay, where would you put food in a model?
Speaker 2:No, I'm not very good at the model yet, well, is it a circumstance? I would put it as a circumstance. Yeah, I mean, it's just there, it just is, it just is right and it's part of life it can't be challenging. No.
Speaker 1:No. So what is challenging then? If food can't be challenging, what is challenging?
Speaker 2:I'm not quite sure, maybe dealing with the emotion that's making food a problem. I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 1:It's the thoughts we have about food.
Speaker 2:About food right yes.
Speaker 1:Right, it's what we make food mean in our lives, and that's when we say it's challenging. I am talking about the emotion. So what comes before that? It's what we think about food, right, that's. And this is such a good thing because it means that that food has never been the issue. We don't need to have less cake around, or we don't need to even eat less. We just need to pay attention to the thoughts we have around our eating, around the cake that's sitting there. I want you to consider that there's no negative circumstance, so if you eat an entire cake, that not being negative.
Speaker 2:Okay, Well, the only problem is that I will be like sicker than a dog.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you might get sick right, but it just you just do feel sick, right, just like when we get the flu, because we didn't get a flu shot, right, maybe there was preventative measures, it just is the flu, right. Yeah, we don't have a story about how, like man, the flu has always been a real struggle for me. It's not loaded, I get the flu, like every year, but I don't have like any kind of story around the flu and who I am and whether or not I can handle when the flu comes up, right. So you like, the first start step is always really neutralizing, like it's.
Speaker 1:It's just food. It doesn't have power over you. It's, even if you ate a whole cake, I wouldn't be like, oh, that cake. Like, so just start paying attention to the words you use, the way you talk about food and the way you talk, even about your decisions, because it's even decisions are just neutral. It's like, oh, I ate a cake, right, because it really is that next step that's causing the unnecessary suffering, either in emotion or the outcome of maybe, like you were saying, like you know health problems or weight or whatever it's that next step it's going.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, I ate a whole cake. I can't, you know, do it. So then our action line? So we feel shame. So our action line is to restrict like crazy which is a dieting thing, not a long term thing, right, right. And then our result is that we binge eat again because it's not a long term solution, right.
Speaker 1:So the problem never really was eating the entire cake. The problem was us believing that this means that we have a problem with food and that food is challenging and that we don't have willpower, whatever we make that means. Do you see that I do, yeah, yeah, okay. So when you say, like, what do I do with those thoughts? That's a good question. You know, you're like I think I'm getting some, you know, awareness of my thoughts, at least the feelings, which is really huge, right, like boredom and worry, I could totally say those wanting to get rid of those and just go, like snack on something. Yeah, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I want you to consider what it would be like just to sit with that one minute longer. So it probably doesn't come to your mind, when you feel boredom, that like, oh, what does this feel? Like your, your first thought is whatever your brain offers you to offset that, like, let's go get some chocolate chips. So you've, you've taken it to step one, which is oh wait, what am I feeling that's making me want to do this boredom? Okay, okay. So that's the thought. Let's just go, I can totally have chocolate chips, because we're not going to, we're not going to say you can't have them. Choco's member, they're not the problem, they're neutral. Right, I can totally have chocolate chips, but let me just feel this boredom for like five minutes longer than I normally would. Great, and not with the goal of, oh, hopefully, five minutes. My cravings have gone away. No, remember, the chocolate chips are neutral. Let's just get good at boredom.
Speaker 2:Right, because I think my problem is that I don't really sit with that. I think, then, that I have to just come up with the willpower and say, no, I can't do that Journey instead of really, instead of just really dealing, and then that whole thing is just ridiculous.
Speaker 1:The willpower is like all in the action line right. It's like further down the model.
Speaker 1:It's like we're walking towards the chocolate chips and then we're like, no, no, no, I can't have them, I shouldn't have them. So that's like all the action line. It's actually so much easier to be like, well, whatever comes next, that's fine, but can I just feel bored for a minute and see what that's like? Right? Yes, a lot of people too will be like, well, let's replace the chocolate chips with something else. You can do that too, but that's still the action line. Like when we're bored, we could go for a walk instead of eating chocolate chips. But we're still not getting better at just sitting and with our feelings and being bored. Great, I love that. So that's the first part of just slowing down everything a little bit.
Speaker 1:And what will happen to if, eventually, we get to a place where you are? You're so willing to feel your feelings that you kind of feel them instead of going and doing something else. What happens is because you're consuming less sugar, because you're consuming less. You know what's the opposite of complex carbs? I can't think of it. Right, refine carbs. Refine carbs, process carbs.
Speaker 1:Because, you're consuming less of it. Your hormones will you know, up-regulate right, and then those cravings will take care of themselves a little bit right.
Speaker 2:But it's like, well, I hope so, but you know, I don't really have anything anymore but testosterone because of my age. But I mean like left and growling right, Left and growling will start to regulate, because right now there's a couple.
Speaker 1:you know there's different reasons that they are offered to you. They're offered you because of the time of day that you normally eat. They'll be like oh well this one.
Speaker 1:We always, you know, offer growling. We're hungry, right. So there's different reasons, or because your hormones are off, right, or because of blood sugar. So when we start to sit in our feelings, and eventually also the physiology part comes along with it and we start to have like a lower hunger scale, right. So it's all going to work together. But first we're just going to think about how food is neutral, your past is neutral and we're just going to learn to sit in our feelings a little bit longer. Does that sound like a plan?
Speaker 2:That works for me.
Speaker 1:If you have questions about anything you've learned here on the podcast or want to help with something going on in your own life, hop on a free coaching call with me. In just 30 minutes you'll have real tools for your unique situation. Go to limitlessfemalecoachingcom forward slash workwithme, or you can find a link in the show notes below. Spots are limited, so grab one before you miss it.