144 How to Unwind Without Overindulging

When food is the main method to relax and have fun, it’s easy to overindulge at the expense of our wellbeing. Whether you’re mindlessly eating after dinner or trying to white knuckle your way through and NOT give in to the ice cream or glass of wine, this episode is going to give you a proven strategy that doesn’t rely on willpower.

In this episode you’ll learn:

• How I use goals with clients: as lighthouses, not destinations
• Where to focus if you’re snacking after dinner
• A strategy and mindset that will shift you out of overeating for fun and relaxation and into following through 

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Transcript

This transcript was auto-generated, please forgive any weirdness.

 Welcome to the Mindful Shape Podcast. Thank you so much for being here. My name is Paula Parker, and this podcast is really to help you feel in charge around food and good in your body. When I work with coaching clients, we start by creating two types of goals, and first I'm gonna explain. How I think about goals, because I think oftentimes we set goals and then we either forget about them or we set them and then we beat ourselves up the whole time because we're feeling like we are behind or we're not on track with our goals.

So how I like to think about it is a goal is really a lighthouse. You can imagine it's signaling a beacon of light. It's showing you the direction in which you want to go, and that's it really. It's not about ever reaching it. It's more about. This informs my action. This informs the plan. This gives me some inspiration and helps me make progress toward it, right?

This way, if we're looking at it this way, we never beat ourselves up if we don't hit our goals at the exact time that we want it to. We're not so attached to the timeline of a goal. That's how I think about it. The second thing to know about goals is that there's two types of goals. One is. It's very tangible.

It's either, yeah, we hit it or we didn't. So that could be, when I work with clients, that could be a number on the scale that they wanna see. It's a weight range that they wanna reach. Maybe it's a clothing size that they wanna fit into, or a certain number of pounds that they wanna release. The second is much more interesting and it tends to be more of an emphasis, and that is what I think of as more of an intangible goal.

It's a process. Oriented goal in which if you mastered this goal, it would make your tangible goal inevitable. So let me give you an example. If I mastered the skill of befriending hunger, then I would likely be able to release the next five pounds or whatever, right? It's usually some. Step in the process that if you got really, really good at it, you would not only reach your goal, but it would have exponential returns, meaning you would have it even after you achieve the goal and it would be benefiting you.

All right? So a common goal that a new client will set is to be able to enjoy their evenings. And unwind and relax and decompress without overindulging, without the wine or a beer, without something sweet, without popcorn or the bag of chips. And this is a really helpful and. Important goal because process oriented goal.

Because even though during the day you might be eating well, if you are overindulging in the evenings, that's enough to prevent your body from releasing excess body fat. So instead of using your fat reserves while you're sleeping, you're using all that food that you ate before bedtime instead. So it's never accessing your fat reserves, and so you can't release the weight.

You might notice you are mindlessly eating after dinner just because there's food out or your partner is eating and you're not really thinking about it too much. You just eat food because it's there. Or you might have identified this as a problem and attempted to stop it by making a hard rule for yourself.

So you think, okay, no more of this snacking after dinner and you rely on your will. My apologies. I know that there is some construction noise in the background, but we are just gonna roll with it. Okay. So let's say you decide, okay, this is my new rule. I'm gonna kick this habit. I'm gonna, you know, summon up the, the willpower and I'm not gonna snack that night.

You might feel deprived, especially if your partner's eating something right beside you, but you make it through, right? You're not doing the snacking. And because it's the first night, right? It's not, it's not easy, but you're able to do it. You're committed, and you will likely feel better in the morning, and you'll think, oh, this is great.

This is how I wanna feel. I will for sure keep this up. But inevitably, because you're a human, you notice that those sneaky justification thoughts start creeping back in, well, I've been doing really well, so I can treat myself tonight. Or, I've had such a crap day that I really just need it. But then you feel pretty crappy about that.

Maybe you don't feel so hot the next day, and then the next night feels especially hard to keep on track, to not have the snacks, to not eat that night. So you feel especially deprived and you are thinking thoughts like it's not fair. It's not fair that you have to go without. That you want your evenings to be a part of your day that's relaxing and fun.

It might be the only part that is relaxing and fun, and you say, ah, screw it. You know? No, it's no big deal. It's fine. I can enjoy my evening. I'll start this again next week. I'll start on Monday. I'll start again tomorrow. This type of strategy that's based on willpower alone is a losing strategy. So today I wanna offer you an alternative strategy that actually will work and.

Hopefully, if you do it, get you out of this pattern once and for all. First, we need to cultivate some awareness, not just after the fact, but beforehand, before you eat the food if you're not already. You need to be pausing before eating anything just to check in with yourself. You still may eat the thing, but you need to create some space in there.

If you're mindlessly reaching for food, this is your soul focus and your first assignment, so stick with it until you are not mindlessly eating anymore and you have full awareness. If you are beyond that and you are fully aware if you're doing that, how you might be thinking. To yourself now is, well, I know I shouldn't be eating, but I really want it.

You'll be knowing that this is something outside of your how you wanna be behaving, but you are making justifications. So for you, I have a little, you know, tougher coaching for you. I want you to stop believing the bucket of lies your brain is offering. You think of it as a part of you as. Quite gullible.

Sweet, you know, really wants the fun and the relaxation, but very gullible because it's convinced that overeating overindulging is fun and relaxing. Meaning you as a whole person experience more fun and relaxation in your life from overeating. How is this a total lie if you have food noise? From over desire to food, from having an over desire for food, meaning you're in this mental battle about eating something or not, or if you have excess body fat and you are not loving how you feel in your body.

Then overall, the net effect of overeating creates less fun and relaxation for you. It may create immediate, short-term, fun and relaxation, but even that starts to really wane when you have enough awareness to see that what you are truly doing by overeating is a net harm. To yourself. It really takes the fun out of it.

When you are onto yourself in this way, when you know in your heart that this is not what you want for yourself or how you wanna be living, it's going against what you want. So how do we address this? If not using willpower, summoning up your will First is you wanna see that lie? Let that sink in. Truly, if you can really take anything away from this podcast today, I want it to be this.

Fully integrate the truth of what this evening snacking is really doing. The real impact of it, it's like fake fun, fake relaxation because it has the complete opposite effect overall longer term. When you can really see that, I promise you, it'll be so much easier to follow through once you've seen the lie.

Once you've integrated that you are onto your brain. With those justifications, you're going to need some tools to be able to handle. The fallout, the emotional fallout of saying no. Because if you're at this stage, you're pausing beforehand. You have the awareness. You see the lie that overeating creates more fun.

It doesn't, then you are ready for this third piece. You need to be willing to feel all the discomfort that comes up when you say no to yourself. So be willing. Be willing to, in the short term experience less. You know, quotations, fake fun, less relaxation. It won't feel especially empowering. At this point, you might be feeling deprived.

Okay? What is so bad about this? It's like, okay, your dream body, okay, your dream body is awaiting you, but you willing to give that up for some fake fun and temporary escape. I just want you to think about that for a second. Any negative emotion. Is a vibration in your body that you have experienced many times before in your life and you are capable of handling this.

And you can also influence your experience of negative emotion of that vibration in your body and how you relate to it, how you're thinking about what you're feeling. The next tool you need is to be able to shift your state. Without food or alcohol. I'm not talking about bypassing negative emotion, but you can help the body process whatever you are feeling with what I think of as restorative practices.

If stress is on one end of the continuum and joy or relaxation is on the other, what is one small thing that you can do or even one thought that you can have, maybe one practice or ritual that you can turn to, to shift a notch or two up that continuum, at least two neutral to more of a balanced state.

Examples of this are body work, like movement, walking, stretching, mindfulness practices. I teach women minute mindfulness practices in my program. You can use music or breath work or journaling, self-coaching on paper. You can have a shower, you can have a bath. Getting into water is very cleansing, not just for the body, but for your energy.

What you're looking for is how to make peace with rather than fight. What you're feeling, and it's a real skill to be able to do this, but once you do it, then you'll notice you're experiencing more relaxation and fun without needing the food or alcohol. You're forcing your brain to find other ways to get this need met.

So long as you keep turning to food or alcohol, your brain won't need to change at all. It will prefer you to stick with that old familiar pattern to summon up the willpower. 'cause kind of secretly knowing it won't last. And it's not like I think your brain is actively working against you. I just think there's this part of us that wants the fun, it wants the relaxation.

And because of how our brains are designed, they get easily confused thinking food will do that. At first, you may feel resistance to doing a meditation, to doing thought work on paper or going for a walk when what you really wanna be doing is relaxing with food. And I just sent out an email recently, so if you're not on my email list, but you want to be connected, you wanna hear from me, you can sign up for that on my website@mindfulshape.com.

I'll repeat some of it here because I got a lot of positive feedback and hopefully you will find this helpful. When we feel resistance, what most people will do is quit. We'll stop when it feels hard. We interpret that as a signal to stop. We interpret resistance. As a signal to stop. But what if that's a sign that you are entering real change?

Because the first stage of transformation is friction. That inner resistance that I just don't want to energy. So resistance isn't a sign, something is wrong. It's proof that you are moving toward the next version of yourself. This version, she doesn't snack after dinner. What is she doing instead? She's thinking and acting with intention and purpose.

I can tell you it's worth it that eventually your brain won't even offer up the thought to snack because this has been my personal experience, that going to bed hungry because you had an early dinner or a lighter dinner feels normal and even preferable in your body. But you won't know it until it becomes part of your lived experience until you do it and you embody it and you experience it for yourself.

So instead of selling you on all the rewards and the benefits, I'd actually rather sell your brain on working with that discomfort on working with the resistance that is inevitable because ultimately it's the only way to get there. Anyways. Okay, I hope that was helpful and I'll talk to you again soon.

Bye.