147 Staying Consistent Part 1 of 2 - The Hidden Key

The key to success is consistency. So…what’s the key to consistency? Although you’ve likely heard of the four stress responses: fight, flight, freeze, fawn, you’ve probably not connected that to staying on track when your brain is fixated on chocolate. 

In this episode you’ll learn:

• Why understanding this will lesson the shame from getting off track and overindulging 
• How to identify YOUR dominant nervous system response
• The specific overeating behaviors that reflect your nervous system response

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Transcript

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

Hi, and welcome to The Mindful Shape Podcast. I'm Paula Parker. I am here to help you feel the best in your body that you possibly can. All right, so we've all heard it a million times that the key to success is consistency. And I'm not gonna argue against it, but then it begs the question, what is the key to consistency?

How do we stay consistent? How do you stay on track? Most of us can eat on point for a little while until something happens when we get off track. Maybe it's a bad day. We get really, really hungry and then we eat more than we need, or we're feeling great and get permissive with a glass of wine or two or three.

Or we get the burger instead of the salad, and then we're feeling a little bit guilty about that. So then we get the ice cream too, because hey, it's summer, we wanna have fun. But then of course at some point we look back and we think. You know, I wish I hadn't done that. If I could just be consistent, then I would be able to make some progress.

So let's talk about exactly how to do that, how to stay consistent. We all know that there's times when it's easy, when eating well, moving our bodies, getting in the meditation, it all feels really doable. It's just smooth sailing. We're not thinking about food all that much and we're just on track. This is when your nervous system is balanced.

So let's just briefly touch on a little science here, because it's important for you to have the foundation. Your nervous system is responsible for basically everything in your body. So your nervous system is like your own internal personal internet. It's the filter and the messenger of everything happening inside you and around you in your environment.

You can't. Overstate the importance of the nervous system. It begins in the brain and it carries energy signals throughout the whole body. So it processes all your senses, like sight, what you see, smell hearing, what you hear, what you taste and touch. It registers emotions, thoughts, and sensations, and sends all of that information, all of that input, sends it to your cells so you're breathing.

Blinking. When you blush after you say something or somebody says something to you and you blush. When you shiver, even your hunger, your satiety, your thirst, your sleep, even your heartbeat, your experience of your entire life is through your nervous system. So when we get triggered or stressed, our nervous system gets.

Dysregulated, or I like the term imbalanced, so I'll be using them interchangeably, dysregulated as a little bit more clinical. I like the idea of balance and being out of balance and in balance, but let's talk about stress for a second. Okay? Because we live in the modern day world, we are going to get stressed.

I wanna give you Dr. Sarah Godfrey's definition from the hormone cure. So stress is your response to change. Such as external or internal factors that knocks us out of homeostasis. So when it's dysregulated, cortisol comes up and it can be very troubling for women in particular. So balancing cortisol is related to stress reduction.

We've, we've all heard this before. We all know about cortisol. It's a hormone. So always start, she says, always start with lifestyle changes that you can make. To mitigate the stress in your life, both real and perceived. She says, optimize nutrition, exercise, and mental retraining. Okay, when we are talking about stress, that's what we are talking about.

We are talking about those moments when you wanna reach for the snack, even though you decided not to snack in between meals, when you feel out of control with your eating, like you can't stop or that you're powerless. Maybe you have a very intense craving for something for the chocolate, you simply must have something.

This is what we're talking about. Okay? Because this is of course gonna get in the way of you being consistent. And most people will make the mistake of thinking this is a lack of self-discipline or self-control, or that they just love food too much and then they keep trying to summon up more willpower and white knuckle their way through.

Those cravings, or maybe you keep thinking, I must be missing something. What am I missing? Why can't I stay consistent? I don't know what to do. I follow through in every other area of my life, but not with food and weight loss. So you might also notice yourself vowing to follow through on, you know, absolutely no sugar, no alcohol, any kind of hard lined.

Plan with hard lined determination and like you're just like, that's it. I'm just fed up. I won't allow that anymore. But none of that is empowering. There might be a false sense of control that feels reassuring in the moment, like through the force of will. I will avoid sugar and flour no matter what, but.

If you've ever tried this, you probably have noticed that no matter how strong that intention is, no matter how much determination there is at the start, it fades that will, it just doesn't hold on. When you're tired or you're craving for something is super, super intense, or when you get stressed out, you get dysregulated or out of balance.

You say, I just can't keep this up. I need a break, and you eat. You overeat, you eat more than your body needs. So from now on, let's not think about this as a lack of self-control. Think of it as nervous system imbalance, because that's what's really happening. So I'll say it very plainly. The key to staying consistent is learning to balance your nervous system.

When you know this, you won't waste your time creating false hope using willpower, but instead, you're really gonna be able to solve the real problem that your nervous system gets dysregulated. Why? Because you're a human and you live in this world, okay? So when you learn how to regulate it or get it back into balance, you can stay consistent.

Now, what's really interesting is that what you particularly. Need to focus on to get back into balance will be oftentimes different than someone else. It's very helpful to know what your default stress response is. Okay. So in other words, what does an imbalanced nervous system look like for you? Because I worked with lots of clients, I see it showing up in different ways.

Now, although there is some overlap, you're gonna notice yourself doing things from. One of four categories of these stress responses that I'm gonna share with you. So there are four types of stress responses. I actually think they should be called reactions because my idea is that a reaction just is so automatic, and that's what this is, versus a response which is thoughtful.

But in any case. This is what they call it as far as I understand it in the psychology, in the neuroscience. So people usually fall predominantly into one of four main categories. I'm sure you are very familiar with them. Fight, flight, freeze fawn, but maybe you've never thought about how they could inform and structure your weight loss success.

So here we go. Four categories of stress response and four categories of remedy. Four categories of how an imbalanced nervous system shows up and four categories to balance it. So I'm gonna go through all four, and as you're listening, see if you can identify which one describes your tendencies more so than the others, and I'm gonna give you a general description and then how this might show up in your eating patterns.

And attempts to release any excess weight. So of course, again, there's gonna be overlap. You're gonna see yourself in most likely a lot of these categories, but just try to hone in on which one do I think I might be the most? Okay. The first one is fight response. This is you. If you are a very action oriented person, you tend to take things head on.

You don't avoid confrontation. When stressed, you often feel angry, irritable, frustrated. You get defensive, you're prone to arguing, yelling, blaming others. Try to control the situation or other people. You are just someone you need to get your point across. If you are someone who overeats in spite or in rebellion or defiance, this could be you.

If you rage eat. This might be you. You might find yourself saying, screw it, I deserve this. It's not fair. I'm just gonna have it. You also have a pretty relentless inner critic when you do overindulge. So she's like that mean girl. We all know that mean girl from high school. Okay, that's her. You have that inner mean girl.

Or sometimes I think of her as like the bratty teenager. So she's pretty mean about how your body looks and when it comes to you going off your plan or not following through overindulging. And she will say, you know, why can't you just get it together? So your internal dialogue is, why can't I just get it together?

You are very like harsh, very critical of yourself. You might listen to that inner mean girl and react with over exercising or being super restrictive as punishment. Does any of that sound familiar? Again, there's always overlap, so as we go, just consider what describes you the most. What are the tendencies that you find are almost default, most often?

The second category is flight. If you are in this group, you are likely an overachiever and tend to be. Anxiety prone. You have noticed your tendency to be a perfectionist. This can show up as all or nothing. Thinking. For example, I'm either completely on point or I'm completely off the rails with food.

I'm either working out regularly or I haven't moved in a week. If you have one cookie, you think, well, I've gone and done it now, might as well have five and start again tomorrow. No sugar whatsoever. Okay? All or nothing. There may be some irritability, edginess. You're kind of a busy body. You're always doing stuff.

You got lots of things on the go. A million projects. You start a lot of things. You may or may not finish them all, and you might have poor sleep or even chronic tension in your body and your mind. Here's how it very specifically shows up when you're trying to release weight and in your eating patterns there's mindless snacking, so you're using snacking to escape feelings of stress.

Or overwhelm. So if you eat from directly from stress or overwhelm, this could be you. If you eat to calm anxiety, you are constantly busy or multitasking while you're eating. So you are somebody who's eating in the car, you're eating on the go. You never sit down for your meals. You use food to escape stress or overwhelm.

I mentioned that earlier. You have a really long day and then you tend to overeat. Again, that kind of goes back to trying to escape from the stress and overwhelm. But if you tend to have a really jam packed day, and then you overeat because you are at capacity, this could be you and you could sometimes panic about gaining weight, and that can lead to an correction over corrective behavior like.

Crash diets will seem really compelling to you all of a sudden. Okay? So you might find yourself trying something and then quickly saying, ah, this is not working and trying something new. So if you're constantly flip-flopping on strategy, on protocols, this could be you. You could be flight. Okay? Next category is freeze response, and I may know a little thing about this.

Okay. You tend to have a slower pace of things, so your style of work is slow and steady. You are known to space out. When stressed, you are more likely than others. To procrastinate, to ruminate. Be slow to choose an eating plan. Or stay in overwhelm and confusion about what to do next. You're kind of a lone wolf style.

You like being by yourself. You like your own company. You can feel down and lack motivation. You likely have difficulty articulating feelings, and when you're stressed, you tend to clam up. You tend to shut down. You don't wanna engage, you wanna withdraw into yourself. It might even be hard for you to find the words.

If someone asks you to open up about what you're going through in terms of your eating and weight loss, you might feel stuck quite often, and you will find yourself saying things like, I don't even know where to start. You might lose your sense of timing while eating. So you feel the need to escape into movies or shows while eating for hours or a couple of days.

Numbness followed by shame. You eat too numb and you kind of feeling negative feelings in your body, but then you feel really bad about it. You can feel trapped and you can feel paralyzed to change. Okay. That feeling of trapped your weight loss journey so far has probably had. Quite a bit of self pity, hopelessness and despair.

You overeat primarily as a soothing mechanism when you are disconnected from what you're feeling or you're unaware of what you're feeling and you're emotionally flat. You may also feel like you're in a fog while you're eating, so like you can't remember what or how much you ate, and you might find yourself compulsively eating, like having binge episodes that feel almost out of body.

There's a sense of feeling out of control with food. Your brain was simply watching what your body was putting into its mouth. Okay, next, let's move to Fawn. Now, it's argued that fawning is more of a personality adaptation than a nervous system response from unresolved trauma or chronic stress. But if you recognize some of these tendencies, then it will be helpful to include the remedies for fawning.

So I will include it in. Faers are people pleasers? They say yes to things when inside something in them is actually screaming. No. They will go above and beyond for people they most care about. They will sometimes kiss up over flatter or be overly accommodating at their own cost. Often they experience guilt that they're not doing enough and yet also.

Resentment for doing all the things that they're doing for doing too much, and they tend to want validation. So acknowledgement for everything that they give and all that they do. If you are fawning response, or this is one of the categories that you fall into, your overeating patterns might look like this.

Overeating, after taking on too much for others, or not setting healthy boundaries of your time and energy, you give so much that you feel food is the one. Of the few pleasures you can give yourself. So it's your me time when you can finally relax, let your hair down, enjoy yourself. You overeat to self-soothe after saying yes when you truly meant no.

You feel like you betrayed yourself and you wanna distract from that feeling by eating. You eat sometimes out of obligation. So you say yes when someone offers you food, even though you're not hungry. It's not what you really want. You eat or drink at a restaurant because that's what you think is expected of you, or you use food to fill the void created by neglecting your own desires.

You put everyone else first and what you really want takes a backseat. You may have a hard time asserting yourself when someone chooses a restaurant, you know, won't work for you. You just go along anyways. You don't wanna cause a fuss. You don't wanna ask the server to make any kind of accommodations to your meal because you don't wanna be a bother.

You don't want the attention either. Okay, so. Have you got yourself identified? You might notice one is dominant and you've got some of the other two. Again, fawning tends to be, I think, more dominant in women. That's just my own opinion, not based on any facts whatsoever, and I think it's partly societal and partly family of origin stuff.

Okay, so these responses might seem like a nightmare. Like when I was listing them off, I felt a little heavy. So let's just take a deep breath. Okay, this is not a problem. None of these behaviors are a problem. They are very human. This is not a failing on your part. They are part of your complex and like messy humanity.

They are an adaptive response to dysregulation, imbalance, or unmet needs. Now that you know about this, think of it as taking a massive leap, like a quantum leap in your weight loss strategy because you'll be able to better identify and understand your unique challenges and patterns. And from there. Come up with more efficient solutions.

So in part two in the next episode, it's called Staying Consistent Strategies. I'm going to give you very specific strategies based on which stress type you are so that you can balance your nervous system, so that you can stay consistent with your weight loss, your food choices, and feeling good in your body.

I hope that was helpful. I hope that gives you some understanding of maybe why you do the things that you do and you stop blaming yourself. You know, this is just like a nervous system response, right? These are very typical behaviors, especially when it comes to food. I see it all the time, so be sure to tune into the next episode because we wanna know, okay, how, what are the solutions?

Like, what are the strategies for these very specific behaviors? I wanna equip you with all of that so that you can really make some progress. Okay, I will see you there.