183 Become Someone Who Naturally Stops at Enough

Practically apply the 6 elements of neuroplasticity so that you can go from eating past comfort because the food is so delicious (you’re an excellent cook), you don’t want to waste it or your brain thinks a few more bites won’t matter to eating so that you feel nourished, satisfied and optimize metabolic health.

You’ll learn:

• How to become someone who naturally stops at enough not by forcing themselves to, but by working with their brain for real, lasting change.
• The 6 elements of neuroplasticity 
• Why Ezra Klein makes me hungry

• Instagram: @mindful_shape
• Free Self Coaching Resources
• Interested in getting coached by me? Go to my website mindfulshape.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi and welcome to the Mindful Shade Podcast. I'm Paula Parker and my work is here to offer you specialized mind and body practices and frameworks to shift into the next version of yourself. So one in which you feel in charge with food, great in your body, and more connected to yourself. So let's get right into it. Uh when I work with clients, there's three things that we focus on. One is how to befriend hunger so that you're only eating when you're hungry. The second is eating to just enough so that you feel satiated and nourished, but that you're not overeating. And then the third is really choosing foods that serve you. So this is going to be foods that are going to be healthy, you know, have fiber, like we all kind of know how to eat healthy. So that's choosing foods that serve you. We're gonna limit or think of them as exceptions when it comes to like alcohol and sugar, stuff like that. Okay, so when I first start working with clients, typically what happens is they get the hunger thing pretty easily. They start attuning to their body and noticing that there's waves of hunger and they can detect it. And we work on some of their mindset on how to interpret those signals and not make a big drama out of it. So that one comes usually first. Then the second is usually choosing foods that serve you. So most of us kind of know the foods that don't serve our bodies and the foods that do, and so we work on again what's the mindset around being able to follow through on your plan when it comes to foods that serve you. But the last one that typically takes clients a little bit longer is the stopping at enough. Most clients I work with generally eat pretty healthy, but they will often overeat. And so this typically is the last phase that we want to hone in on so that you can really be in a body that feels like it's right for you. So we all know the advice on how to slow down, how to not overeat at our meals, right? It's be intentional, don't maybe watch TV or distractions. I eat so often when I'm watching, I watch Ezra Klein on YouTube, and I watch it so often that I just hear his voice and I will get hungry. Okay, so I am not one of these people that thinks that you need to eat without any distraction whatsoever. I really do think that when you can when your brain and body are working together in terms of paying attention to those signals, it becomes more automatic and you actually don't have to pay as much attention. But when you're first learning, it makes sense. You want to reduce distractions, you want to set an intention, you want to be slowing down so that you're not overeating, even when the food is really delicious. But if you've heard all of those things and you are still finding that you're overeating at your meals, you're just eating more food than you need, then we need to go a little bit deeper because those are actions, those are things that you could be doing that you could try. But I want to go to what will make those things just natural. Who's the version of you who can watch Ezra Klein and eat your meal and not overeat? That is who I'm interested in. And I really do think it's a skill set that you can get to, that you can achieve if you want to. So let's talk about how to do that. What I'm talking about is how do we change your brain so that it's just natural to do that? What's the foundational change that needs to happen so that you're just following through on those things rather than forcing yourself to stop at enough? And to explore this idea, I'm going to be relying on some of the work, some of the training that I did with Amanda Blake, who is a master somatic coach, and she talks about neuroscience and she talks about embodiment, and she's a doctor. She wrote a book called Your Body is Your Brain. And so if you're interested, you can check that out. So let's talk about neuroplasticity because if you change your brain, this is all gonna be so much easier. So, according to all the research, there are six elements of change when it comes to neuroplasticity. I'm gonna go through them all for you, and we're gonna talk about how you would apply them to this change that you want to make in terms of how to stop at enough, which for many of us can be really challenging. Now, you don't need all six elements to create change. However, the more elements that you can incorporate, the more effective the change process will be. Okay, so the first one is disruption. So, how can you interrupt the pattern? Talk about this a lot. This is like, you know, behavioral change 101 is how can we interrupt the pattern? So, what can you do differently than you are doing now? Take a look at what are the meals, when are the times, what are the foods when you most often overeat, when you have a hard time stopping it enough, or you're very resistant to stopping it enough. And how can we disrupt that pattern? So for you, that might look like instead of continuing to think, am I still hungry? Am I still hungry? And then eating, instead, you might disrupt that pattern with how am I feeling in my body? And how satiated am I feeling? And then you'll notice those cues and you'll be more in tune with your body. Okay, so we're gonna interrupt what you typically do with something new. The second is relationships. So our brains really take shape while embedded in relationships. This is true early in life when we're little babies and we develop such connections or attachment and everything with our primary caregivers. But it's also true when we are learning and growing and changing in, you know, adolescence and adult life. We are as humans heavily influenced by our interactions, our the presence or absence of people around us. The thing that dysregulates us the most is when we are in conflict with somebody very close to us, personal relationships. So, in order for a change to really take root, it can be helpful to tie it to some sort of relationship. There's lots of evidence to support that growth in therapy is not necessarily as correlated to the methodology the therapist uses as the relationship that the client feels with the particular therapist. That's when they see the most growth, when that relationship is more positive. So we know that that can influence behavior change. Is there a way that you can make it more relational? One way that you could try is to whoever is in your life, maybe it's your significant other, just tell them that like this is what you're working on and this is what you're caring about. And that just in and of itself might be enough to feel supported and bring alongside that relationship piece. If you don't have someone like that that you feel like you can speak to, that's a great idea where you tell a best friend or you can speak to a coach or someone who really gets it, and you can just say, like, listen, I just want to let you know, like, this is what I'm working on. I'm gonna be eating a little bit slower. I'm gonna be focusing on what I am doing while we're talking. So I'm still paying attention to you, but I'm also just gonna be like paying attention to how my body feels. I'm just like trying out this new thing just to like see how it goes. You don't have to make a big deal about it. You don't have to be weird or awkward, just like bring them in on it for you, for that relationship piece. The next one is emotional engagement. We know that strong emotions are correlated with the release of neurotransmitters that support learning. So this is why when you have a highly intense emotional experience, like being on a roller coaster on a first date, you will ascribe that emotional experience to the person. So they always say if you're like wanting to make a connection with somebody, make sure that there's high emotion because they will learn, they will remember that experience and kind of tie it to you. So, how might you use emotional engagement to stop it enough? Well, really, what you could try is just tying it to some compelling reason, getting really clear on why it matters to you. Why are you doing this whole thing? What is it going to feel like when you are somebody who can just stop it enough, when you are somebody who can have a few chips and like leave it, or when you're that person who's reached their goal, how will that feel in your body? It really doesn't matter what your compelling reason is. I don't think there's like a right one or a wrong one, it just has to be compelling to you, meaning when you say it, when you think it, you feel something. There's an emotional charge there for you. Can you somehow twig your brain to connect to that emotional engagement when you sit down for your meal? In a positive way. Again, negativity in terms of emotion can work for change, but it's not gonna be sustainable over long over the long term. So, what I recommend is you find some sort of compelling reason that makes you feel calm, that makes you feel um how you want to feel positive, enthusiastic, excited. You're not gonna feel like that every single time, but it needs to be a compelling enough reason that you do feel it when you are not in like a pressure cooker kind of situation. So you want to be able to connect with your compelling reason before you sit down to your meal. Now again, are you gonna be doing this every single time? No, you could choose literally one of these in terms of how am I going to support this change through neuroplasticity and try it. You could try this one time and just see if that works for you. The next one is attention. So we know that whatever we pay attention to, there's change. So that's the same is true with our own behavior and our own bodies. So what I encourage you to do is have some measure of tracking. Whether you track your food, it's totally up to you. But maybe you could track, okay, how did that feel in my body? That amount of food. Did I feel energized and nourished, or did I feel a little heavy and lethargic? And you just want to monitor it, track it. What that will do is remind your brain, this is something I'm paying attention to. I know I'm gonna be tracking this at the end of the day or after the meal, how I feel maybe 25 minutes after I eat. So it will cue you to pay attention to that while you're eating. Now, this next one is kind of funny because it's movement, and it might be a stretch to think that you can incorporate movement into helping you stop it enough when it comes to food. But I want you to consider that you could incorporate some sort of bodily movement, some sort of gesture that signals to your brain, this is what we're doing. So it's more of intention rather than I'm moving my body and that's somehow going to direct my thinking or direct my behavior in some direct way. No, it's more like, oh, what is the what is the gesture that is a symbol to me that I will do to remind myself that I'm somebody who can stop it enough. Like I've done it before and I can do it again. Now that might be something as simple as um snapping your fingers. It can be something that's so subtle that only you know, hand on heart briefly, or um some sort of like uh making a fist. It really doesn't matter. It's just whatever for you is some sort of bodily movement. Again, you can use a few of these or you can stack them if you're like, okay, I'm going all in. What are all the things I'm gonna do? And then create a little neuroplasticity ritual for yourself. Try it as an experiment for three days or a week and just see, see the progress that you make. And so this is really supportive of my last point, which is or the last element of neuroplasticity, which is practice. So the more that you do it, the more you're teaching your brain to create essentially a new brain structure. So neuroplasticity, right? We are literally changing the structures of the brain. So the more you can practice it, the more likelihood that you will change over time. But it needs to have some sort of emotional resonance. So that's key. So that's why, like that whole thing on The Simpsons where they would just write like on the chalkboard a million times, like I will not misbehave, or I will not talk in class or whatever. Like, if it has no emotional resonance, it doesn't matter if you do it a hundred times. Nobody's gonna learn anything from that. So it's not repetition in and of itself. What I encourage you to do is take a look at all of these and then just see which do I have the most emotional attachment to? How can I incorporate that into my practice of choice and then do it repetitively a few times a day, anytime you eat, or a few times a week, and just see what happens. All right, I hope that was helpful and I'll talk to you again soon.

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Bye.