187 Signs You Have An Overdesire for Food or Alcohol

What’s the difference between being someone who can follow any food plan or adopt healthy habits easily and someone who puts it off, starts on Monday morning and quits on Friday night? It’s not the eating plan or that they’re more self-disciplined. It’s simply overdesire. Learn the signs so you can stop spinning your wheels and solve the REAL reason you have excess body fat. 

You’ll learn:

• How to be someone who can adopt any eating plan and follow through
• Why you keep “self-sabotaging” your plans to get on track
• What your hidden contract with food probably is

• Instagram: @mindful_shape
• Get the FREE Building Momentum 4 Part Video Training
• Free Self Coaching Resources
• Interested in getting coached by me? Go to my website mindfulshape.com

Transcript

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Hi and welcome to the Mindful Shape Podcast. I am Paula Parker and my work is here to offer you mind and body tools, practices, and frameworks to help you step into the next version of yourself, one in which you feel in charge of food and in the desired body that you want, and also just more connected to yourself. So in today's episode, I want to share with you 10 signs that you may have an overdesire for food and alcohol. So what do I mean by overdesire? Overdesire is simply a level of desire for food and alcohol that does not match your desired body or level of health, your optimal health. So you can imagine if you have excess weight on your body, it is from overeating. Let's say let's really make it simple. So it's from overeating. So then your overweight body is from overeating because of an overdesire for food. You've essentially eaten more food than your body needs. Your body doesn't want to be overweight, right? But your brain thought it was a good idea. And so you ate more energy, ate more food than your body needed, and then your body simply stored it rather than killing you, right? It's like I'm gonna use up this extra food, this extra energy, and just store it as excess body fat. Okay, so your body's doing you a service, but you might not like that. So you want to change, and what do we do? We go to, okay, well, I need to eat less, I need to move more, but of course it's not that simple. The reason that you are in this body is from overeating due to over-desire. What we want is more of a natural desire so that it matches your natural weight or the weight that is most desirable to you, whether that's a number on the scale or you just physically know that's the true you or how you feel on the inside. It just matches. So we want your desire for food and alcohol to really match your desired weight, okay? Your natural weight. So let's talk about some signs to look for so that you can spot whether this is an issue for you. Because if it is, we can talk about then how to lower that over-desire to a natural one. And then the result of it, of course, is that you are just living in the body that you want to be in. All right. So the first one is while you are eating a meal, you are already planning what you're gonna eat next. So for example, if you are eating dinner, you're not even finished your dinner, but you're already thinking about dessert. This is a telltale sign that you have some over-desire. Number two, you often feel like you are in a tug of war with yourself when it comes to making a decision around what to eat. So there's like a battle going on in your head, which is like, this is what I want, but I don't want it, but I actually do, but I really shouldn't, any of that mind drama, or sometimes people will talk about it as food noise, that is a sign that you have an overdesire for food as well. Number three is you think about food a lot. So you might have food fantasies where you imagine a weekend or an evening where you could just like make all this delicious food or buy all this delicious food and just zone out and have a bit of a food party. That's food fantasy, okay? Or you're just thinking about food more than you would like to be thinking about it. You're just like constant on your mind. Either what you ate, what you want to eat, what you're going to eat, it's just taking up a lot of mental bandwidth. You might also be spending time, more time than is necessary, planning out your food. Now, it can be very important and useful to plan out your week or plan out your dinners, but if you find yourself scrolling online and constantly looking up recipes for baked goods or cookies or things that you don't even make, this is a sign of overdesire for food. If you plan your food and you're good at doing that, but you rarely obey it, you rarely obey yourself, that is overdesire. You're eating from an overdesire because you have a plan, but you don't stick to it. You either decide I really don't want that chicken and salad that I planned, I'm gonna have the pasta instead, or you go to the restaurant and you're like, oh, screw my homemade lunch, I'm gonna have the pizza, or you eat more than you had planned, or you're snacking, or you're grazing throughout the day. So even though you make a plan, you don't follow through on it. Number five is you turn to food from emotion, specifically negative emotion. Although we can turn to food to temper down positive emotion as well. Oftentimes it's the negative emotion that we are needing to seek relief from. So we are trying to escape an emotion or a state like boredom or anxiety or overwhelm, and we are seeking relief or we're seeking pleasure. So we're escaping something and we're seeking something. So common situation is when you come home after a long day or you've been out doing a lot of social things, and if you're introverted, that can be highly stimulating, and you might feel like you need to settle yourself. And your brain might offer up some food because why, when we eat, that's going to have an effect, it's going to have a neurochemical effect, and it might be soothing and calming to your nervous system to do that. So it makes sense. This is a strategy that totally makes sense, but if you're doing that often, that reinforces that overdesire for food, that food is the solution to that sense of unease, and it becomes a learned behavior, it becomes a habit. And then, of course, we're in a body that doesn't feel like it matches who we are on the inside. So if you are turning to food to escape negative emotion, this is a sign of overdesire for food. It's an attachment for food that we have. Of course, the same is with alcohol. Oftentimes we're in a social situation where we might feel a little bit nervous or we feel some social anxiety. We will turn to alcohol to not feel that. So there's something that we don't want to feel, and we have a perfect solution right in front of us, which is to have a cocktail or have a glass of wine or a beer. Now, there's nothing wrong with that. There's no problem doing that. It's the reasons why you are doing it that you want to understand. If there are reasons that involve escaping a certain emotion or state, or like nervousness, or seeking pleasure relief from that negative emotion, then that is a sign of overdesire. And it's just that you are missing out on an opportunity to really get to know yourself, get to know who you are when you are in a social context without alcohol, right? So it's just a missed opportunity. There's nothing wrong with it. There's like nothing morally wrong with it, or it might even serve you if your reasons for doing it are reasons that match who you want to be and you like your reasons. The next one is closely related, which is your idea of relaxing or having a good time must involve food or alcohol. So that's just interwoven. If it's hard for you to imagine enjoying a social event, a party, it's hard for you to imagine a Friday night or a Sunday morning without sugar, alcohol, um, some sort of like party food, that kind of thing, then it's a sign that you have some overdesire. If the most interesting part of a family function or a vacation is the food and the drinking, that's overdesire. If you often feel that you are obligated to eat, maybe you're not hungry, maybe it's food that you don't even like that much, but you feel obligated to eat it because somebody made it for you. That is overdesire. Why? Because it's you're eating more food than what your body needs to be at optimal health and be in the desired body that you want. Now you might think, well, I actually didn't desire it, I don't even really want it. But if you want it simply because you are thinking, I don't want that other person to feel bad, then what you want is for you to not feel bad. Because if you think they're gonna feel bad because you said no to their cookies that they made for you, then you are trying to manage their thoughts and feelings so that you can feel better, so that you don't have to feel guilty or you don't have to feel bad, right? So there is still an over-desire. If you notice that you often feel deprived or self-pity, like you're kind of feeling sorry for yourself, like it's not fair that other people get to eat cake and you don't, or there's any kind of resentment, or just a an exaggerated sadness that you feel when you say no to yourself when it comes to food and alcohol, that for sure means that there's an overdesire. Otherwise, it just wouldn't be that big of a deal. And then the last one is you find yourself looking in the cupboards, looking in the fridge where you just want something. There's a vague wanting of something, of something to eat or drink when you if you were to check in, you aren't that physically hungry. So maybe this is in between mealtime or you've just eaten and you just have that vague sense of unease and that vague sense of wanting something more. This happens a lot when we have less structured time, so like on the weekends or the evenings. If you are doing that, it's not coming from physical hunger, it's coming from overdesire. So those are the 10 top signs of overdesire. There are probably more, but if you said yes to any of those, you do have overdesire, and it just means that that's good news because now you can start to work to lower that. And why does this matter? Because you can have the best strategy in the world. You can have your macro numbers, your calorie number, your meal plan, everything on point. It can be the best strategy in the world. But if you have all of this over-desire for food, this attachment to food, it's going to be a real struggle. It's going to feel terrible to follow through on that. You might be feeling like you are white knuckling your way through, or it might, you might be able to do it for a couple of weeks, but then something happens and you fall off. You lose interest, you lose motivation, it becomes inconvenient, something happens, and your over-desire for food is going to trump all of that amazing strategy and your best intentions. So when we solve for that over-desire, your attachment to food, how you're thinking and feeling about it, you can really follow any plan that you want. Somebody'll give you a meal plan, not a problem. You can just follow through with it, right? It's just math. Why? Because you don't have all of this over-desire for food. It's not a problem. Somebody offers you cookies or you have a really stressful day, you're not going to be turning to food. You're going to be able to follow through on that meal plan. Even if it's a very healthy, very sustainable way of eating or meal plan, food plan, it won't be sustainable for you until you lower over desire, because then you will be able to maintain it and keep it up. There are two types of overdesire. One is physiological. That's where your body really wants more food than it needs. So this is when you have a lot of sugar cravings, or you crave carbs, or you crave alcohol. And this just means there could be a potential hormonal imbalance due to dieting and then overeating and under-eating due to eating a lot of artificial sweeteners. I feel like we have a lot of this when we're hungover. We have this physiological overdesire, especially if we've had a lot of sugar, you might notice the next day, even if I eat a lot of fruit one day, I'll notice the next day. I'm just craving sugar, right? This is a physiological overdesire. It's your body wanting more food than it needs. And then the second one is a psychological overdesire. And that's more of what the signs that I mentioned earlier, which is really your brain wants more food than it needs. So psychological overdesire is that emotional attachment. That's I'm trying to escape a certain emotion or state, and I'm trying to chase a certain emotion and state, often relief and pleasure. Okay. So overdesire creates all of this desire and permissiveness for food. And the solution in our mind is food or alcohol. Okay, so you can think of this as a contract that you have made with food. And this might not be a conscious contract, but you've made a hidden contract with food and or alcohol that says, listen, the deal is when I'm feeling bad, I will turn to you and get immediate relief. Now it's not going to be long-term and it might not serve me overall, but the contract, the hidden contract is when I'm feeling bad, I can use food or alcohol to feel instantly better. So you may not have consciously agreed to this, but now it's your opportunity to really renegotiate this contract into one that more matches your desired body. So you can think of this as, okay, my contract with food now is that I do not turn to it for escaping. I do not turn to it for relief. I turn to it to fuel my body. And you really think of it as, yeah, something that you take pleasure in and that you enjoy your food, but that it's really more about fueling your body for energy, for vitality, for strength and fitness and all of those things, and just live in the world. So I encourage you to, yes, focus on the strategy, focus on what the mechanics, what you need to do to increase your metabolic health. But also what you'll need to do is address this over-desire piece, the reason that you put on the weight and that you were overeating in the first place. Because you can't have one without the other. They work together as one. Okay, I hope that gave you a new perspective in terms of why am I turning to food? Why am I doing the things that I'm doing? It's just overdesire. And once you lower that, you'll notice you just have a natural desire for food and alcohol if you choose alcohol, and that it's not that big of a deal. All that food noise goes down. All right, I'll talk to you again soon. Bye.