Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. You know, when I was learning how to run marathons and half marathons, I worked with a running group and one of the surprising things I learned that now makes so much sense to me, but was so counterintuitive was that if you want to get faster, you need to slow down. You can slow down to get faster.
And so today in this episode of the podcast, I want to talk about pacing. And the pacing that is going to help you create freedom from overeating. So, one of the things that motivated this episode was that last week I was cleaning out some papers and I was paging through my journal and I realized that I had started this particular notebook about a year ago. And I got curious. What was, what was going on a year ago at this time. Right?
What was I doing last year at this time? It would not be an exaggeration to say that when I went back to the beginning and started looking at what was happening in my life and what I was thinking 52 weeks ago, I was astounded. I mean, really that visit from my friends that was just a year ago? That COVID experience that happened, that interview that I did, that was really only a year ago?
I am almost always amazed when I look back over a year or over a period of time that’s longer than a year and I remember all that has happened and all that has changed. When I do this, it doesn’t feel like reality matches my perception that I had in my head. And science and research tell me that I’m not alone in this.
We know that human beings tend to underestimate what is possible in a larger quantity of time, like a year or five years or 10 years. We underestimate the amount of change that can happen or things that can be accomplished. And conversely, we chronically overestimate what we can accomplish in the short term.
Which is why most of us have overwhelming to do lists for today and for this week. And why we are always feeling behind and too busy. Somehow our brain thinks that in order to do the big things in the long term, we have to do way more than is actually possible in the short term. And there is a part of our brain that actually believes we are capable of this superhuman performance in the very short term.
Diet culture has not helped us with this. We are endlessly marketed a buffet of instant results. Right? Instant results, fast cures, before and after pictures, 10-day cleanses. And those, well, I already mentioned the before and after pictures, those dramatic 30-day pictures with the stomach sucked in, right? This is what I did in just 30 days or in just 10 days.
And this contributes to many of us, so many of us feeling like if we If we aren’t taking big hard steps and if we aren’t seeing progress every single day, and if it isn’t happening fast, then we’re doing something wrong. Or even worse, many of us have come to feel that if we are not seeing progress every single day, if it isn’t happening fast, there’s something wrong with us.
That’s one big, important piece of this. And then there’s the impatience. Which is so understandable. So many women feel like they have been fighting with food, fighting with their eating, fighting with the scale for so long, and they’re tired.
They want done with this and they want to have achieved their goals already. They want to achieve them yesterday. And then you’ve got all this messaging that says, oh, if you were doing it, right, you would have done it. If you just buy this product, it’ll happen. Right. All of this leads to, well, I guess the best way to describe it is this panicky feeling sometimes of what do I need to do?
What do I need to do? How can I lose weight faster? How can I make this binging go away now? Today? What if I did more? What if I do bigger? What if I work harder? I am pretty sure you know this voice. I think we all know this voice. This noise, this static that is constantly there. And in the midst of all of this, I am here to share a very different message with you.
You can untangle this stuff. You can break even long-term habits of overeating and emotional eating. You can create results that last. And if you really want to do this. You want to slow down.
When it comes to creating freedom from overeating, slower is faster. Slower creates better results. And slower creates easier results. I really want you to hear me out here. And if your brain needs to hear this more than once, that is the beauty of podcast episodes, you can listen again. Because here’s the thing, you’ve been conditioned for the opposite. You have been conditioned to not slow down. You’ve been conditioned to push harder.
Your brain won’t want to do it. It might initially feel like you aren’t getting anywhere or you’re doing it all wrong because it’s not what your brain is used to. But I will go out on a limb and I’m going to say what I really think. I really believe that slowing down is the only way to get where you want to go.
And also slowing down doesn’t mean that it has to take a long time to get where you want to go. Change takes more time than you think, and it also happens faster than you think. Just bear with me here, okay?
Let me tell you about what I have done over the past year. A change, a pretty dramatic change that has happened almost effortlessly. I have completely straightened my teeth. You may have heard me mention in another episode, but a little over a year ago, I got the Invisalign braces.
If you are not familiar with them, this is how they work. These are those, almost invisible clear braces that a lot of adults use to straighten their teeth. So, you go in, you get this high-tech scan of your teeth, and then they use a 3d printer, which I don’t really understand 3d printers. But anyway, they use a 3d printer and You get a set of clear plastic trays that fit over your top teeth and another set that fit over your bottom teeth. And they fit almost perfectly and they send you a whole bunch of these trays and each week you change to the next tray.
And again, each of these trays fits almost perfectly. They don’t hurt. They don’t hurt at all. Maybe they feel a little tight for the first day or two that you wear them, but then they don’t. And then the next week you move on to tray number two and tray number three and so on. And if you take out these trays and you look at them side by side, they look practically identical. Actually, they do look identical.
But each one is a teeny tiny bit different. In fact, I actually Googled and I found that on average, your teeth are moving a 10th of a millimeter every week. That is a teeny, teeny tiny bit. That is not very much at all. It feels like nothing. You look at these trays side by side, they look all identical. It doesn’t feel like a lot is happening.
So, imagine my surprise when just a few months into this process, my canine teeth, which have always been crooked and have always overlapped. My other teeth didn’t do that anymore. They were straight and they were even. I saved my very first trays. Just the very first set and a year later I look at that compared to the last trace that I am wearing and they look nothing Like what I wore the first week.
Slow and steady worked fast. And it was easy. And week by week It did not feel dramatic. It did not feel like I was doing a lot. Probably if you had asked the high achiever in me, hey, would you like to push those teeth a little bit more? I probably would have said oh, yeah, we could do that. You I didn’t need to, and I’m guessing it probably wouldn’t have helped and it probably wouldn’t have worked as well.
So slow and steady worked fast. It felt easy. And in the end, it felt like during each week I wasn’t doing a lot. But I, when I look back and think, oh my gosh, that was just a year ago. It’s pretty amazing.
It can be this way with changing your eating. Your brain is not going to believe this, which is part of the reason you actually need to slow down and I’m going to get to this in a minute.
Your brain won’t believe it. But I know this is true. And as a result, I now only work with clients for six months or longer. Because you have to slow down. Because when you slow down, you can speed up all the right things. And when you slow down, you can sidestep all the stuff that has probably been causing the problems.
So, at this point, I only work with clients for six months or longer. I don’t do one session or three sessions. Because slowing down and giving yourself time and space is an essential part of the process.
Let me tell you more about what I mean. If you’re listening to this podcast episode, then you have probably tried to stop overeating or emotional eating. And if you’ve been trying to do this, you are more than likely in reaction mode. Your brain is probably constantly reacting.
Reacting to this problem that you need to solve. You I’ve got to do something. Right? It is probably constantly telling you exactly that I need to do something or I need to do more or I need to stop doing something. I need to stop eating. You probably also have this flurry of thoughts and feelings that go along with us.
Guilt and shame are pretty common feelings. So is being frustrated with yourself or angry with yourself. So is a desire to just avoid the whole issue or numb out. And by the way, chocolate chip cookies are pretty good temporary numbing devices.
None of this panicked reacting is helping. And your brain is probably really used to this panic, panicked, panicking reaction mode. Think about how it feels to start a new approach to change your eating or to start a new round of changing your eating. If you start a new program, you probably have an inner drill sergeant that shows up and is encouraging you to be strong and disciplined and stand tough. Do it right this time.
This is not how you ditch diet mentality. This is not how you do it differently. This is the way you have been doing it that hasn’t worked. In order to get the right results, and by the right results, I’m talking about results that feel freeing, that feel easy, that you feel confident that are going to last, you need to soothe your nervous system out of reaction mode.
Your nervous system is just like on high alert. What do I need to do? What do I need to do? How do I do more of it? How do I get there faster? Your nervous system needs space and time to relax. And before that, maybe even to learn how to relax, to feel safe to relax and stop this reaction loop. Which is part of the vicious cycle of overeating.
This doesn’t happen automatically. It is normal to start something new. Right? To, to wake up on Monday and say, okay, this is going to be the week I stay on track. And feel that reaction mode of bubbling up inside of you. A phrase that I find myself repeating over and over again with members of my program or with one-on-one coaching clients is it’s okay to relax.
We have time. I find myself often pointing out how hard people are being on themselves, how much pressure they feel under. You know, to get moving, do more. Is this going to work? I need to prove it.
Your diet brain has probably spent most of her life believing that she’s behind and she needs to catch up. And to get where you want to go, we need to calm your brain down. We need to calm your nervous system down. You don’t find peace with food and freedom from overeating in a stressed out, tense, reactive, harsh place. It is not just okay to relax. It is essential. Give yourself time. Give yourself permission to slow down.
Another piece of this is; in order to create freedom from overeating, you also need time to learn how to be again. I’ll tell you what that means. Reaction mode is this endless cycle of endlessly doing. What do I do? What do I do? I need to do something. I’m not doing enough. It’s, it’s endlessly doing. Never doing enough, always seeing more to do.
And that reaction mode actually leads to poor results. It leads to overwhelm. It leads to exhaustion. It leads to burnout. And it leads to more overeating. To create freedom from overeating, your brain and your body need to learn, they need to learn how to do this, and they need to find more comfort in doing less and being more.
So, for instance, say you join Your Missing Peace. At the beginning, once you’ve joined the program, it might feel like you are going too slow. Or you’re not doing enough. Right? When you start the program. But what you are actually accomplishing is that you are doing something very different. And also, very effective.
When you and your brain and your nervous system, learn how to be more and do less. And when you start to learn what that really means, you’re actually retraining yourself and you’re retraining your brain to provide space for yourself. And that space isn’t doing nothing. That space isn’t wimping out or being ineffective. That space is incredibly valuable for creating change.
So, say you join Your Missing Peace and you’re like, okay, where’s that? Where’s the hard stuff? Why? Why am I not doing this? It doesn’t feel like a drill. I should be doing more. I could be doing more. I need to work harder
Your brain is going to say those things, but actually Remember the idea is to practice and learn how to be Instead of jumping into this reactive doing. And when you start retraining yourself and your brain to provide this space for yourself Which happens when you slow down?
Slow down You start to create some really valuable things. You start to learn some things; you learn how to create space. To listen to yourself. You can’t learn how to listen to yourself if there’s no space to hear yourself. And along with that, you learn how to give yourself space and time to hear your response.
When you listen to yourself, you have to also be able to hear what’s going on. And this is how you learn about why food has the power that it does. And this is where you are able to learn about yourself and about what you need that isn’t food. So that you can take your power back from the cravings and the urges to binge. And the hunger that you know isn’t really driven by a physical need.
When you slow down, you also start giving yourself space to be curious. Space to be inquisitive and curious, which is different than being in an endlessly reactive cycle of doing. Which is a cycle of dieting and depriving yourself and then blaming yourself when you don’t get the results you want. And then telling yourself you have to work harder. You have to start over.
When you slow down, you start to experience space and time to practice new thoughts. New behaviors, new ways of responding. If you stay in that cycle of doing, moving really fast reacting, what do I do? What do I do? What do I do? You’re going to keep filling the space with the familiar stuff. You’re going to keep doing the same old thing.
Slowing down allows you to start to see some new possibilities. New ways of doing things. When you slow down, you start to see the cycle. And you also start to give yourself space and time to not have to get things perfect. And when you don’t get things perfect the first time and you don’t speed up into the, okay, what do I do next? I have to do it over again.
But when you slow down. You start to see how you cannot get things perfectly the first time and then not do that same old thing of throwing the baby out with the bathwater and then moving on to the new thing. Or telling yourself it’s all ruined and now you need to start over.
When you slow down. You can keep going. So, for instance, you might eat way more than you wanted to after work. But if you slow down, maybe you can take a deep breath and you can reevaluate and you can think about, okay, what’s the step I want to take so that I feel like I’m in the place where I want to be tomorrow morning when I wake up?
When you slow down, you start to create space and time to learn new habits. Right? You start to learn a new way of doing things. Doing, doing, doing, reacting, reacting, reacting isn’t thinking. It’s actually acting on autopilot. So, you can start to learn new habits like that new thing that you found that works better than binging in the evening.
You start to notice that. Oh, today was easier than yesterday or today was really hard. Why was that? You start to create space and time to practice what you are learning. Like, let’s say you’ve learned, okay, here’s this thing that works really great in the evening and I don’t binge anymore. And now I’m going to slow down. And I’m going to notice that that was working really well, but now I’m on vacation and it’s not working at all.
But if I give myself space and time and I slow down instead of throwing up my hands and saying it didn’t work and it failed and I’ll just have to start over when I’m back from vacation. Maybe now I could practice things I know that work. You know, how can I stretch them or adjust them when I’m in less than ideal situations?
This is also another, side benefit that I love very much about the Missing Peace Program. Because it’s six months long, and so not only do people learn how to slow down and learn how to rinse and repeat and practice things and give themselves space for all these things, but six months is Almost always the length of time that will always overlap with those non ideal situations.
Whatever your trigger times are or your challenging times are. So often we think we need to do a program when we can be perfect, when everything is lined up and so we can give it our all. But if you think about where your challenges are with eating and emotional eating, it’s probably when things aren’t perfect. Maybe it’s vacations. Maybe it’s, the holidays.
Maybe it is when the month when work is really stressful or, on the weekends. Or some other situation that happens a few times a year or when you’re not feeling well, the unexpected kind of stuff. And so, if you give yourself space and time to practice something long enough, so that it’s going to include the times when you feel really strong and resilient, but it’s also going to feel that it’s also going to include the times when you don’t feel so strong and resilient. Or maybe you don’t feel motivated at all.
Or maybe these are the times when you have absolutely never felt successful with your eating. Or you might even have stories that I can’t eat in the way I want to in these situations, and we can challenge those. You can give yourself the space and time to learn about whether it could be different. Be curious about whether it can be different.
And that kind of slowing down. Changes everything.
Related to that is this other side benefit of slowing down, which your brain might not see as a benefit right away. But that is, it is so important to create freedom from overeating that you give yourself an opportunity that you give yourself space and time to not only dismantle the old ways of thinking that didn’t work for you. But then notice how they still come up when you least expect it.
How can you dismantle them at that new level when you least expect it? And how can you also learn to see progress that shows up in surprising ways? Like, Huh. It is, it is progress to see that, I just learned I had these new challenging situations I didn’t know I had. I used to think all the situations were challenging and now I’ve, I’ve conquered the first three levels of it and I went on this, you know, I went on vacation and some of that overeating stuff came up again and so now I can target that. That’s progress.
So, you want to give yourself space to see your wins. You want to give yourself space to keep developing wins. And even more challenging situations. And all of that, all of that is built on the slowing down. Especially at the very beginning that nobody wants to do because everybody is so anxious and impatient to get results. And because diet culture has told you, you should have had them yesterday.
But really, one of the things I’m so passionate about with the, this podcast and with the Your Missing Peace program is teaching you how to build that initial solid foundation. That new way of thinking. That new way of approaching food. Which so much of it actually, of this foundation is slowing down and giving yourself space and time. So that you can create a way of being with food that is going to work for you, for, for life, work for you and with you for life.
And I know that probably, even as you’re listening to this, your brain is talking back to you. I hear from women, not infrequently who say, but six months is such a long time. But remember I said, slowing down and it doesn’t mean the results have to be slow. Right?
So, if six months seems like a long time, one of the first things I really think that’s important to question your brain with is what if you had invested this time in yourself six months ago? What if, what if now was six months later?
Changing your whole approach to food and eating and how your mind works around these things? Of course, that takes time, but that doesn’t mean that nothing happens until the end of month six. It does mean, sometimes, that you won’t see the changes you expect in the order that diet mentality has taught you to expect them.
And Six months, and I’m using the time of six months because that’s the time that I have found that, that really feels like enough time so much of the time. It’s, it’s the length of my program. It’s the length of my one-on-one coaching packages, six months builds you a new foundation.
When you give yourself the six months. Six months builds you a new approach. Six months frees you from this hamster wheel of reactivity that isn’t serving you that you might not know how to get off of right away. Six months will teach you how to do that.
And six months gives you space and time to create results that surprise you because they aren’t driven by being driven or disciplined or hyper focused.
So, one of the things that I hear a lot when women work with me is the phrase, I never thought I would feel this way. I never thought I would feel this way. That phrase I think comes up a lot for women who have given themselves permission to slow down.
When change isn’t driven by doing, doing, doing. When it’s comes from a place of learning how to be and pay attention to that. I hear things like I never thought I wouldn’t know where my scale is and that I’d still be losing weight. I used to weigh myself a couple times a day. I never thought I wouldn’t know where my scale is.
I never thought I’d be in a place where food does not constantly consume my thoughts. I never thought I’d lose weight without trying. I never thought I’d stop binging at night and not even realize that the habit had evaporated because I wasn’t paying attention anymore. I never thought I could go on vacation and lose weight.
I never thought I could enjoy eating out and not overeat. I never thought I could still have Christmas cookies in my freezer in March and not even have been tempted by them.
Slowing down gives you better results for so many reasons. There are so many reasons this is so important. When you slow down, you are able to build a new foundation. And you build it differently.
And best of all, when you give yourself time and space to build a relationship with food that really truly fits you because you’re being instead of constantly doing and you’re learning about yourself and you’re paying attention. When you build a relationship with food that really truly fits you, it is yours forever.
You are never going to unlearn all that you give yourself by slowing down.
So, take a deep breath, go slower.
What could you accomplish in six months? And what would life be like if you had started giving yourself that six months, six months ago?
I’ll talk to you soon.