Hey, everybody, it’s time for another listener Q and A episode where I answer a question that was submitted by one of our listeners. And if you have a question that you would like me to answer on an upcoming episode, what you need to do is join my private Facebook community. Go to facebook. com/groups/TooMuchOnHerPlate, all one word.
And drop your question there. That’s where I collect questions for these episodes. And I would love to hear what is on your mind. I will put that link in the show notes.
So today the question is how do I stop flaking out on myself? This is from Laura and she says, how do I stop flaking out on myself? In the rest of my life, I’m learning how to do this. I’m learning not to make commitments that I know I can’t keep or that I won’t show up for. But I can’t seem to hold myself to the same standard when it comes to my goals and my plans for changing my eating.
A related question was from Beth who says, how do I get myself to follow through? I could write a book on what I need to do. I know all the things I should do to rein in my eating. I know more than I ever wanted to. But it seems like almost every week I write the plan. I decide how I’m going to eat. And all the things that I’m not going to do and the things that I’m going to do. And then by Tuesday or Wednesday, it’s all evaporated and I’m back to the same old patterns.
I am betting if you are a listener of this podcast that you might be familiar with similar patterns and cycles to what Laura and Beth are describing. So many smart women are caught up in cycles of trying all the things, getting off track and starting over. And then doing it over again.
And you’ve probably also experienced how over time this over and over again pattern erodes your confidence and your hope. And you’re feeling like you’re ever going to get anywhere. So, I want to tackle Laura’s question. How do I stop flaking out on myself? The overview or the big picture answer is simple and it’s also not simple. You need to stop making promises or commitments to yourself that you can’t or that you won’t keep.
It’s important to realize that diet culture has taught you to do just that. To make promises or commitments all the time that are either unkeepable or that you don’t want to keep. Weight loss advice is stacked with all or nothing thinking and all or nothing expectations. You either succeed or you fail. It was a good day. It was a bad day. Some plans like, whole 30 literally tell you that if you make one misstep, then you have to start completely over again, it’s ruined. Right? Everything you did takes you back to zero.
So, you’ve learned to think about the plans that you make in the context of all or nothing. You’ve learned to make promises that are big and that probably make you tired, just thinking about them. And a history of making these kinds of plans that aren’t realistic or that aren’t sustainable. That leads to less self-trust. Because you also then have a history of breaking the plans.
Half the time, you know, you aren’t going to be following through on the things that your brain is telling you that you should do. It just seems like the thing you have to do. It’s the thing you’re supposed to do. It’s the thing you air quotes need to do. So, you keep making the plans. You keep not following through on the plans. You keep recreating the cycle.
You’re going to stop flaking out on yourself. And I’m just going to use Laura’s term for this, because I think a lot of people can relate to the term, because it’s how we tend to talk to ourselves in our brain about this. You will stop flaking out on yourself when you start to rebuild trust in yourself. And you will start to rebuild trust when you start building a trail of promises that you do keep.
So how do you do this? And specifically, how do you do this when it comes to making changes with eating and overeating and emotional eating? The first thing is that in order to stop flaking out on yourself, you need to practice making smaller commitments. Smaller commitments. And then keeping them.
This sounds like such a simple thing. But practicing making smaller commitments and following through on them means ignoring your brain. Which is going to tell you that only big dramatic actions count. Only big dramatic actions are worth anything. Big dramatic actions that are unkeepable. That’s why you don’t trust yourself to follow through when you try to stop overeating or emotional eating.
And freedom from overeating requires self-trust. I’m going to keep repeating how these pieces go together. Because it’s important and it is going to be important to have a foundation in knowing this stuff because you’re going to have to talk back to your brain. Your brain wants you to do big. Your brain wants you to do dramatic. Your brain wants you to do all or nothing. You rebuild self-trust by practicing, making smaller commitments and keeping them.
Recently, I did another podcast episode with Wendy, who is a past member of my, Your Missing Peace program. And on that episode, she talks about self-trust in a really beautiful way. And she talks about how her discovery about her lack of self-trust and, and the process of rebuilding her own self trust. She talks about how that changed her eating.
I’m going to put a link to that episode in the show notes. It is episode number 141, and you might want to scroll for that on your podcast app and listen to it. Because I think it really overlaps with what I’m talking about here with this whole idea of making promises to yourself that you can keep and rebuilding self-trust and not feeling like you flake out on yourself.
So, making commitments of a size that you can commit to and be consistent with is really important. And it is not only making smaller commitments or taking smaller steps. It’s also about the kind of commitments or promises that you’re making to yourself. The commitments that you choose to make are really important.
So often, Actually, I think most of the time, particularly in this area around eating and weight and overeating and emotional eating. We are so programmed around how to do it. Deprivation culture is so Entrenched and diet mentality and all the things we’ve learned about what the rules are supposed to be and what we’re, what we should do and what is necessary to create change.
All of that stuff is so, almost cellular. Like it’s embedded in us that it is really easy to be reactive. Our brain says, oh, I want to lose weight or, oh, I need to stop eating in the evening. And then it’s, I need to do this and I should do this. And this is what you have to do. Which are all reactive ways of thinking.
It is not just about making smaller commitments. It is about the kind of commitments you choose to make. You don’t want to simply reactively decide what you should do or what you have to do. Before you make a promise or a commitment to yourself, which is what you do when you wake up on Monday and say, okay, this is my plan for the week. This is the thing I’m going to hold myself accountable for.
Before you do that. Ask yourself some questions. Make sure you’re being intentional and not simply reacting to all the old stuff and all the old patterns and all the old ways of thinking and believing. Ask yourself, do you really want to do this thing that you woke up and said, all right, this is going to be my plan for the week? Do you really want to do it?
Can you really see yourself following through? And I’m not saying that in a skeptical way because I don’t believe in you. But is this really something thing you can see yourself being consistent with? That you really believe you could keep this promise to yourself about? Or is it too big? Or does it not fit you? Is it somebody else’s should that is never going to work for you?
Don’t just reactively make a promise to yourself. Be clear on why you’re making this promise to yourself. That may sound like it’s obvious, but, but so many times we do the thing because we think we have to. We do the thing because we think we should.
Why are you doing this? What is motivating you to make this promise to yourself? What is motivating you to want to keep it? It’s important to actually ask, is there something that’s motivating me to want to do this thing? Or is it another one of my long list of things I am supposed to do to be successful?
If you have a history of not following through on promises to yourself, then you will need to lower your immediate expectations and make smaller commitments than you’ve been making in the past that you can be consistent with. You’re going to want to do less than you think you can. But you also want to be really intentional about what it is that you’re promising yourself to do.
And I think it’s important to ask yourself if what you’re doing is rearranging the chairs on the Titanic or whether you’re doing something that is going to lead to lasting change.
What I mean by this is, is this thing, this commitment, yet another promise to yourself that demonstrates that this time you are capable of having unlimited willpower. Like, okay, I’m not going to eat after 8 p.m. Or is this a promise or a commitment that addresses the reason that you want to eat after 8 p.m.? Or the reason you have run out of willpower so consistently in the past when you have tried not to eat after 8 p.m.?
Are you rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic or are you looking at the root cause of what’s going on because that’s how you’re going to create permanent, lasting change.
Ask yourself, is this a fair or a reasonable thing to promise yourself or commit to? You know, this might sound kind of woo woo, but you might actually want to look yourself in the eyes in the mirror and say out loud, tell yourself what it is you’re committing to. Do you actually believe yourself?
Can you look yourself in the eyes and with a straight face say, yeah, this is really what I want to do. Can you actually visualize yourself doing the thing that you are promising yourself to do consistently? Double check this. Check in with yourself. Not just your brain, but you know, how does your heart feel about this?
When it comes to making promises to ourselves around what we’re going to do with our eating, how we’re going to eat, why we’re going to eat, how we are going to interact with ourselves when we have a craving or an urge, how we’re going to talk to ourselves, how we’re going to think. It is so easy and it probably feels so natural to go into this reaction mode of, okay, yeah, I know this dance. This is what I do. This is what I have to do. This is what I need to do.
You really want to check in with yourself. And you’re probably going to discover if you do check in with yourself that that promise isn’t exactly a good fit for you. You’re probably going to discover that you actually do need to make that commitment smaller or easier or shorter or different. If you really want to be able to look yourself in the eyes and know that you can that you can keep the promise and that you want to keep the promise.
One of the things that is really important to remember here is your goal in this instance is to rebuild your trust. Your goal is to become the person who doesn’t flake out on herself. Your goal is not to do superhuman things in a very short span of time and then burn out and then be starting over again.
So, since we’re addressing the question of how to not flake out on yourself, but also how to not set yourself up to be some kind of superhero who does impossible things. I think it’s important to also spend some time talking about how you treat yourself. And how you react and what you do if you don’t keep a promise that you made to yourself.
If you don’t keep a commitment that you made, how do you currently treat or talk to yourself? Are you allowed to be curious about what happened and just wonder about it? Or do you slam yourself and then default to the whole, oh, I just need to be stronger next time. I ruined it, but next time will be different.
Or do you maybe numb out? Maybe you use more food to numb out so that you don’t have to be as aware of what happened, at least right now, at least for a little while. Those last two options, beating yourself up or numbing yourself, they’re both likely to lead you back to doing the same thing the next time.
Blaming yourself for the fact that it didn’t work this time and pushing yourself harder but with less confidence than you had. Because you’re going to lose confidence each time you go through the cycle.
Okay, so new way to stop flaking out on yourself. Make smaller more reasonable Committable commitments. Commitments that you can commit to. Take time to examine whether they are reactive Promises or whether they are real intentional promises that you want to keep. And before you make any commitment or promise to yourself, take that time to ask yourself what you know already about why what you’ve tried hasn’t worked in the past.
What do you need that you don’t have? It could be time. It could be support. It could be additional tools or resources. It could be a more realistic plan. I hear all these answers all the time. You’re only going to get these answers though if you take the time to ask the questions.
So, take a look at why what you have tried in the past hasn’t worked, a shortage of time, a shortage of support, tools, strategies. And then make a commitment or a promise that addresses these things. Make it small enough that you can follow through. And remember, don’t let your brain diminish what you just accomplished by setting up a plan with small steps, with being intentional, with actually addressing the reason that things haven’t worked in the past. And as you take the small steps, don’t let your brain diminish those either.
Your brain will want to tell you that always you should be doing more. You should have done more. You should have done it faster. That’s how brains talk. Don’t listen. And then just keep repeating these steps.
Listen, I know this information might not feel very satisfying. Because rebuilding trust is a process. There’s no way around it. It’s such an important process. You deserve to have your trust back. Because you do. And because with that trust comes confidence and hope. And this is foundational for creating freedom from overeating. It is the reason that the place we start in my programs is with finding your power again.
So much of that power has been eroded by deprivation thinking and traditional weight loss plans and diet culture. And when you figure out how to approach changes that you want to make. Changes with your eating or with anything else, actually. When you figure out how to do that from a place of your own power, rooted in your own power and confidence, it is going to be so different from any of the old cycles that you’ve gone through. Trying to make changes that haven’t worked and rinsing and repeating with that same old dance over and over again.
Rebuilding trust is a process. You’re going to go through these steps repeatedly. And you’re going to do it imperfectly. And your brain is going to talk back to you because your brain is really entrenched with that old way of thinking and the all or nothing ideas and bigger is better. All the things that have gotten you to the place where it’s easy to flake out on yourself in the first place.
Rebuilding your trust and your confidence. This is a place where having support can be incredibly useful. Be sure to check out Your Missing Peace because this is where I go deeply into this with members.
This is again, rebuilding your self-trust, knowing that you are the person who doesn’t flake out on you. This is a bedrock of creating or for creating freedom from overeating.
I hope this Q and A episode was helpful to you, Laura and everyone else.
And I will talk to you soon.
Hello everybody, welcome back to the podcast. Today’s episode is a Q and A episode. This is an episode where I am answering a question that was asked by a listener of the podcast. This particular question was submitted by someone who is a member of my free Facebook community. If you haven’t joined me over there, you can do that by simply going to facebook.com/groups/toomuchonherplate, all one word.
Or you can search on Facebook for the freedom from emotional eating and overeating group. The full title is Freedom from Emotional Eating and Overeating a Non-diet Community. And there are about 3,300, 3,500 members, something like that, in that community who are interested in creating freedom from overeating and peace with food. Figuring out how to eat in a way that works for them without dieting.
So, this question was submitted from that group. And today’s question that I’m going to answer on the podcast is what if feeling my feelings is just too uncomfortable? She says, I know I’m an emotional eater, but I don’t want to feel my feelings. So how do I stop overeating?
I know. We don’t like discomfort. Nobody likes discomfort. It isn’t fun. And we are constantly marketed to, to avoid discomfort. The idea that discomfort is something that you can and should not feel. You should avoid it. Buy this and you won’t feel different anymore. Buy this you won’t feel sad. Buy this and you won’t be lonely. You’ll have lots of friends or you won’t be tired anymore, or you won’t feel overwhelmed.
We have been taught the myth that feelings of uncomfortableness, that discomfort is bad. And that if somehow, we are perfect, if we get it all together, we won’t have discomfort. We’ll bypass that or surpass it somehow.
And of course, something that you have probably learned, or maybe definitely learned that helps you avoid that feeling, any feelings of discomfort or helps you avoid uncomfortable feelings is reaching for something to eat. Grabbing something to distract yourself, to numb yourself, to busy yourself. The reality is that change is uncomfortable.
Being instead of constantly doing can also be uncomfortable. That constant doing… that could be your identity. It is for a lot of busy women. Here’s what I’m doing. Here’s what I did today. Here’s what I accomplished today. And that constant doing can also keep you busy and feeling productive.
and not feeling other things. Constant doing can keep us away from discomfort. From uncomfortableness. When you’re busy, you don’t have to feel the things that you might not want to feel. You don’t have to know things that maybe you don’t want to know, or you don’t want to remember that you know.
We tend to avoid discomfort and food and eating are big parts of or big ways that smart, busy women cope with and avoid discomfort. You might eat to distract yourself. You eat while you’re watching TV and it keeps your mind busy so you aren’t thinking about how you’re feeling. You aren’t worrying. You avoid discomfort by procrastinating it or just not doing the thing.
And our thoughts help us with this. We tell ourselves things that help us avoid discomfort. We build stories in our head. Right? So that uncomfortable thing, it’ll be too hard. It’ll take too long. It’s a bad time. There are lots of reasons our brain can give ourselves that we create in our brain that help encourage us to avoid uncomfortable things and uncomfortable feelings.
And sometimes we do take on the uncomfortable thing, the thing that we don’t want to do, the thing that is going to make us feel a certain way we believe. But we eat at the same time so that we can push down the uncomfortable feelings that are coming up.
So, procrastination is a way of avoiding discomfort and then procrastination can turn into never doing the hard thing at all. Or coming to believe because you procrastinate and you build these thoughts and beliefs coming to believe that it isn’t possible for you. You build such a big wall that you never do the thing.
Our thoughts and our beliefs help us avoid discomfort and numbing. All those different numbing activities and numbing with food is a big one. Numbing is a big way to avoid feeling discomfort or to avoid putting yourself in a situation that you believe will be uncomfortable.
I want to keep going back to this belief about discomfort being bad. Because it’s so pervasive that it may just be something you’ve accepted as truth. There’s this belief, this idea that discomfort is bad, that if you have it all figured out, whatever is making you uncomfortable won’t.
That’s not true. Discomfort is a normal part of life and it is a very normal part of growth. And when you believe that you shouldn’t feel uncomfortable, that there’s something wrong with you if you feel uncomfortable or that you can’t feel uncomfortable, you are going to create and then embrace all the thoughts and beliefs that help you avoid the discomfort.
So, if not eating chocolate at a certain time of day, so maybe you, let’s let me back up. Let’s say you eat chocolate as a way to numb your boredom. So, if not eating the chocolate as a way to numb your boredom is uncomfortable. Your mind is going to feed you stories about how to avoid not eating chocolate as a way to numb your boredom. There’s got to be a more simple way to say that.
Your mind is going to feed you stories about why you shouldn’t give up the chocolate. Right? About how you deserve the chocolate. The rationalizations about how today is already ruined by your, the way you’ve eaten already, so the chocolate isn’t going to make a difference. About how there’s so much weight that you want to lose, that it’s a lost cause anyway. So, the, you might as well eat the chocolate.
Your brain is going to come down on the side of avoiding discomfort, which is what you would feel. Remember the scenario is, okay, I’m eating chocolate to numb my feelings. So, if I take away the chocolate, I’m going to feel my feelings. Your brain is always going to come down on the side of you being more comfortable. Or what your brain believes and what you believe is more comfortable.
So, in these kinds of situations, it is going to be really easy to just believe it’s true that, you know what, I’m too tired to deal with how I’m feeling. It’s not going to help anything to feel how I’m feeling. There’s nothing I can do about it anyway. So why should I feel the discomfort? And you know what, I deserve that reward from the chocolate. It’s been a really lousy day. It is really easy to fall into the path of avoiding discomfort. It’s really comfortable to avoid discomfort.
And then back to the listener’s question, it gets really easy to say, you know what? I don’t want to feel my feelings. So how can I, how can I change my eating and just not feel my feelings? Cause I don’t want to feel my feelings. As if it is perfectly reasonable.
Okay. I would like to give you a different perspective or a different challenge. What if you give yourself permission to be uncomfortable? What if you go beyond that? What if you decide to experiment with the idea that discomfort, being uncomfortable is not a bad thing.
If you give yourself permission to be uncomfortable, being uncomfortable is not the end of the world. It’s just uncomfortable. If you learn to be with the discomfort. If you learn to feel your feelings, for instance. If you learn to sit and watch the discomfort. I’m going to just sit and experience my feelings.
First of all, this means being, not doing. So, you start there. You feel what it feels like. You learn that it is not that bad to be uncomfortable. I know it sounds… it may sound like I’m talking in opposites here because your brain is conditioned to feel like uncomfortableness must avoid discomfort is bad. You can feel discomfort. You’ll learn that it’s not that bad. When you feel discomfort, the sky really doesn’t fall in.
There’s this myth that you can be successful and avoid discomfort. I know I’ve said it a couple of times, but I just want to keep coming back to that. Right? It is a myth that if you do this really well, you will somehow outgrow discomfort. Again, it’s that perfectionism, like, like you can be perfect enough and not have discomfort in your life. And it is so pervasive.
So, for instance, recently I was listening to this podcast. And Abby Wambach was talking about her daily habit of doing cold plunges. Right? Where you plunge yourself into ice cold water and you sit there for a while. I tried the cold shower thing. I’ve never gotten to the cold plunge thing. But I did try the cold shower thing where you at the end of your shower turn to Turn it to really cold water for a few minutes at the end of your shower.
I tried that a few years ago and yes, it was invigorating and it was energizing and I did see the benefit. I got out of that shower feeling really great, but it was really hard to turn the shower, my nice hot shower down to the cold. So, I didn’t stick with it. It was hard.
So, I’m listening to this podcast episode a couple of years later, and Abby is talking very matter-of-factly about how she does this cold plunge thing daily. And, I didn’t catch it at first. I didn’t realize it, but as I’m listening, I’m starting to spin stories in my head about how it was easy for her to do this. How she must have stuck with this cold plunge habit until it became comfortable. Right? And I’m feeling a little jealous of her persistence.
And I’m also thinking, hmm, maybe I could try it again. And if I tried it and stuck with it just a little bit longer, I’d eventually get really comfortable with the whole cold shower thing. I would enjoy it.
These thoughts happened so fast. This planning to overcome the discomfort happened so fast in my head. And before I could get any farther on the podcast episode, Abby says, you know, my cold plunge is the hardest thing physically that I do every day. This world champion athlete, this Olympian is still uncomfortable doing the cold plunges. It’s the hardest thing physically she does every day. And She does it every day. She does the thing and she has the discomfort. It is not about beating the discomfort.
Moving out of deprivation Mentality with eating and food and creating freedom from overeating it requires discomfort. Because doing things differently is uncomfortable no matter what How you mix it up and how you look at it.
Feeling our feelings is uncomfortable. Sometimes some of our feelings are uncomfortable. Training yourself not to numb, not to distract, and not to avoid discomfort with food, but to be with your life in a different way. This is uncomfortable.
It doesn’t mean the results aren’t worth having. Abby Wambach does the cold plunge every day because I’m assuming how it makes her feel and what she gets from it. Right? But you do have to wade through some crappy, swampy discomfort to get to those results.
That’s what creating long term, effective change requires for all of us. And just like with the cold plunges, you’ve got to get more comfortable with discomfort because freedom from overeating means losing the lie. It is a lie. That there’s a way to get all the discomfort out of your life.
I’m going to say that again. Creating freedom from overeating means losing the lie, letting go of the myth that there’s some way to get all the discomfort out of your life. It’s not possible. And it’s such an unhelpful belief. So how do we do this? How do you grow your capacity for discomfort?
I hope you already know my first piece of advice. It is to start small. Do not throw yourself off this cliff into this abyss of discomfort. Right? There’s no point to that. Start small. Use a delay tactic to sit with your discomfort for 60 seconds before you open your desk drawer for the candy.
Practice taking little pauses. Practice asking yourself, what do I know about what I’m feeling? And then breathe with it for just 30 seconds. Practice being with the discomfort in small steps. Not to make the discomfort go away. Remember, this is about being with discomfort. So, it’s not about making the discomfort go away. It is not to talk yourself out of it, tell yourself, oh, I really shouldn’t be uncomfortable with this. I really should be fine with this.
But to experiment with what it feels like to really be in your body with uncomfortableness. To really embody discomfort and feel what it feels like. Instead of practicing the thought, I don’t want to feel my feelings over and over again, start reframing discomfort as a normal experience. And start reframing your ability to be uncomfortable as a valuable muscle, a strength and a coping strategy.
Now, I’m not saying it is your only muscle and it’s not your only coping mechanism. Nobody aims to always be uncomfortable. But if you have to avoid discomfort, if it’s like, I can’t feel that I can’t go there. I don’t want to feel my feelings. If you have to avoid it, that comes at a cost. And often the cost for you is going to be overeating.
So, reframe discomfort as normal. And then give yourself props for strengthening your muscle to tolerate discomfort. Sitting with the discomfort, feeling discomfort, feeling your feelings in teeny bits- that’s a good thing. And your brain has to be reminded of that so that it can relearn what you’ve learned about discomfort. Or maybe unlearn what you’ve learned about discomfort.
So, experiment with choosing discomfort sometimes, not just for the hell of it, but to learn more about what happens when you do. You probably have a ton of stories in your head about why you need to avoid certain kinds of discomfort at all costs. And you’re probably going to find out that they aren’t true.
You can do something like challenge yourself to do one uncomfortable thing a day. Maybe it’s eating a mindful meal if the thought of it just makes you twitchy. If the thought of putting down your phone or turning off the TV while you’re eating makes you uncomfortable, try it. You could set a timer for 20 minutes and devote it to that thing you just don’t want to do. Do it anyway.
You could try the cold plunge or turning your shower to cold. You could say no to something even though it is really uncomfortable to do it. Remember, you are not trying to create a perfect, unattainable version of yourself who never feels discomfort. You’re not trying to learn your way out of feeling uncomfortable.
You’re experimenting with feeling discomfort and surviving and learning that maybe it’s not the big deal or as big a deal as your brain has been telling you.
If you want to expand your capacity and your comfort with discomfort, another thing you can do is simply be curious. Start watching for the patterns in your life of you avoiding discomfort. Just notice where you do it. Where do you catch yourself? And then be especially observant of how food and eating might play a role here.
So, when do you eat to numb out? When do you go on autopilot with your eating? When do you eat to distract yourself or to avoid a situation or a feeling? And then, what might you possibly learn if you didn’t do the eating thing or the obsessing about food thing in those situations?
What if you could peel that back? Step away from the eating and into the discomfort a little bit? What would that experience be like? This is a place where you use that small step idea and practice not avoiding that uncomfortableness for a short period of time. Just to be curious, just to grow a tiny bit stronger.
This is not about action taking and habit building. As you play with discomfort, you don’t want to ignore your brain. Your brain runs the show. All those thoughts and beliefs that have helped you build a pattern of using food and overeating to avoid feeling uncomfortable things, those are powerful. And they’re probably pretty entrenched.
So, what you also want to do is you want to start Building your beliefs about the value of discomfort. About why it’s okay to allow yourself to feel uncomfortable. So, what’s good about being more comfortable with discomfort? Why is tolerating discomfort helpful? How do you grow when you build this muscle and what ways are you growing your capacity for discomfort?
These are questions to think about. These are places to pay attention, make lists. Notice these things. What’s good about this? Why am I doing this? Why is it helpful to be able to tolerate discomfort? What happens when I sit with discomfort? Remember I said the sky doesn’t fall in. Well, what else doesn’t happen that I have been afraid of?
Challenge the fears. Start to create new beliefs. Start to see the new possibilities. If, if experiencing discomfort and tolerating discomfort and expanding your capacity for that is actually building a strength, that’s a whole different list of things that you never come up with as long as discomfort feels dangerous.
So, make lists and keep making them and use what you’re learning to remind yourself what you can do instead of telling yourself all the things that you can’t do or shouldn’t do or don’t want to do.
Here’s one more thing that can be helpful. If you have taken my free hidden hungers quiz, you might have discovered that there is something called a hidden hunger for compassion.
If you are eating to avoid discomfort, and that looks like mindless eating or eating on autopilot or eating to numb, then you quite likely have a hidden hunger for compassion. If you want to know more about this, if you want to get some resources for how to take care of that hidden hunger, if you haven’t taken the quiz, by all means, go to my website, TooMuchOnHerPlate.Com, click the button, take the free quiz. You will find out what your primary hidden hunger is. And you will get some resources to help you start dealing with that. And you’ll also get an opportunity to learn about this hidden hunger for compassion in a deeper way.
Here’s what I want you to hear in this podcast episode. If you are eating to avoid discomfort. Mindless eating, eating on autopilot, eating to numb. You very likely have a hidden hunger for compassion. That means you might have very high expectations for yourself. You may be hard on yourself.
You might be somebody who constantly lives in the belief that you need to be stronger. You need to be more disciplined. That you’re not doing enough. Growing your capacity for discomfort does not mean leaning into those thoughts. Growing your capacity for discomfort does not mean beating yourself up or being your own inner drill sergeant.
You can choose to do the difficult, uncomfortable thing from a place of kindness and compassion. And this is an important nuance here. It’s important to look out for. Just as a parent helps their child do something that they’re afraid of with love. You want to do that for yourself.
So, what does this look like? Pulling in compassion and being uncomfortable. Well, you can acknowledge that feeling discomfort is hard. And you can reward the crap out of yourself after you do the hard thing. Or in order to do the hard thing. You give yourself all the high fives. All the acknowledgement. You should do these things.
Discomfort and self-compassion are not opposites. Discomfort and self-compassion work together. A lot of people believe the myth that discomfort is the opposite of self-compassion. Don’t make this mistake. You don’t want to make the mistake that hiding from discomfort is self-compassion. Or that numbing out with the Tostitos after a hard day is self-compassion.
Self-compassion sometimes looks like telling yourself that you need to do the very uncomfortable thing. It’s okay to feel the uncomfortable feeling. And speaking of self-compassion, do not beat yourself up if you recognize yourself in what I’m saying. The truth is we could probably all grow both our self-compassion and our discomfort tolerating muscles.
We all have work to do here. So today, try a small step.
When you grow your capacity to be uncomfortable, you grow your capacity to be. You grow your capacity to be yourself, to be in your life. And you also grow your own power and you shrink the power that food and eating, overeating, cravings, urges to binge, all these things, you shrink the power that these things have in your life.
It’s okay to not want to feel your feelings. And just like taking a cold plunge, you can still do it.