Welcome back. We are moving into October.
tomorrow. And all through September, we talked about taking care of yourself while you're living your life.
We talked about why sometimes you want a vacation from your habits and about your habits not being these strict rules. We talked about not making every missed habit mean something about you personally.
And last week, we talked about what happens when your life changes, and how your habits are allowed.
to pivot, to change with it, right? The intention can stay even when the execution, the follow-through changes. And now I want to take that conversation just one step further, because sometimes it's not your schedule that changes.
Sometimes it's how you feel. You're stressed or overwhelmed, maybe you're frustrated or angry. You're worried about somebody, and maybe you're taking care of everybody.
Something happened at work or at home. There's something completely.
outside of your control, and you cannot fix it, and you don't know what to do with how you're feeling about it.
All right, all of suddenly, all of the things we've been talking about feel a whole lot harder. All of those habits that you're wanting to create, they feel so much harder because when you're stressed, you might not be thinking, what do I want? What do I need? What's the better choice that fits this moment? All those things that we talked about last month.
You might just be thinking, you know what? I don't care. I don't care. Have you ever gotten really overwhelmed? And that's the only words that you could come out. Mine's either I don't know or I don't care. And so maybe you're saying, I don't know. I don't care. I don't care what I plan. I don't care if I'm hungry or if I o.
I don't even care about my weight loss right now. I'm just stressed. And that's what I want to talk about today, because I don't actually think that you've stopped caring. I think sometimes you just don't have the capacity to care in the same way.
you do when everything is, you know, feeling manageable. So I think there's a really important difference.
I'm stressed.
I hear this from clients often. I say, why did you eat it?
I was stressed. Okay, why did you keep eating it? I don't know. I'm just really stressed right now. Okay, well, why didn't you just wait for hunger? I've got so much going on, and sometimes we say I'm stressed, almost like that's the end of the explanation.
So of course I ate it. What else was I supposed to do? And I understand why, because for a lot of us, food has been one of our tools.
for dealing with emotions for a very long time. Think about how early we learned some of this.
Maybe you did a great, something great, good schoolwork, something was good, right? Okay, let's go get pizza. That is what our families have done, right? We, we went and got pizza when we did something good. We got a good grade on our report card. You want a game? Let's go get ice cream.
Or vice versa. If you've had a terrible day, let's go get ice cream. You're sad?
Let's have a treat. Maybe you need a cookie and cheer you up. Food celebrates with us, and it comforts us.
So it makes complete sense that when you're an adult, and you're stressed, and uncomfortable, and you just need something to feel better, your brain knows exactly where to send you.
food. And it works! It does! I'm not gonna lie to you, it absolutely works. I think that's important to say. It does work.
For a minute. For a minute, it tastes good.
It gives you something else to focus on. Maybe it gives you something to look forward to, or maybe there's that little dopamine hit that you're getting, and maybe it gives you 10 min where you're not thinking about the argument with your husband, or your job, or the bills, or your mom, or your kids, or.
You know, whatever it is that's happening, there is relief, even if it's momentary.
So, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that you are ridiculous for wanting food when you're stressed out.
Your brain has learned. This helps.
The problem is when your brain has also learned, this is my only option.
So when food becomes the automatic answer, if every time you feel a big or uncomfortable emotion, you eat, eventually you really aren't deciding anymore. It becomes automatic stress. Eat.
Frustration, eat.
Lonely, eat. Overwhelmed, hard day, eat, right? And eventually, you don't even experience it as a choice. It just feels like what happens.
I'm stressed so of course I ate and I think that's where we start to feel really powerless because now the stress feels outside of your control and your eating feels outside of your control and when everything already feels like too much.
That's a really uncomfortable place to be.
So sometimes we reach for a little bit of power.
A little bit of control wherever we can find it. And I think the I don't care.
can actually be one of those places. I don't care can feel powerful.
Think about it. If everything feels out of your control, I can't change what's happening at work. I can't change.
what somebody else is doing or thinking or feeling or saying to me. I can't fix this situation. I can't make this person or any other person act differently.
And I can't make this feeling I have disappear. But I can say, screw it. I don't care about weight loss today. I don't care. That's our way to disconnect from caring so much when we feel out of power. And just for a second.
That disconnect can feel powerful.
I don't have to try. I don't have to make another decision. I don't have to think about hunger or stopping it enough, and I don't have to think about what's worth it. I don't have to do one more freaking thing. I can just eat. I can just eat and have my moment.
And I think that's why sometimes we feel almost.
thoroughly justified in it. You don't understand what I'm dealing with right now. I hear that. I deserve this. This is the only thing that makes me feel better.
And again, I get it, I get it, I've said it, I've felt it, and man, have I heard it from so many clients. But here's what I want you to notice.
You had to make your goal less important for even a moment in order to feel like you had some power.
I don't care.
but you do care. That's why tomorrow you feel so much worse, you feel bad, you feel guilty, because you do care. So what happens afterward? Because usually.
The stressful situation is still there.
The food didn't fix the problem. The problem didn't fix itself in the amount of time that we were eating the food. It wasn't supposed to. It just gave you a little relief from it. And now sometimes we've added something else. We've added that guilt and shame. Maybe you ate a lot.
And you have physical discomfort. You have disappointment. And then you say, why did I do that? Why can't I get this together? I gotta get my act together. That's the one I always hear. I'm like, what act are we doing?
I was, um, people will say, I was doing so well, or this is the one that hurts. I'm never going to figure this out. So now, we still have the original stress.
And we've compounded it. We've added another problem on top of it.
But I actually think that there's something even bigger happening. Every time stress happens, and you automatically respond with food.
You're practicing the belief.
That I can't handle this.
I can't handle feeling this way. I can't figure out what to do. That is very disempowering when you already felt like you didn't have power. That's even more disempowering. I can't figure it out. I don't know what to do. I need something else.
to make me feel like this is gonna go away. And food becomes the thing that rescues you from that discomfort.
That's the part that I really, really care about.
Not because I think you…
should never eat ice cream when you're stressed. I absolutely do not care about making you a person who never stress eats again.
I care about you knowing that you have options.
So, what is in my control? When we are stressed, our brains tend to focus on everything we can't control. What somebody said or did, what's happening at work, maybe it's a diagnosis, a bill, a deadline, somebody else's choices, the traffic, the weather.
You know, whatever it is. And sometimes those things really are outside of our control.
I'm not going to tell you to think positively and pretend that it's not hard, you know, rainbows and daisies. Some things suck, they absolutely suck, and some things hurt, and they're unfair, and there are so many things that you just cannot fix.
But there's almost always a smaller question available.
What is in my control right now? Maybe I can't fix the whole situation, but…
Can I make one part of it easier? Could I ask for help?
Could I find something out? Is there some bit of information that might be helpful right now, if I could just figure that out?
Could I change my schedule? Could I say no to something? Can I cancel something that doesn't need to happen right now? Could I expect, stop expecting myself to perform at that same high level.
When I'm dealing with something really hard, could I just give myself some grace?
Or call somebody. Could I go to bed? Can I take 10 minutes and go cry? Or take a walk? Or… one of my clients, her favorite thing right now is to go sit in her car for 5 minutes by herself.
Can I let this feel terrible without needing to immediately make it feel better? Can I just witness the emotion? That's different from trying to control everything. You're looking for your part.
And the more you practice doing that, the more you start collecting evidence. Oh, I can help myself. You don't have to immediately feel better or take care of all of the issue. This was something I had to learn. An uncomfortable feeling isn't an emergency.
I can be sad, or angry, disappointed. I can even be worried and overwhelmed, and I don't have to immediately make that feeling disappear.
Because feelings change. They move, they don't stay the same intensity forever. And the more comfortable you get with being uncomfortable.
the less urgently you need something to rescue you from it.
That doesn't mean that you just sit there and suffer. It means that you start building a toolbox, and food has been a tool.
Think about food like a hammer. A hammer is a really useful tool, especially if you're building a house. You're probably going to need one of those.
But imagine trying to build the entire house with only the hammer. That's going to be really, really hard.
That's what happens when food is our only tool. Food can comfort you, and it can give you pleasure. It can be a reward or a celebration, and it absolutely can distract you for a little while. I'm not taking the hammer out of your toolbox.
I just want you to own more tools.
So maybe sometimes what you need is comfort in your toolbox, or you need support, some sleep, somebody telling you, girl, you're doing a good job.
Maybe you need to stop doing something or set a boundary or you need some information. You need help solving the actual problem. And maybe you need to feel the feeling and let it suck for just a little bit. They say most feelings pass in 90 seconds.
So maybe 90 seconds we feel it. And then sometimes, guess what? Maybe you still want ice cream.
You can still choose the ice cream. This is where I think this conversation can get misunderstood, because you might think I'm saying, before you stress out, go through this giant checklist of emotionally healthy coping mechanisms and only eat the ice cream if nothing else works.
No, that sounds exhausting to me. Sometimes you know all of this. You know the ice cream isn't going to fix the problem. You know there are other things you could do. You know you're stressed, and you're not physically even hungry.
And you decide, you know what? I'm gonna have the ice cream. Okay, that's a decision. You're not saying I couldn't help myself, which is where it hurts my heart when people think I can't help myself.
You're not saying, this is the only thing that's gonna make me feel better. You're not saying, I'm stressed, so what does it matter anyway? But what you are actually saying is.
This is hard.
I have options, and this is the option I'm choosing right now. And then you eat your ice cream. You're doing it intentionally. Maybe you decide you'll deal with the rest tomorrow when you have more capacity.
That's still you taking ownership of the decision, and that's a completely different relationship with food.
The goal isn't I never use food for comfort. The goal is food isn't my only way to comfort myself.
Sometimes your capacity really is lower. There's another side of this, and I think it is really important.
Sometimes when you are dealing with something hard, and you genuinely do not have the same capacity you normally have.
You're tired or overwhelmed.
I know you're taking care of other people. Most women are. Your schedule, it can be upside down sometimes, and you definitely are going to be emotionally exhausted sometimes.
And then you add, and now I need to do all of these habits. I have to do all of this weight loss stuff perfectly. No! Remember what we talked about all through September.
Your habits are supposed to support your life. Your life doesn't exist to support your weight loss routine. This might not be the week for all the things, so bring it down. What's your baseline? Maybe you're not going to make vegetables at every meal like you'd really like to.
Can you add them just once to one meal today? Maybe you're not going to hit your normal water goal. Can you drink a glass of water right now, though?
These are the baselines. Maybe you're eating whatever somebody else brought over because you don't have the capacity to cook. Can you just make the best choice with what's available?
You didn't have to plan a whole thing. You could make your best choice. So, whatever it is.
You can just pick one thing that would make taking care of yourself a little bit easier today. That counts because the last thing I want is for weight loss to become another way for you to prove to yourself that you're failing while you're already struggling.
We're not adding more stress to stress. We're asking, what does taking care of me look like with the capacity I actually have today?
That is bigger than any food.
I know now that I can figure things out. That doesn't mean I know all the answers. It doesn't mean I can control everything. It doesn't mean hard things don't hurt me. I've been through hard things, but I know that I can find resources. I can find information or people.
I know how to ask for help now, and I can make changes. I can make it easier. I can even survive discomfort. So, I've endured things that were really hard, and they didn't break me.
Felt like it was in the moment, but they did it. But maybe even more importantly.
I've learned how to be there for myself while I'm going through those hard things. I've always been really good at doing that for other people. I hear this often too, right? Loving them and supporting them, having compassion for other people, helping other people figure things out.
And I've had to learn how to do that for myself. That's what I want you to build. Not, I can control everything, but the… I… I truly… I've got my own back. I can figure out what I need. I can ask for help.
If I need it, you know, I can, I can change something if it can be changed. And here's the other part. I can let go of what I can't control.
I can feel something uncomfortable without believing it's going to last forever or it's going to truly break me.
I can make a decision about food instead of feeling like food is making the decision for me.
So this week.
When you notice stress making you want to eat, or making you want to say, I don't care, don't start telling yourself you shouldn't eat. The long pause…
that you take just a long enough pause to ask.
What feels out of my control right now and then what part of this is in my control and then finally ask yourself what do I need right now.
Maybe there's something you can solve, or make it easier. Maybe you need another tool, or to lower your expectations that you're putting on yourself.
Maybe… maybe you need to let yourself be uncomfortable for just a moment. And maybe you decide you want the ice cream.
But I want you making that decision, because every time you do that, you're practicing something much bigger than not stress eating. You're practicing, I've got this, I can figure this out. I truly have my own back.
And that is a skill that will take you so much further than someone telling you to just stop emotional eating. So next week, we're going to take this into a really specific place where I see this show up all the time.
Nighttime eating, because sometimes the thing that you need to stop is the snacking, the sweets, the chips, the dessert.
Sometimes it's not. And when what we really need to figure out sometimes is what are you actually needing at the end of the day? So I will see you next week. If this stress keeps knocking you out of your weight loss and if you're listening to this thinking this is exactly what happens to me.
I know what I want to do until life, you know, gets stressful and then everything goes out the window. This is exactly the kind of thing that we can look at together. I have a free call where we can talk about what's actually happening, what you've been trying and what taking care of yourself.
and losing weight could look like in your real life.
You don't need to get your stress under control first. You don't need to prove you can be more consistent, and you definitely don't need to have everything figured out before we talk. We'll start where you are. Okay, you can find the link to schedule your free call in the show notes, or.
at www.coachingkara.com/freecall. I'll see you next time.
