[Kara Hackleman] 09:31:36
Welcome back. We spent this month talking about some of the reasons that we eat.
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that have absolutely nothing to do with physical hunger. We started with stress.
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That feeling of, I don't care, I just, I want it, I need it. And we talked about recognizing that food isn't your only option. Then we talked about nighttime eating and asking, what am I actually needing? Last week we talked about that FOMO.
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What am I afraid I'm going to miss?
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And how you can fully participate in an experience without believing you have to maximize, eat it all, the amount of food.
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Today, I want to talk about another phrase I hear often, and honestly, I've said this one plenty of times myself.
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I deserve it.
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I've worked hard today. I deserve this. I've been taking care of everybody else. I, I deserve it. Nobody appreciates the things that I do, or I've had a terrible week, or I've been so good. I deserve this. I've said it for so many reasons, and my clients have said it for so many reasons.
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And again, just like everything else we've talked about this month, I'm not going to tell you you don't deserve it. No, you don't.
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Actually, you do. You deserve good things. You deserve pleasure and rest and comfort. You deserve to spend money on yourself.
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You deserve to enjoy food, to have nice things. You don't need me or anybody else to give you permission for that.
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But I think there's a much more interesting question here. Why do you think that you have to earn it in the first place?
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I deserve it usually comes after something. Pay attention to when this phrase shows up. Usually something happens first. Maybe you worked really hard, you've been doing things for everybody else.
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Somebody didn't recognize what you did. You weren't appreciated or you had to deal with something difficult. Maybe you've been restricting food all week. Maybe you've been good, whatever that happens to mean. And then.
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You say, I deserve this. Food becomes the prize, the compensation, the thing you give yourself because you did enough, endured enough, sacrificed enough, or accomplished enough.
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to earn it. And I want you to notice something.
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If you have to say, I deserve it.
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Then there's an unspoken question that's underneath it. Do I actually deserve it? Am I allowed to have this?
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Because we don't usually defend our right to have something unless some part of us believes that right might.
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in fact being questioned.
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Food became something valuable. This makes complete sense if you've spent years dieting. Food has been restricted. Chocolate is special. Dessert is a treat. Pizza is a cheat.
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The foods you really love become something you have to earn. You were good all week. You earned the meal. You exercised.
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You earned dessert. You lost weight. You earned a treat. You had a terrible day.
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You deserve something good. So now food has become more than food. It's a reward. And because you've spent so much time telling yourself that you can't have it, getting to have it feels valuable. I earned this. I deserve this.
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But remember what we talked about last week. You don't have to earn permission to eat. You already have permission. So now we can ask a different question. Not do I deserve this, but do I want this?
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And is this actually what I need? What I want, what I need? Your worth isn't up for discussion here. I think sometimes I deserve it is connected to something even bigger than food, that worth.
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Maybe you spent the whole day doing things for other people, and nobody noticed, nobody thanked you, nobody acknowledged how much you handled.
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And there can be this feeling of, well, I deserve something So you give yourself food. And again, food can absolutely be something enjoyable that you give yourself. I'm not taking that away from you.
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But I want to separate the two things, your worth and whether you eat the chocolate.
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Those things have nothing to do with each other. Eating it doesn't prove you're worthy.
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Not eating it doesn't mean that you're depriving yourself of something you deserve.
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You don't need to…
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Um, you don't need food to validate the fact that you've worked hard. You have!
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You don't need dessert to prove that you matter. You already matter.
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You don't need to spend money, or buy something, eat something, or reward yourself to establish that you are valuable. Girl, you are so valuable.
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Your worth isn't actually being decided in any of those moments. You're deciding whether you want chocolate. That's what you're deciding. That's it. What do you actually deserve? Sometimes I think the phrase I deserve it is useful because it points us.
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toward something. Okay, you deserve something. What? Maybe you deserve rest, or you deserve to stop working so much, or you deserve support to be recognized, to have some…
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Freaking fun, right? You deserve comfort, or to stop doing everything for everybody. It's not your responsibility.
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Maybe you deserve a boundary. You deserve to have not everybody have access to you at all times. Maybe you deserve to spend some money on yourself, or…
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You deserve some chocolate, some nice chocolate.
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Great, but let's figure out what we're actually talking about here.
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Because if you really need, if what if what you really need is rest, and you give yourself a cookie or that really nice chocolate instead, you still need rest.
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If you desperately want someone to appreciate you, and you eat ice cream.
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You're still feeling unappreciated.
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If you are exhausted from saying yes to everybody, and then you order takeout and dessert because you deserve it.
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Maybe what you really deserve is to say no to somebody or to something. Food may still be a part of what you choose.
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But now, it's not carrying the entire responsibility of giving you whatever you've been missing.
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So food can be the answer. And I want to make this really clear, because I don't want you listening to this and thinking, Kara says every time I think I deserve food, I need to figure out what emotional need I'm avoiding, or I should just go to bed. No, sometimes you deserve the chocolate, and you want the chocolate, and you choose the chocolate.
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Perfect.
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Remember what we've been talking about all month. Food is a tool.
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Food can provide pleasure, it can provide comfort and be a celebration, it can be fun, it can be nutrients, it can absolutely be the thing you choose.
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The question isn't, is food allowed to be my reward? The question is, do I like my reasons?
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That's where worth comes back in. What am I saying yes to? What am I saying no to by saying yes?
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What are the consequences? And what is that trade? Is it worth it to me? If the answer is yes, eat the chocolate. Tell me what kind you like, I will have some too.
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Enjoy it. You don't need guilt afterward. You made a decision.
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When food becomes your only reward.
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Where I want you to get curious is when food is the only thing you know how to give yourself. You accomplish something, food. Hard day, food. Finished a project, food.
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Someone hurt your feelings, or you survived the week, or Friday night? Food. You didn't.
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You did something difficult.
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food. Eventually, we stop experiencing the pleasure of the accomplishment itself.
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instead of I'm really proud of what I did. That was really hard, or I worked hard, or I figured it out and then feel amazing. It becomes. Now, what do I get? I did it transactional, and what I think we're losing what we I think.
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We lose something here.
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Because the accomplishment was already valuable. The growth…
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That was valuable. The effort, it was valuable. You were valuable. You were valuable.
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Before you ever did anything, you were valuable before the reward ever showed up.
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If the only way that we know how to feel good about ourselves is to give ourselves something afterward, we never really learn how to experience that internally.
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I did this with chocolate. I recognize this one because I've done it. For me, one of the ways this showed up was.
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Expensive chocolate. I deserved the good chocolate, but it wasn't only about chocolate. There was another layer underneath it. I deserve to spend money on myself.
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I deserve nice things, and those sentences sound really empowering. But looking back, I can see that I was desperately trying to prove something to myself.
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that I was worthy.
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See, I buy myself nice things. I let myself have expensive chocolate. I spend some money on myself. That must mean that I matter.
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But none of those things could create worth. They give me pleasure. They could be enjoyable. I absolutely chose them.
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But they couldn't prove what I…
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was trying to make them prove.
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Because my worth…
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Should have never been.
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up for discussion. My worth wasn't created by the chocolate.
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It wasn't created by what I spent, and it wasn't created by how much I did for everybody else first.
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That's something I've had to learn to give myself internally, that I already was worthy.
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You don't have to earn something good. You don't. I think this is where I want to challenge the whole idea of I deserve it. Not because you don't deserve it.
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You do. You deserve so much more.
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Because maybe deserving doesn't need to be part of the decision at all.
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What if you have to earn food?
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What if you don't…
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have to earn rest? What if you don't have.
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to earn pleasure? Or what if you don't have to exhaust yourself before you're allowed to stop?
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You don't have to take care of everybody else before you take care of yourself, and you don't have to accomplish enough before you're allowed to be proud of yourself.
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What if you don't have to prove you're worthy of something good? You're already worthy. You get to decide what you want. That's what's left. You get to decide.
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Because you're an adult making a decision about your own life, what your preferences are, what you enjoy, what about your life.
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So what happens to I earned it?
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This also changes what happens after you've worked really hard. Let's say you had an incredible week. You accomplished something you've been working toward. You crushed your workout, finished a huge project, handled something difficult.
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Instead of immediately asking, what do I get?
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What if you pause long enough to actually experience? I did that.
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That was hard.
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I showed up, I handled it, I followed through, and then let yourself have that pleasure, because that's so real. That's. That is real too. And I. You don't have to immediately convert accomplishment into food in order to enjoy it.
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And then if you want to celebrate.
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with some food, dinner, chocolate, whatever, go celebrate! If you want that dessert, or… now food is part of the celebration, it isn't the proof that the accomplishment mattered.
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You can give yourself…
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What you need before you earn it.
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This connects back to what we talked about last week with FOMO, and what we talked about the week before with nighttime eating. Sometimes we wait until we've reached the breaking point before we finally give ourselves something.
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I hear this often. I am not going to have pizza until I have lost 10 pounds. Why would you do that? You're not learning how to have the pizza. We work until we're exhausted before we're allowed to rest. We take care of everybody else all day long before we finally get something for ourselves.
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at nighttime when we're already exhausted, or we endorse stress until we feel entitled to say, I am done, I'm stopping all of this, I deserve it.
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What would happen if you didn't wait that long? What if you gave yourself rest before you were exhausted and pleasure before you were depleted?
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Support before you were falling apart. Recognition before you desperately needed someone else to give it to you.
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And food. Food before you had to earn it. Maybe there wouldn't be quite as much urgency when you finally did reach for those food items that you like. So, this week, when you hear yourself say, I deserve it.
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I don't want you to answer no, I don't.
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And I definitely don't want you to turn this into another reason that you shouldn't eat something.
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Just get curious for a second. Ask, why do I think I need to deserve this?
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And then what do I actually believe I deserve right now? Is it food, rest, comfort, recognition, pleasure, support, boundaries, breaks?
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something nice, whatever it is, and then ask, what would taking care of myself actually look like here?
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If the answer is eating chocolate, okay.
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But then decide how you want to have it. How much? When? What else do you want? What are you saying yes to? What are you saying no to? Do you like those reasons?
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And then you own your decision because your worth isn't hanging in the balance.
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It's chocolate. It's just some chocolate. Even expensive chocolate, but it's just some chocolate.
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So, what we've been building all month, I want to bring this whole month back together. When you're stressed, what is in my control?
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When you're eating at night, what am I actually needing?
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When you feel some FOMO, that fear of missing out, what am I afraid of? Like, what am I afraid's gonna happen? What am I afraid I'm gonna miss out on? And when you think, I deserve it, ask, what do I believe I have to earn?
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None of these questions are designed to make you eat less. That's not the point. They're designed to help you understand yourself well enough to make.
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great decisions for yourself. And sometimes that decision means less food.
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Sometimes it won't. Sometimes maybe you delay it a little bit, or you level it up, or you eat exactly what you wanted.
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And sometimes it's just recognizing what you even needed in the first place.
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But you are making the decision. That's what it is. That's what we've been building all month. Not how do I stop emotional eating, but how do I stop feeling like food is the answer to everything or my only option? How do I build a bigger toolbox?
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That bigger toolbox. We want more tools in it.
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How do I understand what I need? That understanding of ourself is amazing. When you know yourself so well that you know what you need, and you know how to give yourself.
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Support and compassion and exactly what you need.
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So, it's how you make decisions that you can feel good about.
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How you can trust yourself and I think it comes back to the same thing. I've got my own back. I can handle this because I know what's best for me and I can do it. I've got my own back.
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I can figure out what I need. I can take care of myself.
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I can make great decisions, and I don't need to be perfect in any of it.
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Okay, we are next month in November.
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This is the part of the, uh…
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Perfect place to move into November because we've spent October talking about what happens when emotions, stress, needs and old patterns show up around food. Now we're going to head into the time of year where food is everywhere.
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Right? Parties, family gatherings, Thanksgiving, the Christmas, all the holiday meals, desserts and treats at work, foods you only have once a year. And I don't want you going into that season thinking, how am I going to control myself around all of this food?
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We're going to talk about something much more useful. How do I enjoy all of this and take care of myself?
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Because those are not opposites, and that's where we're going next. I will see you next week.
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If you are listening to this.
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Thinking.
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I understand all of this when you say it, but I don't know how to actually do it in my own life. That's exactly what coaching is for. On a free call, we'll talk about what's actually happening for you, not what a diet says should be happening.
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We'll look at your patterns, what you've tried, where you're getting stuck, and what learning to trust yourself around food can look like for you.
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You don't need more rules. You need skills you can use in your real life. You can find the link to the schedule your free call in the show notes or go to www.coachingkara.com/freecall. I will see you next time.
[Kara Hackleman] 09:49:55
Bye.
