Ep 22-6 Lessons on Moderation

July 04, 2024

Do you have a hard time moderating all foods?

I did a fun experiment this month where I learned to moderate my phone screen time.

Instead of a full digital detox, my goal was to cut my screen time in 1/2.

In doing this, I learned 6 valuable lessons on how to moderate dopamine activities, whether that be eating, scrolling, drinking, or beyond.

You will learn…

• why you shouldn’t go cold turkey with sugar or social media

• how to create guidelines instead of strict rules

• 6 tips to stop overdoing it with food

Confident eaters, today have a fun episode for you where I am going to be talking about my experiment this month with cutting my phone screen time in half. Now this will relate to your eating. I promise you because learning to moderate something like your screen time on your phone is very similar to learning how to moderate food, sugar, alcohol. Anything that you were trying to moderate in any other area of your life to.

Now I'll be honest, I have been procrastinating this podcast a bit because I didn't actually cut my screen time in half. I had made this title I thought it sounded so cool. I was set on bringing my screen time down from what was about four hours and 45 minutes on average. Oh a day down to, I want to get it to two and a half hours. 

So about half. And honestly, I did not do that.  I did my best but I have checked and on average this month, I have average about three showers a day on my phone. So I got close. It was a big improvement, but my little perfectionist brain was like, no, you can't record this because you did actually do half, which is going to bring me into one of my lessons about perfectionism. But I'm going to be going over six lessons I learned from this experiment, and I think it'd be fun for really anyone to do. 

If you want to cut your screen down. On your phone or you think we could all do with a little less screen time and we can all do with some more skills on how to moderate sugar and food and all of that.

So what most people do when they do a challenge like this is they just do like no social media for a week. They'll do a digital detox. They'll cut it out. They'll get a flip phone for a bit. Just like people might do no sugar for 30 days, cutting out all carbs and doing keto for a month. 

These like really extreme challenges. That's what we tend to do. We tend to think about like, how can we just cut everything out for a time? Time period, and go to the far extreme because we think that will help us feel reset. And you might feel reset after that and find some new confidence if you can actually stick to it, which most people don't, but let's say you do actually stick to it. 

The thing is though, you're not actually learning any tools for moderation. The only skill you learned is how to cut things out. So unless you want to continue to cut out sugar and your phone and social media for the rest of your life. You didn't actually learn any tools on moderation. So that's really why I chose to cut my screen time in half versus doing like a full digital detox is because I wanted to learn how to use my phone in a mounts that felt good. 

And they also use my phone for work. And I use social media a lot for business purposes. So of course I wanted to make sure that I kept that in my life.

Now learning how to moderate ease the harder way at first, it is easier for your brain to have very clear cut rules and say no sugar, no social media. It creates a very simple option of just like, we're not going to do this. It's a very clear cut decision. And your brain likes having simple options. 

It doesn't like nuance. Your brain doesn't really like the gray area of like, well, it could be this way and it could be that way. And that's why it's so easy for us to get into all or nothing thinking. But we need to consider what happens when you go to the birthday party or you want cake. And you can't have it because you're doing your 30 days of no sugar. Then you might say, screw it and just keep eating.

So moderation is really a skill and it's a skill you have to learn and practice and figure out. So even though moderation is the harder way. It is the sustainable way. And I want you to hear that again, even though moderation is the harder way it is the sustainable way. 

So it's going to take a little more effort to figure out than just doing a quick detox, but it's the way that's going to last you forever and ever, and make you into the person who has learned the things and necessary skills to maintain your results.

 So, I'm going to go over the six lessons I learned about moderation from doing this month challenge to cut down my screen time.

The first lesson I learned very quickly is that your habit brain is always at work. And you will get urges to do your learned habits. I don't know why I didn't expect my brain to give me urges. I think because I've worked on urges in a lot of different areas. I just thought it was going to be simple. I was just going to keep my phone out of my room. When I was working and I would just get through it and  I would remind myself to not check it and I would simply use willpower and say, don't do it. Don't go on your phone. Do something else, that did not happen. I felt a lot more urges than I expected to use my phone in the way I'm habitually used to, which makes sets right. Our brain is a habit making machine. It is always constantly forming habits letting go of old ones. And so of course, I wanted to check my phone throughout the day, because that's what I'm used to doing. So for me, I checked my phone a lot in between task that's something I noticed is when I was transitioning from one thing to the next, or I was in between client calls or directly after a client call, I noticed I felt the urge to go get my phone and to check it or to do something on it which makes sense again, because that's something I tend to do.

I also noticed myself whenever I was bored after work, I wanted to reach for my phone right away. I didn't want to sit with that boredom. So I got the urge to go to my phone.

With food, a lot of you expect that you're going to decide to stop binge eating and heal your relationship with food. And you're just going to decide to do it. And that will be it. You don't expect these urges for food to come up and any time we change our brain is going to give us an urge to do the same thing cause that's what a healthy brain does. 

So chances are, as you get home from work, if you are used to binge-eating every time you go home from work or going to get a snack before bed. You're going to get that urge and you want to expect it so you can prepare for it and don't make it a problem urges or justice sensation. They're not going to hurt you. You can sit with them. It's just going to require a little bit of discomfort. 

But every time you sit with that urge, you are changing your brain. You were creating a new habit in breaking the old one. You can literally feel your brain rewiring in the discomfort of that moment. So get through it, because that is what is going to ultimately make you the person who doesn't have these strong urges anymore. 

And I did notice even on just like the second day after dismissing, like what felt like 50 urges to check my phone in the day. Even on the second day, I noticed that I went to walk a neighbor's dog. And I totally forgot about my phone. I just like left it at the house and I didn't think about it once. 

And I realized I needed it for something and I didn't have it. But I was so happy that I was able to already start to decrease those urges. And you might start to notice that with food too, where one day you just start forgetting that there's ice cream in the freezer and it's like, oh my gosh, what a fun moment to have.

The second lesson I learned is a classic, which is to value, progress over perfection. So the very first day I did this, I was super excited. I'm like, yes, I'm only going to spend two hours on my phone. Max, we're going to start out strong. And then I looked at the end of the day and I spent three and a half hours on it. Which was an hour over my original goal. And I was writing this podcast outline on my phone, actually right before sleeping in bed. So I had realized just how much I use my phone for so many different things. And the key is not to give up when you don't hit that perfect goal or your ideal. 

So maybe you have the goal to eat less sugar. You don't want to freak out. The second, you start eating a little bit more sugar than you want to. It's going to be okay. And that freaking out about it is what really ruins things. It's not the thing itself. It's when we panic about it. And then we say, screw it and we feel hopeless and we just give up.

Every day is not going to be the same. It is impossible to reach your goal, the exact same every single day. Right? So my two and a half hour goal on my phone, some days I was only on it an hour because I went to a music festival during this time and I was barely on my phone. But then on another day I was on my phone for like six hours because I was driving from Colorado to Michigan for this music festival. 

And I wanted to use my phone more and I was okay with that because I was stuck bored in the car and I had some other things to do. I did read. Maybe I would have been better off doing some other options as well, but I felt good about that. 

And the point being when we set these goals for ourself. We do like to make them more clear cut like two and a half hours a day. I'm only going to have dessert once a day or every couple of days. But these clear cut rules don't work for the everyday of life. 

Maybe you have a birthday party one day and you end up eating two or three cookies because they're really good and they're different flavors and you're really enjoying them. And then other days, maybe you're so busy with work. You don't even think about food, you get the bare minimum and, and that's all you have. And so it's different day by day.

So I really encourage people to make guidelines, not rules because guidelines are flexible guidelines. Allow you to set an intention for what you want and how you want to be eating and feeling. But with the flexibility for life, not this clear, rigid rule.

The third lesson I learned is to make it easy on yourself by getting it out of sight, out of mind. 

So I was putting my phone in the bathroom during the day and at night and I had to go up and get it in order to use it. I didn't have it directly next to my hand on my desk, which is what I normally do because that just made it a little bit too convenient to pick it up and just do a quick check. So by putting in the extra barrier, I just made myself think a little bit more before I acted and picked it up. 

So how you can implement this with food is I recommend keeping food that is a little bit more a trigger foods and treat foods in your cabinets a little bit hidden you don't have to like lock it in a box, like totally hidden away in the deep dark basement. But you want it, so it's not on your counter. 

Like I know what people keep like cookies on the counter and then just not that you can't not eat it, but it's just going to make it a little bit harder. Just like having your phone next to your desk all day. So we want to make it easier for yourself. And this also doesn't mean you have to go to the far extreme. 

So I could just decide to get rid of my phone for the week, but I need it sometimes just like you don't want to decide, I'm just not going to buy any sugar or treats for the house. You might want to buy some things, but just make it easier for yourself by not putting it in your line of vision all the time or like in your immediate Destro like have a little barrier there. 

The fourth thing I learned is to make sure you understand your positive intention behind using these things in the first place.

So you want to understand what value you're getting out of this thing, because you are getting something out of it otherwise you want to be using it. So with my phone a lot of the value I was getting out of it, was I love being able to connect with my friends and to text them into FaceTime them. I love connecting with all of you on Instagram. I love supporting my clients on my client messaging app and on my Facebook group for my group program. 

So I love being on my phone for a lot of those things, and I get a lot of value out of that. I also get a lot of value learning things from Instagram at times. Now sometimes we can go during the deep dark scroll, but I understand that Instagram also had some value to me. 

With food, food is a way to get putter that's the truth of it. It tastes good at times. Right? So we want to acknowledge that because then we want to ask ourself, are we actually getting the value that you want out of this thing? So, if you were getting pleasure from food, You want to make sure your eating experience is actually pleasurable. And if you're overeating, it's not pleasurable. It's painful. 

So be sure to check in with yourself with that positive intention and make sure you're actually accomplishing it and you're staying true to it. So when I scroll on Instagram, If something positive I get out of it is learning new information on business and seeing other creator accounts and getting ideas from them and insights and inspiration. I need to make sure that I am only scrolling long enough to get a little bit of inspiration, to get some ideas, to get a little information. Because once I keep scrolling longer than that, that's when my brain just gets flooded with dopamine and overwhelm. And just so many ideas that none of it actually sticks. I'm not actually learning anything from Instagram anymore. I'm just going into the deep, dark content hole of the internet.

The fifth thing I did, which I think is really important is I focused on what I was gaining by cutting down my screen time versus what I was losing. I was really focused on how amazing it would be to do this and why I was doing all this in the first place. 

A big mistake I see people making with food is they think that they're cutting it out. They think they're cutting out their pleasure. They think they're missing out on it. They think they're losing something valuable when they stop overeating, but that is not the truth. And when you focus on that, It's not going to feel very fun. It's going to feel like a pretty miserable experience and who wants to lose something who wants to miss out on something? Not me. 

So sure. I called it. I'm going to cut my phone time in half. I'm cutting something out, but I didn't actually feel like I was losing anything. I was thinking about all the things and all the ways my life was going to improve. And how excited I was to gain all those benefits. I was picturing all the hours more a day. That I had to work on my business all the time that I had to go outside to get the chores done over the weekend that I wanted to do to do laundry. 

The things that felt really good to accomplish. Of course, I wasn't like super excited to do more chores, but I was really focused on this feeling of accomplishment that I would get from doing all these things.

I was excited to feel more calm and energized throughout the day and less irritable and anxious. I felt like my focus would be better and deeper because I wouldn't be checking my phone every 10 minutes. 

My attention span would probably improve. I felt like my brain was literally tick talk that would switch between ideas and thoughts every three seconds. So it was really excited to have this longer stream of thoughts. And I was excited to see what my brain would come up with for activities when I was bored. 

What else could I do besides just scrolling and how much more creative could I be with that? And how much more creative could I be in general? What new ideas would I have? Would I think of something that would be brilliant and a great new podcast idea or something just that just felt good to think about a good insight in my brain. 

So those are all the things that I focused on that I was going to get from cutting my screen timed out.  That was going to get from cutting my screen time back. I wasn't telling myself how miserable I was going to be without my phone all day. 

So make sure you're doing that with food to. Go through and ask yourself  what are all the positive ways my life will change from stopping over, eating from healing, my relationship with food and create this really beautiful, exciting picture.  What that might look like in your mind, because that's going to feel like you're actually getting something from this versus cutting everything out.

Okay. The sixth lesson I learned is that moderation values, quality over quantity.

I had to do a value shift in what I wanted out of my phone. I needed to stop wanting those quick hits of cheap dopamine of just the scrolls and I needed to start valuing quality of the things that I actually wanted to learn from my phone and the things that were actually benefiting my life. 

So I prioritized using my phone for things that were actually useful during the time I was on it and this is really a lifestyle shift. 

If you were someone who right now values the amount of food you're having, versus the type of food you're having, it's going to take some time to get used to having less, but you want to focus on having really high quality food because that's, what's going to help you appreciate it more. 

I was talking with a client this week who was helping clean out her parents' house and they were going through like buckets and bins of clothes. And she was talking about how her and her mom were just really starting to value quality pieces so much more over the abundance of having lots of fast fashion. And this is a mindset that I think personally everyone should have. We should all value, quality over quantity. But it can take some time to adjust to this. 

So I want you to think about meaning and every area of your life. If you're valuing the amount of something you have versus the quality of it. Because once you start valuing the quality, it becomes so much easier to moderate it. You don't feel the need to have tons of it because you're getting what you actually want in those few quality things. 

When you have a few quality clothes, you don't feel the need to go out shopping every weekend. Because you have what you need, you like the things you have in your closets. When you're eating a delicious recipe for dinner every night and enjoying your breakfast and looking forward to the yummy salad you packed for lunch it's not going to feel so hard to stop eating because you got what you wanted out of it. You got the really delicious food. You got that quality so you don't feel the need to go for the quantity. 

All right. So those are the six lessons I learned. To recap the first thing I learned is that your habit brain is always at work. So be sure to be prepared, look out for those urges. Two focus on progress over perfection. Three, make it easy by having it out of sight, out of mind, put the food somewhere else. Four understand your positive intentions behind using these things. Five focus on what you're gaining, not what you're losing, look at why you're doing all this in the first place and six realized that moderation is valuing quality over quantity. Have a good week. Talk to you later.