Ep 27- You Deserve to Stop Overeating

August 08, 2024

Have you ever thought “my eating habits aren’t THAT bad?”

I see so many people thinking they aren’t struggling enough to prioritize their eating.

But the truth is, we live in a culture of disordered eating.

And you DESERVE to feel amazing around food!

I’m here to empower you to see the possibilities of food freedom no matter what your struggle looks like now.

I cover…

• my personal eating disorder therapy experience

• understanding the eating disorder criteria

• the importance of addressing overeating and binge eating early on

• overcoming the cultural norms of diet culture, disordered eating, and weight obsession

 Hey friends. If you are listening to this in real time, I have two exciting announcements for you. One, I have a brand new free workshop called six essential steps to stop binge eating. I'm going to be going over the exact path I took to go from binge eater to natural eater. That is happening August 19th. At 11:00 AM mountain time. So the link to register will be in the show notes. 

And my second announcement is I have just opened up my confident eater group program to help you stop binge eating and overeating permanently by rewiring your brain around food. This is a small group that only opens a few times a year with very limited slots. And I would love to have you. 

We are going to be closing on August 23rd. This group includes weekly live coaching calls, unlimited, written support, a community of other like-minded women. And progress tracking to help keep you accountable. And they do even have a full money back guarantee.

There are also two special bonuses. When you join, you are going to get two private coaching calls with me, as well as VIP, early access to my new confident eater course. 

I'm so excited to have this course for you with on-demand lessons and worksheets. So you're not going to want to miss out on these special bonuses. You can find the details and book a free consultation call with me in the show notes. Before we close August 23rd. But be sure to do it now, before we fill up. 

All right. 

So today we are talking about this general thought of what if my eating habits aren't that bad, or when we think maybe I'm not quite sick enough to get help. It's not bad enough. I don't really need to prioritize the school in my life. I have other things that are more important right now. 

And this is a thought that can be disordered in and of itself and keep you stuck, continuing the same harmful behaviors. Keep you not making progress. Keep you repeating the same things that you don't want to be doing. So we're going to talk about why you deserve to stop overeating no matter where you're at, no matter what you're struggling with and what that future life could look like for you. 

So I felt this way the most, when I first went to therapy. I went to therapy when I was struggling with bulemia. So I was binge eating, but then also purging by throwing up. And when I had my first appointment, I remember the lovely therapist, she brought me back into her office and we did a little checklist. She covered what bulimia is, what binge eating is. We took some measurements and vitals and all of that good data. 

Now I remember her telling me something like, oh, okay, you barely meet the criteria for bulimia, but we can still help you. And same thing with binge eating. It was like, oh, you're kind of a binge eater or you're kind of a believer. And I just remember thinking like, what the heck like, oh, I'll show you what's bad enough for treatment. I'll make my vitals worse. You're going to have to send me to all of your other people. 

And the definition for being diagnosed as bulemia is you have to be purging at least once a week per week for three months. So maybe mine was like every week and a half or every two weeks I was purging. And same thing for binge eating. You have to be eating a large quantity of food. Larger than most people would consider normal within two hours, at least once a week for three months. Now what if you're in the category where you're like, it happens every other week or it hasn't quite happened consistently for three months, but it happens on and off. This is the episode for you, or if you feel like you are overeating and that you don't even fit into these eating disorder categories, but you know, like something is often you want to change. This is also for you. 

And why it's so important to, for you to believe that your deserving to stop overeating and become a natural eater is because eating is a basic foundational need of our life. 

If you think of the hierarchy of needs being well-nourished is the most foundational one. And so when that's not going well, we have this crumbling foundation. It's harder to show up to our career, focused and ambitious. It's harder to treat our family and friends while because we're so in our head about what we're eating, we're not able to be present in the moment. I can impact a romantic life with how we're feeling confident, how we're showing up. 

Of course, our health, like that's the biggest thing and that it has an impact on our finances. We spend a lot of extra money on this extra food that we're eating. All of these past diet plans, just all these other things that don't really work and impacts our confidence, just how we feel about ourselves in the world. 

Now the good news is when you heal your relationship with food, all of these areas become so much easier to pursue, which is why I recommend creating your eating goal as your number one goal in your life. 

Now, this doesn't mean you can't focus on other goals, but we only have so much time and energy in our busy lives to focus on things. And so I really want you to see how when you're eating issues are solved. Everything else becomes so much easier because you have the strong foundation of trust with yourself and you're actually well-nourished and your body's not having to process all this extra food. 

Now many of us, when we are struggling with overeating, we're really good about shoving things under the rug. Like just pretending it's not really happening, hiding our habits from the world and from other people hiding our habits from ourself to and we start to turn a blind eye to what's really going on. But when we do this, things only get worse because we're not recognizing where we can change and do better. 

Awareness is always the first step to change and we're not even aware of what's going on. We can't really make the improvements we want to make. So we have to be honest with ourself about where our eating habits are at. And what they are look like and stop lying to ourself about what's really going on.

Now, I like this example of someone who is drinking, but they're not quite an alcoholic yet. They might say, you know, I might be better off cutting back, but I'm not really an alcoholic, so it's not really something I need to work on. Now just because someone is not an alcoholic doesn't mean that they wouldn't benefit from assessing their drinking and benefit from seeing what life might look like if they cut back a bit. 

And that's how I want you to think of your eating habits too. Even if you don't have a full blown eating disorder or it's not something that's impacting your life every single day, all day long. That doesn't mean you're not. It wouldn't be beneficial to take a little look and see what your life might be like if you could change these things. 

And in fact, I think it is much better to work on these habits before they become a full blown eating disorders. Just like it's much better to work on your drinking habits before you become an alcoholic. Once someone's an alcoholic and they're on the brink of losing their job. It becomes really serious when they continue these habits and same thing, the longer these habits go on with your eating and food the more serious they become and we want to get ahold of them  before they become something truly devastating in your life. 

I've seen what happens if people continue on these habits because they don't feel like it's time for them to get help myself included. I went a little too long with these habits and then I ended up developing bulemia and I had severe binge eating. And if I would've gotten help earlier on, I would have prevented a lot of teeth damage, a lot of weight gain, a lot of mental distress. Should I have gotten help earlier. 

It's the same thing with marriage counseling. If you've ever heard the advice, like go to a marriage counselor before you're having big problems. I think that's good advice because if someone like a couple is going into marriage counseling and they like absolutely hate each other and they want to get divorced today. The odds of the marriage counseling working out is pretty slim because there have just layered on so many different fights, so much different history, so much drama, just so many different things within that, that it's going to take years to unravel that and get them to a place where they're feeling good. So the sooner you start to change and work on your eating habits, the less wired in these habits will be, and the easier they are to change. 

So starting today will inherently, always be easier than starting tomorrow because you're going to have one less day of ingrained eating habits.  Every time you binge eat or overeat or eat in a way that you don't even really want to, you're basically taking a vote in your brain and saying, yes, brain, please keep giving me these urges to do these things because I keep giving you the reward of food. 

So your brain is learning every single day who you want to be. And once we start getting help and support for eating, you're starting to take the vote on the other side of your brain for saying, Hey, I don't want these eating habits anymore. And you start the journey of unwiring those habits. 

People come to me after 50 or 60 years, sometimes struggling with binge eating and with food. And we can still make massive changes. 

Like there is still hope for you. If you were in this category, don't you worry? But there's often a lot more to work through. There's a lot more ingrained habits in green beliefs. Just so much that has happened over those 50, 60 years that we have to work through. So sometimes it can take a little while longer working with me to get through all of it. And even if you are in this boat where you've had these habits for a really long time, just know it is still worth getting help and working on them now versus letting them continue on for another 10, 20, 30 years. 

Like doesn't matter if you're 90 years old, you might still have another 15 amazing years to live. And we want those years to be amazing. We want them to be filled with no food drama and self care and truly feeling amazing in your body. 

So here's the truth. We live in a culture of disordered eating habits, a culture of diet, a culture that is ultra weight loss, obsessed. So you might look around you and think that what you're doing is normal. When really it might be normal, but it is not healthy. 

There was a survey that was done and 75% of women between the ages of 25 and 45 engage in disordered eating or eating disorder behaviors. So if your friends are eating in a way. That you feel like is similar to you or your sister is eating in a way that seems similar to you. You might think well, but eating habits, aren't that big of a deal. But imagine if you were surrounded by alcoholics and you yourself were an alcoholic, it wouldn't seem like that out of the norm. It wouldn't seem like that big of the deal. And that's, what's happened to a lot of people in our culture is they don't realize how disordered their eating habits are, because this is the world we've grown up in unfortunately.

 Natural eaters do not spend all day thinking about food. Natural eaters don't get anxiety at restaurants. Natural eaters aren't scared to have certain foods in their house because what if they overeat on em? Natural eaters don't go on and off track every week. They don't. They rarely eat to physical discomfort. 

So if you resonate with these things, one, like I've been there. There's nothing wrong with you. It's okay that you're in this position, but please know that there is a different and much easier way around food that this isn't the way you have to stay stuck forever and ever. 

So just thinking maybe I have a problem with food. Just maybe there's a different way I could be eating. Is a enough reasonable loan to get help, to start focusing on this goal. Being here, listening to this podcast, or you think is reason enough. If you're actively searching out solutions for binge eating and overeating, that's probably hinting that you realize that there is another reality that could be different than where you are. 

I want you to imagine if I could wave a magic wand to change how you interact with food in your body, would you change anything? What would be different, better about your life? And if you notice that there are certain aspects of your life, that would be better. It is worth focusing on this eating goal. You deserve these changes, you deserve to live this best life, you deserve to live a life that is more than just average or okay or I could get by with this, you deserve to live the life of your dreams. 

So I want to validate for you today that you are worthy of getting help. You are worthy of changing. Even if you're at a normal, unhealthy weight, you don't have to be  overweight to make changes, you don't have to be underweight and medically diagnosed with anything to get help either. 

And in fact, only 6% of people with eating disorders are clinically underweight. So it is a very stigmatized thing to say that I don't have eating issues unless I was like really skinny or I don't have eating issues on Les I was like 300 pounds. It's not about your weight. It's about how you feel. 

You are worthy of support, even if you don't fit this rigid definition of an eating disorder, like the reason they have these crazy definitions of eating disorders that are so like defined is for insurance purposes. Okay. Insurance needs to have clear cut rules and boundaries to know whether they can be billed for it or not. So, you know, don't let the insurance definitions define what you need support for and what you don't. 

You're worthy if it's not that full-blown eating disorder, even if you're just overeating. Or if you just overeat a few times a month, that's enough to want to change because that can have an impact on your life. Even if some days feel easier than others, even if your eating habits might look normal from the outside, but you're internally anxious and struggling. I know in my life, a lot of people probably thought like, oh, you looked completely normal to me. I thought you were just doing your normal eating habits. When internally I was so stressed about food all the time. I was thinking about all the time and I would go out with my friends, I'd eat a salad and then I would come home and I would be in half the cabinets.  So from the outside, it might've looked like I was fine and people would be confused.

Oh, you had an eating disorder. Oh, you struggled with your weight. Oh, you felt with your body. On the outside, you looked pretty confident, but you know, when people never know what's happening on the inside. So you don't have to continue to live this way. 

If you're tired and fed up with your eating habits, I can help you. I have been there. I know what it's like, and I have a step-by-step plan for you to get out. So again, the group program is closing August 23rd. I would love to have you in it. I do still have private coaching options as well. If that interests you. So we will talk on our consultation call, which option is better for you. 

We'll go over all the details. And even if you decide not to work with me, consultation calls are so clarifying. I in what you're eating goals are, why you're getting stuck and how to get out. So I would love for you to book a call with me. If you have any questions, let me know. Otherwise, I'll see you guys next week.