Ep 29- Your Food Urges Are Not a Problem

August 22, 2024

Today I dive into our food urges and why they are not inherently problematic.

I talk about a recent birthday experience with an intuitive eater who listens to his body’s signals and makes decisions based on fullness rather than desire.

I cover:

• the difference between having urges and acting on them

• how accepting desire for food makes it easier to stop binge eating

• why you are already capable of sitting with desire for food

 Hello confident eaters! Today we are talking about why your food urges actually are not a problem. And this topic is coming from my life. I am inspired, as always, by things that happen in my life. So the past week was my birthday week and I went out to dinner with my family and my brother joined us. We went to a lovely vegan restaurant.

I am almost vegan. Not quite. But anyways, we got appetizers We got our main entree and I was planning intentionally to have dessert like I knew Dessert was coming. So I made sure I had space in my body For cake and my mom had bought a lovely cake from a local bakery That I was super excited for we had like a chocolate raspberry thingy And as we were finishing up our dinner, getting ready for cake, we were starting to eat it, and one of the things my brother said just really stood out to me.

Now a little background on my brother. I would fully consider him a natural eater. He is someone who has never struggled with his weight, just eats very intuitively, eats when he's hungry, stops when he's full, has no drama around food as a lot of men do sometimes. Games? Games? And so we were eating the cake, and my grandma was also with us.

Sometimes she is a little bit of a food pusher, so she asked, you know, can you eat more, eat more, have some more of this cake? I don't want any more. And my brother said, my mind says yes, but my body says no. He was like, it's really good, but I just can't. I can't do it. I can't have any more. And he was saying I can't, but I know he meant like he didn't want to, because we all know we could physically put more food in our body, but to him it feels like he literally can't.

Now, again, what really stood out to me is this, my mind says yes, But my body says no. He liked the cake and the taste of it, and he was really enjoying it. But he let his body signals take the lead and got rid of any other drama of it. His body is the CEO of all the decisions. It doesn't matter what his mind is saying.

If his body is full, if he feels done, that's it. He's done. There's no other further discussion. I bet if you asked other natural eaters in your life if this happens to them, they would say yes, too. That sometimes their mind wants more, but their body doesn't. Their body's full. I really want you to hear this to normalize that natural eaters get desire for food, too.

I think a lot of us create this fantasy world about being a natural eater, and while it is amazing and so many aspects of your life improve, you're not going to get rid of this part of your brain that likes food. You're still going to have times where it's like, hmm, this food is yum, but I I don't have any more room for it.

Like that is still, that still happens to me. That still happens to my brother. That still happens to other natural eaters. Now the difference is natural eaters, they don't make it mean anything about them or their eating habits when they get this desire. What I mean by that is if you get the desire for food and you make it mean, I'm going to binge, I'm going to overeat, this is a problem, I must get rid of this desire, I need to hurry up and eat it so I don't have to sit with this desire anymore.

All of that is making them that desire means something. It's making it important. It's giving it value when it doesn't really have to have value. Natural eaters don't really give a lot of value to their thoughts about food. They give a lot of value to what's going on in their body. So the problem that most binge eaters run into is we freak out and panic when we feel this desire for food.

You think, I have to eat this now because I have this urge. Now, of course this is happening because in the past. When you've gotten this desire, you have acted on them. When you have this urge for food, you've eaten. And so, when you look to your past, it makes sense why you would assume that this urge must be the problem because I'm eating from it all the time.

But it's not actually that urge coming up that's the problem, it's how you're responding to that urge. Like, this is the key to anything in life, right? It's not our circumstances that are happening to us, it's how we choose to think about those circumstances. That's like the key to every spiritual book ever.

So it's not what's happening in your thoughts, it's how you're responding to those thoughts about food. Natural eaters do get thoughts about food, they just are thinking about them differently. So this urge itself is not actually causing you to binge. Just because you feel the desire for this food. doesn't mean you need to act on it.

Just because we have a thought doesn't mean we have to listen to it. We have an estimated 60, 000 thoughts happening every single day in our brain, and I can guarantee you, you are not listening to everyone. You are not acting on everyone. We have So many silly thoughts that come up day, every day that we just dismiss as silliness and we don't need to do anything about them.

Now, the truth is you do get false desire and urges for things in other areas of your life that you are managing really effectively already. What I see as a problem sometimes is Many readers think that they just can't sit with the urges, that they're just not able to do it, that they just have to act on it.

But this is not true. You feel desire in other areas of life that you don't act on. This is not the first time you're sitting with this emotion of desire. And I want you to look for examples in your own life. Here are some great ones. Maybe you see a commercial for something and you're like, oh, that looks interesting.

You usually don't go out and buy it right away. You usually just think, oh, that's interesting. And you just let that desire or that interest pass you by. Anytime you go to Target or out shopping for clothes, you might see something on the rack and be like, Ooh, that looks really interesting. I would like to buy that.

But then you realize, it's too expensive. It's not really worth it. I have something like it already. So even though you felt that desire for that thing, you didn't actually act on it. You just let it pass.

Food can be the same way where you can allow yourself to see that food's just not worth it. Food is not worth the price that you have to pay of the guilt, the sluggishness, the pain. And of course, this is like with overeating, not just normal eating.

But when you overeat, you're going to have it costing you something. So you can look at that and say, Meh, it's not worth it not really worth it for me today. It's not really worth it for me to have that third piece of cake right now because I don't want to deal with all the things that it's going to take away from me.

When you find someone attractive or you look at your partner and you just like want to have some fun with them, you don't always act on that right away, right? You're capable of waiting. You're capable of sitting in that desire, just letting it be there and then not making that a problem. This is a fun example to think about how sitting with desire can even make it more fun.

Like, when you sit with a desire for a person, when the deed actually happens, it's going to be much more exciting because it's, like, built up. So thinking about food, like, when you wait for food and when you wait for something that's truly enjoyable, you let that hunger build. It can be a much, more fun experience that way.

We all probably have some form of job or we're working or we're doing chores around the house at least, and there's gonna be some times where you wish you were watching your favorite tv show. Maybe it's raining out and you're like, oh, I just wish I could curl up with a book on the couch. I just got done with the series A Court of Thorn and Roses, and I was in love with it. If you have not read it, go read it. If you like Fantasy and romance. But there was so many days where I was working and I was like, Oh, I just want to read my book right now.

But I said, too bad. I'm working. So I just kept working, right? I felt that desire to do the thing. It was true, genuine desire. It was something I wanted to do. And yet it was something I didn't really want to do in that moment. So it wasn't a problem. Just like, you know, you might actually want to eat a snack, but you're not really hungry right now. So it's okay. You just let that hunger or you let that desire be there. And you just wait till you truly are hungry for that snack.

So looking at all these examples as evidence that you already have the skill of sitting with desire, just letting it be there until you either get to do that thing later, to buy that shirt later, or sometimes it just goes away on its own. Sometimes you desire that shirt in Target and then you continue on your Target trip and you never think about it again. Sometimes you think about food and You think it's the end of the world, but really you move on to something else in your day and it'll go away it's really not that big of a deal.

So I want you to expect that desire might be there, right? It's normal to sometimes be eating cake and be like, oh my gosh, this is so good. I would like more. But you don't have to make that thought become an action. It can just be a thought that lives in your brain and you can be done eating the cake.

I know when I open the Amazon app, I am going to want to buy stuff. Of course I do. I expect if I'm going to the Amazon app, I'm going to get excited about buying things, but I don't always buy things. Sometimes I just browse around. Sometimes I just buy what I'm going to buy. Sometimes I do buy things that I need, that I don't need. But all in all, I just expect this desire to come up without panicking about it. I'm just like, well, of course, I know that I'm capable of getting just what I need and moving on. Just like with food, you're capable of eating just enough, not more and then moving on.

So questioning your thoughts of do I really need that? Is it actually worth it? Is this even what I want right now? What do I truly want instead? So the question I want to leave you with today is how am I making my urges a bigger problem than they actually are?

Where am I making this harder and more complicated than it needs to be when I could just be letting my thoughts exist in my brain? I know that sounds easier said than done. And if this is something that feels hard to you sitting with urges, I want you to go to the show notes and get my free gift.

Because right now my free gift, if you hear the little blurb at the end that's about to come, it's a guided urge audio that will literally walk you step by step on what to do when you get an urge to binge. So if you're like, how do I just sit with it? I need someone to remind me of things and walk me through this.

I'm here for you. I got you, friend. Go download that urge audio so you can pop that in your ear when you're getting an urge. All right. Have a good week. Talk to you later.