Ep 38- All or Nothing Thinking

October 31,2024

All or nothing thinking around food will keep you stuck overeating and binge eating for much longer than you need to.

This mindset takes food choices to the extreme, such as labeling foods as “good” and “bad” or thinking “I’ve ruined it, might as well keep going.”

Today I cover…

• how to spot those sneaky thoughts that lead to a binge

• why all or nothing thinking happens

• 3 steps to stop all or nothing thinking

Happy Thursday company eaters today, we're talking about all or nothing thinking, which is such an important topic. If you're wanting to stop binge-eating. So all or nothing thinking is also called black and white thinking around food. It's being good around food and bad around food. It's really this binary thinking where we think it's either this way or that way. There's only two options of how we can be.

So when we say something like, oh, I been so bad with food today, or I've had a really good week with my eating that in itself is all or nothing thinking because we're recreating only two options for how our eating can be. Instead of seeing our eating as a spectrum, which is how natural eaters see their eating as a continuous stream of options that are available to them versus good and bad options.

So you'll know your having all or nothing thinking when you have thoughts, that sounds like the following "I've already been bad today so I'll just start tomorrow". "I'll be good at another time". This will continually put off your eating goal until a later date and continue to reinforce your binge eating habits. Thinking I was supposed to be eating clean today, but now I ruined it with this cookie time to keep going. I can't be trusted around certain foods. I know I will eat the entire box if I have one.

This one completely eliminates the possibility of you even being able to stop at one. If you just decide, once I start, I can't stop. That's either the option of I can't have any at all, or I have all of it when really there's a lot of options in between there.

Having strict food rules, such as, I'm never going to allow myself processed sugar again. Or going to these untrue, absolute about foods.

Eating more than X grams of carbs is bad. All sugar is bad. If you have a list of foods that say this is good foods, and this is bad foods, this is all or nothing thinking.

Now the problem with all or nothing thinking is this is what usually leads us into binge eating. Because we tell ourselves that we're not being perfect. So why try it all might as well just give up now it's not even worth trying.

Why would we even be in this thinking if it's so unhelpful, there's a few reasons why we get caught in all or nothing thinking the first one being. Our brains love to save energy. Our brain is the most energy intensive organ that our body has.

And so it is constantly looking for ways to make things simpler for us. So what is simple to our brain is having two options, good foods and bad foods. What is not simple to our brain is having to think of all the nuances every time we eat to food.

For example, oh, this cookie has sugar in it, but the sugar could also feel me. And the sugar also has joy, but I don't want eat too much sugar. Otherwise I'll get a stomach ache, but it has to have a lot of sugar in order for that to happen.

So see how we have all these nuances to actually eating the food. But instead of our brain says, Hmm, let's just call the cookie bad. So we don't have to think about all those nuances. So it's going to help our brain save energy. When we have these two options, it doesn't want to think about all of the options.

Which is why we have to intentionally show our brain that there's a big gray area in between all or nothing thinking.

So another reason we get caught in all or nothing thinking is because of diet culture. Diet culture has given you these rules that seem very simple and they sell very well. It is easy to make money off of something. When you're saying this is the way things should be, and this is the way things shouldn't be.

Here are five secret foods that are actually killing you. Pay me a hundred dollars, please. Right. So when we have those rules around food, it makes a really good marketing strategy.

Listening to our body is a bit more complicated than that, but it can be simple. I like to teach in a simple way with my hunger scale, but listening to our body is definitely more nuanced than a do this and not that list. It has a lot of considerations to take into place. So diet culture is really teaching us this perfectionistic mindset that in order to be healthy in order to reach our goals, we must do things perfectly. And that's just not the truth.

We actually I do a lot worse when we're trying to reach our goals perfectly than if we were to just try to reach them consistently.

We do not live in a perfect world as a perfect human. We are not robots. And if you want to reach a goal in any area of your life, whether it's food and eating and stopping binge eating or elsewhere, flexibility is a requirement. You must be able to adapt and change to different situations based on what's happening in that moment.

So for example, there's going to be times where you're not planning on having dessert in someone inevitably brings cookies.

And you have to make a decision if you want one or not. And you can't just say no cookies for me or screw it. I'm going to have all the cookies because that never works. Or some days you're just going to be hungrier than another day. And if you look to your calorie counter, that says you need to have the same amount of food every day. You're not going to know what to do, but if we can be flexible, we're able to allow ourself more food on the days that we need it and allow ourselves less foods on the days that we don't.

So, if we were to go into all or nothing thinking in those situations, it's going to be impossible to reach your goals as a confident eater. And when we think in these black and white terms, we can often produce a lot of guilt, shame and anxiety. Which are major triggers for a binge.

I recently had a client think you don't, maybe I should just go back to calorie counting because if I just had a strict guideline on, you know, this is how many calories I need a day. And if I finally knew the calories and everything and could see it written out, then I would stop binge-eating. And I encourage her to think that over, because my experience in all my clients, before her have had this experience with calorie counting, where once we go over our calories, or if we want to eat something that has slightly more calories than are allotted amounts. Then we go into major guilt mode and we say, screw it and then we end up binge-eating three times the amount than we would have if we didn't know the calories in it. And we just ate according to what felt good to our body.

So ultimately when we're in this black and white thinking, it is going to keep you overeating much longer than you need to. If you can get out of these thoughts, you're going to be able to move on much quicker from a binge and not get stuck in it for days on end. You're going to be able to go to a party and decide to just have one cookie and move on without secretly eating the rest of them in the bathroom. Like I have done before. You'll be able to truly eat anything in moderation. When we get out of this.

So how do we stop all or nothing thinking with food?

The first step is to have awareness of what these all or nothing thinking thoughts sounds like.

So, like I mentioned in the beginning of this episode, creating that strong awareness around this is when I'm going into black and white thinking right now and calling it out. So specifically looking for absolute statements, such as never, always, I must, I can't or when your brain is giving you just two options, there's either this way or that way. And there's no other options in between. It's either healthy or unhealthy. It's either being good or bad and then call it out, say, this is my untrue all or nothing thinking there are options in between and reminding herself, there are never actually two options. It's never this way or that way, because your day is filled with hundreds of moments in choices.

We can't have a good day with food because there might be some times where we are slightly overeating or we can't have a bad day with food because there might have been some times that we actually listen to our hunger. It's all nuanced. And there's a lot of variation within our days and our choices.

And food itself can't be healthy or unhealthy, good or bad. And if you don't believe me and you say no, no, no. Surely there are some foods that are completely unhealthy. I want you to go listen to episode 26, what to call foods instead of good or bad, because this is going to go over why there are actually no good or bad foods and how to get out of that thinking that there are.

Food and her eating decisions are always going to be on this spectrum. There are nuances, and we want to consider this gray area, not just the black and white.

I always tell my clients to think of yourself as a fancy sliding dimmer light switch. You are not an on and off light switch. You have all the fanciness to go in between the hundreds of options of brightness. You have the sliding scale of options to choose around food.

Third. I want you to start including foods you love throughout your week.

So stop trying to be perfect every single day only to get to the fourth day feeling so completely depleted of willpower that you just say, screw it and binge the next three days after that.

Instead, you want to give yourself permission to have these foods throughout your day and week to show your brain that these foods are not going anywhere and you don't have to binge on them the second you give up and start eating them.

And make sure when you're eating these foods that you're using neutral terms around them. So neutral terms are calling a cookie, just a cookie and chips, just the chips, not calling it unhealthy or bad.

I personally like to have a suite with my meal, most days. Because I know that I have talked that coming at dinner later, I don't feel the need to go crazy with it now. I don't say screw it and just eat all the chocolates. Plus some cookies, plus some ships after and finished off the ice cream. I know that because I get this food anytime I want. I don't need to have it right now.

So the main thing I want you to take with you today is that what messes up your eating is never that one cookie. It's when you say I ruined it over one cookie, and then you go eat five more cookies. That's where the damage is actually happening. The damage doesn't happen from that first bite of the food. The damage happens from that all or nothing thinking. So that's what we want to focus on getting rid of, and that will help you become the natural confident eater of your dreams.

Talk to you later.