Ep 50 - Why You Self-Sabotage When Things Are Going Well
January 23,2025
Come hike with me in Hawaii as I discuss how to stop self-sabotaging your eating habits!
In this episode, we explore how self-sabotage is your brain’s way of keeping you “safe” during change.
You’ll learn:
The hidden causes of self-sabotage
Why allowing both positive and negative emotions is key to overcoming binge eating
The superglue power of celebrating small wins to rewire your brain
Why life gets to be good for you—and how to believe it
TRANSCRIPT:
Hi confident eaters, I am on a hike in beautiful Oahu, Hawaii right now.
I just got here last night and you can notice that the sound quality is a little different because I am literally mid hike but I just had an idea that I just have to teach you and a concept that you need to know about and so bear with me as I am on this hike and probably breathing a little harder than normal than when I am on my desk but you need to hear this episode if you feel like you are self sabotaging.
Now self sabotaging is not just when you fall down from your goals, it is not just when Every time you overeat, you are self sabotaging because a lot of times there's a lot else going on under the surface. If you are dieting and restricting, that can be a cause. If you have thoughts you haven't addressed yet, that can be a cause of the overeating of the binge eating.
But self sabotage is when things are going really well. When you haven't overeaten for a few days, when you feel like you're finally getting this natural eater thing down under the belt, but then you suddenly start to get uncomfortable. With the good and because something inside you Says that this goodness feels unsafe then you actually start to self sabotage.
So self sabotage is ultimately a way that our brain is trying to help keep you safe. When we are shifting into a new identity, going from someone who is an overeater and binge eater and crazy around food and thinking about food all the time, to someone who is a natural and intuitive eater, that is different to our brain and it requires change.
And any time we go through the change, It's going to be uncomfortable. And sometimes that uncomfortableness is labeled by our brain as something we need to change because it feels new and unsafe. For most people in the world, all they know is how to feel numb. They don't know how to feel negative emotions, but they also don't know how to feel positive emotions.
And so when someone works with me, the first thing we start to do is Allowing the negative emotions because we need to do that in order to stop emotional eating when we're stressed, when we're tired, when we're overwhelmed. But after that comes another hard part, which is allowing space for the positive emotions to exist too.
Because positive emotions can feel much different than this non zoned out feeling that most people feel when they're stuck emotional eating all the time. And because our brain is wired to literally focus on the negative things in order to try to save us from danger, this can be just as hard and even harder as allowing space for the negative emotions.
Now, what do I mean by allowing positive emotions? This is when we feel things like joy and happiness and success and not self sabotaging out of those things. This is for example, I think the easiest thing to understand is when someone gives you a compliment and like let's say someone compliments your hair and says your hair looks amazing today and you just say, Oh no, my hair looks horrible. Like I barely even showered this morning. Like you do not allow space for yourself to feel that confidence that that person just gave to you. And that's likely because you don't believe it's safe for you to feel confident. You think, if I feel confident, something bad's going to happen. If I accept this compliment, I say, yeah, my hair does look great today. Like I look frigging fantastic. That maybe someone will come along and say, your hair looks bad. And then that emotion will be taken away from you. So you just decide to not feel it in the first place.
We self sabotage when we believe life can't really be this good for me. It can't really be possible for me to have my dream body and my dream eating habits. That's just not in the cards for me. And then your brain goes into all the excuses because I've been doing this for 50 years because everyone in my family is overweight and eats like this. Because this is just the society we live in, everyone's unhealthy. Those excuses back up this belief and make it seem true that, you know, this probably really isn't possible for you.
And so then guess what? You get to this goal weight, you get to this place where you do have your dream eating habits and you start overeating again.
So when you can learn to hold space for these positive, feel good results that you're creating in your life, the same way you're working on holding space for these negative emotions, that's when you'll actually achieve what you want with food, your body, and with anything in life.
Now, a few examples of how I see this happening specifically with people in my clients. The biggest one is when people stop overeating and binge eating, they might lose weight. I am not a weight loss coach. I am not here to tell you how to be your smallest version of yourself, but when you are frequently overeating and then you stop, you might lose weight.
And when that happens for some people, it's the first time they feel like they're being seen. And sometimes being can be scary because that makes us more vulnerable to rejection, to comments, to people noticing us in a new way that our brain has not been used to.
This also happens with love and relationships a lot. When people get in a new healthy relationship after a cycle of toxic relationships, they're scared that that love is not real or that love could be ripped away from them just like it has in the past. And so what do they do? They sabotage that relationship.
So it's starting to rain on me now. You might hear the trees in the background. And so I'm going to wrap this up, this very quick impromptu episode. And what I want you to practice this week is holding space for both the positive and the negative. Because you have not worked on holding space for the negative emotions either. We need to start there, but if you've already started doing some of this work and been following me for a bit, I really want you to focus on when you feel something like joy, letting that joy expand inside of you tenfold and really allowing yourself to feel how good it feels, allowing your life to be amazing.
Or when you get through an urge and you don't overeat and you feel proud of yourself, get proud of yourself ten times more. Jump up and down in your kitchen and be so happy for yourself. Celebration is like actual neural super glue in our brain. So any of the new habits you have, the more you celebrate, the more they will stick.
So the more you allow space for happiness and joy and pride around your new eating habits, the easier this process will become. When someone compliments you, tells you you're doing a good job, that they love your dress, Let it sink into your core and feel how good it feels to be seen and admired. And when someone tells you they love you, let that love sink in and allow yourself to feel that love back.
Life gets to be this good for you simply because you exist.
You deserve all the good things. You deserve everything you want. And sometimes knowing and believing that can be scary. But I want you to take that leap and expand what you believe is possible for you and your life.
Okay, I'm gonna stop this now because I'm gonna fall and slip on my face if I don't. I love you all.
Have an amazing week. Goodbye.