Ep 8-Procrastination Eating

March 28, 2024

Have you ever found yourself reaching for a snack instead of tackling a big project?

Or maybe you've used food as a way to avoid tasks around the house.

Let's explore how eating can be a form of procrastination and how it impacts our productivity!

You will learn…

• The difference between taking breaks and procrastinating

• Why we tend to procrastinate

• How to stop procrastinating with food

• Where motivation ACTUALLY comes from

Confident eaters, have you ever procrastinated with food? Maybe you've had a big work project upcoming, and you decided to go get a snack instead. Or you had something around the house you wanted to clean, but instead you went to food. Eating can be a form of procrastination, and that is what we are talking about today.

Really, any activity can be a form of procrastination. So going on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook are things we think of as procrastination. typical things we do to procrastinate. But even something like going for a walk, where we consider that to be helpful, can also be considered procrastinating. What procrastinating is, is putting off an activity that we had an intention of doing.

So think about all the things you could do to be procrastinating. Now, of course, we are going to talk about What happens when you eat instead of doing the task, which is something that I think we have all done at some point in time. Procrastination, a lot of times, can come disguised as taking a break.

It's really normalized in our society to go take a break with food, to have a snack drawer, or to have a big long list of things you want to have as snacks at work. Maybe you always pack a snack with you to take, but you want to be careful not to let your brain tell you that you are taking a break when you are really just procrastinating.

Taking a break looks like intentionally doing a restful or re energizing activity. So, the intentionality behind it is really important, whereas procrastination looks like unintentionally distracting yourself from work you feel like not doing. Procrastination tends to be more of an in the moment decision, whereas a break you might plan out.

Like saying in 30 minutes from now, I am going to go get a snack because I am getting hungry or in an hour from now, I am going to go outside and take a walk. Another difference is that a break leaves you coming back feeling better. After you do that activity, Your quality of work will improve. You're more focused, you're more energized, you're able to get more done, you're more creative, whereas procrastinating leaves you coming back to your activity feeling worse.

You feel guilty. You feel even more unmotivated, and it usually declines the quality of work that you're doing after it, after procrastination. So, if you procrastinate by eating, you're going to come back to your work feeling more sluggish, unmotivated. You're going to be discouraged that you still have to do the task.

So it ultimately comes down to your why behind the action you're doing to determine, Am I taking a break right now or am I just procrastinating? Now, why are you procrastinating in the first place? There's a few reasons I want to go over. The first one is to escape the discomfort of doing an activity.

Any activity we do, besides just like laying in bed and sleeping, maybe watching TV, requires some effort. It requires energy. And our brain does not like to use energy, specifically our lower brain, the survival part of our brain. It's trying to make us do things that require the littlest amount of energy possible.

Our lower brain wants us to just stay in the cave and be safe and comfortable all day long. Because that is seen as something that would help our survival. But we're not out here trying to survive. We're out here trying to create amazing, fulfilling lives that are healthy and that last a really long time.

So that discomfort of doing something is something we want to go through so we can get better. the results that come along with it. The second reason you might procrastinate is because the task feels hard. Maybe you're doing something new. You're learning a new skill. You're starting a new work project.

And anytime we do something new that takes us to a new level outside of our current skill, Any activity that requires growth is going to feel difficult because, again, it's pushing your brain out of the cave, out of its safety zone, into something that requires learning. And learning requires energy. Our brain is having to grind its gears to get to that Next level of capabilities and possibilities as a human.

Third reason you might want to procrastinate is because you feel overwhelmed. This is definitely my biggest thing. If you don't know where to start or feel like there's too much to do, you're going to shut down, feel overwhelmed and want to escape that. If you're feeling overwhelmed, chances are you are looking at too big at.

If you're feeling overwhelmed, chances are you're taking a big picture look at all the things you need to do. You're looking at the many things you need to do throughout the entire week or month or even sometimes the year of your life. And that is why you feel overwhelmed. To get out of that overwhelmed, you need to ask yourself, what do I actually have to do right now in this moment that is a priority?

That will take your brain to the smaller task of what you need to do now, and you can start with one specific thing. Versus looking at the 20 million different things, which of course you're going to feel overwhelmed. Of course it's going to feel hard to start. Of course you're going to want to procrastinate then.

Fourth is if you don't understand why you're doing the task. It feels meaningless. If you have a job that you don't particularly enjoy, my guess is that this is the one that is common for you. If you are just given tasks and you're not told why you're supposed to do them, or you just feel like it's very monotonous, you don't have a lot of meaning behind it, It's not to say that you need to quit your job and go out and get a new one, although if you really hate it, maybe that's something you want to consider, but we need to find instead the reasons behind these tasks that you want to be doing in order to stop wanting to procrastinate.

So you need to find a stronger why. of why you want to do this task in the first place. So maybe that means asking a manager, you know, what's the purpose of doing this? What is this contributing to our larger goals? Or looking for yourself, maybe it's just more of a personal task, such as cleaning your house.

You're not really sure why do I even need to clean the house in the first place? So you want to get really connected with your why. Maybe you want to clean your house because you have a guest and you want them to feel comfortable in the environment. Or because you want to feel comfortable in your environment.

You feel like your environment has been distracting to you, so you want to get it cleaned up. That strong motivating reason why is going to help you start to do it. But maybe you don't even need to do the task at all. Maybe this is just something that you put on your to do list because you feel like it's something you should be doing, but you don't actually want to do it.

And I'm going to give you permission right now to just take it off the to do list. Maybe it's not important. It's not a priority. Just take it off. Who cares if you should do it, if you're supposed to do it, if it's not deeply meaningful to you and your goals, there's no reason to have it on your to do list.

So just take it off and then you don't even have to procrastinate it at all. Finally, maybe you find the task boring. It's just a dull task. It doesn't sound fun. Boring is not actually a problem. Go listen to the last episode on emotions if you want to hear how to sit with your emotions. Because the truth is, there's going to be some times where we just feel bored.

There's actually a lot of research on how boredom is highly beneficial for our brain. We spend so much time constantly overstimulated with entertainment in our brains. With all the things that we now have, with the internet, Our brain does not spend a lot of time bored. So if we are doing a task that feels boring, chances are it's just because we've trained our brain to be used to lots of dopamine.

It doesn't mean it's bad that the task is boring. And I actually think the more boring the task is, The more beneficial it probably is for your growth. If you think about something like lifting weights, where you just have to do kind of like a very similar structured workout over and over again, that is going to get you the best muscle growth versus doing a hundred different random exercises at the gym that targets random things.

Like, is that more fun? Probably, but the boring things are what lead to our bigger, amazing life that we want to live. If you can find a way to make things more fun, By all means, do it. I love using colors in what I'm making like to do lists, highlighting things, crossing things off. Find ways to make it fun for sure, but also know when things are just boring, sometimes you just have to get over the initial hump of doing it.

But I want you to remember again why you're doing something and the reward you're going to get from getting it done. Why it's going to be so fun to have it completed.

So all of these things get into the topic of motivation. Right? We're procrastinating something because we don't feel like doing something. Who has said that before? I just don't feel like it. But motivation is a feeling that comes from our thoughts. Most times, motivation is not something that just magically comes over you, and you just feel like doing something.

On occasion, that happens, and isn't it wonderful when that does happen? But I would say 90 percent of the time, We just have to do the thing without feeling motivated. But if you want to feel motivated, you need to be telling yourself motivating thoughts. So if you're telling yourself the whole time you sit down to do a project, I don't want to do this.

This is no fun. It's too hard. I don't get it. I'm confused. All of those things, you're going to want to escape that feeling. And if you're telling yourself desirable thoughts about food of like, Well, it'd be so nice to go take a break. The snack sounds so yummy.

All of those thoughts about the food are going to make it so you don't want to sit down to do the work and you do want to go eat the food. My favorite thoughts for motivation are One, just do it. A classic Nike saying, but it's good. Like, just sit down and just do it. I like to think about how I'll feel after, about how good it will be to just get it done.

I like the thought, this could be fun. Asking myself, how could this be fun? Like, who says? My thing is writing emails. I hate writing emails, but not anymore because I've thought about them is I am just writing magic sparkly words on my computer to send to all the beautiful humans on my email list and that is so fun.

Who doesn't love to write beautiful, magical, sparkly words to my best friends? So I've made it fun by changing my thoughts around it.

If you decide. To go in and eat the food anyways, let's think about what happens. When you eat, you are still delaying the inevitable. When you eat, you are still delaying the inevitability of doing that task. Eating or doing another activity does not contribute to the progress of getting something done.

You are going to do that activity and that that thing you still have to do is still going to be there. You go into procrastination, thinking it'll make you feel better, but you will always feel worse after procrastinating, especially with food, because now your body has to process the extra food, which requires extra energy.

It requires your digestion to start up and that taxes your system. One sneaky thought that comes up is, well if I take a break with food, it's going to give me energy to do this task. But I want you to think about what actually happens, because if you are not hungry, food cannot give you energy. It is just going to make it so much harder for your body to show up in the world.

Now, if you are truly hungry, sure, sometimes food will give you energy, because when we're a little hungry, we're Our energy levels sometimes go down as a way, as a signal for our body to let us know that we need food, but we need to be honest about how much our energy levels go down. Like, come on, we are not like passing out.

With absolutely dead tiredness because we haven't had a snack in a few hours. I am recording this podcast right now before lunch and I am actually pretty hungry. And I feel like I'm showing up great. I feel like I got lots of energy right now. Sometimes being hungry gives me more energy because I'm more focused.

Think about when you're When,

think about humans, thousands of years ago, it would be beneficial for them to have energy when they were hungry because that would motivate them to go out and go hunting. They would be like, having this extra drive to go out and do things in the world. So I usually feel actually a little more energized when I'm hungry.

But the times we get really hungry, sure, have a snack, you can procrastinate with eating then I guess, if you're really hungry. But more times than not, Eating extra food just makes it so we're extra tired. It doesn't help anything. All feelings are temporary. The 30 second hit you get from eating food will go away.

Really think about this whole story. You're going to put the, you're going to go downstairs, you're going to get your snack out of the cabinet, you're going to put it in your mouth, you're going to be, um, this is good, and then 30 seconds later it's going to be gone, it's going to be over, and then you're left with the dread of doing the task still.

It is such a fleeting thing to eat food. It literally goes by so quickly. Even if you're really slow and mindful with your food, which I always suggest, it still doesn't last that long. It still lasts like 10 15 minutes. And then you still have to do the task. But the opposite is also true, where the discomfort of doing the task will also pass.

Those few minutes where you have to sit down at your desk, open up a new project for work, It's a little uncomfortable, but that passes, then it's gone. And then you're cruising away. And then you get in that flow state. And isn't the flow state so fun to be in when you're just working and you feel like the time just passes.

And then the next thing you know, the workday is over and you've gotten this major project done. You're feeling amazing about it, showing you that discomfort of getting started always passes too. So keep that in mind. Discomfort is temporary. So whether you eat the food and get rid of the temporary discomfort of starting that project, then you're going to give yourself the discomfort of overeating, or you can sit down and do the discomfort of the task.

Either way you're feeling discomfort. So why don't you sit down? Feel the discomfort, start the task, get it done, and stop procrastinating. All right. I hope you have a super motivated, get shit done kind of week. We are going in to the fourth quarter. If you think about the year that way. We're fourth of the way done for the year.

So get after it. Go get things done and go feel amazing. Feel energized in your body because you're properly fueling it. Not overstuffing it and able to do all of that. While feeling amazing in your body. Alright, I'll talk to you next week, loves. Bye!