Confident Eaters

Making your skills more accessible (so that you can use them!) (CE)
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Georgie: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Confident Eaters Podcast, where you get proven methods to end overeating, emotional eating, and stressing about food. We are heading for harmony between your body, food and feelings, hosted by me, Georgie Fear, and my team at Confident Eaters.

Christina: On this show, you hear us talking about different skills to use to support yourself and your health journey so that we can move away from unhelpful behaviors of binge eating and emotional eating, and move towards the freedom and confidence with your eating. I've been talking to one of my clients recently who knows a lot of skills, but is currently working on making those skills more accessible in the midst of a difficulty or urge to overeat or mindlessly snack or otherwise just eat out of alignment with how she feels best.

I think it's pretty common for clients to spend a lot of time creating more [00:01:00] awareness of their old unhelpful patterns with eating before being able to change them. We spend time sharing skills with clients to add to their tool belts, but sometimes there is being aware and not being able to put it to action, and that can be really frustrating.

Georgie: It's like you can't find the hammer or something that you've already got. You're like, where's that tool

Christina: Yeah.

Georgie: Which if you know anybody with a toolbox, happens often in real life.

Christina: Definitely.

Georgie: I call this the gap, as in there's a gap between once you know better and actually when you start doing better. Knowing obviously has to come first, but then there's a lag where your old habits still fire automatically, or you find an excuse at the last second not to do the new behavior just yet. It's a really uncomfortable place to be and can really involve frustration.

Christina: I know for clients that I've talked to about this, it can feel upsetting. You might think things like, so even with more tools, I still can't overcome these [00:02:00] challenges? And then defeat starts to creep in. But it can be difficult to access these skills if they're new and unfamiliar because food is still the most accessible and familiar thing you have to turn to, to cope with the difficult situations in life.

Georgie: Right? You aren't broken because you know better but aren't doing it yet. You're just in that ordinary expected gap phase. And we wanna help our clients move forward through that uncomfortable spot as quickly as we can, because things really do start to feel better once you're doing the new behavior.

Christina: For example, this client has identified two challenging times of day where she is more prone to binge or emotionally eat. One is after work and before dinner when kids are home from school and she's trying to get dinner ready and transition into mom mode. She feels vulnerable, scattered, and mindless munching while she's standing in the kitchen prepping dinner is often what happens. The other time that she [00:03:00] feels vulnerable is after the kids go to bed and she has some downtime all to herself. She's identified these times that are more challenging for her and even some alternative behaviors to support herself through some of the tough periods.

Things like pouring herself a cup of tea or a glass of sparkling water. Transitioning from her workday before reentering home life by some deep breathing exercises or mindful practices, and that gives her a clear transition into her evening. But the munching was still happening. She was feeling stuck and frustrated in this gap phase.

So we wanted to make it easier for her to choose the new behavior more and more and here's how we approached it. First, we decided to set the scene ahead of time. If you've ever worked in a restaurant, then you may have experienced the concept of closing duties, whether you work the day shift or the night shift, you have a list of tasks to complete, like cleaning, [00:04:00] food prep, and setting the next shift up. This way, the incoming workers have everything set up and their job is as easy as possible. Nobody has to clean up the prior shifts, messes, and many things are done ahead of time, like cutting lemon wedges if the next shift needs them for beverage service, or rolling silverware into napkins.

Making your skills more accessible and easier to choose is like that. In this client's day, she could see that having closing duties to help our future self out for the next shift of life could really help. Her daytime self also has more energy, her intentions are aligned with her values, and she's feeling more fueled and has just more time while the kids are at school.

Earlier in the day, she does things like folding the clean laundry off the bed and making her bedroom cozy and inviting. In the evenings, she closes down the kitchen and packs lunches for the kids. She works from home a lot of the time, so she hadn't been packing [00:05:00] her own lunch, but since she was already making the kids lunch, she decided she was gonna start packing her own satisfying lunch as one way to help herself from mindless snacking during those tricky afternoon times. Then before the kids head to bed, she also sets out her journal and makes a cup of tea so she feels drawn to wind down rather than going back to grazing in the evening.

Georgie: That's an awesome way to put it. The closing duties. I've worked in hospital kitchens and, you know, seen people there, how they have a list of things that they need to do for the, the next shift and I. I think it's normal for us to be like, but wait, I don't wanna work both the day shift and the night shift, but unfortunately, real life doesn't just ask us to work eight hours. So we are sort of being a friend to ourselves by setting ourselves up for success. We've also talked before on this show about the related strategy of pre-deciding, which is similar but not the same. So if you pack your lunch the day before you've pre-decided what you'll eat, and having made that [00:06:00] decision already, the other stacked in favor of it being a nutritious meal, instead of leaving the decision to the last second, which might turn into an impulse plate of nachos. It's also really pleasant when things are made, like your bed or you come home to something that's organized and clean to prepare dinner instead of having clutter on all of the counters. I have found that in the wintertime I've been making big pots of soup and so I've sort of pre-decided like, oh yeah, lunch for the next two days is just that big old pot of soup.

All I have to do is ladle it out. And it, it definitely decreases the total cognitive and physical labor to do things ahead of time rather than making each decision at the last moment.

Christina: Making the new plans feel fun and appealing helped a lot too. She likes to watch reality TV in bed, so if the bed is made, no pile of laundry on it, and her tea is made and the journal is out. It's not just convenient, but really appealing to get into bed and start relaxing after putting the kids to bed.

Georgie: [00:07:00] That's just the perfect example. The laundry on the bed can just derail everything,

Christina: Or worse when you washed the sheets and forgot to put them in the dryer, and then you gotta make the bed when you're like, but wait, I'm ready to get in bed. And the bed's not made.

Georgie: Yeah, getting in our own way. Again, that is so key. Trying to think of what will make our lives or the tasks that we want to do more appealing, more enjoyable, or things that have an immediate payoff. So for example, like decluttering my desk, probably not appealing or enjoyable in my book, but there's an immediate payoff in like, woo, look how nice and organized it is in here. Or some other things don't really feel fun or have an immediate payoff, and those take a lot more. Mental work to nudge or shove ourselves toward doing. If we try to work in an alternate activity in place of snacking, for example, we say "instead of eating chips, I'm gonna clean the cat box", it's not [00:08:00] gonna happen 'cause you just replaced something that is pleasant with something that's not pleasant and the cat never thanks you anyway. So. You're gonna do much better if you think like, oh, that really awesome book that I'm listening to, I can lay down and put that on instead of, you know, turning on TV and eating chips. So think about what's appealing.

Christina: Working with our emotions is something I have seen over and over, make a difference for our clients. So for the period of her day that's after work, I suggested something called temptation bundling. Temptation bundling is when we pair together something we find really tempting or appealing, like we've just talked about, to do with something we're feeling less enthusiastic about.

For example, watching a show while walking on the treadmill. For this client, we bundled her favorite Spotify playlist with preparing dinner. Even just using this simple tool helped making dinner more enjoyable, especially after the days where she's eaten the satisfying lunch and done that transition from work mode to at home family mode.

And I've [00:09:00] also seen on Instagram recently, this idea of making life more whimsical by just doing things that you're already doing, but kind of adding some fun to it. And one of them was.

Georgie: Like chores with glitter.

Christina: To, well, maybe, but, but they, they talked about like putting on tavern music and pretending you're a tavern wench while you clean your house, or if you're cleaning something, like placing it somewhere else and saying, will you hold this for a second to like inanimate tables or whatever.

Or every time you pass yourself in the mirror, you say, my lady or something. You know, just like ways to make the ordinary things that you're already doing more whimsical and I really loved that. I just thought of it. It's kind of cute.

Georgie: I'm picturing myself explaining this to the healthcare worker that is escorting me into the ambulance being like, no, no, no. Really, I, I know what year it is. I was just playing a game. The, the Spotify playlist is a powerful tool. I have, [00:10:00] you know, a cardio playlist that I only listen to when I'm working out and it definitely helps boost my energy. Audio, books or music while doing another task is fantastic for temptation bundling, 'cause you know, you only using your ears so your hands might as well do something productive. Indoor cardio, oh god. Indoor cardio is really, really hard for me 'cause I'm used to being outside and in the fresh air. But yeah, if I have to be on the spin bike, I do something really good to watch or, or listen to. Otherwise it's just boring and I won't do it.

Christina: I love to use this too. You can absolutely get creative and recruit some other members into this as well. Sometimes just having another person there can make the experience a lot more enjoyable. Sometimes I'll face time a friend while chopping vegetables or sometimes I like going to walk by myself, but if I have someone walking next to me, I know that the time is gonna fly a lot faster and I last longer.

Like I wanna go for further distances with other people. These are just some examples, and I think [00:11:00] it's valuable for everyone to think about this within the context of your own life. Considering the structure of your day, where are the opportunities for you to set up your next shift for success? How can you make things easier for your future self to choose by bundling it with something fun?

Georgie: I think can we bundle something with like doing taxes?

Christina: Hmm. I have to think on that one.

Georgie: We get like the, the, the serving wench being like, must count the coins to figure out how much to tithe! I, I also was thinking with what you said earlier about how we know things can metaphorically snowball in an unfavorable direction, but they can also sort of helpfully snowball in the right direction where we feel like, oh yeah, I got my act together. Look at that made bed and oh, I had that satisfying lunch that I packed.

Thank you self. You're welcome.

Transition from work into home mode in a deliberate, intentional way, and then making the cup of tea like, so it can sort of like all domino effect [00:12:00] into just a better, healthier day, which I think is really nice to point out. Just getting the dominoes started is the, the hard part. We've mentioned how helpful it can be to set things up physically, like that nice clean made bed. However, there's another way that you can help make your skills more accessible so that in a busy or emotional moment, you actually turn to them instead of away from them. This is called fire drilling. So just like you've probably had to do dozens of times in school or your workplace, there's no shrieking alarm going off in this instance, thankfully. But you do rehearse the exact steps that you would take in a tense moment had there been an actual fire. You do these things, which are your healthy, desired behaviors, when it's calmer, when you feel like you have your wits about you. So if you have that really challenging day where you might turn toward ice cream or chips when you're feeling rushed, frustrated, tired, or irritable. You're [00:13:00] not trying to get yourself to do something new like, oh, let me find that coloring book and the colored pencils that have dust on them somewhere. If you go about the same routine you've done many other times on that stressful day, it's much easier than trying to push yourself into a novel activity. This is especially helpful if you feel like your commitment to stopping emotional eating is really high until you're emotional and then it plummets. So in those less emotionally intense moments, do a fire drill. Look over the list of things, which I hope you have, that you want to steer yourself toward when you're in emotional distress. When you look down that list, make sure you do these things regularly, even when you're not distressed, just like a fire drill, so you can do them with less thinking and less effort. They may not be every day, but if you don't know where the things are to do that activity, you haven't done it in long enough, so you know, you don't need to do a fire drill every day to remember where the exits are, but, you know, maybe once every month [00:14:00] or two months at the, the minimum is good just to keep that routine going so it's familiar.

Christina: We hope that you found some of these ideas inspiring, and if you wanna improve your success rate with doing certain behaviors, try out the strategies we described today. We covered temptation bundling, which is pairing something pleasant or tempting with something you may not like doing as much. We also talked about how anticipating and planning can help support your efforts of making these skills that you want to choose more accessible.

The two examples we used there were setting things up ahead for your next shift, and fire drilling your skills on days when your emotional challenge level is lower. Thanks so much for listening today, and we'll see you in the next episode.

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