Ep #131: Your Binge-Free Identity

Hi! Last week on the podcast I shared a piece of a coaching call I had in one of my groups. If you haven’t listened, go listen!

There were a few main topics that we discussed and I wanted to dive deeper into them for you all in their own episodes.

The first is about your identity as a person who binge eats and then your identity as a person who does not.

There are so many people who have been bingeing for such a long time that they don’t even remember what they and their life were like before binge eating.

So when they try to envision who they’ll become, they have a difficult time.

But here’s the thing, it doesn’t matter what your life was like before. Your life before doesn’t have to be the same as your life after and I really hope that for you it isn’t!

Let’s create one better, right?!

Why settle for what you already had when you can create something even better?

Something you want but have never had before.

Oh, I get so excited just thinking about it for myself and for you.

So before we get into the amazingness that your future self is going to be, let’s talk about your current identity.

Let’s talk about who you are now as a person who binge eats.

But actually, not who you are now but who you think you are now.

Right now, you think about yourself using certain adjectives and descriptors.

You think they’re factual, they’re just the truth but, they’re not.

They’re your choice of description.

Here’s some examples:

You’re out of control.

You can’t be trusted around food.

You’re disgusting.

You’re lazy.

You’re an all or nothing person.

You’re a perfectionist.

Those last two I swear people think are ingrained in their DNA but they’re not. They’re totally changeable.

You taught yourself to think in an all or nothing way and you taught yourself to be a perfectionist.

At some point you got it into your head that perfect is the only way or that “all” is the only way, you believed it, and now you continue believing it.

All of those that I listed, all of them, are just optional thoughts you have about yourself.

None of them are facts, just your opinion.

This is how you’re describing yourself as a person who binge eats and guess what, it’s also part of what’s keeping you as one.

You’re thinking these ways about yourself and therefore living into them.

When you think you’re out of control you’re going to act out of control.

When you think you’re lazy you’re going to act lazy.

When you think you’re disgusting you’re going to dress and show up disgustingly, or at least not nicely.

How you think is how you act.

You’re not going to think you’re out of control and then act like you’re in control.

That just doesn’t make sense and it’s not how life works.

So if you want to change how you are, if you want to change what you do, you first have to change how you think.

You have to think like the person you want to be and identify as the person you want to be, not by the person you are.

It’s the same as the idea that you dress for the job you want, not the job you have.

Don’t just settle in to who and where you are, make the change and the change begins in your mind.

Think as the person you want to be, not the person you are. Which by the way, if those are the same person then awesome! So good for you for being the person you want to be.

But if you want to grow into better version of yourself and act differently then start identifying as that person now.

Think as if you are her.

What does a person who trusts themselves around food think?

What does a person who isn’t all or nothing think?

What does a person who isn’t lazy think?

You may believe you need to do things before you think but you actually need to think before you do.

What I mean by that is that you don’t become a person who isn’t a perfectionist and then stop thinking like a perfectionist. You have to stop thinking like a perfectionist before you stop being one.

You can’t think like a perfectionist and not be one, again, it doesn’t make sense.

Just like you can’t think like a binge eater and not be one.

I changed my thinking first and then my eating changed.

I changed how I thought about binge eating, about eating in general, and about allowing urges and feelings.

Then I changed the action of how I ate and the action of how I handled my urges and feelings.

The change in thinking and beliefs came first and the actions came after.

So if you want to be a certain way, show up in your life a certain way, and act a certain way, you have to start thinking like that version of yourself now.

Now, if you’re having a hard time fully stepping into that version of yourself now, if her way of thinking is just so far from what you’re thinking now, you can build a bridge to get there.

You can take small steps in changing your thinking.

For example, you may not trust yourself now so you may have a hard time believing you’re trustworthy but, you’re working on it. You can take the small step into thinking you’re working on becoming trustworthy around food.

You can build that bridge or jump all the way to thinking like your next version of yourself, your new identity.

What’s so awesome about all of this is that you get to create this new identity. You’ve created this one you have now and now you get to create a new one.

You get to decide who you’re going to become, how you’re going to define and describe yourself, and how you want to identify yourself.

You don’t have to be the disgusting, embarrassing, out of control, untrustworthy gal.

You can become the self-loving, self-confident, in control, trustworthy gal.

You get to make that happen.

There are no rules when it comes to who you want to be and how you want think and how you want to identify yourself. None. You don’t need anyone else’s approval or permission, you can just do it.

And the best part – you don’t have to wait for anything.

You don’t have to wait until you stop binge eating.

You don’t have to wait until you get to your goal weight.

You can become her right now. Seriously, why wait?

All it’s going to take is a change in your thinking and you can start doing that right now.

You can decide that you’re no longer the perfectionist and you are, or you’re working on becoming, someone who is willing to fail and is willing to do B- work.

That may not mean you show up perfectly imperfect 100% of the time, you may still fall into perfectionist tendencies, that’s expected, but you’re moving in the right direction by putting your mind in a useful place.

Your identity as you define it is for you to decide.

Decide who you want to be and work on becoming her, in your mind, right now.

Then watch as the actions fall into place.

Have a fantastic week becoming who you want to be.

Bye bye!