Ep #255: Not Wanting to Deal with Urges at the End of the Day

Hello hello! Registration for the next round of The Stop Binge Eating Program is opening next week on June 29^th of 2023!

I will be offering a workbook bonus to the people who register in the first few days AND, you’ll get immediate access to The Stop Binge Eating Course so you can get started on the work before the program officially begins. So if you’re joining, sign up as soon as it opens and join the waitlist now so you can be notified via email when it does open on the 29^th.

So many people who join this program do so after thinking about it for awhile, sometimes over a year, and when they finally do it, they’re so happy they did and wish they’d done it sooner.

If you’ve been thinking about it for awhile too, don’t put it off any longer because waiting longer could mean binge eating longer. Together, as a team, we can get it done faster and when you’re in this program, you and I really are a team and even better, you have the other group members on your team too sharing ideas, sharing inspiration, connecting with you, and supporting you.

So if you’re ready to do this, go to coachkir.com/group to join that waitlist so you can get signed up and get started ASAP once registration opens. All the info about the program is also on that page but if you have any questions that aren’t answered there, send them to info@coachkir.com.

Alright, now onto today’s topic, not wanting to deal with urges.

When you’re someone who struggles with binge eating, urges are part of the struggle.

All people who binge feel urges to binge and even once you’ve stopped binge eating, you’ll still feel urges to overeat sometimes but they’re just not as intense as the binge urges usually.

It’s so important to understand why your urges to binge show up for you so that you can nip them in the bud at the root cause of them.

But until you stop them, they will keep showing up and you can not binge when they do, and you can not over eat when you feel urges to but, you’ll have to be willing to put in effort to do so.

And sometimes, you just might not want to.

That’s what happened to one of my group members not long ago.

She found herself just not wanting to deal with her urges and because she didn’t want to, she didn’t, and she binged.

When you’re in that place of simply not wanting to do the work, it’s going to be very challenging to get yourself to do it.

Because getting yourself to do the work is work in itself and you don’t want to do that either.

And I get it. Sometimes we’re just so done.

So although you can try in that moment to tell yourself why you actually do want to handle the urge and try to motivate yourself to do it, the work I’d actually recommend you focus on and do is not getting to the place where you’re so done and have zero desire to do the work to handle an urge.

And in order to do that, you’ll need to understand why it is that you’re getting to that place.

When I was coaching that group member, I asked her to tell me what happened during the day, before she got to the point of not wanting to deal with the urge and bingeing.

She told me she had a busy day with work and errands and she felt irritated in the midst of all of it. She also had lunch with friends and toward the end was feeling frustrated, and then felt an urge to go get something sweet, and at home later when she was tying to get things done around the house, she was feeling anxious.

So what we realized happened for her was that her day was filled with the feelings of irritation, frustration, an urge, and anxiousness and after experiencing them all day, and having them build up, she was done.

So when that urge hit, she was over it and had no desire to deal with it. She just gave in and ate.

The problem for her was that she let the feelings build up and that’s what lot of other people do too.

They let them build up instead of dealing with them as they come.

And the more built up they are, the more effort and focus it will take to work through them in that one moment, as opposed to putting in the effort and focus a little bit at a time.

It’s like cleaning your home a little bit at a time, a little here, a little there each day as opposed to doing one big clean of your whole home in one day. It can be overwhelming and daunting and harder for you to get on board with doing it when all the disorganization, messiness, and uncleanliness builds up.

So if for you, you don’t want to deal with your urges because you have so many other feelings built up from the day, prevent this by handling your feelings as they come, or as soon as you can once they’ve come.

What that means is that you’re taking a moment to acknowledge how you’re feeling instead of just pushing it away or ignoring it. You’re also taking a moment to be with it. It doesn’t even have to be long, just a few, focused deep breaths can help. And what would be most helpful is taking a moment to understand why you’re feeling how you’re feeling and trying to change your perspective.

You feel how you feel because of what you’re thinking and you have other options besides what you’re currently thinking.

Now, in that moment, you may not be able to see any other options and if that’s the case, you can still choose to be present with how you’re feeling, feel through it, and try to work on it once you’ve calmed down a bit. And having someone help you work through it can of course be helpful too.

So my group member could have taken a moment to acknowledge her irritation, and chosen to be with it for a moment, and felt through it instead of rushing to the next thing she had to do. Same with her frustration, her urge, and her anxiousness.

This could have helped her ease the amount of feelings she was feeling by the end of the day so instead of having a build up full of feelings that haven’t been dealt with, she’d have little bit of feelings that could still use some work and that would be so much easier to deal with.

Going back to the home example, maybe you’re not doing a full clean of your counters and your stove top and your sink during the day but, even if you just do a little something, it will be easier for you to finish cleaning at the end of the day.

Any time you can make to be with your feelings is better than no time at all.

But just make sure that when you are acknowledging and simply feeling what you’re feeling that you’re not panicking or getting angry about it being there, being impatient with it, or thinking about what you can do to distract yourself from it or make it go away quickly.

You want to truly be present with it and be accepting of it’s existence.

And then again, when you have time, you can work through the feeling and change your perspective on that situation you were in, or are in, to then truly change how you’re feeling.

Eating isn’t going to truly change how you’re feeling but changing how you’re thinking will.

So if you’re someone who doesn’t want to deal with their urges at the end of the day because you have so many feelings from the day all built up, take time during your day to address how you’re feeling. Even just a few minutes can be helpful in regulating your nervous system and your mind.

Now let’s you’re not feeling all kinds of emotions but are just feeling several urges throughout your day and after feeling all those urges, you’re tired of feeling them and don’t want to deal with feeling another.

This could totally be the case for emotions too. You get into the mindset of, “It’s too much, I don’t want to deal with another feeling.”

With urges, with the same feeling coming back several times during a day, I’d be curious to know if it’s for different reasons or if it’s the same reason over and over and I recommend you get curious about that too.

Why do these urges keep coming?

Instead of getting upset about them, get curious about them.

You’re urging to eat food but if it’s not because you’re physically hungry, it’s for another reason. You’re urging for something that you think the food can provide for you. It could be to experience pleasure, for entertainment, to calm yourself down, to distract yourself, to numb, to comfort, or something else.

And when you take a moment to acknowledge that you’re urging for food and get curious about what the food is representing for you, then you can figure out what you’re really wanting or needing and give it to yourself.

When you do give it to yourself, it’s likely that the urges will stop.

If you give yourself what you’re urging for, you won’t urge for it anymore.

And remember, if you’re not physically hungry, you’re not just urging for food, you’re urging for what you think the food will do for you.

So check in with yourself and try to figure out what you’re really wanting when you feel that urge for food.

And if you don’t do all of this work I’m talking about here, maybe you’re doing only some, and there’s still emotions and urges coming up for you all day, you are capable of feeling all of them.

You are built to feel those feelings you’re feeling.

What stops you from feeling them and drives you to go for food instead is not your lack of ability, it’s your lack of willingness.

So be willing to feel your feelings.

Be willing to feel another urge, and feel it without eating, because it really is what you want most.

I know you don’t want to experience that discomfort, but what you do want is to stop binge eating and feeling through discomfort is part of what needs to be done in order to do it.

And how you’re thinking while you’re feeling the urge or feeling the feelings has a huge effect on whether or not you’re actually processing through it or not.

If you’re resisting it, arguing with it, freaking out, or are being impatient, you’re not processing.

If you’re as calm as you can be, are accepting of the feeling, and are choosing to be present with it, you’re allowing the feeling to be there, which is part of the processing process.

Even on a busy day, you can take a couple minutes for yourself. Even if that means you’re doing this work while going to the bathroom or while you’re driving. You can sit there, breathe, be present, and ask yourself why you’re feeling how you’re feeling.

You don’t have let things build. You can take little moments to do something, even just a little bit of this work, even if you don’t figure it all out right away, something is better than nothing.

You don’t have to power through and exhaust yourself so you get to the point of not caring, it being too much, and not having any more capacity.

Take moments, even small moments, to recharge yourself.

It’s like plugging in your phone for a few minutes and getting little bits of charge throughout the day instead of letting it die before the day is over.

So often we think we can’t take those moments for ourselves but when we really look, some of the things we think we have to do now can actually wait, they aren’t urgent, and there might be things that can be delegated.

Look for where you can make time for you and your feelings.

How you feel is important. It matters. Dealing with your feelings as soon as you can when they come up is worth making time for.

Take care of you as you go so you don’t get to the point of not wanting to deal.

Alright, that’s what I have for you today and remember, registration for the next round of The Stop Binge Eating Group Coaching Program will be opening next week on Thursday June 29^thof 2023. Go to coachkir.com/group to get all the info and to join the waitilist so you can sign up ASAP.

So many lives have been changed in there. Be the next one to do it. Because you can.

Alright, bye bye.