Ep #329: Being More Present and Connected With Yourself

Hi! Let’s jump right in and talk about being more present and connected with yourself.

Or really, about not being present and connected with yourself because when you’re binge eating, that is what you’re doing.

You’re checking out, you’re zoning out, you’re not paying attention, you’re just focusing on the food and how good it tastes.

You’re not present and connected with yourself or your body. You’re escaping.

And, you not being connected with and present with your body, your true desires, and your emotions is driving you to binge.

As you’ve heard me say before, what causes you to feel urges to binge is being overly restrictive with your eating and using food to control your emotions.

Maybe it’s just one of those for you, or maybe it’s both.

And both of them are related to not being present with or not connected with yourself.

If you are being overly restrictive with your eating, you’re not honoring your body’s hunger signals or you’re not honoring your desires.

If you’re not honoring your body’s hunger signals, then you’re ignoring them. You’re disconnecting yourself from them because you don’t want to eat, even though your body is asking for you to. And most likely it’s because you’re trying to control your weight and you thank you have to not eat even though you’re hungry in order to do it.

You’ve become disconnected from your hunger signals so you’ve actually stopped listening for them or you think they’re wrong if you do feel them. You think you shouldn’t be hungry or you don’t want to be hungry so you ignore the signal.

So then you’re making decisions for your body, deciding what your body needs, instead of letting your body tell you what it needs.

And then you end up under eating.

But if you were connecting with your body’s hunger signals, and actually honoring them, then you’d be able to notice what your body needs and doesn’t need.

And if you’re eating according to your body’s wants and needs, then you’ll physically feel so much better.

You won’t be feeling too hungry as you don’t let yourself eat even though you’re feeling hungry, and that excessive hunger won’t cause you to feel urges to binge in order to make up for the under fueling and to prepare for possible under fueling in the future. I call those biological urges. It’s your brain urging you to eat because it doesn’t know you’re purposefully not eating, it’s concerned for your survival.

So connecting with and honoring your body’s hunger signals will stop you from feeling those biological urges to binge.

Listen for the signals. Honor them. Give your body what it’s asking for.

And then there’s you not honoring your desires.

If you’re not honoring your desires, if you’re ignoring them, if you’re denying yourself of what you want, you’re going to want it more and think about it more. You’re going to begin to urge for it.

You might want to eat a certain food but you keep telling yourself no, that you shouldn’t, that it’s bad, that you can’t eat that.

You don’t allow yourself to.

Instead of connecting with what you want and giving it yourself, you’re trying to disconnect, trying to not want it, trying to pretend like you don’t want it, and trying to push your desire away.

And it may work for a little bit but it’s not going to last.

Eventually, you will connect with your desires and actually give yourself what you’re desiring but it’s going to feel urgent, you’re going to want a lot of it now that you’re allowing it, and if you’re not going to allow yourself to eat it again after this, then you’ll want to get as much as you can while you can.

But what if you did connect with and honor your desires when they came up?

It would be such a different experience.

It would be so much calmer, so much less urgent.

There wouldn’t be a build up of desire. The desire would be so much less intense.

And many of you, for so long, have been denying your food desires so much that you’ve actually become completely disconnected from what you really want.

In my Stop Binge Eating Program, I help people to eat how they ideally and realistically would like to eat and sometimes, some people don’t even know what that looks like for them.

They’ve been disconnected from their own wants with food and have been eating according to what other people and diets have told them to eat for so long that they don’t even know what they want.

They’ve been too reliant on external factors to make their eating decisions and have stopped relying on themselves, their desires, and also their body’s requests and signals.

So it can take some time to reconnect.

And you’ll do that by paying attention to yourself.

When you think of certain foods, how do you react in your mind?

Does it actually sound appealing? Does it not? What sounds the most appealing and satisfying?

How does your body react when you say no to certain foods?

Does it tense up? Does it feel open and relaxed?

You’re not just going to keep making decisions based on what you think you should do or what you think you have to do.

You’re going to notice what you’re thinking and feeling as you consider your options.

And when you do, you’ll be setting yourself up to feel more satisfied after eating which will make it easier to move on once you’re done.

And, you’ll be setting yourself up to feel less urges if you’re not denying yourself of what you really want to be eating.

So, you’re going to connect more with your body and with yourself and your desires.

You’re going to notice what you and your body are wanting and not wanting and you’re going to honor that.

And in doing this, you’ll create a more communicative, trusting, connected relationship with yourself and your body and a result of that will be feeling less urges to binge which will cause less bingeing.

Next let’s talk about using food to control your emotions.

Instead of feeling uncomfortable, you eat.

You don’t let yourself feel, you try to ignore what you’re thinking and how you’re feeling, and you disconnect from what you’re thinking and feeling.

And you’ve learned that you can do that by eating food.

Eating food is something you can do to get away from your emotions, to feel better, and to just get a break.

And if you’ve done this many times, and if you’ve eaten more than you’ve felt when you’re feeling uncomfortable, then your brain has turned this into a habit.

It has become your go-to when you’re feeling uncomfortable so that’s what you’re going to think of.

And the more intense your discomfort, or the more often you’re feeling discomfort, the more you are going to want to eat.

You’ll urge to eat.

And it’s coming from a desire to disconnect from how you’re feeling and to not be present with how you’re feeling.

You want to get away.

But, if you were willing to be present with how you’re feeling, and if you were willing to connect with yourself, how you’re feeling, and what you’re thinking, then you wouldn’t feel that urge to eat.

You’d just be in it. You’d just feel how you’re feeling.

The desire to eat when you’re feeling uncomfortable is coming from a desire to escape and to disconnect.

So that desire to eat won’t be there if you’re not desiring escape and disconnection.

So you’re going to choose to stay present and connected with yourself.

If you do, if you are willing to be present and connected with yourself, even if you’re feeling uncomfortable, then you won’t need to eat anything.

You’ll just go through the discomfort, work on your thoughts, and feel better on the other side.

Being more present and connected with yourself and your body and your emotions will be a huge game changer for your binge eating.

And not even just with the things that cause you to feel urges to binge like I’ve been talking about, but if you’re wanting to overeat less or stop the snowball bingeing.

And by snowball bingeing, I’m referring to those times when you aren’t feeling super urgey but you just keep saying one more, and then one more, and then one more. Your eating snowballs into an excessive amount that could be considered a binge.

The snowball bingeing and overeating can happen when you are disconnecting from how your body feels and are disconnecting from your true wants and are disconnecting from your future self.

You’re not thinking about any of those things and are just focusing on how good the foods tastes.

And, it can happen when you’re not present with the food you’re eating. You’re not even focusing on it. You’re mindlessly eating. So you just keep putting hand to mouth without any thought about whether you’re still enjoying the food, whether it actually tastes good, if you like the texture, or if you even want the food.

When I run The Joy Food Eating Workshops inside of The Stop Binge Eating Program, the people in the workshop are practicing extreme connection and presence with their body, their mind, their feelings, and their food.

And because they’re doing it, they usually end up feeling much more satisfied than usual when they stop eating, they might even stop sooner than they usually would, and they’re listening to their bodies and their true desires.

That’s the magic of being connected and present when you’re eating.

Now, of course we can’t all be extremely mindful like I have them be in the workshop all time because you are going to be eating around other people and you are going to have distractions around you sometimes but, you can at least do your best.

You can at least try to connect and be present as much as you can instead of completely checking out and not paying attention. You choose disconnection or connection. Checking out doesn’t just happen, you choose it.

Choose self-connection.

So many of you just haven’t spent enough time connecting and being present with yourself yet, you do it so much with other people.

You pay such close attention to how other people are acting and how you perceive they’re feeling, and you ask them about themselves and what they want and how they feel yet you don’t do it nearly as often with yourself.

Do it more.

Pay attention to your hunger and fullness signals, pay attention to what you’re wanting, pay attention to what you’re feeling, and actually give your body and yourself what you’re needing and wanting.

You will be so much more satisfied, fulfilled, and content if you do.

And less urges and less binges will be a result of that.

Notice yourself.

Notice what your body is telling you and not telling you.

Honor yourself.

Honor your body.

Ask yourself questions and answer them.

Spend time with yourself.

Spend time with your emotions and discomfort.

Be present and connect.

You will feel so much better and binge less if you do.

Alright, until next time, bye bye.