Ep #56: Being Patient with Your Progress

Hi! How are you doing with your binge eating work? How’s your progress? Is it happening fast enough? Are you done binge eating yet??

You probably want your binge eating to end quickly and you probably want it to be easy.

You want to not give in to one urge and be done forever.

You want to learn one piece of information and think that is the thing you needed to know that will cause you to stop.

You don’t want to wait any longer for this to be all over.

If your impatience is building up, this is the opposite of how you need to feel. Your feelings are what fuel your actions and think about how you act when you’re feeling impatient. You might rush, go to extremes, not do things right the first time, skip steps.

You might get irritable, complain, be frustrated.

You might just throw your hands up and stop.

So why so much impatience? Why is this happening?

First of all, let’s talk about this instant world we live in. It’s so fascinating how impatient we have all become because of it. It’s seriously ridiculous.

Someone doesn’t text us back right away. A webpage doesn’t load fast enough. We have to wait in line. There’s traffic.

Things don’t happen fast enough and we get so peeved by it because we’ve been promised instant results with so many things in our modern world.

We feel entitled to have everything fast. Fast food, fast responses, fast travel, so much.

We get so used to it that then once we have to wait for something, we’re not down with it.

Big goals are usually one of those things, something you have to wait for, and your impatience isn’t helping you get there.

Stopping binge eating is a big goal. Going from eating excessively to eating like a “normal” person takes time and effort.

You have probably heard stories about people just stopping suddenly, and that’s great for them. But that’s not the norm. That’s not how it goes for most people.

I myself stopped pretty quickly but I also did it after going through an intensive coach training that taught me everything I now work with my clients on. I still binged after that but not for long because I learned a crap ton of tools and put them into practice and applied them right away. But even after I stopped the bingeing, I still had emotional eating tendencies to work through and that took longer. That didn’t change as quickly.

And I didn’t expect it to.

So I wasn’t in a huge rush.

We all want to make positive changes and hit our goals and of course we want them sooner than later.

But when you rush to get there you miss out on so much.

Think about when people rush to lose weight. They go on a crash diet, drink only juice, master cleanse, zero carbs, whatever the craze of choice may be. They get to their goal and then what?

They don’t know what to do. They don’t know how to maintain. They don’t know how to eat in a healthy way that will allow them to stay at their weight while feeling good. Even worse, they might still feel terrible about themselves and their body. They still think like an overweight person and if you think like an overweight person, you will be an overweight person.

Your thoughts become your results.

If you rush through the process, you miss out on true growth.

You miss out on learning what you need to learn in order to be the person you want to be when you get to your goal.

Like I talked about in episode 51 about fearing not binge eating, it’s what you learn when you’re going through the process that teaches you everything you need to know to stay at your goal.

It’s what you learn in the process of stopping binge eating that allows you to never binge again.

Everyone is different, learns at different speeds, has different starting points, has different issues, things click for people at different times.

The path to success is not the same length for everyone.

When you expect yours to be short, and it’s not, you’re creating so much unnecessary struggle and suffering for yourself.

It’s going to take as long as it takes and when you get impatient, like I said before, the results aren’t going to be good. The way you show up isn’t going to be good and the whole experience is going to be way less enjoyable.

You can see the importance of being patient, so now how do you do it?

First of all, I get that you don’t want to wait. Why would you? Waiting means that binges are still happening and you’re living with the effects of the binges, and you don’t want that to happen.

But also think about why you want to be done with bingeing so badly.

It’s because of all the things you think will be better once you are done. How much better you’ll feel about yourself and how much better your life will be.

Here’s the thing you gotta know about this. So much of that is available to you now and you’re not seeing it. You can feel more confident, capable, sexy, beautiful, proud, accomplished now and you’re not. You’re waiting until you stop bingeing before you do but now why they heck are you waiting?

Create what you think you’ll get when you get there now, don’t wait to get it.

Don’t wait to feel good about yourself and your body.

Don’t wait to think you’re capable and that you can do it.

You want to get to the goal quickly so you can get those things quickly so you go to extremes to try and get there and you get to your goal and those feelings aren’t there.

You are the one who has to create them and you didn’t. You were too busy taking crazy actions to rush yourself there without taking the time to do the internal work.

Now you’ve learned nothing about how to stay where you are and true change didn’t happen. Just temporary.

The most important thing you have to do is believe that you will get the result you want. You have to believe that you will achieve your goal.

If you believe that it will happen, that you will get there, then any obstacle or delay won’t phase you.

If you binge, knowing that you’re on right path towards not bingeing anymore, then it won’t be as devastating.

You know you’re going to get there so a setback won’t affect you the same way. You can calm the eff down.

Patience is all about having the capacity to tolerate delay without getting angry or upset. That’s what the dictionary told me.

When you can believe that the end result is waiting for you and you’ll get it when you’re supposed to and you expect obstacles, then patience will be much easier to create for yourself.

You can tolerate the delay because you know you’re still going to get there even though it may take longer than expected.

Wouldn’t you rather get there at some point than not at all? Patience will help you to do that.

Patience comes from feeling calm and accepting what is. We create calm with our thinking and can create it no matter what the circumstance, no matter what’s going on around us or what is happening with our goals.

Getting impatient and being desperate for it to happen sooner than it is isn’t going to make it happen sooner. It’s just going to mess with you, your actions, and your progress. It might even lead you to give up altogether.

Believe that you will stop binge eating. Believe it even when you binge or overeat or feel urges. You will get through this and it’s going to take as long as it takes.

Have a great, calm, and patient week. Bye bye!