Ep #153: Yada, Yada, Yada

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Come learn what you need to do to stop binge eating as I break it down into the most crucial components and dive as deep as I can into them in 5 days.

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Okay, so you might be wondering what the heck today’s topic is about.

Yada, yada, yada.

Well, it actually stemmed from an episode of Seinfeld back in the 90s.

If you haven’t seen it, you can just google Seinfeld yada yada yada and watch a clip on YouTube but basically what happens is that George is dating a woman that shortens her stories by saying “yada, yada yada.” But she’s not doing it to cut out the boring parts, she does it during parts where you’d like to hear some details.

So one of her stories is, “My old boyfriend came over late last night and yada yada yada, anyway, I’m really tired today.”

So George is obviously like, “Did she yada yada sex?” Because obviously that would be something he’d want to know about.

How that woman told her stories, and actually George and Elaine played with telling stories that way too, is something you all do when you’re talking about your binges.

I’ve heard you all do it so many times and one day I realized that’s what you’re all doing.

The yada yada.

You’re skipping over the most important part of the story.

You may not being saying yada yada yada but you might as well.

Because this is how I hear it go.

“I came home from work and I binged.”

Or, “I was eating dinner and then I just kept eating and it turned into a binge.”

The thing is, you think you’re telling the whole story but, you’re not.

There’s more to it that is very important information if you’re going to figure out why you’re bingeing and how you’re going to stop it from happening again.

If you’re only telling those stories I just said then no wonder you’re confused about what happened.

“I walked in the house and yada yada yada, now I feel terrible and all the cookies are gone.”

What’s the yada yada?

The elaboration of the yada yada is going to get you out of confusion.

So any time one of my group members starts to yada yada by skipping the important part of the story, I stop them and we back it up.

In the yada yada is what drove you to binge.

It’s your thoughts about bingeing. What were the thoughts?

It’s your thoughts about feeling tired, feeling an urge, feeling stressed or however you were feeling. What were the thoughts?

It’s your thoughts about yourself. What were the thoughts?

It’s your decision to give in to the urge. Why did you decide to do it?

We gotta know these things because although the basics of the yada yada is that you gave in to your urge, everyone’s reasons for why they gave in are different and it’s not like everyone has the same reason every time. They may have different reasons in different circumstances.

And you can’t find a solution if you don’t know the specific problem.

Giving in to the urge is the surface problem.

It’s like your car breaking down. That’s the surface problem. It’s not drivable. But why did that happen? If you’re going to fix the car properly so it doesn’t break down again because of the same problem, you gotta know specifically what the problem is. You figure out what’s broken so then you can fix it and you’re good to go.

You gave in to your urge but, why did that happen? If you’re going to make sure it doesn’t happen again, you gotta know why it happened this time. There was a thought error. What was it? When you find out what the thought error is then you can correct it so you don’t think it again and again in the future.

A common thought error is, “One time won’t hurt.” And, um, yes it will hurt and you know this. So this thought about binge eating needs to go. When you find out this is a thought error you think that justifies binge eating for you, you can be on the look out for it and when you hear it, replace it with thinking that every binge will hurt.

You correct the thought error and you’re good to go.

But when you yada yada, you don’t find the error. So you’ll just keep repeating the error.

But when you acknowledge it as part of the story, you’re able to see it. Then you can work on correcting it.

So when you’re reflecting on what happened when you binged, don’t yada yada your story.

Get as detailed as you possibly can.

Try to recall any thought you were thinking and any feelings you were feeling.

What was going on in your mind between the time you got home or the time you first felt the urge and when you started eating?

Don’t yada yada those details and leave them out.

Then you will be able to more clearly see why it happened. There won’t be confusion, you’ll know.

And from there, you can figure out how you’re going to handle those thoughts and feelings in the future.

You can choose to think differently and you can choose to allow your feelings.

But only after you know what your specific thoughts and feelings were.

If you’re going to correct a thought error your new thought has to be related to the error. It has to address the error.

Like if there’s a lurking thought error that’s says, “But one binge won’t hurt,” and you’re trying to not binge by telling yourself, “I’ll feel so great when I stop binge eating” then you might end up bingeing because now you’re actually thinking, “I’ll feel so great when I stop binge eating but, this one binge won’t hurt.”

It’s like this one time won’t affect the big picture.

Doing this is like fixing the wrong part of the car. You don’t have an error about how great it will be to stop bingeing forever. Your error isn’t, “There’s no upside to stopping binge eating forever.” So that new thought isn’t correcting the real error.

The error correcting though would be one about how one binge will hurt and all the reasons why.

That’s why knowing what’s behind the yada yada matters.

It points you in the direction of what needs to be corrected.

So give attention to the details. Don’t skip over them.

They’re important if you want to understand what happened and what you’re going to work on moving forward.

Alright, now like I said at the start of this episode, the free 5 day training has begun but you can still join and watch the replays for a limited time.

So go register at coachkir.com/training and catch all the trainings you can so you can figure out what your plan of action is for stopping binge eating.

I’ll see you there.

Bye bye.