Getting back on track when you feel like you have “gone off the rails” with your eating. Tips to feel more empowered to act!

Hey ladies! Welcome back to the show! So today we’re going to talk about getting back on track. When I’m talking about getting back on track, I’m talking about having these episodes of feeling like you did some mindless eating or some emotional eating, or some kind of binge eating in general. Before we start the episode, I want to give a big shout out and just tell you how grateful I am today is my 50th episode and I’m recording. And I’m just so thankful to all of you who have stuck around during these 50 episodes and just supported me and supported this community. And I’m forever grateful to you. So I just wanted to kind of thank you. And again, I’m just really grateful. And then also as part of it being the 50th episode, you know, I’m really going to try to be much more authentic with all of you.

I feel like each week when I’m getting ready to do an episode, I have it kind of like scripted out because it’s very hard for me to, you know, I want to cover all the points that I have thought about that I think would help you. But sometimes I noticed that I’m like a little bit reading it because I have a really hard time once I’m in front of the microphone, which is like a whole different ball game of keeping my thoughts together. And so I’m going to try today to do a little bit less of the scripted part of what I have prepared for you and just kind of talk from what’s in my head and what I’m feeling at that moment and all the, and just really giving you the most benefit. So you may hear some cursing who knows. That’s like part of my repertoire of usual words.

So I hope that doesn’t offend you if it’s my mom listening, hi mom!, you will for sure be offended and you’ll be telling me not to curse that much. So anyway, so let’s get started with the episode again, thank you so much. I’m so grateful and I’m so appreciative of everything and everybody who’s listened and supported me in this venture. So thank you. So let’s talk about getting back on track. And in this episode, we’re going to talk about like nine different ways or suggestions of how to get back on track after you’ve had this event where you’ve overeaten or binge eating or mindless the Abe and how to kind of like redirect your focus or that you’re really, you know, not kind of getting stuck down the rabbit hole of craziness and negative self-talk. Okay. So here are my suggestions for getting back on track number one, resetting with the next meal that you eat.

So once you’ve had this episode that you feel like you’ve kind of gotten all out of control. I know a lot of us do this thing where we skip meals, or we kind of starve ourselves as some kind of like punishment. Recently I was at my day job and there was a work party there. And, you know, there was like all this food around and there was really like food. That was like what you would consider like healthy. And then there was food, I guess, what many people would say bad food, although I’m from the, you know, I don’t really believe in good and bad food, but there’s food like cake and cookies and things like that. And the girl whose party it was for, I heard for saying like, I’m not going to eat for the rest of them. And I am just not going to do it.

I just eat so much. And I don’t want you guys to do that. I want you to really just kind of like reset of what just happened. So I don’t want you to starve yourself as a form of punishment because of what you perceived as you’ve done bad. Right. You know, I think many of us have this tendency to promote this mindless or emotional eating that we’ve, that we’ve been doing. And we think like, Hey, I don’t want to stop eating the food that I really love. So I really want to eat cakes and cookies cause they feel amazing. And I think number two, a lot of us feel like what’s the point, what’s the point of getting back on track. Now what’s the point of resetting, but I would say the point to all of this is that the longer it takes you to get back on track, meaning the longer it is that you have some structure into what you’re doing, the longer it’s going to extend the whole overeating cycle.

And when I talk about the overeating cycle, what I really mean is this cycle of like having stress, reaching for some comfort food, feeling good, feeling temporarily better, and then all the guilt and the shame comes with it. And then it starts the cycle of stress eating triggers and trying to get this comfort view. So, you know, resetting with the next meal would be something that would help kind of get you out of that cycle of emotional eating that can last for days, months, years, however long it lasts for you. But I also want you to know that I, I always talk about like, I don’t want you ever to avoid food completely. Especially if it’s foods that you really love. So if you love cookies and cakes and candies, then eat those foods because most often than not, if you don’t eat those foods, then they’re going to be the foods that you’re going to hold on to.

And most likely that’s going to be the food that ends up being part of that whole emotional, eating, hunger, that food that’s going to make you feel really good. So if you can eat that food and you feel comfortable eating that food because you’re not depriving yourself, then hopefully that helps with the cycle beginning in the first place. So that’s number one. So number two is exercising. Ah, we all know the benefits of exercise, so I’m not going to go crazy here. I’ve done previous podcast talking about exercise, but the point of exercise or one of the ways that we can use exercise, especially when we feel like maybe a little bit out of control with our feelings is to know that exercise can help manage stress. It can help improve mood and exercise has been linked to decreased anxiety and decreased depression. I think many of us have some kind of anxiety or depression going on, especially for listening to this.

And it’s storing, you know, the whole COVID restrictions and isolation that a lot of us I know we’re feeling, but what exercise also does is it helps manage the underlying feelings that led to the overeating or the binge eating or mindless eating in the first place. So exercise is a really, I think it can be like a very useful way to kind of reconnect with what’s going on with you and for exercise. I would say just kind of walking, it’s probably the simplest way to get started. And it’s probably the simplest way of just kind of like breaking that cycle of any of the negative thinking that is going on in your head, from whatever you’ve perceived as something bad that you’ve done in terms of this overeating in general. But I want you to know that, you know, participating in regular exercise, whether it’s walking or anything, it doesn’t matter.

Just something that you’re being physically active that activity in itself will help you manage those underlying feelings. So I don’t know if any of you have done this, but I like to write things down that I eat, not the nutrition content or anything, but just kind of an idea of when I’m meeting. And when I go back and I look at what I’ve eaten and how my behavior is and anything that I have associated with it in terms of emotion, they’re much more in check my emotions and the emotional eating when I’m doing physical activity. So if I’ve had a walk that day or I’ve done some exercise in that morning, I’m much more focused on what my bigger picture is. And I’m much more able to handle the emotions related to why the overeating occurred a lot of times. And you know, a lot of times it’s stress or it’s anxiety.

So I encourage you to do some kind of exercise to kind of help manage those feelings so that you feel like most days of the week are under control. And not that you’re feeling crazy and stressed every day. Next I would talk about, I will talk about sleep. Sleep is a big one. So I don’t know that we’ve ever talked about sleep. Sleep is very important when it comes to overeating in general, being tired can be a cause of overeating, but sleep is very important for every one of us because sleep regulates our hormone levels. When it comes to hunger and appetite, there are two hormones that you’ll hear a lot of people talk about and that’s, they are ghrelin and leptons. So what happens is, is when we have a night or have a whole bunch of nights where we don’t have a lot of sleep, it leads to an imbalance of our hormones.

And that includes our hunger. It’s resulting in an increased hunger and an increased appetite. So with sleep, there’s two parts of this. There is the part that you’re not, you’re not sleeping. And so you have this deregulation of hormones and then there’s this other part where you can overeat because you have lack of sleep, right? So the first part is that you have the hormones that are not regulated because you’re not eating because you’re not sleeping enough. And the result of that can be that you have more time during the day that you’re awake and you’re overeating. And you’re more likely to overeat also because you’re tired and sleepy. There’s a lot of research that talks about like waking and obesity in and people that work the night shift. And so I want to remind you that lack of sleep in general, probably for most people can lead to weight gain.

And it is more likely that you could be at risk for obesity with your lack of sleep. Also, we know that overeating, this is the second part of this can lead to lack of sleep. So why is that? Well it’s because you could be too full to sleep. You could have GERD or acid reflux, and that might, you know, make it very uncomfortable for you to lay down because the acid reflux tends to be worse when you lay down after you eat, especially if it’s only like within a half an hour after you eat your acid reflux symptoms may be much worse, especially if the food that you’re eating is like fatty or spicy or, or peppermint or chocolate or something like that, that tends to be more of an asset reflux food in general, overeating leads to like an increased body temperature. So for sleeping, you know, that you want body temperature to be right.

You want your room temperature to be right. And so overeating in general can just lead to disruptive sleep. So what I would say is I would encourage you all to, you know, get enough sleep easier said than done, right? And hopefully in the future, I’ll have an episode. I will have an episode in the future talking about sleep, but as a general guideline, the, you know, most adults, so most adult women between 18 and 65, we need about seven to nine hours per sleep per night. But I know that you know, that I know that you know, that if you have less than that, you may have periods where you’re just so tired. And another part of the sleep is, is like being healthy and having healthy lifestyle choices. It kind of takes a back seat when you’re really tired. It’s very hard to remember when you’re tired, why you’re doing this in the first place.

It’s very hard to plan and plan for your family when you’re really tired. So I would encourage you to, you know, try to, if that’s something that you want to focus on, try to get enough sleep every night and a minimum of seven hours of sleep a night. But obviously some people may need a little bit. Some people may need a little bit less sleep than others, and some people may need a little bit more. So just kind of think about how much sleep you’re getting and if there’s any way that you can improve that next, we’re going to talk about hydration. And we’ve talked about this a lot, but I just wanted to remind you that when it comes to eating or overeating, just kind of monitoring what your hydration status could be. So I think a lot of us tend to eat when we are dehydrated and maybe we’re not even hungry at all.

So, you know, what might be helpful in that is to kind of drink a little bit of liquids all throughout the day. And just kind of remember that hydration is important and that the human body is made up of at least 50 to 60% of water. And that water is necessary for every cell and tissue and organ in your body to function. And just remember too, that the amounts of water or hydration that you need in a day varies according to age, gender, weight, and lifestyle. So typically the men tend to need more water than women. If you weigh more or you tend to need more water, if you have a very active lifestyle, you were going to need more water. If you live in a climate that’s very warm and hot, you’re going to need more water than if you live in a quarter climate and then hydration status.

When you’re talking about hydration status, it’s not just water. You can get hydration, you know, lots of the beverages that you’re drinking, whether it be milk or whether it be coffee and tea, you can, you know, that some of that has water in it. And then also based on the food that you eat that can have water contents and them like the fruits and veggies, if you’re consuming a lot of that, that has water content of your getting soups, all of that kind of takes into account. So I would say, because it varies so much, I would look at your P we talk about this all the time, but look at your urine output and figure out how much, how, what your pee looks like. If it’s very yellow and concentrate it, you probably need to drink more. If it’s very clear, you may need to drink a little bit less.

So you want to kind of be in the middle hydration, like everything, when it comes to nutrition, it’s best in, you know, having the balance. So if it’s, it is possible to drink too much water. So just really look at your urine as an indicator to figure out next. Don’t wait until Monday. Why is that? My concern is that the longer it takes for you to get back on track, but longer period of time, that you’re going to ignore any of the hunger signals or any of the fullness cues that you may have. And so why that’s a concern is that I don’t want you to be having all of these meals where you’re ignoring this whole like overeating cycle and all the negative self-talk, that’s part of that. And so what I worry about is the more meals that you’re doing this for. So say you have a night out that’s on like a Friday night, and then you’re going to get back on track on Monday.

Now you have all day on Saturday and all day on Sunday, where you may feel bad that you’ve been overeating. You may feel some relief for a little bit, but then this inevitable food guilt comes into play and this negative self-talk. So as a form of self-preservation, don’t do this all weekend. Don’t have the negative, self-talk go all weekend. I feel like this goes to eat. Is it either goes, Oh, well, F it, I’m not going to worry about it. Or it goes on the other end where it’s like, you’re worried about it. And then there’s just a lot of this negative self-talk. So if you don’t wait until Monday and you kind of get back on track with the next meal and reset, like I said, at the beginning, that will really help kind of decrease the negative self-talk that you’re doing for Judy street. Potentially, if you’re overeating on a full week, next, you need to know the emotion that’s underneath everything before you can really figure out how to combat it. So identify the underlying emotion, and then you can start to think of some strategies that work for you, because it’s going to be different for everybody that work

For you that you know, that you can

Do. So if you’re at work and you’re upset, maybe you go take a walk around the parking lot, or maybe you put like a song on that makes you feel like inspired and that you don’t care. Or maybe it’s like you just take two seconds and just sit at your desk by yourself and just figure like, okay, do some positive affirmations or some positive self-talk to get you through it. Or you listen to something, an audio book, whatever it is for you, that makes you feel good. Just have to know what the underlying emotion is, so that you can be first aware of it. And so that you can work against the emotionally eating so that you can really deal with the real behavior instead of the quick hit of eating, which is what we’ve all been doing. And you know what we’ve been doing for many, many years.

And then next, I would figure out like, what does your body need right now? So this is also kind of comparable to what we just talked about. It’s just taking a minute, you know, to figure out when you’re in the midst or when you’re done, that’s missed of like, where you feel like, you know, you’ve had this eating episode, try to figure out if you’re really hungry or if you’re emotionally hungry, but in order to break that cycle, once you’re in it, you’re going to have to probably just take a minute and breathe or reconnect to whatever you’re doing to really identify that. And so, you know, there’s going to be a difference because if you truly are hungry and you’re, and you’re eating because you’re hungry is very different than eating when you’re emotionally hungry. So I would just really try to take a minute and to tap into what your body is telling you that it needs because your body knows and either is okay.

There’s not meant to be judgment around it if you’re truly hungry than eat. And if you’re emotionally hungry, let’s figure out how to deal with the underlying emotion so that you get that hunger met. Okay. And then two more things I want to talk about is just first seeing the big picture in this, this episode of over eating, whatever you’re doing, any of this, it’s not a catastrophe, you know, it’s part of the process. You are human and no human is perfect. So I don’t know why we think we have to be perfect. It’s just, if you have a health goal that you’re trying to meet, it’s just every day trying to be 1% better every day, every day, and then overall having the compounds effect of that. So I always, you know, I want to keep reminding you that it’s just progress over perfection.

And then one of the most important things I’m going to say to you today. So listen in is redirect the focus on getting back on track, forget about the behavior. Doesn’t matter, just redirect the focus on the future and getting back on track. Nothing that you did an hour ago, two days ago, five weeks ago, Hey, it doesn’t matter. It’s not a catastrophe. It’s part of life. Just get back on track. The quicker you get back on track and refocus your energy onto what’s most important, which is moving forward, you know, the easier it’s going to be for you. So just keep looking forward. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done in your past your past is going to give you lots of information about what works for you and what doesn’t work for you. So some of it is a lot of it is necessary.

So it doesn’t matter what your past look like. Just get back on track and start looking forward and thinking positive things and having positive self affirmations or whatever you need to do to kind of keep you from looking forward, what you did. Again, it doesn’t matter. And it’s going to teach you what works for you and doesn’t work for you. So anything in the past, especially when it comes to healthy eating for a lot of people, it ends up being dieting. It just teaches you what works for you. It teaches you doesn’t work for you. And it provides a lot of valuable information. So it’s never meant to be something to be ashamed of, or, you know, have guilt around because it doesn’t matter. It’s informed who you are today and it’s informed any, it tells you a lot about what’s going to work for you and what won’t work for you.

And no matter what you would have needed to go through that in order to be successful today. So let’s think about redirecting the focus on getting back on track. Okay. It doesn’t matter why you got off track. It just matters that you get back on track. That’s going to be the indicator for success for you in the long-term. And then lastly, what I want to talk about today is forgiving yourself and moving on. So you are human life. This is life and your body is always changing. What you look like is always changing, what your nutrition looks like and what your body required is always changing. So forgive yourself for anything that you’ve done in the past. It really doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you take steps forward to continue to do the things that are going to get you where you want to be.

I mean, for most of us, we get into this cycle of like hating our bodies because we can’t forgive ourselves for what we’ve thought we’ve done wrong in the past. But I think one of the, there’s all these quotes out there. And I feel like one of them is like, I think I’ve read recently where like the biggest revolution is like loving yourself. And I think part of that is forgiving yourself, forgiving yourself for anything that may have happened in the panelists and remembering that it probably served a purpose and it helped you in some way to be where you’re at today so that you can do it different in the future. So my friends just take it one day at a time progress over perfection, just take it day by day and each day, just take one step forward in making a health change that you desire because what’s the alternative. There isn’t one, right? So just by taking that one step every day, it’ll lead you in the direction that you’re so badly craving that you want to be. So, you know, thanks so much for listening this week. I encourage you to just love on yourself this weekend and just, you know, acknowledge all that your body has done for you and how wonderful you are in that. You’re just going to keep getting better. So thanks for listening. And again, thanks for celebrating my 50th episode with me. And I’ll see you guys next week.

If you found value in this podcast, please rate, review and subscribe on iTunes. Being a busy woman or mom doesn’t mean that we have to give up on our health wellness or self care together. We can take tiny, imperfect steps towards creating the whole health we desire and deserve. You can find us at wholehealthandpower.com or on Instagram at @wholehealthempower. Thanks for listening. I’ll see you next week.

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